Functional Medicine For Period Problems (Episode 314)

Full Transcript: Episode 314

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 314. Welcome to the Fertility Friday Podcast, your source for information about the fertility awareness method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process.

Because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health. Because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless whether or not you want to have babies I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys I know I know I’m a busy girl. But I managed to fit it all in this podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles your fertility and your overall health and I’m. So excited that you’re here with us today I’m excited to share today’s interview with you today I’m sharing my conversation with Dr.

Kyrin Dunston and anyone who’s listened to the podcast for a while will know that I love it when I have an opportunity to interview an MD I love having the opportunity to learn more what is medical school like what perspectives did you come out of medical school with how are certain issues addressed. You know how are doctors trained to deal with period issues why is it that. So many women go to medical doctors and and find that the treatment that they receive doesn’t address the root cause I think these are the important questions that we need to be asking and the important conversations we need to be having.

Because we all need to have doctors I mean it’s really important that we have medical doctors there’s. So many different concerns and issues that all of us need to have doctor. But at the same time we have to understand where our doctors are coming from and understand the ways that they’re trained and the conditions that they’re apt to treat. And we have to have some of those answers about why certain period conditions are not really treated in modern medicine and what we can do about it how we can empower ourselves. So this conversation is really powerful for you know many reasons.

But one of the reasons is because Dr. Dunston shares her personal experience going through Medical School having a traditional practice. And then going through a series of events that inspired her to switch the way she practices all together. So switch from a traditional medical practice to a functional practice. And so this episode is important for all of us to hear. But particularly for health professionals for doctors because I know over the years many doctors actually do listen to the show. And it’s it’s interesting to hear from medical professionals who learned in a certain way.

And then through experience in their practice it’s transitioned to a different way of looking at things in the way to treating patients. Because really this is where I see the future of medicine and healthcare going okay. So let me introduce Dr. Dunston leading by example OBGYN Dr. Kyrin Dunston lost a life-changing 100 pounds and healed herself from chronic disease by addressing the root causes of her overweight and dysfunction this personal transformation in turn caused a professional one and she left her ob/gyn practice in 2011 to pursue a functional medicine practice after becoming fellowship trained in anti-aging metabolic and functional medicine Dr.

Kyrin’s book cracking the bikini code six secrets to permanent weight loss success brought her in office natural weight and health restoration program to women everywhere and as the host of her brilliant health radio podcast she offers interviews with inspiring and insightful experts in functional medicine for women desiring to heal and achieve optimal health naturally. So without giving any more away and without further ado let’s jump into today’s conversation with Dr. Dunston and I’m really excited to be here today with Dr. Kyrin Dunston Dr. Kyrin we met.

Because you had me on your podcast and we had such an amazing conversation that I invited you to the show. So welcome to the show.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Thank you so much for having me Lisa it’s really fun to be back here with you. Well let’s just jump right in I mean you’re a board-certified medical doctor a board-certified OBGYN for over 20 years as I talked about in your intro and I always say lovingly. But seriousness but whenever I have the opportunity to interview a medical doctor who’s been classically trained I always just I’m dying to know what med school was like and all of those things. So I’m really excited to dive into that but one of the questions I always ask my guests is what brought you to the field of medicine.

So 20 years ago 30 years ago whenever you decide to be doctor why did you decide to be a doctor like what brought you into the field of medicine. Right so I always wanted to be a doctor I just I kind of came here wanting to do that. And you know I’ve been filled over 20 years now and just in the work I’ve done kind of in the spiritual realm which is a whole other conversation I’ve learned that I have been a healer for many lifetimes. So my mom has a picture of me listening to my favorite stuffed animal when I think I was four or five with a stethoscope my lot Leo the Lion.

And so it was something I was always interested in I was always interested in science how things work how the body works I was always interested in helping people and I always had a proclivity for how could we do things better that was kind of my makeup as a child I was the one who would take the TV apart how it worked and how he could make it work better. So it’s something that I I always wanted to do and it really is something that was in my family I have one grandmother who was a registered nurse I have another grandmother who was a pharmacist.

So those two strong women really had this science background in the healing background. And then I had a great grandfather and a great-great uncle they were brothers who were physicians and my great-grandfather was actually the third african-american to graduate from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia where I went to school. So I really came from a history of people who were healers and scientists. And it’s something that I always wanted to do when I was in college I volunteered at a women’s health center and loved that I really loved with talking with women about their health problems.

You know it’s interesting my best friend in high school I went to Bronx High School of Science and she and I we call her Harriet’s and you’re a nation and bowel function and her brother who was older than we were and he was a student at Dartmouth one day he said to us we’re at the dinner table he looked and said why are you always having these scatological conversations. And we looked at him like what is scatological and. So of course we had to look it up and it’s about body fluids and body activities and functions and I was like yes we love having scatological conversations.

So what better fashion for somebody who loves to have scatological conversations then OBGYN. Well I love I love learning new words learn they’re to me. And it’s so funny that you say that so I didn’t know I’ve never heard the word scatological and I have a lot of friends who are nurses. And so nurses constantly have scatological conversation they’re always talking about bodily fluids. So it makes total sense and then so am I. So here we are well so one of the things that really struck me in our first conversation that we had a little while ago was that you had you just experienced some changes in your viewpoints.

So as from once he graduated medical school and you began practicing at some point you started to kind of see things a little bit differently I mean the fact that you had me on your show and we’re talking about the menstrual cycle is a vital sign and questioning the use of birth control isn’t really the typical mainstream medical perspective. So can you share with us just some of your your professional experiences that led you to look beyond what you had been taught in medical school sure. Well it gets back to my childhood again so I was raised in Manhattan by a very progressive mother her name’s Jerry we used to call her granola Jerry and she was really good friends with Gary Null whom some people listening may be familiar with I don’t know how many New York Times bestsellers he’s written.

But he really was one of the leaders of the whole health holistic health movement and he had a health food store very close to where we lived. And we were in there several times a week talking to Gary. So this is me and grade school my mom toting me and my sister behind and he would educate her on nutraceuticals which he sold in his store and making healthy foods. So she used to make her own yogurt and all kinds of things into her own sprouts she always had sprouts under the sink making sprouts. So I really was raised in an environment of natural healing my mother it was very healthy didn’t take medications my dad didn’t.

And if my sister and I got sick she would give us goldenseal and echinacea and make us sweat it out and none of our friends did this we thought she was crazy she would give us. You know black bean burgers instead of beef burgers and we we just would make fun of her incessantly. But we actually were pretty healthy kids and so here I decide to go to medical school. Because I’m the type of person that when I decide I’m gonna do something I’m all in two feet. And so I’m gonna be a healer I want to help people I’m gonna go get all the information about how to do this.

So I went to medical school which I loved because I was just a geek about how do things work. And you know when I got to learn about the tendons in the hand and how they pulled them and how it’s really like a puppet I mean I just it was thrilling exhilarating fascinating. And then I went to residency and of course I wanted to be a good resident. And so I did what I was told to do. And so they you know in hindsight I didn’t really realize what was happening at the time there was this big shift from learning all the science and biochemistry and physiology of the body to.

Well this is how you assess a patient these are the symptoms these are the diagnoses you make a diagnosis. And then you give a drug or you do a surgery diagnosis drugs surgery. And so I just did that because that’s what I was taught and I really stopped I didn’t question anyone I had no reason to question anyone. Because these were the people doing it and so they knew how to do it. So I need to do what they’re doing so that’s the type of medicine that I practiced for many many years. But then my own health took a downfall and I ended up weighing 243 pounds I had chronic fatigue I was tired all the time all I did was sleep and work and even though I had kids and a husband and a family all I did was sleep and work I didn’t wasn’t really living and I had something called fibromyalgia which is pain in the body I had anxiety depression my hair was falling out I looked and felt 20 years older than I was and bad people come I didn’t feel like myself in my skin I didn’t feel at home in my skin and I really got to the point.

Because here I am a board-certified physician who’s supposed to know more about when it’s help than anybody else in the country and I’m running tests and they’re all quote-unquote normal and I can’t figure out what’s wrong and fix it and I go to my internist and I say something’s got to be wrong and she runs tests and they’re all quote-unquote normal and as this progressively worsened over years time I really got to the point where I thought if this is what life is I I don’t even think I want to live it. But I really didn’t have a choice because I couldn’t figure out an answer.

So I just kept going through the motions and breathing in and out and putting one foot in front of another and doing what it was mine to do. And then through a series of miraculous events I mentioned the spirituality earlier I came across this thing called functional medicine. And when I learned about it it wasn’t some somebody giving me their opinion it was really I heard scientists and doctors talking about tests I had never heard of why I’m board-certified obgyn why have I not heard of salivary hormone testing why what is this how has it validated oh my gosh it’s validated why don’t we use it hmm long story right that’s a political thing.

But I started using it on myself I actually initially worked with a naturopath when I heard about functional medicine and started doing salivary cortisol testing salivary hormone testing did the right thyroid tests and read them the right way and Oh even though I had checked my thyroid at least ten times and it was quote-unquote normal discovered that I had hypothyroidism low functioning thyroid. So I had adrenal deficiency testosterone deficiency had a flat line cortisol Oh then I started going to conferences a life extension Foundation and the American Academy of anti-aging medicine and I started learning about food sensitivity testing and the importance of gut health and healing for health and learned about functional stool tests never heard about these things as a traditional physician and came back.

You know I have leaky gut and I was sensitive to all the foods I was eating on a regular basis I think there were 40 foods on my list really bad. And so I immediately eliminated them from my diet and I started noticing benefits and the weight actually it was like someone popped a balloon the weight just started coming off my energy started coming back my hair started growing my skin started shining my outlook improved. And so slowly but surely it was like Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumb trail I’d go to a conference learn about tests do the tests fix whatever it was adding me to address and my health just started improving.

And so after a while all my patients who are middle-aged women with the same problems I was having right overweight tired or can’t sleep depressed anxious no sex drive hair falling out skin problems gut problems autoimmune disease like all these things they and they really never got better and I was noticing this in my practice along with my health problems and I started saying to my colleagues like are we really helping anyone. Because even though I put this woman on an antidepressant and a sleep medication and a birth control pill for her heavy painful periods and fibroids like she never gets to a point where she says oh my gosh doctor cured I feel great again thank you.

So much it’s just like you would just add diagnosis and add medications and it would just be this kind of slow downward spiral of aging. And so my patients saw the changes in me and they’re like what are you doing girl cuz we want that. So I started doing this work with them and quickly realize you can’t do this type of care in a regular medical practice. So regular medical practice has five and 10-minute visits and it only takes a few seconds to write a prescription I can assess you do a quick exam oh you. You know you have insomnia here take this right you have heavy painful periods here take this birth control pill right that didn’t work Oh take that one that didn’t work we’re gonna do surgery.

So you know functional visits are an hour if not sometimes more there’s a lot of education. And so I I really ended up starting a separate practice on Mondays and Wednesdays where I saw my functional medicine patients. But then what was happening is all my regular patients I was seeing on Tuesday Thursday before I would say. Well my board certification says that this is how Sosa treat you supposed to do this surgery hysterectomy are supposed to give you this birth control pill or this sleeping pillow this antidepressant. But you may be interested in this other type of medicine that I have learned about that is the reason I lost a hundred pounds and healed myself from chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and all this.

And this is what it entails and any educated person you you explain this to them they want it and they get the difference they get that they’re being sold just pharmaceutical treatments that are band-aids that don’t fix the root cause. So when you explain to them the difference they say I want that. So all my patients then were coming on Mondays and Wednesdays to see me in the functional practice. Well after several months of that I realized it wasn’t in integrity anymore doing traditional medicine. So I actually closed that practice and retired and that was 2011 and I’ve done this full-time since oh nine years.

And so that’s really my transition the you know the issue is that we physicians once we’re told we’re board certified. And we know everything about health right we get a certain type of arrogance that incurs contempt prior to investigation meaning we’re not willing to be open minded and look at anything else even though it could be valid. Because we know everything that’s valid already so why would I look at anything else and there is this kind of arrogance that permeates mainstream medicine. You know and it’s almost I know people say you don’t sound like a doctor right it’s almost like a cult.

But it really certainly is a religion and it’s the religion of the double-blind placebo-controlled trial which came about in the past 50 to 70 years it didn’t used to be our gold standard medical care if you look at the history of medicine in America since it was since settlers came here although there I do acknowledge they were indigenous people here way before other people came and they used traditional methods of healing like plants right and they lived with the earth and in harmony with nature. But here we settlers came or settlers came I probably wasn’t one of those they actually.

You know medicine was interesting like orthopedic surgeons were doctors initially who worked on animals big animals like horses right. And so they thought well you work with big animals you can work with the bones. And so those were the initial orthopedic surgeons believe it or not we’re veterinarians who worked on baked animals and there really was this a printin apprentice factor to medicine. And so there wasn’t really medical school you had to go apprentice with someone. But I mean think about it like they used leeches for bloodletting and they didn’t know about germ theory and that there was these things you couldn’t see called bacteria and viruses that made you sick.

And so they there was just a lot of superstition and it wasn’t didn’t really have a scientific basis. So fast forward to the last century and discovery of germs and Madame Curie and discovery of antibiotics. And so that was such a powerful change in medicine right the discovery of antibiotics that how powerful they were and that they could protect us from these infections that that really became the Holy Grail. And then we discovered the double-blind placebo-controlled trial and that became the basis of science. But now knowing what I know about functional medicine knowing what I know about spirituality and energetic medicine and the nature of us as energetic beings right we’re not physical beings we’re energetic beings who happen to have a physical body it really the double-blind placebo-controlled basis of medicine with pharmacological intervention doesn’t allow all space for things like quantum physics which we know to be now kind of that the nature of reality is changeable based on the observer effect.

And you know that’s a whole other conversation but to get back to the track cuz I’ll just take an idea and run with it I became open to learning something new when I had pain. So it’s been said I think Michael Bernard Beckwith says pain will push you until your vision pulls you. And so I had so much pain that I became open minded. And that’s all the doctors who practiced this type of medicine with and weren’t finding answers or they had a loved one who had. So much pain and work finding inches and then once you get through that pain. And you find these tools and you use them to improve your health then your vision of what’s possible for all of us start to pull you.

And you go oh my gosh we’ve been going about this the wrong way and I don’t mean to say that mainstream medicine doesn’t have miraculous tools miraculous right for acute care and the medications that we do have available tremendous right tremendous we’ve increased our lifespan by decades in the past hundred to two hundred years. And we can even do better you know.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well let me jump in there I mean thank you for sharing there’s like a P like. So many different points of what you said that I’d like to highlight. But what I think is really interesting is that after years of doing this podcast and interviewing hundreds of guests one of the reasons why I asked. You know what brought you into medicine and what kind of caused that shift in the way that you practice it’s a consistent when I asked my question there’s consistently a personal situation. So whether that’s a personal story of illness that the individual had to overcome or a family member or something along those lines and and for others it’s years of seeing that their patients weren’t necessarily improving.

So yeah I think that that’s a really important piece of it. Because something that I’ve really started to to just I suppose just to put into words is that the truth is always the truth whether you believe it or not. So for example we all kind of know that eating healthy relates to health and eating like not healthy it’s debatable what’s healthy right everyone has a different idea of that. But there’s certain tenets of health that are just true right. Because if you are ill and you change things and you become better that’s actual result. Right so if you’re in a modality that isn’t necessarily healing the body.

And then you switched to a different modality where you’re getting different results again the results kind of speak for themselves. So you touched on the medical model which a lot of people refer to as the allopathic model when you said. You know I went to school and you know you diagnose. And then once you diagnose it’s drugs or surgery and you mentioned that in a short appointment it’s either. You know what I mean like you have five minutes. And it’s like that allows you to make a diagnosis and create give the solution right away. So one of the questions that I think my listeners would be really keen to hear about specifically is thinking back to medical school what were you taught about the menstrual cycle and what were you taught about essentially how to solve issues related to menstrual cycle health and how does that differ from how you handle your patients today given what you’ve learned.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: So in medical school the first two years are really a lot of didactic lectures and learning about the system’s anatomy physiology. And we have Anatomy cadaver labs and we dissect the body. And so it’s really learning and so I learned how the body functions about the in the ovaries. You know egg production how that evolves what hormones are produced and in what sequence how the brain controls fertility how fertility occurs or doesn’t occur for men and women. So I really learned all of the the physiology and the biochemistry around that with without in the first couple years there isn’t really a large talk about interventions or treatments it’s just getting the incorrect information on how systems function how cells function.

And then in the third and fourth years there is more focus on we start going into the clinic and at least this is how it was when I went through might be different now we started going into the clinic and really taking pharmacology and learning doing surgery on our surgery rotation. And then learning from the doctors that we would preceptor with how things were handled. And so that’s where we started having introduced protocols and treatments and like I said in residency you just got you got more of that and really in depth in your specialty. Because in met in med school in the third and fourth year in the third year I basically rotated around every six weeks to a different specialty.

And then in the fourth year the depth and specialties. So how does that compare to what I do now. So as I said it was really that I was told that how taught how the normal menstrual cycle functions and I was told. Well if someone has irregular periods painful periods heavy periods fibroids endometriosis pain associated with their cycle basically any cyclic complaints that the treatment was a birth control pill that’s what I was taught and that you try the lowest dose right and that. You know you try the latest and lowest dose and you see how that does three months is a trial.

And then you see how they do you see them back in three months. And if not improve you try a different pill right maybe a little bit higher dose different hormones in it. And if that doesn’t work then depending on the issue you’re generally going to go to surgery a some type of laparoscopy where you look inside now at some point you might have done an ultrasound. And you probably did a pelvic exam to look for any anatomic defects to see if you felt anything which you may or may not feel you might have some fibroid you may not may feel some ovarian cysts.

But that’s generally the protocol of how these things are handled whether you have ovarian cysts fibroids heavy painful periods suspected endometriosis whatever cyclic pelvic symptoms are going on birth control is going to be the answer now there are other forms of the birth control that they may use now. You know implants or hormonal IUDs something to basically shut off shut down the female hormones. But there’s really not much thought there’s no discussion of what’s causing that never in my clinical training did I have any doctor or clinician bring up the fact of we need to look at why somebody has that and that is the whole basis of functional medicine it’s not what can I do to suppress the symptom and just.

Because I suppress your symptom with a pill means you’re hunky-dory it’s why are you having this. Because you have to speak the language of the body and the body uses symptoms to get your attention to pay attention that something’s wrong. And there’s something that’s wrong is not your body’s not saying I need a birth control pill please give me a birth control pill that body is not seeing that body’s saying I have this symptom please look at something that’s causing it and figure it out to fix it. So I can come back into balance because the body naturally wants to heal.

So by the time you have heavy painful periods ovarian cysts fibroids there’s something. So out of balance that the body cannot fix and and it can’t fix it. Because there are drivers of that dysfunction and you have no break on the dysfunction every disease has a driver and it should have a break. And when you get symptoms it means that your driver is. So high and your brake is faulty and you have to decrease the driver and increase the brake to bring the body back in homeostasis. And so I wasn’t taught that and then thank God I found functional medicine that said.

You know like you’re 243 pounds your fat is not the problem it’s a symptom of the problem we all think the fat is the problem if I could just lose the fat then I’d be fine that was my thought and I worked with hundreds if not thousands of women who are overweight. And that’s all of our mentality our body is a bank account it’s calories in, calories out if I can exercise like crazy and starve myself I’m gonna lose this weight. And then I’m gonna be fine and that is a lie right that’s why all weight loss programs have only a six percent success rate at two years and helping people lose the weight and keep it off.

Because your body is not a bank account it’s a complex biochemical equation and system and how your body handles calories which can be stored as fat determines your weight and what determines how your body handles calories your hormone balance right hormones are the chemical messengers the communicators telling your cells what to do on a second to second basis store that calorie is fat or open the fat cells and burn those calories as fuel right this is the signals that your cells are getting or not getting you’ve got a look at toxicity right. Because if we have too much toxicity your body can’t let it swim around.

Because it’s gonna make you sick so it has to store it. Well where does it store it in fat right so if you’re not getting rid of those accelerators of inflammation those toxins your body’s not gonna let go of the flap we have to look at nutritional insufficient eight core nutrients vitamins minerals nutrients that our body needs to burn fat and get rid of it and that our body needs to function and seventy percent of us in the industrialized world are micronutrient insufficient. So we have to look at that so you have to look at these drivers and mitigators of disease and symptoms.

So now that’s my whole approach if someone comes to me and they can’t sleep why can’t you sleep I don’t just give you a drug to knock you out there that is a tool that can be used if needed and I’m grateful we have that tool. But it doesn’t fix the problem and people think you know it’s. So funny because I talk to patients I do some traditional telemedicine sometimes and I talk to patients and I say. Well do you have any medical problems or take any medications and I’ll say no I don’t have any medical problems or any medications oh yeah and they list.

You know five or six medications antihypertensive cholesterol medicine and they go oh. But you told me you don’t have any medical problems they go no it’s all controlled on the drug people think they’re fine and they don’t have any medical problems and their health is as good as it can be when they are on pharmacologically controlled by these drugs and that is a lie it’s not true. And you know but this is what we’ve all been trained and bought into as being our healthy healthcare. And so you know if you’re on a medication to make you sleep you’re not getting the proper brainwaves and REM cycles to restore your body.

And it’s not restorative and it’s not a long-term solution and it it belies the fact and mask the fact that probably your cortisol is out of balance your stress hormone which determines how your immune system functions and whether you’re gonna get a virus when it comes around or not and how sick you’re gonna get from it or whether you’re gonna get cancer or not cortisol determines your immune system function most people who have insomnia have a cortisol problem if you just take something to knock you out you are denying yourself the ability and opportunity to fix that cortisol that’s probably going to cause you problems with some other system down the line and you’re thinking in ignorance that you’re good when that’s not true.

So it’s a whole different paradigm but like you said the truth is the truth whether you see it or not are willing to see it this was always there. But I just had no open mindedness to see that what I knew as an allopathic physician was a small amount of what is available the body of knowledge and expertise to heal the body.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Wow yes I’m fist bumping over here so I think I mean there’s just. So much of what you said that’s really important I mean I feel like the listeners should just like listen to that again. Because what you’re talking about is a difference in paradigm this can be challenging I think to explain. Because when you’re talking about the medical system it’s not to say that you’re trying to slam it or trying to. You know be really critical of it I feel that in a conversation like this we’re trying to explain it. So that a person who’s seeking medical support can understand how this look what this paradigm is.

And there’s a difference but so the paradigm that you’ve described is one where the questions are not being asked what is the underlying factor and how can we restore the body to homeostasis. And this is essentially what I would talk about on the podcast for five years.when. Because I’m looking at the world through the lens of a menstrual cycle right like it’s it’s a different approach a lot most people don’t do that. But when you look at it from that perspective as what you said about the body. So the body sends you messages when there’s something odd balance.

And then strokes like a kind of starts going haywire when there’s something out of balance your body doesn’t have a telephone or a cell or Wi-Fi send you a message in words to say look there’s something wrong. So these symptoms are the only real way that our body has to try to wake us up in to understand it and what you described beautifully is that these medications are helping to control those symptoms. So they’re controlling the body’s way essentially kind of minimizing in many cases the body’s way of trying to tell you that something’s out of balance.

And so you feel like you’re fine and it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong necessarily with taking that approach. But I feel like what we need is that conscious level about it if you’re conscious and aware that this medication isn’t healing you. But it’s simply controlling those symptoms and you’re not necessarily fine and you’re comfortable with that then I feel like that’s a big difference to someone who really doesn’t know that that is the approach and that it is actually possible to look at another approach that would actually look at those underlying factors that are causing those symptoms.

Right so you know just as you were talking this analogy popped into my head that I have to share it’s like if your kids are wanting your attention and your time and your love and they’re coming to you and wanting to interact. And you just tell them here’s some Doritos sit in front of the TV all the time like is that the answer every single day all day maybe it’s a tool that you use every now. And then but if you do that long term you’re gonna end up with some really disturbed kids who don’t get their need for connection and love met. And it’s kind of analogy I thought of but I think it is confusing for people.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: It is really confusing because we are really taught from the time we are born in this country to that the doctor is the authority the doctor will fix you and that doctors are to be respected and not questioned that they know everything. And so we have really bought into this system and all of us collectively and that our insurance should pay for us to be healthy and anything that our insurance doesn’t pay for we don’t want right and that our health expenses are just like our other expenses and they should be mitigated at all costs we want to spend as little as possible on our health we don’t see it as an investment and and that we need a drug I talk to patients every week who want to tell me I need an antibiotic like I asked them what symptoms are you having and they go I need an antibiotic why do you need an antibiotic.

Because I have an itchy throat and I just want to get on top of it I hear that every week I want to get on top of it before it becomes a problem which says chose to me a total lack of understanding about what an antibiotic is for and how we make the diagnosis of needing one and a lack of understanding of the harmful effects of antibiotics. So I think that we are trained into this system of the medical systems the authority the dark Durr has the is one who heals me and that I need a drug and my insurance should pay for it. Right so when we see anything different than that as consumers we are very suspicious and very wary we’re like they don’t know what they’re talking about I mean I even look up doctors that I respect like Dr.

Mark Hyman who has written several New York time bestsellers ultra wellness he’s I think one of the creators of the Institute for functional medicine there are two organizations that train functional medicine doctors right now the I FM and the a4m and I think Mark Hyman was one of the creators of I FM I mean he’s a prolific physician he’s an educator of physicians and laypeople and everything that he teaches is documented I mean nothing that I do isn’t documented and and proven. And so I looked him up some for some reason on Wikipedia and it says that he’s a charlatan.

And it’s this kind of thing that really keeps consumers confused like. But it says that he’s a charlatan but moat the average person doesn’t have the the ability to know if that’s true or not or to educate themselves if that’s true or not. And so what do you do when you’re afraid because you don’t want to make us mistake and try something that could be you could waste your time or money or be hurt by as you go with what the herd says is safe. And that’s mainstream medicine. there also is very much a herd mentality when it comes to everything that we do in life.

So pharmaceutical companies insurance companies and the medical establishment I’ll call it our really who profit financially from the medical system the way it is which is disease management not the creation of health. Well they also run media right they bake pay for all the commercials that fuel your shows that you watch and your news that you watch and your newspapers they have. So much money and buying power I mean every other commercial you see is a drug commercial every other commercial you see is an insurance commercial right they’re not advertising for health insurance.

Because that comes for most of us through our employers for the past many decades. But they advertised for car insurance right every other commercial for car insurance. Because they make money off of that and that funds their other activities. And so it puts keeps them forefront in the mind of employers gonna mind you that we are trained into a system. And then we are not given information that could be contrary. So even though we have free speech in our country right one of the founding tenets of our Constitution is that we have free speech you may be saying it and that.

So this is why we need people like you and like me and all the other hundreds of podcasters out there who talk about alternative health holistic health to get the word out. Because people aren’t gonna see this information watching the nightly news or Good Morning America right. Because they censor it because the drug companies don’t want people coming on there talking about why the pill isn’t the greatest thing ever they’re gonna have doctors on there talking about how it’s about women’s liberation and you’re trying to set women back decades. And you know all this and and they don’t want people on there talking about it.

So I think it’s very challenging for the average person. And this is why I say doctor means teacher and my job as a doctor is to educate you. So that you can make a decision for yourself I don’t tell you do this. Because I say it’s right or helpful I say let me teach you this is how the menstrual cycle functions these are the hormones this is their chemical structure this is how it functions in the body just like I learned in medical school and you’re having these symptoms. Well let’s see what we can do to evaluate that we want to look at why you’re having that.

Well maybe we should do some salivary hormone testing to check your levels of estrogen progesterone testosterone and they might say. Well my regular doctor said we don’t do that which is standard mainstream medicine I say. Well that’s true in mainstream medicine there is no standard of care for checking women’s hormones. But let me ask you we check your cholesterol and all the different types of cholesterol we check your blood pressure temperature we weigh you we do blood chemistry’s we check all this other stuff why does it make sense to you that we don’t check your sex hormone levels and the average person will say no that doesn’t make any sense right.

Well we can do that and we do do that in functional medicine right why don’t we do that in mainstream medicine their argument is there no standard values which is a lie right there. Because the lab comes back from the lab with the standard values right. And so we can check it and so you talk to them about that. And then I say okay well we could do a blood test. But I would recommend a salivary test and this is why. Because these hormones are made from cholesterol in the body and cholesterol is made from fat right and they know that they say yes okay.

So these these hormones are oil they’re like oil because they’re fat and your blood is like water right. Right so what happens when you try to mix oil and water they don’t mix they separate out okay. So these hormones have to be carried around on proteins in your blood to get from one place to another. So I say okay I like I call those FedEx trucks. So we can tell how many FedEx trucks you have. And when it’s throwing the packages into the cell stay in there for like such a small fraction of a second that you can’t even count that it’s almost impossible to get an accurate measure of how many of these are not only in the FedEx trucks.

But being delivered to cells on what we really want to know is how many of these hormones are inside the cell. Because that’s where they have their action they go in the cell. And so one way that we can check what’s inside the cell is with salivary hormone testing. Because the saliva that’s secreted from the cell has the same contents as what’s in the salivary cell. So if we collect saliva we know how much of these fatty hormones are inside the cell and most people go oh that makes perfect sense. So I don’t say you need to have salivary on testing. Because I said right now I’m gonna educate you how your body works.

And then you does that make sense to you I’ve never had a person say that make doesn’t make any sense. And then they start getting it okay we do the salivary hormone testing oh look your estrogen and there are three different types of estrogen we check for is really high and look how low your progesterone is we know that optimally healthy people should have a ratio of like one to ten to one to twenty estrogen to progesterone. So you’re out of balance so this is why you have. So estrogen is the weight gain water attention PMS depression anxiety hormone right you need enough of it to feel good.

But if you have too much it’s going to cause those things and progesterone is the we lost diuretic and depression sleep a feel-good happy hormone. And it’s the mental timekeeper and it’s the light flow menstrual talked positive. And so you need a balance between you need them both at the right levels. And so if the estrogen is high then the next question is why right oh okay are you not excreting the estrogen that you make. Because you’ve got to get rid of everything that your body makes you’ve got to get rid of you have to detoxify it. So is estrogen toxic to women no but if you have too much it will become toxic and increase those symptoms we’re talking about.

So you get rid of it through your liver and your gastrointestinal tract and your stool right you poop it out. Well if your action is high the first thing I look at is are you pooping it out and is your liver sanitizing it out. You know dumping it into the gut and then there we look at all the things that could go into raising your estrogen. And then we look at why is your progesterone low what’s going on with your ovarian function your ovaries the main creator of progesterone why isn’t it doing that and there are a lot of reasons. So I find that when I eat people and take them through this they totally get it.

But it’s funny because I can work with someone for three to six months and they can get. So much benefit and losing weight and periods regulated and I mean fertility increased and all of these things and. But there’s amnesia that happens because it’s this information isn’t being reinforced in the outside world. So I inevitably find people come back and and maybe they’ll come back three six months later and they say. Well they’ll say oh yeah I started taking this birth control pill. Because my doctor told me to take it it’s like late. But we had we explained and now remember we talked about this remember we talked about tolerate hormone test and remember we talked about oh yeah.

So there’s this amnesia and there’s this pull to go back to what everyone else is doing. So people that that really take this type of medicine and run with it and never look back and their health is transformed forever tend to be people who have a certain type of Constitution where they are independent thinkers and they’re also not people pleasers. So they can take care of themselves and say no to what doesn’t work for them and really get it.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: But anyway I wanted to kind of the difference yeah I wanted to jump in and get your thoughts on something. Because with me because the work that I do helping women to understand their menstrual cycles and helping them to not only use it as a tool for natural birth control or conception. But also as a window into the health yeah so what I find I have conversation after conversation pretty much every day with clients where it’s really connecting them to what’s happening in their body. So tuning them into those subtle messages that their body is trying to tell them.

And you alluded to the fact that from the time that we’re born essentially we’re born into this system that is constantly broadcasting a very specific type of message about health care and that message is that we get we find the answers outside of ourselves there are experts who know more than we do and those are the ones that we must put our faith into. And you also mentioned towards the beginning of the interview something that you might be able to get back to a little bit you mentioned medicine is like a religion right and I’ve I’ve certainly felt that way.

Because when I was young so many tangent here but when I was young and I learned about science I mean I’ve always just been fascinated by science and the way that I was taught about science was that science was this practice not a religion that involved creating theories. And you would have a theory and you could basically ask any question right like there’s no limit this is how I was taught. So you could ask any question and essentially the research was there to test out your observations. So if you have a theory that that hormonal imbalance contributes to health issues then you can construct experiments to test those theories and even and all you do when you’re having these tests.

So these scientific experiments is adding proof for your theory or showing that it’s less likely to be true. So you’re either but you never this is how I learned it you never really proved the theory it’s always a theory you just have certain theories that have more supporting evidence. So there’s theories that have years of supportive evidence and there’s other theories that have conflicting evidence. But my the way I was taught from when I was young about science and I really gravitated to that idea. Because it was so fascinating was that you’re never really like proving anything in the sense.

But you have support and additional evidence to support your theory. So getting back to my point so after that little tangent what’s interesting is that from a young age we’re taught to look outside of ourselves for answers now none of like most of us aren’t medical doctors most of us haven’t thoroughly gone through that training. But if you’ve lived in your body for your entire life then I would be hard-pressed to say that any medical doctor would ever know your body as. Well as you because that is the where you live. So I just I’m curious to hear your thoughts in it.

Because the way I’ve looked at things the way I’ve supported my clients just to kind of like one of the main things I’ve supported. You know all of my clients to do is to actually start to trust their own intuition. Because the truth is the truth you either feel good or you don’t your menstrual cycles either in line or it’s not your cholesterol is either out of whack or it’s in balance. And if you do something you make a change and then you see that shift in one way or the other it either shifts or does it right. And so I just I’m curious your thoughts on that.

Because I feel like it’s not even necessarily that we should be replacing these don’t know what all doctors for know at all functional doctors. And we should always be and going to people who supposedly have all the answers it’s a challenge. Because not everybody is trained and not everybody can interpret scientific information necessarily. But I still think that it would be beneficial to move towards more of a just an acknowledgement that our own intuition our own feelings the way that we feel in our body that that matters.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Absolutely I think we really are socialized into self-abandonment in. So many ways and not being having a central locus of control with ourselves knowing who we are listening to the signals knowing what they mean learning how to interpret the signals I mean who’s teaching us that like nobody. And so part of my journey through functional medicine has also been relocating the locus of control in myself physically mentally emotionally spiritually. And so it’s something that I really when I work with patients you guys. Because you you’re exactly right Lisa you can practice a functional medicine approach the same way you practice an allopathic medicine approach and I see doctors do that.

But I really try to foster that innate knowing in my patients and I work with a lot of homeopathics with my patients. And it’s interesting I am working with this young woman was having a lot of gastrointestinal problems and she has Hashimoto’s now she didn’t know she had how she loves. Because I didn’t do the right test but she knew she didn’t feel right and thank God she trusted that and she came to me and I diagnosed her. And then we’ve been working on her autoimmune issue so I have her working with the homeopathic. So I had given her instructions because you have to kind of grade them up as your body tolerates.

So you really have to learn how to tune in to am I ready to move up to the next level or not am I ready to add that next homeopathic or not. So I explained that to her we had nice in-depth conversation about it. And then she she calls me and she says I don’t know Dr. Karen am I supposed to go to the next level and I said. You know I just explained to her again I really would like for you to start listening to your own body and listen to what it’s telling you. And you decide and then what’s the worst that happens you go up. And you have adverse symptoms then you know oh I wasn’t paying attention to the symptoms I shouldn’t have gone up or shouldn’t have added that other one I need to back up or I need to go forward and I think that that is.

So vital because when we abdicate our self knowing and our self responsibility to a system outside of us to heal us we give up all our power. And that’s kind of a soulless unsatisfying empty way to live and I don’t think it’s how we were meant to live. And so for me fostering people’s personal empowerment is huge I tell patients all the time. You know yourself better than I will ever know you. You know yourself better than anyone should ever you know will ever know you. And you I may give a suggestion but if you immediately feel like oh no that’s not right for me you need to honor that right you need to say yeah I don’t doesn’t sound right for me and I say fine right you you have an innate knowing.

And when I weighed 243 pounds that thing was so shut down I had no idea that I had. But now I know that I have to honor that above all else and that that trusted still small voice what I do follow and sometimes a test is helpful.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well I think these are all tools right these are all tools that. So yeah I had chills when you were saying that it just resonates. So deeply with me because in the way that I’ve looked at it for a long time and the way that I talk about it is that I look at health care. You know you’re sitting around a boardroom and each medical professional each health coach each whoever is supporting you on your journey is around that boardroom table and they all have a certain specialization. So I think it’s helpful even just to frame it that every health professional that you go to whether it’s a psychologist or an OBGYN or a functional medicine doctor or a naturopath or a chiropractor or whatever all of these individuals have been trained in a specific modality.

So each individual professional has a set of tools and within that I mean within that profession you’re different like you mentioned some functional practitioners are very much like ok. So you have this issue take these supplements so instead of prescribing medication it’s prescribing supplements in a very kind of similar way and others go deep. So even within it so you’re at the head of that bordering table. And it’s a hard place to be to take that full responsibility for your health and to acknowledge that I’m the one that has to make that final decision I can’t just if I abdicate my healthcare to somebody else is in the word that you used then really you’re releasing some of that power.

But if you take the time to inform yourself and to make those decisions it’s harder. Because then you’re kind of on the hook but at the same time you can do what resonates with you there’s something that you said towards the beginning of the call and I feel like this might be a good place to as we kind of draw towards the end of our our call today. So one of the things that I’ve often said with clients when it comes to incorporating a bit of spirituality a bit of not necessarily spirituality even I don’t know that that’s the right word. But with menstrual cycle charting it becomes clear how significant of a factor stress can be mmm.

Because it literally shifts the minstrels like a whether it’s chronic or acute and one of the ways to reduce stress then is to. You know calm yourself and engage in different practices and. So getting to my point you mentioned the placebo kind of like the double-blind placebo-controlled trials you mentioned that our bodies are there’s an energetic component yes right is it really discussed in medical science. And when you mentioned the double-blind placebo-controlled trials you mentioned that concept of I don’t know if I’m gonna say the right word.

But basically the effect of the observer and so for the odds like for the listeners you heard that and we’re kind of like what does that mean my understanding. Because after you read thousands of research papers you see it over and over it’s fascinating a double-blind placebo-controlled trial what that means is if you have let’s say nutrient X. And you want to find out if it has a certain impact in the body to do a proper trial not only do you have to blind the participant. So if I’m the participant I can’t know if I’m getting a sugar pill or if I’m getting nutrient X you also have to blind the doctor who’s administering nutrient X.

So the doctor can’t know if it’s the real nutrient or the sugar pill. Because the power of our minds is so strong that if I know are getting nutrient X I will have a beneficial effect in many cases just. Because I think it’s helping and if the doctor knows that they’re giving me that nutrient. Because they know it could make me have a positive effect. And we call this the placebo effect we call this an annoyance we call it something that interferes with our research when what is the potential if we can think something is helping and it can help. So I’m sure you have something to say about that.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Absolutely so yes right so we say it so blase blase double-blind placebo control I mean every study like that’s the gold standard. But what are we really saying is exactly what you said Lisa we’re saying that what we believe about our patients and what the patient believes about the treatment and what we believe about the treatment causes an outcome. And if we believe that it’s beneficial it will be beneficial and will if we believe it won’t work it won’t work. And so this is the standard that every treatment is is tested against. But we totally are you know the Act would ebo effect and it can vary 1020 sometimes up to 50% just based on belief we’ll get a clinical outcome.

So that means like if we take an antidepressant and we treat half of a group with an antidepressant. And we prove they’re depressed and we treat the others with sugar pills. And we tell them all you know we don’t know what they’re getting they don’t know what they’re getting that a certain portion ten twenty percent of the people who are getting sugar pills are actually going to become not depressed from sugar pills. Because they believe and we believe that they’re gonna get better right and and actually a lot of the studies on antidepressants before they were approved show that they probably don’t perform much better than placebo.

But what this gets to is our belief so what is a belief it’s nothing more than a thought that you thought thousands of times. So much so that it has become unconscious you don’t think about it. But it is a driver of your behavior and it’s something that you can’t sense with your five senses you can’t see hear touch taste smell right. But it’s what I call the intangibles along with your thoughts your feelings your beliefs and also your connection to something greater than you what are these they are energy you can’t find them in the body they do not exist in an atomic form they are only energy they are energy that defines who you are.

Right so they’re part of the energetic system that was defined by the ancient Chinese thousands of years ago they access it with acupuncture it’s the energy blueprint of your body that forms the framework of your physical body that can be photographed with things like Kirlian photography or can be measured with electromagnetic frequencies. Well outside the body several feet right these these are energetic forces that compose who you are and they are vital for your health and well-being. But no allopathic daughter doctor talks about this and a lot of functional practitioners don’t talk about it you’ll get energy practitioners who do energy medicine practitioners who talk about it and for me I really have a ginormous toolbox.

Because I deal with the energy body homeopathics speak to your energy body informational tools like homeopathics where the plants you’re just taking the energetic information that speaks to your energetic body. But you can learn how to work with this yourself there’s some great books I want to recommend the Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton fabulous book Joe Dispenza has a book called Dr. Joe Dispenza the placebo effect that talks about what we’re talking about and really for you to be the CEO of your own health means that you do need to investigate and learn about these things and understand and prove to yourself and find what makes sense for you.

And then educate yourself and kind of have your your boardroom of practitioners who help you. But we we do the double-blind placebo-controlled trial and the observer effect is there’s a great video on YouTube I think it’s Dr. Bob Green who did it that has a cartoon that explains the observer effect that based on what you believe about an outcome. Well actually just observing a study changes the behavior of what happens in the study. And so that gets to the power of the energy that we are right there’s this this energetic essence that transmits from us that we change just by looking at things and Dr.

Wayne Dyer says when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change. And it’s so true it’s now scientifically proven with the observer effect and the double-slit science experiment in quantum physics that we change outcomes with our observation. And so you know this gets back to I think really knowing yourself having that locus of control paying attention to your thoughts and emotions examining your beliefs this is a lot of what I talk to patients about. But most people are like flabbergasted said no one ever told me this I have no they have no knowledge of this.

But what I want you to hear today is that. Well welcome to your energetic self and this is a thing. And if you learn how to start working with it and harness it you’re gonna reach levels of health that you might not have thought were possible. Because I find that this is the missing link in a lot of people’s healing. Because this energy is the energetic framework of your physical body I can’t correlate. Right so you’ve got to address the energetic correlate in order to have complete physical healing. Well.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: And I mean I love this topic I think it’s it’s also interesting to mention what’s referred to as the nocebo effect the opposite. So for example if and there’s there’s reports of things like this happening where a person has an illness and they go to a physician the physician says okay you’re gonna die you’ve got six months to live that belief then they’re all often patients who will then die like six months to the day. So I think it this isn’t about for anyone who’s hearing this and as this is new information or it sounds a little bit out there for you I think that what’s interesting are the implications here.

Because I go on about the science and it is helpful obviously to do double-blind placebo I think we need to have any word there. But placebo controlled trials so that we can verify if it’s actually the drug or if it’s if what the result is actually more than what you would get just by believing you would be better. So this isn’t to say that there isn’t room for the scientific inquiry. But I think the opportunity that this presents is that when you do have evidence backed treatments when you do have the specific strategies that you’re following to improve health imagine then the possibility of harnessing that additional power of the mind that is mislabeled as placebo to whatever you’re doing I mean what are the implications of that combined with that empowerment piece of really trusting your intuition taking your health back into your hands.

And then utilizing all of these pieces that we’ve talked about as tools to improve your health I feel like some that type of knowledge and drive and empowerment can make a person unstoppable.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Absolutely yeah that makes you unstoppable because you know yourself you trust yourself. You know about your energetic self you’re intimately familiar with your thoughts and your emotions what your emotions are usually in reaction to your thoughts. And then like we said your beliefs our thoughts you thought thousands of times before. And you you do become somewhat unstoppable once you learn about this energetic realm. And you learn how to work with it and you uncover the underlying beliefs that keep you stuck like a lot of people have a belief that if their parents had certain illnesses they’re gonna get it I can’t tell you how many women have said to me oh my mother had a hysterectomy at 40.

So it’s time for my hysterectomy they believed they would have problems like their mother did and need a hysterectomy. So they manifested problems and then they said I’m ready for Maya’s directa me. So these like I said are subconscious you don’t you’re not even aware of them or this belief that you have a susceptibility to illness like oh I get a sinus infection every year at this time I can’t tell you how many people who I talk to who say that. Well what does the belief that you the nocebo effect that you’re going to get a sinus infection actually does help to cause you to get a sinus infection.

So once you learn about this and you start working with it it really does make you unstoppable I will say that. And this is where I’ve been doing a lot of my study lately is in transforming bully. Because a lot of our beliefs were implanted into us before we were seven when we were this tabula rasa, an open vessel and the beliefs were put into us by how we were treated and what we were taught about how the world works. And so sometimes those are hard to discern but if you look at your life you can see the out picturing of your beliefs and it once you if you don’t like what you’re getting in life.

And you can go back and say oh what are the beliefs I’m having. And so one of the beliefs that people might want to look at is I believe the doctor heals me and that I have no power to heal myself I really find that in a lot of people. And so I you have to make it conscious first and say yeah I guess I do believe that. And then you have to start making it all conscious on a conscious level and asking yourself do I really want to believe that does it make sense to me I have a whole exercise I take people through with this to evaluate the beliefs that are out picturing a common one I find with the women I work with is I work with a lot of middle-aged women who are in jobs that they hate.

But they believe that that’s all they can do to make the money to survive I suffer to make money I can’t do what I love and make the money I want to live like they’re all these beliefs behind it and I find that a lot of women these women are they allow their boundaries to be crossed repeatedly they will over give at work they allow themselves to be disrespected and they don’t say anything I had one I have one client right now who even though she was put home on social distancing. So now she’s not commuting to work her boss said. Well now you’re gonna work those hours for me and and she didn’t say anything and I’m like oh no I would had something to say about that.

So these are beliefs that you have to over give to earn your worth that you’re not worth what you’re getting paid. And you know when we look at the paycheck discrepancy with men and women I always in the my mind wonder how much were participating with that. But in any case looking at these beliefs because and this was true for me I should speak for myself I over gave you talk about over giving when I was an OBGYN oh my gosh I gave and gave and gave and it was like never enough until I depleted myself. So fully and so I had this belief that to be worthy that I had to over give beyond my capacity to take care of myself.

And so really looking I’m like that’s insane no I don’t believe that I don’t want to believe that. And so the first thing is though awareness acceptance action. So I’m aware of it okay I accept why I feel this way a lot of it has to do with how I socialized as a female in our culture. Because that’s how we’re taught and then action is take contrary action how can I do it differently. Well I don’t know forgive anymore I say I look inside and I say what can I give with an open hand and loving heart. And that’s what I give and then when it starts to deplete me and say sorry I can’t no more I can’t do it anymore.

You know it has to come from a place of love and openness. And so I started doing it differently and you know sometimes when we take contrary action to what we believe it can be a little uncomfortable. But then when you become intimate with yourself you can learn how to process and work with those emotions and see where did they come from usually from childhood events feel them allow them acknowledge them you can journal and dialogue with them. You know they’re all these tools you can use to really have that intimacy with yourself. You know so many of us are looking for intimacy with others in the outside world and what we can get.

But we don’t even know who we are we don’t even really know how we feel or what we think. And so one of the things I like to help people do to get back to your point Lisa of that knowing yourself right I remember when I was a resident this woman came in with a full-term pregnancy who said she didn’t know she was pregnant Wow in fetal distress and she was like a 23 year old living at home with her parents and she her parents had wanted her to be a virgin at marriage. So she didn’t want us to even go tell them like that she was pregnant. You know it was just the most insane situation but the bottom take-home was talk about being out of touch with your own body and I wish I could say that was an isolated event.

But it would frequently happen that we would have women come in full-term pregnant and say they didn’t know. So it helps you to foster that knowledge of your physical body. But also your emotional body and your thoughts write your thoughts and emotions are flowing throughout you right if you laugh really hard you can feel how you feel like I encourage everybody listening when you get done with the podcast just think about something funny and just start laughing or just start laughing there’s something called laughter yoga where you make yourself laugh.

And then after a while you’re laughing for no reason automatically and it does boost your happy hormones and see how your vibration feels and your energy and what your thoughts are like and feelings after that. And then go turn on the news or go read a really sad scary story or whatever and see how you feel. And you feel constricted and down and then see what happens to your thoughts and your emotions right there in the toilet. And so you wouldn’t you start knowing this then you can start working with your thoughts feelings emotions and moving up that vibrational scale with your energy and staying or in gratitude and appreciation and openness and love and joy and that improves your health.

Right so your cells are all vibe a certain frequency. Well when you’re feeling happy and you’re laughing and you’re in joy they’re all at a high frequency. And when you’re in fear and constricted they’re all at a low frequency and they function way better at a high frequency. So this whole issue of getting to your beliefs and the double the the observer effect and belief like I think this is the next frontier of medicine mmm-hmm.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well I couldn’t think of a better place to end I mean we could have talked all day I’ll have to have you back again to jump into more topics. But doctor does thank you so much for being here this was. So informative and I just really appreciate this conversation I think these are topics that we really do need to be exploring I couldn’t agree more that this is the new frontier of Medicine the incorporation of all these different modalities instead of separating the human body into all these little parts and everybody having their own little specialization which is also necessary.

But I feel like there’s there’s a lot of value in having communicate communication with all these different specializations. So that we can really understand that this is one body and incorporating these different modalities into care I mean just there’s. So much potential for human beings to be so much healthier than we are. Because the information is already there I think that’s one thing like the information is already there this there’s millions if not more than millions of scientific papers that have gathered all of this improve everything we need for people to have a really amazing level of health and of course there’s.

So much potential so thank you for having this conversation with me and bringing these issues to light.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Okay and you’re welcome.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: And I want to invite you to share about your podcast about your website practice. So that the listeners know where to find you.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Sure thank you so much for having me Lisa I love talking about this stuff I think it’s. So important because like I said a lot of people aren’t going to hear it and a lot of places. So it’s important that we keep spreading the word you can listen to my podcast Her Brilliant Health Radio on itunes and I think you’ll really enjoy that my website I’ll give it in case you want to look me up is Kieran Dunston MD and it spelled kind of differently. So KY are IM d un sto and md comm and I’d love to share with your listeners I created a meditation for brilliant hormone health.

So I know you talk about fertility and menstrual cycle. And so it’s a 20 minute meditation that I created to help people balance that energetic aspect of hormones that we talked about right I think they’ll really enjoy it. So I’d love to if you can put the link in the show notes I’ll have to send it to you I can’t remember what it is offhand I just want to offer that.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Ok well we’ll definitely include that in the show notes thank you. So much for being here I’m really excited to share this conversation with my audience. Because I mean this is what it’s all about.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston: Yeah thank you again Lisa thank you for listening if you enjoyed today’s show please share it with a friend you’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at FertilityFriday.com/314 I hope that you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Dunston I mean we could have gone on for a really long time. So for those of you who actually listen to the end thank you for staying with us I think I’ll have to ask Dr. Dunston back on the show. So that we can continue our conversation because honestly we could have gone on for a lot longer. But what I really loved about this conversation was just to get that additional insight I think it’s.

So important for us not to give up on doctors there are issues with our medical system and there are issues with the way many doctors are dealing with period issues obviously there are. So many women who have negative experiences who have period pain or different issues irregular cycles and they’re really hoping to get to the bottom of the root cause and their doctors are telling them that it’s not possible and all that. But it’s really important to know why that is and that’s why these conversations going into it talking to doctors talking about med school talking about write as residency talking about what that experiences like what you learn.

And then finding out how it’s often different to what happens in practice these are conversations that are really important to have. So that we don’t lose sight of the fact that we do need doctors. And we need to be able to work with with doctors. And we need to be able understand where they’re coming from. So that we can advocate for the care that we need we need to understand the role that doctors can play in our healthcare and there are many areas where the doctors are more helpful in one area than another for example. So it’s it’s really important to have these conversations so that we don’t let’s say throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Because I’m sure I’ve mentioned this on the podcast before. But I’ve had a number of conversations with clients who are. So proud of you know I find I haven’t seen a doctor in 10 years and I don’t see doctors anymore and I think okay. Well we don’t want to just totally the concept of medicine we need to understand where these doctors are coming from something I wanted to mention I mean I’ve been interviewing professionals this will be the sixth year of the podcast coming into December 2012. So I’m in the sixth year and I I’ve lost count of the number of professionals I’ve interviewed.

But somewhere between 150 to 200 professionals certainly at this point I’m interviewed and I find that I learn. So much from professionals who’ve written amazing well researched books I learned. So much from professionals who have years of experience but not just experienced going through the motions experience listening to patients learning what works taking it upon themselves to focus their attention and education in specific areas who have really specialized in a certain area field of medicine and really continue to grow. So I suppose I’m pointing out those who have really taken that interest in what really works for the human body if you’re using a certain approach and your patients aren’t getting better asking why are my patients not getting better and learning more and adapting and taking it upon yourself to do that an independent and additional professional training and research to really support those patients to get better.

And then to start getting those results and so I can’t tell you how much I love speaking to seasoned professionals who have that level of experience of practice where it’s not just following the motions. But it’s really looking at like okay so I have these patients I was taught in school to do XYZ. But I’ve noticed that it’s not working I want to help my patients get better. So you know what what what else can I do and honestly this is how we make the system better this is how we improve healthcare for everybody we start listening to the patients and learning about what works.

Because we are at such an interesting time in the world where there’s. So much information out there and for you know so many of the common conditions and challenges and issues that we face whether it’s with the menstrual cycle and otherwise there are often huge bodies of research a number of channels throughout the world that are successfully treating different conditions. And you know this would be such an amazing time to come together and really tackle some of these common health issues that we actually do have a lot of information and support and professionals actively treating successfully in.

You know non-invasive ways with period issues being just one of them. So thank you so much Dr. Dunston for coming on the show this interview as I mentioned I found it to be. So informative and so important and I always love having an opportunity to talk to a medical doctor it’s like one of my favorite things. Because I want to know I want to know I want to learn more what was it like in med school was like a residency. So that you can then make those informed choices so with that said I want to thank you for tuning into the show today if this episode resonated with you.

And you know somebody who could really benefit from hearing it make sure to share with them for FertilityFriday.com/314 and I thank you all for being a part of the fertility Friday community for sharing the episode with your friends for spreading the word about fertility awareness and really just helping. But women in the community and the world at large to empower ourselves with this knowledge. So with that said I will let you go and of course as always until next time be. Well and happy charting you.