From Surviving to Thriving Using the Adrenal Transformation Protocol
May 2, 2023
Table of Contents
It's time to take a moment to address your health so you can feel your best which in turn will give you the energy and resilience to help others. If you’ve been feeling like you can’t get through the day without your coffee (or other caffeine laden drink), a glass of wine or are experiencing cravings for sugar or carbohydrates and maybe you are feeling tired but wired, it is time to explore whether your constant on the go lifestyle is creating chronic stress and is impacting your adrenal glands.
I know first hand how improving adrenal health can at times seem impossible, especially when conventional advice isn’t practical for parents and practitioners busy looking after others. In this special episode, Dr. Izabella Wentz and I are debunking adrenal fatigue or what Dr. Wentz more appropriately calls adrenal dysfunction myths in the most comprehensive way so you can better understand the root causes of the symptoms you may be experiencing. Dr. Wentz shares practical and actionable advice from her Adrenal Transformation Protocol, so you too, can get back to feeling your best without having to “press pause” on your life.
Don't miss this episode and dive into the enlightening conversation to learn about adrenal and thyroid dysfunction, its symptoms, and how Dr. Wentz's protocol has already transformed thousands of lives.
- Understanding what adrenal dysfunction is and how it can affect your daily life.
- The hidden connection between adrenal and thyroid dysfunction symptoms.
- 14 safety signals to help your body transform from struggling to a thriving state.
- The surprising reason why you feel worse after starting thyroid medication.
- Where to identify the line of the Adrenal vs. Thyroid Dysfunction symptoms.
- How thousands have healed and reversed their adrenal dysfunction with the Adrenal Transformation Protocol.
- Why high cortisol levels aren't always the cause of fatigue, anxiety, and brain fog and what is.
- And much more…
Show Notes for this Podcast
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- What is adrenal fatigue and why you should be giving it attention (03:50)
- One of the fastest ways to get adrenal dysfunction (12:30)
- Fueling your day with the 3 R’s to help you avoid crashing fatigue, getting hungry, feeling anxious, or becoming irritable (18:00)
- What to do when you have thyroid symptoms but don’t have thyroid issues (20:50)
- How to use the Adrenal Transformation Protocol as your recovery plan to crush and reverse adrenal dysfunction (32:55)
Resources and Links
Dr. Wentz’s book: Adrenal Transformation Protocol: A 4-Week Plan to Release Stress Symptoms and Go from Surviving to Thriving
Dr. Wentz’s Website: www.thyroidpharmacist.com
Free ABCs of Adrenals Support guide
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More about Dr. Izabella Wentz
Dr. Izabella Wentz is a compassionate, innovative, solution-focused integrative pharmacist dedicated to finding the root causes of chronic health conditions. Her passion stems from her own diagnosis with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009, following a decade of debilitating symptoms.
As an accomplished author, Dr. Wentz has written several best-selling books, including the New York Times best seller Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause, the protocol-based #1 New York Times best seller Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back, and the Wall Street Journal bestseller Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology: Nutrition Protocols and Healing Recipes to Take Charge of Your Thyroid Health.
Her latest book, Adrenal Transformation Protocol, is set to be released on April 18th, 2023. The book focuses on resetting the body’s stress response through targeted safety signals and features a 4-week program that has already helped over 3,500 individuals. The program has an impressive success rate, with over 80% of participants improving their brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, irritability, sleep issues, and libido.
00:00 Tara Hunkin:
This is the My Child Will Thrive podcast. And I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, certified Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and mother. I am here to share with you the latest research expert advice, parent perspectives, resources, and tools to help you on your path to optimizing the health and development for your child with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, learning disabilities, or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on, research I can dig into, and conferences I can attend have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed trying to help their children. So sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey.
A quick disclaimer, please keep in mind that the information provided is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat your child and is not a substitute for working with a qualified practitioner. This episode of the My Child Will Thrive podcast is brought to you by the Autism, ADHD, and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit. You can sign up for free to watch 10 days of expert interviews and masterclasses at mychildwillthrive.com/summit. Now on with the show.
Hi everyone, I want to welcome you back to the My Child Will Thrive podcast. I am really excited to have with me today Dr. Izabella Wentz. Dr. Wentz is a compassionate, innovative, solution-focused integrative pharmacist dedicated to finding the root causes of chronic health conditions. Her passion stems from her own diagnosis with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009, following a decade debilitating symptoms.
As an accomplished author, Dr. Wentz has written several bestselling books and I'm sure we're going to talk about today. Her latest book, which I'm sure is going to be her latest bestseller, but she already has a New York Times bestseller, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause. She has protocol-based number one, New York Times bestseller, Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back.
And the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology: Nutrition Protocols and Healing Recipes to Take Charge of Your Thyroid Health. Her latest book that I just mentioned, the Adrenal Transformation Protocol is set to be released at the time of this recording. It's going to be coming out, this podcast will come out after it's been released, but it's being released on April 18th this year.
And this book focuses on resetting the body's stress response through targeted safety signals. And it features a four-week program that has already helped over 3,500 individuals. The program has an impressive success rate with over 80% of the participants improving their brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, irritability, sleep issues, and libido. So you can see why I am excited to have Dr. Wentz with us here today. Thank you for joining us.
03:11 Dr. Izabella:
Thank you so much for having me, Tara. And thank you for the work that you do in the world. You are changing people's lives on the daily, my life included.
03:18 Tara Hunkin:
Thank you. So let's talk about this. So we are, you are a parent of a young child and I am a parent now of two teenagers, one that's just turned 19. So that's just kind of hard to believe.
But as parents, when we talk about adrenal function and adrenal fatigue and we're going to talk about exactly what that is, it's, it's something that's, some people would almost say it goes along with parenting, but it especially goes along with parenting when you have children that might have some extra special needs and demand more of your time and energy and attention.
So tell me a bit, first of all about what exactly is adrenal fatigue and why adrenal function is so important and why we as parents that are here and listening to this today might be struggling with this more than others.
04:04 Dr. Izabella:
Hmm. So adrenal fatigue, and I would say the more accurate term for that is adrenal dysfunction, as we've learned in the last few years, is essentially what happens to the body when it gets stuck in a chronic stress response.
So, you know, you're exposed to so much stress for a prolonged period of time that your body just starts to compensate in normal kind of short term situations. People will produce more cortisol when they're stressed. This kind of leads to a breakdown of our own tissue and slowing down things like digestive function and all these important things, right, to really fuel that stress response to help us get away from that bear that's chasing us or get through that critical moment kind of can give us like it feels like we have superpowers and super strength. And you hear about people who like lift cars when their children are in danger, right?
And this is an amazing thing that our body can do under normal circumstances. This is kind of like a short-lived short-lived boost that we get. And then the kind of stressor goes away. We get away from the bear, we lift the car, whatnot, we shake it off, and then we feel so much better. Like we feel we come back to normal after that.
The issue is when we're constantly perceiving stress, we get stuck in this chronic stress response and initially we're producing too much cortisol, then we can have cortisol fluctuations throughout the day. And in the kind of end stages, we get really disconnected from the circadian rhythm where we're exhausted during the day and we're tired, but wired at night.
And as time goes on, this can turn into chronic fatigue and autoimmunity, hypothyroidism, so on and so forth, where you're just chronically exhausted. Everything is overwhelming.
You know, some of the things that people have said when they are somewhere on that adrenal dysfunction state is they feel irritable, agitated, anxious, they have trouble waking up in the morning, they have brain fog, they have morning fatigue, they might have that 3:00 PM crash. They have salt cravings, sugar cravings, coffee addiction. They need wine to help themselves get settled. They feel wired but tired. They're sensitive to bright lights.
When they get up too quickly, they feel faint and lightheaded. And it's really kind of a, just kind of suppresses our vitality, right? We're constantly reacting. We're we're in overdrive, right? We're just overwhelmed by anything. And like texting back a friend or a family member just feels like it's too much for us because we're, we're in that stressed out state, right?
06:40 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. I mean, and of course everybody over the last couple years have been through a lot more than even what anybody would've expected. We as an entire world, we went through a, a state of chronic stress during that period of time. So I'm sure that a lot of people can hear symptoms of themselves there in all that you said.
So how do you differentiate you, you talked about adrenal dysfunction and where is that because a lot of the, the symptoms overlap with thyroid dysfunction or eventually thyroid disease. So where, where do you, you identify that line between the two?
07:15 Dr. Izabella:
It's so interesting because over the last decade I've worked with thousands of people with thyroid issues and I myself had Hashimoto's and one of the things I did was getting on thyroid medications, but I still didn't feel well.
So I still had the brain fog and I still had the fatigue, the anxious feelings, the irritability, the unrefreshing sleep. And I turned out that it was my adrenals that actually needed support to actually get rid of these "thyroid symptoms". And I find that with the people with Hashimoto's, this is very, very common. There's an intricate feedback loop system between our adrenal glands, which produce our stress hormones, including cortisol and between our thyroid gland.
And so when somebody, for example, isn't producing enough thyroid hormone, their body will compensate by slowing down the clearance of cortisol. Cortisol kind of kicks in and helps us kind of get through when we're hypothyroid. Now this person will have maybe energy, but it'll be more of a wired energy.
They'll start storing belly fat, they'll feel anxious and they'll go to their doctors and if they're fortunate, they will get diagnosed with a hypothyroid condition if the doctor will, will run the appropriate tests and then they'll get placed on thyroid hormone. Right?
Which can be incredibly helpful. It may be necessary at that point when you are hypothyroid. But then what can happen is that thyroid hormone will normalize the clearance of cortisol and that can uncover a cortisol issue, right? So people will say, I started on thyroid meds, I felt better at first, and then as time went on, I felt worse, I felt more fatigued. I just crashed. What on earth happened? And it's because you know that cortisol gets revealed.
And in fact about 62% of the people that I've tested, I've tested a lot of people over the years with their adrenal function, but I have about a, I did a study of 148 people with symptomatic Hashimoto's hypothyroidism and 62% of them had low cortisol. Right? We typically hear about high cortisol in the mainstream media, but when you've been chronically stressed for so long, a lot of us are actually in that low cortisol pattern.
Or we may be in a normal levels of cortisol, but we might be disconnected from our circadian rhythm where we're just exhausted during the day and wired at night.
09:47 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. And I'm, I'm sure there are a lot of people listening right now that are, are almost like you're describing their personal experience in terms of, of going through all those things. You mentioned in the book, how you went through this journey yourself, like you said about with the thyroid and then it was the, you know, you worked to fix the adrenal dysfunction and that worked until it didn't work anymore.
In terms of the, all the things that you were told or, and what is commonly told even by integrative positions, can you talk more about that journey for you and how you then came up with this new plan that sort of addresses where, where certain tactics aren't going to work because they're just not feasible with our lifestyle?
10:27 Dr. Izabella:
Absolutely. So when I was on my healing journey, I was a young married woman with, without children, right? And so a hint coming up. And so I was able to, to utilize hormones, right? So I utilized something like named Pregnenolone and DHEA, which are hormones, they're like precursors.
And when somebody doesn't have enough cortisol, you can utilize these hormones to kind of balance out artificially, hormonally their adrenal curve. And this can be very effective. It does take a few months. There are some contraindications, for example, DHEA can over-convert to estrogen. So women in perimenopause and older women who are already in menopause and already have estrogen dominance, this can actually make things worse.
It can fuel some hormone sensitive cancers. It can also over convert to another metabolite, which causes like chin hair and backne. So most of us don't want, if we have, you know, like the genetic predispositions for that and tend towards something like PCOS. And so it's not necessarily ideal for everybody but it, these are some of the protocols that could work where they're glandulars, they might be prescription medications like hydrocortisone.
So these were more the traditional integrative medicine protocols. And I've been trained in them and I've worked with them. I've recommended them for some of my clients, but then not everybody could go that route. So I started looking into additional options and then I was,
I came across like this really intensive lifestyle method where you sleep for 10 to 12 hours a night for 30 days straight. You cut out caffeine, you know, you meditate and you, you really do all the things to reset you decommit, you go on like a sabbatical and that can work incredibly well, right? You spend a month at the beach just connected to like the ocean, like everybody please do that if you can. Right? Take away all your responsibilities.
But then, you know, then I became a new mom and I, one of the fastest ways to get into adrenal dysfunction is through sleep deprivation. So when my son was eight months old, he wasn't sleeping through the night and he was waking up every few hours and we had some feeding concerns and developmental concerns and I was just, you know, not sleeping at night and worried throughout the day as much as I was loving on my son and enjoying motherhood, they were, you know, the sleep deprivation and the worry was very stressful for me. And I found myself in this really depleted state where I was like, okay, I'm going to test my adrenals. I bet they're burned out.
Sure enough, my adrenals were burned out. But then I was like, oh crap, I can't take hormones 'cause I'm nursing. Like I don't want my baby to get like chest hair, right? You know, I don't, I just don't know, like what's going to happen if you take hormones when you're nursing? I'm a pharmacist so I'm very, you know, a minimalist with, with nursing moms and taking a lot of things. And then I was like, okay, so I can't do like the hormone route and then can't do a lot of supplements and then I also can't do like the intensive lifestyle. Like could I like go on a, you know, a 30 day sabbatical and sleep for 12 hours and give up coffee with an eight month old?
Like no, like, you know, I'm a parent, I have responsibilities. So I was like, okay, this, this, I don't know how to get out of this, right? So I had like all this experience helping others and some people I wasn't able to help. And I was like, okay, what can I do for myself to actually get out of this state, right?
I was in survival mode and how do I get to thriving? And I came across like the safety I, I had been working with like the safety theory and how the messages we send our bodies can either send us into that like stressed out, overwhelmed state, right? Because our body's always tuning into an environment and picking up stress signals and then it'll shift into that fight or flight.
Or if I could send it messages that were more of the safety messages, then my body would go into more of a thriving state. And I was like, could it be as easy as like a teeter-totter light? Like I could just take away some of the stressors as much as I can, right? I can't sleep. I would if I could, if I know that's a big stressor, but how do I counterbalance that, right? So what are some additional things I can can do to like help my body out and to help my body ease more into a thriving state? And so it was something that I utilized on my journey as a mom helped me tremendously.
So I, it's not like I was running marathons with, you know, like being up all night or anything like that, but my brain was working again and I felt more calm and I had more energy throughout the day and I felt like, okay, rather than this is also overwhelming, like I can do this, right? I still was waking up at night, so that didn't change, but it gave me a little bit more cushioning or a little bit more resilience to, to kind of be present in the present moment and actually be able to, you know, take care of my son, take care of myself, take care of my family. And so, so then, you know, once, once I got a little bit more sleep, I started to say like, okay, I got this out into a program.
Over 3,500 people have gone through it. Now more than 80% of them have less fatigue, 92% have less brain fog, they have more energy and they feel like, okay, this is doable. Like I, you know, I feel really good. I haven't been this energetic in years. And then when I finally got some sleep and then I decided to put it in a book, so this is the book that I've been writing, I started writing that in 2021 when my son started preschool. And yeah.
16:22 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, it's, it's amazing. Well, and what, what I like, so the reason why I wanted to talk about that was because just so people understand that this is an approachable, realistic way to go about helping yourself.
And then I think what I, I mentioned to you before we started recording is that the sneaky part about this is pretty much everything you're doing here are things that you can incorporate into your kids' lives too, which will also help them. I always love when we find these things that, 'cause as parents, we're always a hundred percent ready to give, give, give to our, our kids.
And we're not great about doing it for ourselves. And we've all heard the analogy of put your oxygen mask on first, make sure you're in good shape, but we still won't do it. We're not great about that. I'm going to just say that I, I I'm sure that, I'm hoping there are other people that are better about that than I am.
But when there are strategies that we can use with ourselves and our children, so it's really no more effort and it's a win-win, win, win, win, it's just so much easier to, to even think about approaching these things.
So with that in mind, let's talk about some of those things. So you talk about this, so, and, and, and in context of those safety signals. So I also love that concept because the whole idea around our stress response is, is if we feel safe we're not in fight or flight, we'll be able to be able to do things like rest and digest and calm ourselves and, and being able to flip back and forth will become easier over time.
So why don't, can you walk us through, you have the Rs, I'm going to call them the Rs. Can you walk us through those things and how they relate to those very doable aspects of life?
18:09 Dr. Izabella:
So absolutely one of the first ones is replenish. And this really focuses on, you know, things we can always do. One of the biggest stressors for our body are blood sugar swings. So if we're having too many carbohydrates and not enough protein throughout the day and not enough fat, then we're going to be in trouble.
We're not going to be able to, you know, have enough amino acids to repair our bodies properly. We're not going to be able to, you know, fat is a precursor for cholesterol and that's where all of our hormones are made from.
So we can have hormonal issues. And I find, you know, specifically for moms, a lot of times we like feed the kids feed, feed the, feed the pets, feed the fish. And then we're like, you know, and, and I've been there before where I'm like, okay, what people are like, what do you eat these days?
I'm like, toddler leftovers, right? Like you, you kind of get into this caregiving mode where giving yourself simple things you can utilize. I have like a two ingredient breakfast recipe. You, you take some coconut milk, I like the simple one without any additives in a can. And you add a scoop of protein powder, like a hypoallergenic protein powder to that and that can be your breakfast, right?
And that can really fuel you for the day. And you're not going to get hungry, you're not going to get anxious, you're not going to get irritable, you're not going to have a crash of fatigue. Your body's not going to be on this cortisol rollercoaster. And we incorporate protein and fat every few hours throughout the day.
So really fuel yourself. We focus on anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense foods. So gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free. These are very hard to digest foods. And when we're in a chronically stressed out state, our digestion gets suppressed. So giving your body easy to, more easy to digest foods and doing smoothies can be incredibly helpful and liberating for our energy. Some people will say like, holy cow, I didn't realize how much energy I was utilizing on digestion.
And then they start utilizing smoothies and you can make them so quickly, right? So you can just have a bunch of stuff prepared ahead of time or you can just throw it into a blender and have that done in a few minutes, right? You can do this with your kids. Where my son Dimitri always helps me make my smoothies.
He is like, okay, we're making a smoothie and then, you know, I like, I'll cut up the strawberries and he puts them in one by one. Sometimes he eats one. And this could be a great, great thing to do for the whole family is making sure that you're super nourished and that's going to send a great safety signal to your body when you're, when you're not eating enough food, your body's getting the message that you're in a famine, right?
And so that can really suppress our metabolism. It could suppress, you know, our thyroid function, our adrenal function. A lot of times people, you know, I've worked with people with thyroid issues primarily. But then I started having people reaching out to me who said, I have thyroid symptoms but I don't have thyroid issues.
Can you help me? And a lot of times it would be they have a lot of stress unprocessed stress and they have adrenal issues and this can actually produce too much of something known as Reverse T3, which gets into our thyroid receptors and blocks them.
And so a person can have like a perfectly beautiful, well-functioning thyroid gland, but because of that stress response and sometimes, you know, starvation, not eating enough calories can send you in that stress response. The body is like trying to help you out and conserve your energy by creating Reverse T3 so that you don't have a good metabolism. So this is one of the most approachable safety signals most people can do. And we also focus on restoring the nutrients that are depleted during stressful times.
So B vitamins especially critical for that. If you utilize them, you're going to have better energy throughout the day. Certain B vitamins, for example, B6 can help with sleep at night. I like the P-5-P version and help with producing calming neurotransmitters. Thiamine, Benfotiamine can be incredibly helpful for people who have chronic fatigue. And then vitamin C is another one that's commonly depleted when we're under a lot of stress.
So utilizing that from food sources or supplemental sources can be a game changer. And then we look at magnesium. So one of the things that I really love to recommend is you can take a magnesium supplement if you tend to be constipated.
Magnesium citrate can be incredibly helpful for clearing out brain fog and the constipation because some of us may end up with ammonia in our bodies that has been linked to constipation and that can oftentimes lead to things like brain fog and a magnesium supplement can help with anxiety, it can help you sleep better, it can help you have less pain in your body.
Another way to get this, and this is my favorite method, I don't currently take a magnesium supplement, but I take a daily Epsom salt bath. So 10 to 15 minutes, you right before bedtime I get into that bath, I put a cup or two of Epsom salts and if I've had a stressful day that might be an hour long Epsom salt bath until my husband and my child try to drag me out.
And then that can be a great way to replenish your magnesium stores. People will say that have gone through the program and started doing this, it's like I get in the bath and I am stressed out and I come out happy. You know, when my son was younger I would bathe with him. And so the Epsom salts were really great and calming for him as well.
So that meant, you know, I got better naps, I got better nighttime sleep if we did those Epsom salt baths. And still to this day I'll be like, you know, I'll keep my bath water and I'll be like, do you want to get in? And he feels so much better after he does. Right?
24:20 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, it, it is such a simple thing. We, we've used them for years in our family as well. Again, the kids get them more often than the parents do, so, so it's just, but even to the, this day one of my daughters always, she, she knows when she, she, she needs that Epsom salt bath. So it's, it's the the the effects are are immediate, which is so nice.
24:44 Dr. Izabella:
Yes. And they can be utilized for like the whole family. Like my husband and I will each take turns taking a bath and we'll be like, you know, we joke that it's like better than couples therapy 'cause we, we might both be stressed out, but when we get in that bath, we start feeling better and then we come out and we're just, you know, it, it's like amazing what happens with the world when you have more resilience and less stress. It's like everybody around you becomes nicer and less annoying, right?
25:12 Tara Hunkin:
Exactly.
25:12 Dr. Izabella:
Yeah. So part of that is like really trying to build a person's resilience and giving them some habits. Another thing that I might utilize, and depending if, you know, if you're sensitive person to supplements or if you're a nursing mom, various kind of, I talk about various options, but adaptogenic herbs can be incredibly helpful.
They really boost that resilience for us. So they kind of change how we perceive stress and then a person ends up just feeling better. So anxiety reduces, they sleep better, they have more energy throughout the day.
You know, I have, I, in the book I talk about various options. Some of my favorite are like rhodiola and ashwagandha and oftentimes I'll recommend like one supplement that might have adaptogens B vitamins, vitamin C, so you're not popping 75 different pills a day. Right. It's easy to like remember to take it in the morning, you put it next to your toothbrush.
But you know, for nursing moms or people that are, that are sensitive, they can even utilize like Tulsi tea. I'm drinking that right now. You can probably, my throat sounds a little bit scratchy. We were just chatting about how, how my son was sick the last few nights and so, you know, preschool germs and so I'm drinking a little bit of extra and as well as some Throat Coat tea, but you can sip on this throughout the day.
It's just a tea that you could add into your routine. It's also a galactagogue, so it's probably, definitely check with your lactation consultant. It's usually safe for most nursing moms. And this is something that you can just incorporate into your day, routine, and whether you have too much cortisol or not enough cortisol, adaptogens work to balance cortisol levels so that you'll have good cortisol throughout the day and then you feel more energetic and relaxed and less stressed.
27:07 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, that's why I love, like, I love adaptogenic herbs is for that exact reason. I mean a lot of times when you're dealing with hormones, if you start taking things that directly impact them or to to help them go up or down, you've gotta continuously go back in and get tested because it's, you're playing with very delicate balance and you want to always be monitored.
The adaptogenic herbs just are are going to adjust accordingly and, and you really can't go wrong, which is a really nice, a nice and very relieving in terms of being, being able to do that and not have to think too much about that.
One of the things I also want to just touch on is as obviously the, the first are being replenished in food and I just love the fact that the thinking of it, it's reframing it as food being a safety signal on your body, knowing when you aren't getting proper food. But in, in conjunction with that, the, the blood sugar balance challenges that go along with that because the adrenal glands are tied right into and they get overused when, when, when we get our blood sugar out of balance.
But our kids are of often struggling with as well because they're starting with their digestion, they're struggling with the things, they have the same cravings that we have when we are in adrenal dysfunction. They want those carbs and the sugar, the cheeses, the all the comfort type foods and which aren't typically good for blood sugar balance and shows up in hungry-like I believe you mentioned that too in the book behaviors, both in the parents and the children.
So, so it's so good to have, again, something that we all need to be doing and it just kind of makes sense and we probably don't have time to go through all of them. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to tell make sure that, well obviously we're going to link to the book and all the things in here, but I did want to touch on a couple more things.
One of them, which I have always liked to talk about, and it is the one of the most overlooked things I think and the easiest things we can do, which is hydration. So you have another R which is re-energized. So tell us more about that and and why it's so important.
29:13 Dr. Izabella:
So part of my program is, you know, a lot of times people say you need to quit the coffee to heal your adrenals, to heal your fatigue. And people are like, uh-uh, you're not taking like this coffee out of my cold dead hands, right?
And so I really wanted to create a way to, to find other sources of energy, right? And so I really focused on what, like what can cause us to be exhausted? Turns out dehydration is a really big reason for that. And so utilizing electrolytes into your routine and so you can utilize like the noon electrolytes element tea, I have a blend that I made by Recology that also has some vitamin C and some D ribose to support energy production. But there's a whole lot of options out there where people are like, I thought I was hydrated, I was drinking enough water, but it turns out that I wasn't.
And some of the people that have gone through my program will say, all I did was electrolytes and that was a life-changing thing for me where I have more energy. Typically when we're in that chronic stress state, we're going to have electrolyte imbalances.
Oftentimes people are going to be having those salt cravings and that's a hint, that's a sign from your body. Not that you need like a whole bag of potato chips, but it is a sign from your body that you do need more electrolytes.
And so sometimes I'll recommend those electrolyte drinks or doing something like not sure if it's called "sole" or “so-lay” depending on how fancy you want to get, but it's taking a cup of water like this and adding some sea salt and sipping on that throughout the day.
This can be incredibly helpful for your morning fatigue. If you're somebody that has low blood pressure that's oftentimes tied to low cortisol, low blood sugar and low blood pressure, you're going to be supporting yourself with some of the, the extra sea salt and electrolytes to have a healthy blood pressure.
And then, you know, kind of like when one of the signals goes, the other ones sort of come up as well. So it's a matter of sending your body these like, you know, all of our hormones and things and they talk to each other. So it's, it's a way of doing our own biofeedback, right? So you're anxious and you slow down your breath, all of a sudden your anxiety releases and same with kind of lifting, you give yourself a little support in your blood pressure and all of a sudden you have more energy.
So this can be incredibly game changing for people where they just add electrolytes to their routine, right? And they help, they, it recover, they recover so much faster from stress.
31:55 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, no, it is amazing those little tweaks, what are seen to be little tweaks, what a difference it can make. And I'm just looking at in the book your, the feedback that you got when you did your surveys around the program, the first intervention, which we talked about in terms of blood sugar balance, that was 91% of people found that that's where they, they they, they got gains just by working on that. And hydration was a close second at 87%.
So it shows you just how powerful and, and it's, and it's interesting like, you know, and then changing diet was tied also with hydration. So it, it is really, even if right now you just focused on those two things, what a huge impact you could make. There are so many more things you talk about in the book though, in terms of the, the, the rest of the Rs that we, we could go through, but we'd probably be here for quite a while.
If there was one thing that you wanted people to take away from the book that they, so, so they, they understood how approachable this could be and what a difference it could make on their lives and by making a difference on their lives, what that's going to do for their family, what would it be?
33:11 Dr. Izabella:
I mean, I would say for people that are in that like sandwich generation where they've got children to look after, jobs, responsibilities and sometimes even elderly parents to care for, we are, you know, we're in that kind of stressed out state and we really need to replenish our bodies fully and it doesn't have to take a lot of time.
I have 14 like targeted safety signals that will just shift you into that thriving state so you can be there for your family, right? And so you can be there for yourself. I had worked with various other protocols for, for years now and generally like the hormonal approach, it's tricky because you have to oftentimes find a doctor that will test you.
Most conventional doctors are like, what's adrenal fatigue? It doesn't exist, right? And it's like, okay, so you've gotta go to an integrative doctor and then, you know, that's usually out of pocket and then you've gotta take the test and then by the time you get the test results, it's a few weeks past and then the hormones sometimes are tricky depending on, you know, what's going on within your body. With these changes, it's like three to four weeks is what people are completely like transformed. So I'll have like 87% of people say they're less tired and 92% of people will have less brain fog. And I mean, I have stories upon stories, I've, I've created this program in 2020, so right around the pandemic it came out and still remarkably people had less anxiety and less depression and they felt so much better.
I've got so like I couldn't fit all of the stories in the book that I wanted to. Yeah. Cause it, the publisher was like, you know, you only have like 400 pages, right? You can't have thousands of pages. But people just time after time, it's like, oh my gosh, I did not know it was possible to feel so good. I've been sick for so long, I've been so exhausted. And I really focus on just really key targeted things.
So you're not taking a ton of supplements, you're not like meditating all day and you're not, you know, you're not like if you can go to Club Med, do it. Right? But it doesn't require that, like there are ways to feel better in a short amount of time and I just want people to know, like, you might see everybody's struggling, everybody's anxious and overwhelmed, but that doesn't have to be you. Right? Like you can be coming from a thriving state even if you, you have stressors in your life. 'Cause we all do, right?
35:41 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. I I love that and I encourage people to pick up the book because it is a step-by-step plan. It is a doable plan, it's very approachable and it's obviously the science is explained throughout the book, which, you know, if you're a science geek, like some of us here, you're going to want to do that. But I, it, it's so great to have resource like that.
And I have to agree with you in terms of, the reality is is that as we age and we, you know, get, you go through life and you more things change you, you always think that the next phase of your life is going to be easier. It's just, it's not that it's harder, it's just that it's different. And like you said, we tend to, I am in the sandwich generation just as you described, and those things are going to keep on happening.
So in order to be our healthiest and best selves, we have to find and take the time to do these things and it's, it's great to have it so succinctly put together so that people can pick it up and take action and, and feel better in such a short period of time, relatively speaking.
36:40 Dr. Izabella:
Yeah, it's, it's been a game changer. So I was like, I have to get this out into the world and it works even for people, like if you have a thyroid condition, there's a really good chance you have an adrenal condition. So you, you definitely need this. But even if you don't have a thyroid condition, if you're finding yourself with that brain fog, fatigue, anxiety unrefreshing sleep, this can be incredibly helpful for you.
37:02 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, no, I, I am looking forward to hearing everybody's results. You'll have to let us know once you've picked up the book and listen to the podcast and, and tell, tell us your results to hear. Dr. Wentz, thank you so much for taking the time to join us here today at My Child Will Thrive. And we appreciate your work and you sharing your work with the world and taking the time to talk to us as parents about how we can do this for ourselves too.
37:28 Dr. Izabella:
Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure. And thank you for the work that you're doing to empower parents and help so many kids around the world and so many families.
37:38 Tara Hunkin:
Thank you. And just one more time, remember the link will be in the show notes so you can pick up the book by the time this airs, it will be available, the Adrenal Transformation Protocol. Dr. Izabella, once, thank you so much.
Thanks for joining me today. If you've enjoyed this episode, please support us by subscribing and giving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. This is Tara Hunkin and I'll catch you on the next episode of the podcast or over at mychildwillthrive.com/, where you can find articles and the free My Child Will Thrive Toolkit too.
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00:00 Tara Hunkin:
This is the My Child Will Thrive podcast. And I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, certified Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and mother. I am here to share with you the latest research expert advice, parent perspectives, resources, and tools to help you on your path to optimizing the health and development for your child with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, learning disabilities, or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on, research I can dig into, and conferences I can attend have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed trying to help their children. So sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey.
A quick disclaimer, please keep in mind that the information provided is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat your child and is not a substitute for working with a qualified practitioner. This episode of the My Child Will Thrive podcast is brought to you by the Autism, ADHD, and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit. You can sign up for free to watch 10 days of expert interviews and masterclasses at mychildwillthrive.com/summit. Now on with the show.
Hi everyone, I want to welcome you back to the My Child Will Thrive podcast. I am really excited to have with me today Dr. Izabella Wentz. Dr. Wentz is a compassionate, innovative, solution-focused integrative pharmacist dedicated to finding the root causes of chronic health conditions. Her passion stems from her own diagnosis with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009, following a decade debilitating symptoms.
As an accomplished author, Dr. Wentz has written several bestselling books and I'm sure we're going to talk about today. Her latest book, which I'm sure is going to be her latest bestseller, but she already has a New York Times bestseller, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause. She has protocol-based number one, New York Times bestseller, Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back.
And the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology: Nutrition Protocols and Healing Recipes to Take Charge of Your Thyroid Health. Her latest book that I just mentioned, the Adrenal Transformation Protocol is set to be released at the time of this recording. It's going to be coming out, this podcast will come out after it's been released, but it's being released on April 18th this year.
And this book focuses on resetting the body's stress response through targeted safety signals. And it features a four-week program that has already helped over 3,500 individuals. The program has an impressive success rate with over 80% of the participants improving their brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, irritability, sleep issues, and libido. So you can see why I am excited to have Dr. Wentz with us here today. Thank you for joining us.
03:11 Dr. Izabella:
Thank you so much for having me, Tara. And thank you for the work that you do in the world. You are changing people's lives on the daily, my life included.
03:18 Tara Hunkin:
Thank you. So let's talk about this. So we are, you are a parent of a young child and I am a parent now of two teenagers, one that's just turned 19. So that's just kind of hard to believe.
But as parents, when we talk about adrenal function and adrenal fatigue and we're going to talk about exactly what that is, it's, it's something that's, some people would almost say it goes along with parenting, but it especially goes along with parenting when you have children that might have some extra special needs and demand more of your time and energy and attention.
So tell me a bit, first of all about what exactly is adrenal fatigue and why adrenal function is so important and why we as parents that are here and listening to this today might be struggling with this more than others.
04:04 Dr. Izabella:
Hmm. So adrenal fatigue, and I would say the more accurate term for that is adrenal dysfunction, as we've learned in the last few years, is essentially what happens to the body when it gets stuck in a chronic stress response.
So, you know, you're exposed to so much stress for a prolonged period of time that your body just starts to compensate in normal kind of short term situations. People will produce more cortisol when they're stressed. This kind of leads to a breakdown of our own tissue and slowing down things like digestive function and all these important things, right, to really fuel that stress response to help us get away from that bear that's chasing us or get through that critical moment kind of can give us like it feels like we have superpowers and super strength. And you hear about people who like lift cars when their children are in danger, right?
And this is an amazing thing that our body can do under normal circumstances. This is kind of like a short-lived short-lived boost that we get. And then the kind of stressor goes away. We get away from the bear, we lift the car, whatnot, we shake it off, and then we feel so much better. Like we feel we come back to normal after that.
The issue is when we're constantly perceiving stress, we get stuck in this chronic stress response and initially we're producing too much cortisol, then we can have cortisol fluctuations throughout the day. And in the kind of end stages, we get really disconnected from the circadian rhythm where we're exhausted during the day and we're tired, but wired at night.
And as time goes on, this can turn into chronic fatigue and autoimmunity, hypothyroidism, so on and so forth, where you're just chronically exhausted. Everything is overwhelming.
You know, some of the things that people have said when they are somewhere on that adrenal dysfunction state is they feel irritable, agitated, anxious, they have trouble waking up in the morning, they have brain fog, they have morning fatigue, they might have that 3:00 PM crash. They have salt cravings, sugar cravings, coffee addiction. They need wine to help themselves get settled. They feel wired but tired. They're sensitive to bright lights.
When they get up too quickly, they feel faint and lightheaded. And it's really kind of a, just kind of suppresses our vitality, right? We're constantly reacting. We're we're in overdrive, right? We're just overwhelmed by anything. And like texting back a friend or a family member just feels like it's too much for us because we're, we're in that stressed out state, right?
06:40 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. I mean, and of course everybody over the last couple years have been through a lot more than even what anybody would've expected. We as an entire world, we went through a, a state of chronic stress during that period of time. So I'm sure that a lot of people can hear symptoms of themselves there in all that you said.
So how do you differentiate you, you talked about adrenal dysfunction and where is that because a lot of the, the symptoms overlap with thyroid dysfunction or eventually thyroid disease. So where, where do you, you identify that line between the two?
07:15 Dr. Izabella:
It's so interesting because over the last decade I've worked with thousands of people with thyroid issues and I myself had Hashimoto's and one of the things I did was getting on thyroid medications, but I still didn't feel well.
So I still had the brain fog and I still had the fatigue, the anxious feelings, the irritability, the unrefreshing sleep. And I turned out that it was my adrenals that actually needed support to actually get rid of these "thyroid symptoms". And I find that with the people with Hashimoto's, this is very, very common. There's an intricate feedback loop system between our adrenal glands, which produce our stress hormones, including cortisol and between our thyroid gland.
And so when somebody, for example, isn't producing enough thyroid hormone, their body will compensate by slowing down the clearance of cortisol. Cortisol kind of kicks in and helps us kind of get through when we're hypothyroid. Now this person will have maybe energy, but it'll be more of a wired energy.
They'll start storing belly fat, they'll feel anxious and they'll go to their doctors and if they're fortunate, they will get diagnosed with a hypothyroid condition if the doctor will, will run the appropriate tests and then they'll get placed on thyroid hormone. Right?
Which can be incredibly helpful. It may be necessary at that point when you are hypothyroid. But then what can happen is that thyroid hormone will normalize the clearance of cortisol and that can uncover a cortisol issue, right? So people will say, I started on thyroid meds, I felt better at first, and then as time went on, I felt worse, I felt more fatigued. I just crashed. What on earth happened? And it's because you know that cortisol gets revealed.
And in fact about 62% of the people that I've tested, I've tested a lot of people over the years with their adrenal function, but I have about a, I did a study of 148 people with symptomatic Hashimoto's hypothyroidism and 62% of them had low cortisol. Right? We typically hear about high cortisol in the mainstream media, but when you've been chronically stressed for so long, a lot of us are actually in that low cortisol pattern.
Or we may be in a normal levels of cortisol, but we might be disconnected from our circadian rhythm where we're just exhausted during the day and wired at night.
09:47 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. And I'm, I'm sure there are a lot of people listening right now that are, are almost like you're describing their personal experience in terms of, of going through all those things. You mentioned in the book, how you went through this journey yourself, like you said about with the thyroid and then it was the, you know, you worked to fix the adrenal dysfunction and that worked until it didn't work anymore.
In terms of the, all the things that you were told or, and what is commonly told even by integrative positions, can you talk more about that journey for you and how you then came up with this new plan that sort of addresses where, where certain tactics aren't going to work because they're just not feasible with our lifestyle?
10:27 Dr. Izabella:
Absolutely. So when I was on my healing journey, I was a young married woman with, without children, right? And so a hint coming up. And so I was able to, to utilize hormones, right? So I utilized something like named Pregnenolone and DHEA, which are hormones, they're like precursors.
And when somebody doesn't have enough cortisol, you can utilize these hormones to kind of balance out artificially, hormonally their adrenal curve. And this can be very effective. It does take a few months. There are some contraindications, for example, DHEA can over-convert to estrogen. So women in perimenopause and older women who are already in menopause and already have estrogen dominance, this can actually make things worse.
It can fuel some hormone sensitive cancers. It can also over convert to another metabolite, which causes like chin hair and backne. So most of us don't want, if we have, you know, like the genetic predispositions for that and tend towards something like PCOS. And so it's not necessarily ideal for everybody but it, these are some of the protocols that could work where they're glandulars, they might be prescription medications like hydrocortisone.
So these were more the traditional integrative medicine protocols. And I've been trained in them and I've worked with them. I've recommended them for some of my clients, but then not everybody could go that route. So I started looking into additional options and then I was,
I came across like this really intensive lifestyle method where you sleep for 10 to 12 hours a night for 30 days straight. You cut out caffeine, you know, you meditate and you, you really do all the things to reset you decommit, you go on like a sabbatical and that can work incredibly well, right? You spend a month at the beach just connected to like the ocean, like everybody please do that if you can. Right? Take away all your responsibilities.
But then, you know, then I became a new mom and I, one of the fastest ways to get into adrenal dysfunction is through sleep deprivation. So when my son was eight months old, he wasn't sleeping through the night and he was waking up every few hours and we had some feeding concerns and developmental concerns and I was just, you know, not sleeping at night and worried throughout the day as much as I was loving on my son and enjoying motherhood, they were, you know, the sleep deprivation and the worry was very stressful for me. And I found myself in this really depleted state where I was like, okay, I'm going to test my adrenals. I bet they're burned out.
Sure enough, my adrenals were burned out. But then I was like, oh crap, I can't take hormones 'cause I'm nursing. Like I don't want my baby to get like chest hair, right? You know, I don't, I just don't know, like what's going to happen if you take hormones when you're nursing? I'm a pharmacist so I'm very, you know, a minimalist with, with nursing moms and taking a lot of things. And then I was like, okay, so I can't do like the hormone route and then can't do a lot of supplements and then I also can't do like the intensive lifestyle. Like could I like go on a, you know, a 30 day sabbatical and sleep for 12 hours and give up coffee with an eight month old?
Like no, like, you know, I'm a parent, I have responsibilities. So I was like, okay, this, this, I don't know how to get out of this, right? So I had like all this experience helping others and some people I wasn't able to help. And I was like, okay, what can I do for myself to actually get out of this state, right?
I was in survival mode and how do I get to thriving? And I came across like the safety I, I had been working with like the safety theory and how the messages we send our bodies can either send us into that like stressed out, overwhelmed state, right? Because our body's always tuning into an environment and picking up stress signals and then it'll shift into that fight or flight.
Or if I could send it messages that were more of the safety messages, then my body would go into more of a thriving state. And I was like, could it be as easy as like a teeter-totter light? Like I could just take away some of the stressors as much as I can, right? I can't sleep. I would if I could, if I know that's a big stressor, but how do I counterbalance that, right? So what are some additional things I can can do to like help my body out and to help my body ease more into a thriving state? And so it was something that I utilized on my journey as a mom helped me tremendously.
So I, it's not like I was running marathons with, you know, like being up all night or anything like that, but my brain was working again and I felt more calm and I had more energy throughout the day and I felt like, okay, rather than this is also overwhelming, like I can do this, right? I still was waking up at night, so that didn't change, but it gave me a little bit more cushioning or a little bit more resilience to, to kind of be present in the present moment and actually be able to, you know, take care of my son, take care of myself, take care of my family. And so, so then, you know, once, once I got a little bit more sleep, I started to say like, okay, I got this out into a program.
Over 3,500 people have gone through it. Now more than 80% of them have less fatigue, 92% have less brain fog, they have more energy and they feel like, okay, this is doable. Like I, you know, I feel really good. I haven't been this energetic in years. And then when I finally got some sleep and then I decided to put it in a book, so this is the book that I've been writing, I started writing that in 2021 when my son started preschool. And yeah.
16:22 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, it's, it's amazing. Well, and what, what I like, so the reason why I wanted to talk about that was because just so people understand that this is an approachable, realistic way to go about helping yourself.
And then I think what I, I mentioned to you before we started recording is that the sneaky part about this is pretty much everything you're doing here are things that you can incorporate into your kids' lives too, which will also help them. I always love when we find these things that, 'cause as parents, we're always a hundred percent ready to give, give, give to our, our kids.
And we're not great about doing it for ourselves. And we've all heard the analogy of put your oxygen mask on first, make sure you're in good shape, but we still won't do it. We're not great about that. I'm going to just say that I, I I'm sure that, I'm hoping there are other people that are better about that than I am.
But when there are strategies that we can use with ourselves and our children, so it's really no more effort and it's a win-win, win, win, win, it's just so much easier to, to even think about approaching these things.
So with that in mind, let's talk about some of those things. So you talk about this, so, and, and, and in context of those safety signals. So I also love that concept because the whole idea around our stress response is, is if we feel safe we're not in fight or flight, we'll be able to be able to do things like rest and digest and calm ourselves and, and being able to flip back and forth will become easier over time.
So why don't, can you walk us through, you have the Rs, I'm going to call them the Rs. Can you walk us through those things and how they relate to those very doable aspects of life?
18:09 Dr. Izabella:
So absolutely one of the first ones is replenish. And this really focuses on, you know, things we can always do. One of the biggest stressors for our body are blood sugar swings. So if we're having too many carbohydrates and not enough protein throughout the day and not enough fat, then we're going to be in trouble.
We're not going to be able to, you know, have enough amino acids to repair our bodies properly. We're not going to be able to, you know, fat is a precursor for cholesterol and that's where all of our hormones are made from.
So we can have hormonal issues. And I find, you know, specifically for moms, a lot of times we like feed the kids feed, feed the, feed the pets, feed the fish. And then we're like, you know, and, and I've been there before where I'm like, okay, what people are like, what do you eat these days?
I'm like, toddler leftovers, right? Like you, you kind of get into this caregiving mode where giving yourself simple things you can utilize. I have like a two ingredient breakfast recipe. You, you take some coconut milk, I like the simple one without any additives in a can. And you add a scoop of protein powder, like a hypoallergenic protein powder to that and that can be your breakfast, right?
And that can really fuel you for the day. And you're not going to get hungry, you're not going to get anxious, you're not going to get irritable, you're not going to have a crash of fatigue. Your body's not going to be on this cortisol rollercoaster. And we incorporate protein and fat every few hours throughout the day.
So really fuel yourself. We focus on anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense foods. So gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free. These are very hard to digest foods. And when we're in a chronically stressed out state, our digestion gets suppressed. So giving your body easy to, more easy to digest foods and doing smoothies can be incredibly helpful and liberating for our energy. Some people will say like, holy cow, I didn't realize how much energy I was utilizing on digestion.
And then they start utilizing smoothies and you can make them so quickly, right? So you can just have a bunch of stuff prepared ahead of time or you can just throw it into a blender and have that done in a few minutes, right? You can do this with your kids. Where my son Dimitri always helps me make my smoothies.
He is like, okay, we're making a smoothie and then, you know, I like, I'll cut up the strawberries and he puts them in one by one. Sometimes he eats one. And this could be a great, great thing to do for the whole family is making sure that you're super nourished and that's going to send a great safety signal to your body when you're, when you're not eating enough food, your body's getting the message that you're in a famine, right?
And so that can really suppress our metabolism. It could suppress, you know, our thyroid function, our adrenal function. A lot of times people, you know, I've worked with people with thyroid issues primarily. But then I started having people reaching out to me who said, I have thyroid symptoms but I don't have thyroid issues.
Can you help me? And a lot of times it would be they have a lot of stress unprocessed stress and they have adrenal issues and this can actually produce too much of something known as Reverse T3, which gets into our thyroid receptors and blocks them.
And so a person can have like a perfectly beautiful, well-functioning thyroid gland, but because of that stress response and sometimes, you know, starvation, not eating enough calories can send you in that stress response. The body is like trying to help you out and conserve your energy by creating Reverse T3 so that you don't have a good metabolism. So this is one of the most approachable safety signals most people can do. And we also focus on restoring the nutrients that are depleted during stressful times.
So B vitamins especially critical for that. If you utilize them, you're going to have better energy throughout the day. Certain B vitamins, for example, B6 can help with sleep at night. I like the P-5-P version and help with producing calming neurotransmitters. Thiamine, Benfotiamine can be incredibly helpful for people who have chronic fatigue. And then vitamin C is another one that's commonly depleted when we're under a lot of stress.
So utilizing that from food sources or supplemental sources can be a game changer. And then we look at magnesium. So one of the things that I really love to recommend is you can take a magnesium supplement if you tend to be constipated.
Magnesium citrate can be incredibly helpful for clearing out brain fog and the constipation because some of us may end up with ammonia in our bodies that has been linked to constipation and that can oftentimes lead to things like brain fog and a magnesium supplement can help with anxiety, it can help you sleep better, it can help you have less pain in your body.
Another way to get this, and this is my favorite method, I don't currently take a magnesium supplement, but I take a daily Epsom salt bath. So 10 to 15 minutes, you right before bedtime I get into that bath, I put a cup or two of Epsom salts and if I've had a stressful day that might be an hour long Epsom salt bath until my husband and my child try to drag me out.
And then that can be a great way to replenish your magnesium stores. People will say that have gone through the program and started doing this, it's like I get in the bath and I am stressed out and I come out happy. You know, when my son was younger I would bathe with him. And so the Epsom salts were really great and calming for him as well.
So that meant, you know, I got better naps, I got better nighttime sleep if we did those Epsom salt baths. And still to this day I'll be like, you know, I'll keep my bath water and I'll be like, do you want to get in? And he feels so much better after he does. Right?
24:20 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, it, it is such a simple thing. We, we've used them for years in our family as well. Again, the kids get them more often than the parents do, so, so it's just, but even to the, this day one of my daughters always, she, she knows when she, she, she needs that Epsom salt bath. So it's, it's the the the effects are are immediate, which is so nice.
24:44 Dr. Izabella:
Yes. And they can be utilized for like the whole family. Like my husband and I will each take turns taking a bath and we'll be like, you know, we joke that it's like better than couples therapy 'cause we, we might both be stressed out, but when we get in that bath, we start feeling better and then we come out and we're just, you know, it, it's like amazing what happens with the world when you have more resilience and less stress. It's like everybody around you becomes nicer and less annoying, right?
25:12 Tara Hunkin:
Exactly.
25:12 Dr. Izabella:
Yeah. So part of that is like really trying to build a person's resilience and giving them some habits. Another thing that I might utilize, and depending if, you know, if you're sensitive person to supplements or if you're a nursing mom, various kind of, I talk about various options, but adaptogenic herbs can be incredibly helpful.
They really boost that resilience for us. So they kind of change how we perceive stress and then a person ends up just feeling better. So anxiety reduces, they sleep better, they have more energy throughout the day.
You know, I have, I, in the book I talk about various options. Some of my favorite are like rhodiola and ashwagandha and oftentimes I'll recommend like one supplement that might have adaptogens B vitamins, vitamin C, so you're not popping 75 different pills a day. Right. It's easy to like remember to take it in the morning, you put it next to your toothbrush.
But you know, for nursing moms or people that are, that are sensitive, they can even utilize like Tulsi tea. I'm drinking that right now. You can probably, my throat sounds a little bit scratchy. We were just chatting about how, how my son was sick the last few nights and so, you know, preschool germs and so I'm drinking a little bit of extra and as well as some Throat Coat tea, but you can sip on this throughout the day.
It's just a tea that you could add into your routine. It's also a galactagogue, so it's probably, definitely check with your lactation consultant. It's usually safe for most nursing moms. And this is something that you can just incorporate into your day, routine, and whether you have too much cortisol or not enough cortisol, adaptogens work to balance cortisol levels so that you'll have good cortisol throughout the day and then you feel more energetic and relaxed and less stressed.
27:07 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, that's why I love, like, I love adaptogenic herbs is for that exact reason. I mean a lot of times when you're dealing with hormones, if you start taking things that directly impact them or to to help them go up or down, you've gotta continuously go back in and get tested because it's, you're playing with very delicate balance and you want to always be monitored.
The adaptogenic herbs just are are going to adjust accordingly and, and you really can't go wrong, which is a really nice, a nice and very relieving in terms of being, being able to do that and not have to think too much about that.
One of the things I also want to just touch on is as obviously the, the first are being replenished in food and I just love the fact that the thinking of it, it's reframing it as food being a safety signal on your body, knowing when you aren't getting proper food. But in, in conjunction with that, the, the blood sugar balance challenges that go along with that because the adrenal glands are tied right into and they get overused when, when, when we get our blood sugar out of balance.
But our kids are of often struggling with as well because they're starting with their digestion, they're struggling with the things, they have the same cravings that we have when we are in adrenal dysfunction. They want those carbs and the sugar, the cheeses, the all the comfort type foods and which aren't typically good for blood sugar balance and shows up in hungry-like I believe you mentioned that too in the book behaviors, both in the parents and the children.
So, so it's so good to have, again, something that we all need to be doing and it just kind of makes sense and we probably don't have time to go through all of them. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to tell make sure that, well obviously we're going to link to the book and all the things in here, but I did want to touch on a couple more things.
One of them, which I have always liked to talk about, and it is the one of the most overlooked things I think and the easiest things we can do, which is hydration. So you have another R which is re-energized. So tell us more about that and and why it's so important.
29:13 Dr. Izabella:
So part of my program is, you know, a lot of times people say you need to quit the coffee to heal your adrenals, to heal your fatigue. And people are like, uh-uh, you're not taking like this coffee out of my cold dead hands, right?
And so I really wanted to create a way to, to find other sources of energy, right? And so I really focused on what, like what can cause us to be exhausted? Turns out dehydration is a really big reason for that. And so utilizing electrolytes into your routine and so you can utilize like the noon electrolytes element tea, I have a blend that I made by Recology that also has some vitamin C and some D ribose to support energy production. But there's a whole lot of options out there where people are like, I thought I was hydrated, I was drinking enough water, but it turns out that I wasn't.
And some of the people that have gone through my program will say, all I did was electrolytes and that was a life-changing thing for me where I have more energy. Typically when we're in that chronic stress state, we're going to have electrolyte imbalances.
Oftentimes people are going to be having those salt cravings and that's a hint, that's a sign from your body. Not that you need like a whole bag of potato chips, but it is a sign from your body that you do need more electrolytes.
And so sometimes I'll recommend those electrolyte drinks or doing something like not sure if it's called "sole" or “so-lay” depending on how fancy you want to get, but it's taking a cup of water like this and adding some sea salt and sipping on that throughout the day.
This can be incredibly helpful for your morning fatigue. If you're somebody that has low blood pressure that's oftentimes tied to low cortisol, low blood sugar and low blood pressure, you're going to be supporting yourself with some of the, the extra sea salt and electrolytes to have a healthy blood pressure.
And then, you know, kind of like when one of the signals goes, the other ones sort of come up as well. So it's a matter of sending your body these like, you know, all of our hormones and things and they talk to each other. So it's, it's a way of doing our own biofeedback, right? So you're anxious and you slow down your breath, all of a sudden your anxiety releases and same with kind of lifting, you give yourself a little support in your blood pressure and all of a sudden you have more energy.
So this can be incredibly game changing for people where they just add electrolytes to their routine, right? And they help, they, it recover, they recover so much faster from stress.
31:55 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, no, it is amazing those little tweaks, what are seen to be little tweaks, what a difference it can make. And I'm just looking at in the book your, the feedback that you got when you did your surveys around the program, the first intervention, which we talked about in terms of blood sugar balance, that was 91% of people found that that's where they, they they, they got gains just by working on that. And hydration was a close second at 87%.
So it shows you just how powerful and, and it's, and it's interesting like, you know, and then changing diet was tied also with hydration. So it, it is really, even if right now you just focused on those two things, what a huge impact you could make. There are so many more things you talk about in the book though, in terms of the, the, the rest of the Rs that we, we could go through, but we'd probably be here for quite a while.
If there was one thing that you wanted people to take away from the book that they, so, so they, they understood how approachable this could be and what a difference it could make on their lives and by making a difference on their lives, what that's going to do for their family, what would it be?
33:11 Dr. Izabella:
I mean, I would say for people that are in that like sandwich generation where they've got children to look after, jobs, responsibilities and sometimes even elderly parents to care for, we are, you know, we're in that kind of stressed out state and we really need to replenish our bodies fully and it doesn't have to take a lot of time.
I have 14 like targeted safety signals that will just shift you into that thriving state so you can be there for your family, right? And so you can be there for yourself. I had worked with various other protocols for, for years now and generally like the hormonal approach, it's tricky because you have to oftentimes find a doctor that will test you.
Most conventional doctors are like, what's adrenal fatigue? It doesn't exist, right? And it's like, okay, so you've gotta go to an integrative doctor and then, you know, that's usually out of pocket and then you've gotta take the test and then by the time you get the test results, it's a few weeks past and then the hormones sometimes are tricky depending on, you know, what's going on within your body. With these changes, it's like three to four weeks is what people are completely like transformed. So I'll have like 87% of people say they're less tired and 92% of people will have less brain fog. And I mean, I have stories upon stories, I've, I've created this program in 2020, so right around the pandemic it came out and still remarkably people had less anxiety and less depression and they felt so much better.
I've got so like I couldn't fit all of the stories in the book that I wanted to. Yeah. Cause it, the publisher was like, you know, you only have like 400 pages, right? You can't have thousands of pages. But people just time after time, it's like, oh my gosh, I did not know it was possible to feel so good. I've been sick for so long, I've been so exhausted. And I really focus on just really key targeted things.
So you're not taking a ton of supplements, you're not like meditating all day and you're not, you know, you're not like if you can go to Club Med, do it. Right? But it doesn't require that, like there are ways to feel better in a short amount of time and I just want people to know, like, you might see everybody's struggling, everybody's anxious and overwhelmed, but that doesn't have to be you. Right? Like you can be coming from a thriving state even if you, you have stressors in your life. 'Cause we all do, right?
35:41 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. I I love that and I encourage people to pick up the book because it is a step-by-step plan. It is a doable plan, it's very approachable and it's obviously the science is explained throughout the book, which, you know, if you're a science geek, like some of us here, you're going to want to do that. But I, it, it's so great to have resource like that.
And I have to agree with you in terms of, the reality is is that as we age and we, you know, get, you go through life and you more things change you, you always think that the next phase of your life is going to be easier. It's just, it's not that it's harder, it's just that it's different. And like you said, we tend to, I am in the sandwich generation just as you described, and those things are going to keep on happening.
So in order to be our healthiest and best selves, we have to find and take the time to do these things and it's, it's great to have it so succinctly put together so that people can pick it up and take action and, and feel better in such a short period of time, relatively speaking.
36:40 Dr. Izabella:
Yeah, it's, it's been a game changer. So I was like, I have to get this out into the world and it works even for people, like if you have a thyroid condition, there's a really good chance you have an adrenal condition. So you, you definitely need this. But even if you don't have a thyroid condition, if you're finding yourself with that brain fog, fatigue, anxiety unrefreshing sleep, this can be incredibly helpful for you.
37:02 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, no, I, I am looking forward to hearing everybody's results. You'll have to let us know once you've picked up the book and listen to the podcast and, and tell, tell us your results to hear. Dr. Wentz, thank you so much for taking the time to join us here today at My Child Will Thrive. And we appreciate your work and you sharing your work with the world and taking the time to talk to us as parents about how we can do this for ourselves too.
37:28 Dr. Izabella:
Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure. And thank you for the work that you're doing to empower parents and help so many kids around the world and so many families.
37:38 Tara Hunkin:
Thank you. And just one more time, remember the link will be in the show notes so you can pick up the book by the time this airs, it will be available, the Adrenal Transformation Protocol. Dr. Izabella, once, thank you so much.
Thanks for joining me today. If you've enjoyed this episode, please support us by subscribing and giving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. This is Tara Hunkin and I'll catch you on the next episode of the podcast or over at mychildwillthrive.com/, where you can find articles and the free My Child Will Thrive Toolkit too.
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