This is a full transcript of the Nirvana Sisters podcast Episode 117, Are Your Hormones Balanced? Find Out With Tips From Holistic Hormone Expert Marisa Faye - Part 1

Editor’s Note: Please know that this podcast transcript is automatically generated and may contain minor errors such as typos and word switches. For more information, be sure to listen to the podcast here or view our podcast episode guide.

[00:07] Amy Sherman: Welcome to Nirvana Sisters podcast, where we take the intimidation out of well being and beauty to help you achieve your highest state, your nirvana. We are sisters in law and your hosts. I'm Amy Sherman.

[00:18] Katie Chandler: And I'm Katie Chandler. So let's get into some real conversation. Welcome to the show. Nirvana Sisters family. We are back, and today we are sitting down with Marissa Faye. Marissa is a woman's hormone and gut health expert. She specializes in hormonal issues like PCOS, Hypothyroidism, weight loss, resistance, IBS, endometriosis, and a lot more. She's the founder of a robust online nutrition and wellness practice supporting women all over the world through her DIY, gut and hormone healing course, the Balanced Hormone Blueprint. Marissa holds a master's degree in public health board certification in holistic, nutrition, certification in functional nutrition therapy, certification in functional lab testing and interpretation, certification in hypnotherapy, which I want to ask about that. That's so interesting. And she's also certified in yoga and meditation. So Marissa is definitely a wellness guru.

[01:21] Marisa Faye: Ladies, thank you.

[01:23] Katie Chandler: A good person to chat with. So we cannot wait to get into this. So welcome, Marissa. Welcome to the show.

[01:29] Marisa Faye: Thanks so much for having me.

[01:31] Katie Chandler: Well, before we get started, let's do our Nirvana of the week. Amy, do you want to get us started?

[01:38] Speaker D: Sure, I can get us started. Welcome, Marissa. So excited to have you here. So my nirvana this week, I would say, well, kind of last week. Bleeding into this week. I was on vacation last week with my husband celebrating a milestone anniversary. It was our 20th anniversary, so that was amazing. And we were out west in Utah and Arizona, and it was just amazing. And we were unplugged and just relaxed, and it was just nice to get away and be completely just not having the everyday stuff going on. It was good to just reconnect and have a really nice, relaxing trip. So that was definitely my nirvana of last weekend. This week. It's bleeding into this week.

[02:20] Katie Chandler: What about you, Katie? Yeah, I know. Your trip was like one massive nirvana, every aspect of it. It's amazing. I was just thinking, I think mine. I had a really great piece of nirvana earlier in my week. I have new clients in the city, and I live close to Manhattan. Marissa and I'm training it into the city now, which is a new thing for me. And I was so afraid, like, how my energy would hold up. And I had a couple days in a row, really busy, in and out of the city, and I felt great. And that with my autoimmune conditions for my energy to hold up and to not crash as hard as I could, it really was. So I was literally dancing in the shower one evening because it was like 06:00 p.m., and I still felt good. Like, I went to the city, I worked, came back, cooked dinner for the kids.

[03:08] Speaker D: What's the secret what are you doing differently?

[03:10] Katie Chandler: You know what? It's actually kind of crazy, and we can get into it on another episode, but I stopped taking my statin, which we found out that was causing a lot of problems for me. So that's a whole other episode for another day.

[03:23] Speaker D: Interesting.

[03:23] Marisa Faye: Good. Yeah.

[03:24] Katie Chandler: I stopped my Statin, and since I stopped it, I have felt like I'm 25 again. That and hormones. Marissa, with you're here, actually, that is.

[03:32] Marisa Faye: Affecting your hormones, and I'm going to touch on that for you.

[03:35] Katie Chandler: Okay, good. All right, before we do that, I would love to hear your Nirvana of the week.

[03:39] Marisa Faye: So my nirvana of the week is opposite of yours, I want to say, because my Nirvana of the week was I had plans after work multiple days this week with friends to catch up, and for some reason or another, they just didn't happen. Someone canceled. Someone had a tire that blew. It was just things like that. Nothing happened to me, but it happened to all these other people. And so I wound up with extra downtime.

[04:02] Katie Chandler: Nice.

[04:03] Marisa Faye: And I was just like, yes, thank you. I will take this gift for sure.

[04:08] Katie Chandler: Extra downtime is always very welcomed, right? And rare.

[04:12] Marisa Faye: Yeah.

[04:12] Katie Chandler: Nice. Okay, well, let's get into it because we have so many questions, and as you just heard, hormones are very much at the forefront of my mind right now. So why don't we first just do a little 101? Let's discuss all of the hormones that are contributing to your imbalances, because I think we fail to realize that it's more than just, like, estrogen and testosterone. And there's a lot more.

[04:38] Marisa Faye: Yes, there are many hormones. So depending who you talk to, there are either 50 hormones or 200 hormones or hormone like substances. And I tend to go to that 200 camp because there are a lot of things that might behave like hormones but haven't been officially labeled as such. But a hormone really simply is just a chemical messenger. So they're little messengers in your body that move around and tell one thing to do something they somewhat other thing something did. Right. So it's kind of like imagine a game of telephone. Your hormones are like that, right? They're kind of going between all these different places to make things happen, which means there's also a lot of room for them to be impacted by things that aren't going right or things that are going right. Right. So this creates a lot of opportunity for different kinds of issues to come into the mix. And there are different categories of hormones. A lot of times when we're talking about hormone imbalances, we're talking about hormones from one of two categories. So one category is our steroid hormone pathway, which a lot of us think about, like, oh, okay, I can think about that. Like cortisol. Right? We're talking about stress hormones, and actually we're talking about estrogen. We're talking about progesterone. We're talking about testosterone. We're talking about all the related hormones pregnant, alone, DHEA, and most importantly, we're talking about cholesterol, because cholesterol is at the top of the chain for steroid hormones. So really important to know these different pathways and what could be impacting things. If you really want to get in the weeds on things, but if you don't want to get into the weeds, the most important thing for people to know is that hormones are a part of your endocrine system, which a lot of us shorthand will say our hormone system, right? But you need to know that your endocrine system is connected to the rest of your body, which means it's entirely impacted by everything else in your body. So the endocrine system is composed of a lot of glands that I like to say are delicate flowers. They're really easily impacted. Part of their beauty is how sensitive they are and how responsive they are. But also double edged sword, because they can be really like that best friend you have, right, who's super empathetic, and she's along for the journey with you when you tell her a story about something great that happened, but also when something terrible happened. And then she starts crying and you're like, well, hang on, it wasn't about you, right? It's very much like that. So a lot of times when we're talking about women's hormone imbalances, I really focus on seven of the most common ones because they're involved in the vast majority of hormone issues that women are having, and they are going to be high estrogen, low estrogen, low progesterone, high testosterone, insulin dysregulation. And that has become such a hot topic. Cortisol, dysregulation, thyroid dysfunction. So those are the seven biggies seven big hormones that we've got to be thinking about and talking about when it comes to hormone imbalances.

[07:30] Speaker D: What is the one you just mentioned? It was like the fourth or fifth one, the one you said and something I've never heard of that. What is that?

[07:38] Marisa Faye: High testosterone. Was that the one?

[07:40] Speaker D: No, sorry. It was the one that you said is getting a lot of insulin.

[07:44] Marisa Faye: Insulin Dysregulation.

[07:45] Speaker D: Oh, insulin. Oh, I didn't hear you. Insulin. Okay, got it.

[07:49] Katie Chandler: Just a quick sidebar. Everything that you just said, I've been learning a lot about it lately, and the fact that progesterone and things like that are precursors to cortisol, which is your stress hormone, was like a revelation for me. I'm sure you don't know this. I have Addison's disease, so I don't make cortisol. So I started using topical progesterone lately, and I was like, wow, where's this energy coming from? I feel great. And I think it's because of the whole chain, which is just so wild. So it's really good to talk to you because I think people don't understand how vastly responsible all of these hormones are and how much they affect every system in your body. It's wild. And millions of different symptoms. What are some symptoms that we will see with hormone imbalance?

[08:37] Marisa Faye: Yes, totally. And the other thing to know too, is that a lot of times if you go and change one hormone, you're going to change others. So sometimes that's wonderful. Like what you're probably experiencing is your thyroid hormone is a little happier is my guess, because progesterone and thyroid hormone, they're besties. So we have to always be mindful of that relationship too. But common symptoms. So first of all, depending on who you talk to and if you're working with a skilled practitioner or being educated by a skilled practitioner, like in my course, or when somebody works one on one with me, big value for me is education. But what you'll find is that there are a lot of potential symptoms that could link back to a hormone issue, but there are also just kind of these common buckets we think about and they tend to be things like sleep problems. So trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, trouble feeling rested from sleep. Right? So things related to that, brain fog or issues focusing and concentrating, like ADHD and middle aged women is having a real moment right now. And while I think it is valid and probably true that there are many women who are under diagnosed, not everybody has ADHD. So there's a real hormone component here, actually, and a gut health component as well, which brings us to problems with your digestion. So Bloating, slow gut motility, distension, even things like acid reflux. So Cortisol is a big issue with acid reflux, actually. And we can see things as women go through perimenopause and on the other side are past menopause. We can see different kinds of symptoms crop up. And part of it does have to do with what's going on, with their lack of as much estrogen or progesterone potentially. So hormones are a part of that too. Mood swings, anxiety, low mood, feeling really stressed all the time, persistent headaches, migraines. We have our more sexual health related things like vaginal dryness or changes going on down there that are not typical, loss of sex drive, right, things like that. Skin issues, hormonal, acne, really strong body odor, lots of food cravings, feeling really overwhelmed all the time. Weight gain or what I think is typically more of a sign of hormone issue is like weight loss resistance, which is like your body just will not move. Right? And a lot of times we back ourselves into that corner through a history of dieting and undernourishing. But hormones are a big part of that, of course. Hot flashes, night sweats, which can happen at any point in your life, by the way, not just because you're going through menopause and changes in things like your breast tissue and tenderness there. And then actually you have an increased susceptibility to certain kinds of infections, viruses, bacteria and organisms if your hormones are imbalanced. So that's a whole lot. I know, I just talked a whole bunch, but that's a whole lot of things that could potentially be related to what's going on with hormones.

[11:26] Katie Chandler: I feel like Amy and I were both just.

[11:30] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, it's like Katie and I talk about this all the mean, and I'm sure our listeners can relate because so many of us go through this in various stages of our lives. But especially lately, at least for me, I've been mean. Katie knows this. It's like the brain fog is a real struggle. Tiredness I've been going through for years, stuff with just and I've been saying also for years that my hormones are off, but I couldn't really find the right kind of person to help me with it. And I found someone years ago who helped me a little bit. And then recently I actually just did like a whole panel and saw that everything was low. So I went to another specialist, and I'm actually, similar to Katie, I'm doing a cream, which I just started maybe like a month ago or three weeks ago for an estrogen cream, a testosterone cream, and a progesterone pill. It has helped me so much.

[12:26] Katie Chandler: We haven't had a chance, especially about that.

[12:28] Speaker D: I know we haven't talked about it, so I figured I'd fill you in. It's helped me so much. Brain fog, not as much, but with the tiredness and the energy level, like game changer. And actually it'll be interesting as a follow up because I just got my blood tested today. So I'm very interested to see if it's actually working, if it's in my head or if the numbers will change, because the doctor said that if it's working, the numbers will change. The one question I have, though, on it, and maybe you would know this, maybe you're not, I'm not sure, but I wasn't having night sweats or anything like that. More of just like the brain fog and the tiredness and the headaches and all that kind of stuff. I've noticed that recently I've had night sweats, and I'm like, is that new? Is that because of this? I've also had a little bit of breast tenderness to your point. So I was like, is that the hormones kind of working? What are your thoughts on that?

[13:22] Marisa Faye: Yeah, so it really depends. And your provider may have done all of this kind of in the order that we would typically do from a functional medicine standpoint. So kind of as a baseline for people just to know, first of all, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy makes sense for a lot of us at a certain point in our life, so I want to normalize that. But there are a lot of other types of hormone medications and therapies you can do that are not bioidentical. So it's really important that that word is part of the process. So that's really important. The next thing that's important is if you're still cycling, even if your cycle has a lot of time between it. So if you haven't gone a whole year without a period, or if you're one of the women who's on it and you kind of found you were going through perimenopause and got on this bioidentical hormone replacement therapy train, you actually probably would continue to bleed regularly if you're cycling hormones appropriately, which is not a bad thing, even though a lot of people find it annoying. Not a bad thing. But it's actually really important that you do testing that can look at more than just your blood work at one point in time, because your hormones fluctuate a ton when you are in phase of perimenopause. And perimenopause can last ten years. It's quite a long time, really. Yeah. And so really important that you're doing ideally comprehensive testing, something like a Dutch test or an extended saliva panel, something like that, where you're collecting multiple samples throughout a cycle or even just throughout a month, right. If you're still bleeding, even occasionally. So this is really important because we then get a better idea of what are hormones doing not just one day, one point in time, but throughout your kind of hormone life cycle. Right. Which is typically our cycle. So that's really important. One of the interesting things with night sweats is though, that a lot of times we hear about them in relation to, oh, your estrogen is going low. And I actually have found the opposite to be true. I have found that women tend to have night sweats when estrogen is high. And anything interesting about lower high estrogen, we're actually talking about it to be relative. So relatively high compared to progesterone because we want them to have the same magnitude. Right. But the first half of your cycle, estrogen is the star of the show, the second half of your cycle, progesterone, is the star of the show. But we want them to have the same magnitude or strength. So a lot of times, a lot of times I see women when estrogen relatively is high compared to progesterone. I actually see the night sweats come in then and we can also see the night sweats come in when estrogen is doing this kind of on a roller coaster, right. For people who aren't seeing me, which is everyone. Right. So estrogen kind of can go on a roller coaster. Right. And it could be part of hormones kind of coming back online and absorbing the therapies that you're doing. And so that could be part of the process, but it also could mean that the levels are not exactly right. So it's just something to be mindful of.

[16:15] Katie Chandler: Like she could be on potentially too much or too little of one thing.

[16:20] Speaker D: Right.

[16:20] Katie Chandler: And the body is still adjusting and sorting out what exactly you need. Right?

[16:25] Marisa Faye: Yeah.

[16:26] Speaker D: I'm going to reach out and ask them what they think. But it's interesting that you said that about the more estrogen because actually when I was younger, I mean, maybe five, six years ago, right before I was getting my period, I remember I would get night sweats, like a couple of nights before, and it had nothing to do with perimenopause or anything like that. So it's interesting that you say that, because that makes sense to me. So anyway, but I'm still working on balancing well and too with that is.

[16:53] Marisa Faye: One of the reasons sometimes we get that. And I've had that too, by the way, in my younger years, where I would get really bad night flats before my period. So typically most people would say, well, that's because that's when all of your hormones are diving, because your hormones dive down before you get your period, before you bleed. But I have just found symptomatically. When I look at the lab work, and I look at a lot of lab work, when I look at lab work, and when I also look at symptom inventories and learn a client's body and even learn my own body, that sure, maybe at that moment that you had the night sweat, your estrogen was coming down. But it's not that your estrogen is always down, it's that it's kind of going through something.

[17:31] Katie Chandler: Right.

[17:32] Marisa Faye: Likely there's some kind of higher estrogen issue because estrogen also gets stored in the tissue. So some lab work is just never going to catch what's being stored in the tissue.

[17:48] Speaker D: It's an interesting journey, and Katie's been following it because when I did all my testing a couple months ago, everything was low. That's when I was like, oh, no wonder I'm so tired. So it'll be interesting to kind of follow it and figure it out along the way.

[18:03] Marisa Faye: Go ahead, Katie.

[18:04] Katie Chandler: The testing is so important and so interesting, and I have a cycle, but I don't have my uterus. I have no way of tracking it. And the doctors that I have been working with have only done blood tests, so I really need to do one of those tests. Let's review again the names of the testing because there's multiple ones, right?

[18:27] Marisa Faye: I want our listeners also, do you have your Ovaries?

[18:31] Katie Chandler: I do. So I do.

[18:32] Marisa Faye: Cycle you can track and maybe you've tried this, and with the Addison's, it may throw this off a little bit, but you actually could track your waking body temperature.

[18:42] Katie Chandler: Okay.

[18:43] Marisa Faye: And that would be a way for you to identify if and when Ovulation might be happening. And so then you could track where your cycle is based on that.

[18:53] Katie Chandler: Okay. Yeah, I've never tried that. I've heard of it. When your temperature is higher, you're Ovulating. Is that right?

[19:00] Marisa Faye: So what we typically see is right before Ovulation temperature goes down a little bit, and then yeah, when you Ovulate goes up okay. So you'll see the first half of the cycle, typically temperature is a smidge lower. We see a little dip, then Ovulation happens in the second half of the cycle, it's a little bit higher.

[19:16] Katie Chandler: Okay. All right. That's interesting. I'm going to try that. It'll make things so much easier because I'm on progesterone, I'm on estrogen, and it's hard to say what the right amount of it is, other than I'm incredibly in tune with my body and I feel good. But the testing so we've got the Dutch test. We've got what else?

[19:37] Marisa Faye: There's a few which, with the Dutch, I do want to clarify here, because, again, really important if you have your ovaries and you're potentially still ovulating, right? So that's the key here. Potentially still ovulating, you want to do a cycling panel. So that's going to be a test that you're collecting multiple samples throughout over the course of depending how long your cycle is, right? Three and a half to five, even six weeks. So if you do something like a Dutch, you don't want the one that's called the Dutch complete, right. You don't want the test where you're collecting over a 24 or 36 hours period because it's not going to give you the data you need about estrogen progesterone.

[20:13] Katie Chandler: Right.

[20:13] Marisa Faye: So you want a cycling panel, and they do make a Dutch cycle mapping test. So that's what I'll use if I use the Dutch. But the thing to know is, about any test, like the Dutch test, I used often in my practice. I also use one through a company called Diagnostic Solutions. It's called an extended female hormone panel. It's a saliva test, but those are my two top ones. And then I will sometimes check certain things via blood at certain points in somebody's cycle, but always to give context to another test because that's almost never enough information for us. But if you're cycling and you get one of those kinds of cycling tests, you need to also know there are advantages and disadvantages to every test. So the Dutch can be beautiful and wonderful for showing you the pathways estrogen is going down, because estrogen can go down different pathways, and some of those pathways are more pro inflammatory, more pro cancer, for example. We can also see if your liver is doing a good job with clearance of estrogen. So that's a really lovely thing to be able to check. If you do one of the versions where you can have your cortisol pattern done on it, you can see what's happening in a particular day related to cortisol hormone. You can see melatonin. So that's a really beautiful test for looking at specific things. However, that is not a great test if we really want to look at things like brain signaling or super duper accurate progesterone, it's not the most accurate with progesterone. So if I have somebody who I think I really need to be able to see more about their progesterone, and I really want to see more about what their brain signaling to the ovary is going on. So looking at things like FSH, follicular stimulating hormone and LH luteinizing hormone. So if I want to see that, which oftentimes with like, a fertility client, I want to see that, that's really important. So we make sure healthy ovulation is happening. Usually the saliva panel I use is a better option there. So there are always going to be benefits and drawbacks to different testing. Right? It just really depends. And likewise blood work. If I have a woman who's post menopause, truly post menopause, blood work might give us all the information we really need. Right. So just knowing the right test for where you are in your journey is really important.

[22:23] Katie Chandler: Yeah, I can see how that is absolutely crucial because someone could be coming to you. A woman can come to you at any different stage in life for any different hormonal issue. And just going to your obgen, they're not going to necessarily offer that. Okay, so why don't we get into a little bit of what you mentioned earlier, the insulin resistance and the weight loss resistance and all of that. Because I think Amy and I for sure have both been dealing with that a little. Just it's like very frustrating when that starts to happen to your body. Never happened before if you wanted to.

[23:01] Speaker D: And you eat healthy.

[23:04] Katie Chandler: Right. Why does that happen?

[23:07] Speaker D: Yeah, and just to add on to that, the other pieces which Katie and I also struggle with is it's like that stubborn, you can't lose it, and it's like 510 pounds, that kind of thing. And then you eat healthy and you exercise, but once in a while you'll have whatever it is, a slice of pizza, a piece of cheese, and you're like, five pounds the next day you're like, what the **** is going on? Like, this is crazy.

[23:29] Marisa Faye: Yes, you hit the nail on the head there. I know. So many women share that experience. So a couple of things, a few things I'm going to drop on you here that may be surprising. One is any woman dealing with a hormone issue is dealing with a gut issue. Meaning we've got some kind of inflammation in the gut, we've got some kind of dysfunction in the gut, we've got some kind of organism overgrowth. And by the way, it does not mean you need to do a candida diet or that you have SIBO necessarily. Right. It's like there are so many ways your gut can be dysfunctioning, so it just means there's something wrong going on with your gut that needs to be worked on. Number two, I have seen very few women who have hormone issues who do not have insulin resistance or some kind of progression towards insulin dysregulation. It's incredibly common. And this is part of where because the whole system works together, but it's also, I believe, part of because of how we all societally have been conditioned. Because a great way to get an insulin issue, an insulin regulation issue or a blood sugar related issue is to do any kind of amount of living in Western society and dieting. It's a great way to get it. So you put a lot of stress on your body when you do that. Also a great way to get it is frankly to be a woman in this world, trying to make things happen for yourself, but also having all the ten other responsibilities we have as women, right? So high stress, periods of high stress that your body has been through, whether that be from caloric restriction, not sleeping for long periods of time, major stress in your life because you're caretaking, for example, a super duper stressful job where you're working all the time because you really want to do a good job at it, right? But any of these for a long time, this type of stress puts a lot of stress on your blood sugar regulation. And what you need to actually be doing is nourishing more, not less. And a lot of us tend towards the nourish less and a lot of the foods that we are taught are healthy and going to keep you lean and give you the body you want as a woman actually are backfiring on us. So all the raw veggies, all the nuts and seeds, all the not enough protein, frankly, because no matter how you slice it, plant based sources of protein just do not touch animal based sources of protein. So we are malnourished and that is a great way to make it hard for your blood sugar to be regulated. And I think it's helpful too to understand what insulin resistance is, perhaps, unless you all have covered that before.

[25:51] Katie Chandler: No, I think this is very important to cover and also even to help people understand what insulin's job is because I think it's very not a lot of people understand it.

[26:03] Marisa Faye: Yes, totally. So I love talking about this because we all are smart and we all want to understand our bodies. But it's like this information, people try to complicate it so much. If you listen to scientist or somebody who's a doctorate talk about this stuff, they're going to talk for an hour and you're going to be like, I'm confused. I'm really a fan of how can we make it so we all understand? So I'm going to try to do that and you all let me know if I missed that mark and I'll work on it. So here's the thing. All of your cells need glucose, which is a fancy scientific name for sugar, okay? Glucose is critical to your survival. It's so critical that your body, if you're not getting it through food, has a way to get it by breaking down your muscle and things in your liver. That is not a good thing. That is very stressful in your body. But that's just a sign for you to know how important glucose is for your body, that it has these different fail stops where. It's going to make it, it's going to do something super resource intensive if you don't eat it. This is happening, by the way, to people who are on the keto diet. This is what's happening. And people who are on the carnivore diet, their body is making it because they're not giving it to them. So over time, what happens and before kind of we get into the overtime. The way the glucose, the quick energy gets into your cells is through insulin. Insulin is like the key that unlocks the door to the cell. So glucose can get inside your body releases is supposed to release the appropriate amount of insulin, not too much, not too little for the amount of glucose that you've eaten or that is in your blood in order to usher it into your cells or frankly, into your muscle. Muscle is a great storage for glucose. It's one of the reasons I'm such a huge fan of women's strength training. It's just incredible for that. So over time, what happens if a woman is living that stressful life that I described before, right? Or if a woman is also doing the opposite, right? Overeating a lot and eating a lot of highly processed foods. So especially highly palatable foods. These are foods that have a lot of fat and usually a lot of sugar in them, but not a lot of protein or nutrients. Your brain lights up, right? Your brain and body are like more that's like doritos ice cream, right? These things that just like we crave them because they're just so yummy. So if you eat a lot of those things, this can also happen. And what will start to happen at the beginning of the progression of an insulin issue is somebody's pancreas will release more and more insulin because it's like the cell is having trouble hearing it. Or you're having a lot of glucose in the system at one time from eating all those highly palatable foods, those really sugary foods, or from being very high stressed because when your cortisol goes up, your body puts more glucose into your blood. So over time, your body's like, we're releasing more insulin. We're trying to get all this glucose into your cell, but all this glucose continues to hang around and why aren't we listening? And over time, the cells lose their sensitization, basically. And so we have a body that eventually is like, I'm tired. You know what? You're not listening to what I'm trying to tell you. I'm trying to release the right amount of insulin to get you to bring this into the cell, but it is not working. And we can see one of two things happen. So we can see bodies where they continue to try to maintain releasing a high level of insulin. And over time, that just gets harder and harder to do. Or what I see in a lot of women, especially a lot of women who are trying to live really healthy lifestyles is that their blood sugar continues to dip low, so they head towards having low blood sugar, not high, which is what a lot of doctors are looking for. So when doctors want to diagnose somebody with diabetes, they're looking for you to have high blood glucose. But what I see most often when I look at women's blood work and when I have them put a CGM on a continuous glucose monitor, which is a really cool thing to do if you've never done it, but when I have them put that on and track their food for two weeks. What I tend to see in a lot of bodies, especially my very health conscious clients, is they go very low. Often very low. And anytime we're going very low or very high, very stressful for the body.

[30:17] Katie Chandler: I'm so fascinated. We're going to have to have a call offline. I'm going to have to start working with you, because this is exactly I actually am pre diabetic, and there's so many reasons for it. It's not just like one simple reason. But I say that because, like you said, doctors are always looking for one thing with diabetes. And so I think there's a lot of women that it's being completely overlooked that they're dealing with these issues because they don't have metabolic issues. Are they say you have to have a certain waist size circumference. You have to have all of these checklists that you might not necessarily have but still have these insulin problems, and then it doesn't get treated. And then when you have the insulin resistance, does that lead to the weight loss resistance? Because your body's not able to use its energy correctly, the food you're putting into your body.

[31:17] Marisa Faye: Yes. So that can be a really common reason it's happening. And the other thing is, anytime that blood sugar is dipping very low often or going very high often, it creates a lot of inflammation. We're actually seeing they're starting to study this, which is cool because they don't always study things like this, right? Because I'm not sure yet who's going to make money, right. But they actually studied that blood sugar swings contributes to premature aging, and especially talking about skin health and hair health. Ladies, if you want healthy skin and hair, you've got to regulate your blood sugar. That is key here. But, yes, it is very hard to lose weight in the presence of, frankly, any kind of blood sugar dysregulation, whether it's insulin dysregulation, which is the term I kind of use just because of your point of, like, I don't diagnose and I don't really care this may sound cold. I don't really care what the diagnosis is, frankly, because I'm looking at your body from a totally different lens. And a lot of times when people are diagnosed, it can be wrong or it's just a doctor trying to put a label on it. And I don't think it gets us closer to our goal of really feeling our best. So that's why I say insulin dysregulation, because it's like, well, there could be a lot of things going on with your insulin, right? And so I think it's important to know that it's not just one way. But yes, that can be incredibly stressful for our body. And then a body is going to hold on to all the resources because it doesn't feel safe to let it go.

[32:41] Speaker D: I have a couple of questions. We had talked about this in another show with a nutritionist, but so if your insulin is regulated, does that then mean you have metabolic flexibility or not? Because my understanding is a metabolic flexibility is what you want, so you can eat various different things and not gain or lose and be healthy in that way. So is it related?

[33:05] Marisa Faye: Yeah, it can be. But I would say insulin is not the only thing I would look at to see if somebody has metabolic flexibility.

[33:12] Speaker D: Okay.

[33:12] Marisa Faye: But I do think it's an interesting way to kind of track and know if you're potentially off the mark. But metabolic flexibility also, we'd want to look at things like your thyroid function. We'd want to look at things like your adrenal function, we'd want to look at things like your liver function so there can be more to the story. But it's a good kind of beginning thing to look at. And by the way, if anybody here is concerned about their blood sugar regulation or their insulin, it's really important that you advocate for the right blood work with this. And I see a lot of providers, especially for my clients or women I talk to, who think they might have PCOS because there are different kinds of PCOS and a large group of people who have PCOS actually have insulin issues and the PCOS is honestly just a symptom of their insulin issue. But I see it a lot too in women with thyroid issues, adrenal issues, all of that kind of that point of it traveling together. But a fasting blood glucose is not enough to diagnose you with an insulin issue. So you need to know that and advocate for yourself. And I'm a big fan of if we're looking at somebody's blood sugar regulation, I want to see their fasting insulin, I do want to see their fasting glucose, but I also want to see a complete metabolic panel. I also want to see a CBC, I want to see are there other ways that their body could be stressed out or other things that could be causing a stressor? Because when a body is stressed, there are a number of things that can dysfunction and actually your metabolic flexibility is one of those things.

[34:46] Katie Chandler: Yeah, that's very interesting.

[34:49] Amy Sherman: Thanks for listening to Nirvana Sisters. For more information on this episode, check out the show notes. Please subscribe and leave us a review. Also find us on Instagram at nirvana sisters. If you loved what you just listened to or know someone that would, please share it and tag us.

[35:03] Speaker D: Tune in next week for a fresh.

[35:05] Amy Sherman: New episode of Nirvana Sisters. We'll continue to watch out for all things wellness so you don't have to. Bye.