 well hello everybody who's joining us live. I'm so excited to be here with my friend Dr. Christine Marin and we are going to talk today about a topic I haven't talked about lately but is so important. We're going to talk about preconception health which is basically how do you get your body in the best shape before you have a baby so that your baby is in the best health of your life and then your pregnancy your post pregnancy period and all of that goes very smoothly and as much as we don't have control over things this is one thing that often women do have a choice depending on their life and their you know relationships and things but often women do have a little window where they think about getting pregnant and we want to talk to you now if you've already had children I promise this will be relevant to you as well and you are in for a treat because Dr. Marin is just not only a great friend we have this mutual admiration society and then but also just a brilliant brilliant doctor who has really made it her life's work to help women not only with great functional medicine concepts but in the pre-pregnancy period I'm going to read her bio and then we'll jump right in so she's a board certified physician and founder of an innovative virtual functional medicine practice in Colorado we're literally just down the street from each other we're very close it was just fun she also does sees patients from Colorado Michigan and Texas she's the co-founder of hey mommy a platform dedicated to helping women through the stages of motherhood and we're going to talk about the platform how you can get signed up and how you can get all her latest guides now you may not see that right now when you go to the website we'll give you the link we'll share all of that in this talk but you guys are in for a treat so you want to be sure and sign up for this because she's got I've seen some of the back end what's coming and it is amazing resources she's put so much time and energy into this and I promise you guys you will love this content and if you're a grandmother or you're someone who hasn't had children yet or you know your sister-in-law is when you get pregnant you can still sign up and share this content with your women friends or the male friends in your life that want to have a family as well so just hang on and we will introduce all of that she was introduced to functional medicine after struggling with pregnancy complications and recurrent miscarriages and I'm going to ask her to tell her story because as you know you I love to talk about story the functional medicine approach helped her address the underlying health issues associated with gut infections hypothyroid hormone imbalance and mold toxicity which you all know is one of my favorite topics now she's a mother of three a devoted a professional and has devoted her life to helping other moms optimize their health before pregnancy thrive postpartum and get their life back she's certified by the American Board of Family Medicine and the Institute of Functional Medicine and she's a compassionate clinician speaker and wellness advocate so I am so excited to have her so welcome Christine thank you so much for having me it's such an honor yes I am excited to have you and just another note for you guys if you know someone who might like this be sure and share if you'd like if you know someone would like it you can always relisten this will be recorded in live and then post your comments because I'll be watching in the background and if we have time at the end I'll try to be sure as I always do to go through and either later go through your comments or even now we'll do live Q&A with Dr. Marin today so Christine what I love to start with is story because it drives like why we do what we do and I'd love for you to tell everyone a little bit about your story yeah so my story I actually you know I was born and raised in Colorado and had a very holistic upbringing and I went to college in Boulder and had some hormonal issues and kind of acupuncture helped me a lot and I just was really into like a more holistic perspective and that's kind of part of the reason I chose to go to osteopathic medical school but it really I didn't find functional medicine until I had my own pregnancy struggles so my story unfolded through pregnancy my first daughter I had gestational diabetes which was super weird because I had like zero traditional risk factors and I really questioned what was going on with that and then when I my husband and I tried to get pregnant with our second child we had recurrent pregnancy loss and I really knew at that point you mean even after the first one I just had this very intuitive sense like something is wrong something is really wrong with me and of course my husband tried to reassure me but I just knew and you know after the second one it was like I have to figure this out and I just I you know worked with a functional medicine provider and then just dealt in like had a first because I knew professionally and personally my lives were colliding and I also found my life's work in that so there was a lot of work to be done and after my second my health got a lot better as I figured out a lot about my environmental exposures and my thyroid and my hormones and my gut and I was feeling really great and then I got pregnant like accidentally with my third and she's the blessing and we love her so much but it was sort of a testament like as you get your health back you get your fertility back so that happened and now I have three so I love working with women just kind of going through those same phases whether they're trying to get pregnant and struggling or maybe not maybe you're just you know want to optimize their health because there's so much opportunity there to have a better pregnancy so what I went through with my second I wish I knew what I know now because it would have been a lot less painful and I think I would have had a healthier kid too right right right it's so interesting how you know one thing one reason I really want to talk to you and many of my audience knows I'm writing a book now so I've been diving into like my history and even preconception because I got cancer at 25 and looking back at the my youth and my zero to five years old I was vaginal born in breastbed but my mother I think in hindsight was probably quite toxic and didn't know it and some of those toxins were endocrine disruptors like atrazine and other organophosphate chemicals that are used on a farm and now looking back there's no doubt not that that not that those caused my cancer but there's definitely a likely contribution from the in utero exposure for someone that young you know 20s to get cancer I really think it was related to my mother's health dream pregnancy in some ways so it's fascinating to me and then I know some of your story with tell us just a little bit about the mold exposure and when that happened and how because I see so many women with miscarriages in a moldy home and it's important for especially my audience to hear this because you don't think of that as a cause totally yep totally um yeah so in my case I had lived in a couple different places because my husband was military and we moved around and we remodeled the bathroom and just had like a massive I had a massive mold exposure which at that time unfortunately I didn't realize like oh when you knock down a wall and you find mold like run the other direction cover everything up call them like mold remediation team immediately and instead I was like in the bathroom amongst all this mold and I just I think I had a really bad hit you know and I mean like in retrospect you think well what other homes have you had where there's potential mold I mean it's so common right so I don't know maybe there was mold exposure prior to that even as a kid my house caught on fire when I was little wow yeah you know the same thing and again I grew up in this little farmstead that had probably you know I remember there being part of the basement that was still dirt like there was stellar like a real seller and I'm like oh my gosh there had to be so much mold growing up and then people don't know in the grain so I grew up in a farm had grains of corn and soybean and in those bins where they store them it is loaded with mold like it's known the fungal content is actually measured when they take it to market I didn't know any of this growing up but I had probably massive mold exposure I mean isn't it interesting to look at those silos and you're like of course they're full of mold yeah like and we have all these research studies looking at cattle who are harmed obviously from the mycotoxins in their food but of course that thing that's full of mold it's like dark and moist and we pile a bunch of grains in there and it gets hot and then it gets cold and it's like this baking so yeah I grew up on a farm with the with the green bins on the farm and there's aluminum silos that are just baking in the heat yes and so the corn when it comes out of the field is usually somewhat of a moderately high moisture content so it's sitting in moisture and they actually have to dry it out before they sell it again I don't know all the process but it's fascinating now something I don't often screen share but I think it's worth pristine really quickly I'm going to try to share my screen because I pulled up right before we were talking about mold and miscarriage and I want people to actually see the data I'm going to share my screen really quickly and then we'll get away from this but if you can see this so look at this this is from animal studies it's a presentation I heard recently on the effects of mycotoxins and you can see this T2 all the different effects the ergos etc but look at this is Zen which stands for something that Christine were hilariously trying to pronounce before this came on it's called a Zirello known I think yeah it's a really fast but that one this as the end stands for so look irregular heaps which means like in irregular cycles this would be for a human equivalent irregular menses or irregular periods low conception rates ovarian cysts which would be like the women with PCOS or frequent ovarian cyst ironically Christine you know my family growth group on a farm still my nieces and nephews over over there and there's two of my nieces that are struggling with PCOS one of them just had an ovarian cyst issue so this is very very very real with the young women in the environment where I grew up and then look at this abortion which is you know miscarriages for animals and because there's such a financial gain from them you know having healthy cows and pigs and everything going to market and not having miscarriages this is a big area of research in animals and we have so much data on the mold in the grains and the foods that they eat and the outcomes like this it's funny because there's not nearly as many human studies on miscarriage and mold but it's clearly I see this toxin in people's urine and I have two close friends both professionals that have had moldy homes unbeknownst to them one has had one miscarriage the other has had three so this is so common so I guess I'll just say if you're listening and you have had unexplained miscarriages and you've done a complete work up think about mold as a possibility because nobody's talking about that right yep totally and the other thing on that slide you just shared talked about sperm production I haven't seen so I need to look that research study up but it's so interesting to look to it like there's also this huge male component that often gets ignored right absolutely so again you probably heard that anywhere else but from the mold docs here you you heard it first so story loved your story of how you've gotten into it let's talk just a little bit about like if someone is wanting to get pregnant what would be the basic steps like how would you take someone through when you see them nutritionally supplements let's go through a little bit of a basic overview of what you would do with them yeah so I mean as a functional medicine doctor I like to test don't guess right like I really and I like to get data so I like to look at nutrients you know I in all my patients for the most part I'll do nutrient testing a lot of my patients I'll do organic acid testing I mean you know most of them and of course you know much of our focus is often on the gut there's a lot of when it comes to fertility and gut health you know it's not like a straight line but you know there's a lot to that and gut health obviously influences your nutrient absorption it influences inflammation things like that so I focus on gut health a lot nutrient status I like to look at nutrigenomics as well so a lot of people have heard of MTHFR but you know just there's many other genes that can help us understand some of these nutritional needs before they get pregnant so some of these needs reflect the their ability to convert beta-carotene to vitamin A you know vitamin A as a supplement isn't safe to take during pregnancy and high doses but sometimes we need more of it and so there's good nutritional sources we might want to know about ahead of time of course folate is huge right so we know folate is important for neural tube defects and that's been long accepted but the other one that we miss out on is choline and so I do some that nutrigenomics testing there's a gene called PEMT which can influence how much choline somebody needs and so preconception choline is probably just as important as folate and so just kind of looking at different food sources or supplemental sources of that I'll let I'll look at hormones a lot so I'd like to do a dry urine test for complete hormones look for signs of progesterone deficiencies or HPA axis dysfunction things like that so you know and it depends right depends on the patient their history and there's you know what they're struggling with but environmental concerns are always at the top of my list as well there's no better time to get rid of environmental toxins than before you bring the baby into the world so I love that you're mentioned that because of course I love to talk about environmental toxic load and all of that and I've gotten a lot of patients that ask this and I love your take on it and it's you know say you do know you have to say mercury toxicity as a woman who's going to get pregnant for mole toxicity or other chemical toxicity we know that one of the primary mechanisms that women get rid of toxicity is through the breast milk I mean the studies have shown the highlights right and it's a really difficult conundrum I know what I think but I'd love to hear your opinion of you know what do you do if you know you have somewhat of a toxic load and at least average which is most of us and you want to brush speed what do you think what would you console your women to do with yeah I mean ideally if somebody everybody's timeline is different but ideally if we can start a detox program six months before you even try to get pregnant that's my ideal at least three months I mean if you're like actively trying and that's not going to change just leave the toxins where they are you know like don't upregulate any detoxification but yeah I mean ideally if you know there's a toxic burden and you have chemical sensitivity or auto immunity or something like that it's ideal to to do that because as you mentioned like obviously you you pass those toxins onto your baby there's studies looking at cord blood you know of newborns and their toxic load is astronomical already which is you know a little bit scary and sad but but then the breast milk I love that you mentioned that because we detox or our stool or bladder or sweat and our breast milk yeah so it's a big deal yeah no I love that that's exactly how I feel like if we could that's why this this even zoom call and Facebook live is so important because if you're listening and you're even thinking you might want to get pregnant in the next five years it's relevant because the more you can do detox work or see a functional provider like Dr. Marin or myself before you ever get pregnant the better off you'll be and then like she said I would always be cautious if someone is actively trying to get pregnant or just thinking the next six months I would not use that as a time to do a massive detox because that's going to still trickle on in especially if they happen to get pregnant before they think you know four months or two months then as far as a breast milk thing I really believe still our bodies are wise and that benefits of breast milk outweigh any toxicity unless there's like some unusually high extremely high level of a certain toxin that is highly excreted in breast milk there are situations like women who are in chemotherapy or certain agents that they're taking orally that the doctors know that it's going to go into the breast milk and they will advise pumping and dumping that breast milk so that the babies don't get that exposure there is something to that in certain situations but in general I still believe which it sounds like you do as well Christine that the benefits of breast milk outweigh the risk even though we're toxic right yeah I agree yeah so what about nutrients I mean there's the classic prenatals but people don't really know the quality and that and what could you either have them look for in their prenatal or if you have any brands or recommendations what would you recommend for people yeah thinking about getting pregnant so definitely methylfolate many people know this already but if you pick up the back of a supplement bottle I tell my patients like if you pick it up and look at the back like if you see folic acid and cyanocobalamin just put it back down they used the cheap stuff move on so your first sign of a supplement that's maybe good is that they used a methylated form of folate and and like a methyl or adenosyl cobalamin so basically those are just active forms of bees which are more closely related to the bees that we eat versus just a purely synthetic form many of us based on our genetics can't even process the synthetic stuff and then like there's even you know dihydrofolic redact a DHFR so dihydrofolate redactase gene which can leave even worse off with folic acids it's very interesting but you know so methylfolate and B12 I also look for choline so choline is a huge one and most prenatals don't even have it or they have a very little amount of it you know like 50 milligrams so you're looking for like 450 milligrams around there sometimes you can sort of hack choline by adding trimethylglycine and so it might be slightly lower you know maybe 350 if you add some trimethylglycine to it but but those are some of the big ones I look for I personally prefer vitamin a as a mix of beta carotene and retinal palmitate so some preformed vitamin a that's somewhat controversial because many people well you know some people will recommend against that because there are studies looking at high-dose vitamin a and pregnancy is not safe agreed but we need some you know we there many women are deficient I'll test vitamin a in the blood when I'm working with patients and I'll see that there's deficiency and there are certain genes that can influence that as well so those are some of the big ones sometimes so for women who've had a history of gestational diabetes carotene can be helpful and really good fish oil you know something with high potency DHA we know that Omega 3 fatty acids are important for not only mom's health but also baby's health and brain development so some of my favorite brands so vitamin IQ is one that I love our friend Sarah Morgan developed that one so they have a whole fruit prenatal that one's nice because it's I think it's just four pills a day and you can open the capsules you know you need to add it a high quality fish oil with that one and I brought you this one for the link on this yeah and I also really like the plus one prenatal from metagenics so that one has a lot of cooling it's a lot of pills so it's a little too much and it's a little stinky so some women you know especially in the first trimester if there's a versions don't love it all the time but I do I do really like that one so with patients who have you know a history of gestational diabetes and issues like that I'll definitely recommend that one because it has a lot of carnitine yeah oh this is so great because I don't see as many preconception as you do so I know the basics and I know I use there's a thorn and orthomolecular both yeah yeah thorns is good I need to I need to look at their cooling I just looked it up it's not nearly as much okay like yeah it's exactly I was like whoa this because I sort of like pull it up yeah I don't know I'm curious I like that they have a pack that has DHA in it so if the women's like I don't want to have all these things they still take two or three pills but they're in a little packet yeah the xymogens is pretty good too but again not enough choline right I wish they would add more so I mean even the American Medical Association has come out and said hey guys you need to put more choline in your prenatals like you know I you know but it just most companies haven't so the plus one and the vitamin IQ are the two that have a good amount of choline I don't honestly know of any others that have recommended dose of choline now am I right to remember the eggs are also a good source of choline totally in farm fresh eggs if you don't have a vitamin with choline you could definitely do eating your healthy breakfast of egg them yes exactly yeah so egg yolk is by far and away I think our best resource in the American diet for choline organ meats are also a great source of choline but not a ton of people eat organ meats or want to when they're like trying to get pregnant or first trimester pregnancy yeah that's a whole other side now but I'm curious do you ever fix liver for your family oh my gosh I tried so this is what I did I ruined like an entire batch of bone broth because I mean this delicious bone broth and then our friend chelisse told me how to prepare it and like hide the organ meat in there so I cooked chicken livers and then I put them in my vitamix and blended it up with the broth it sounds disgusting and it is turns out it is disgusting but it really depends on how much ratio you know if you just like one chicken heart you don't even need that much organ meat it's really nutrient dense you can get away with like a couple ounces but yeah but you look like 12 chicken livers in there and it was not oh yeah it was like way too many like you need like one chicken liver in there so then right yeah so I haven't gotten my family to eat what about you doesn't say I honestly can say I've never eat liver I've never eaten liver and I'm kind of embarrassed because I recommend it to patients for you know iron or yeah those kinds of issues the one thing is it has nothing no relevance but in my brain it does it's almost like when you want to do a fecal microbiota transplant and you want to clean stool donor to me it's the same as a clean liver like what liver nowadays in our environment is clean I've had the same I mean I've struggled with it for so long and it's because we're not naturopaths that we don't need liver you know it's really hard for us totally right yeah and all you're right all my naturopaths are like oh I just fried up with onions and it's great oh it's like coffee enemas and liver not for the allopathy we're working on it though we're working on it we're working on the coffee enemas and all that good stuff so oh then how did our conversation go so right I know um let's talk about thyroid because um yeah no thank you I'm not an expert but this is the one thing I've seen do magic what do you tell me about thank you for bringing that up because that's the other huge thing I focus on with preconception patients I mean I'm on thyroid medicine everybody in my family is on thyroid medicine like I come from a family of Hashimoto's and graves and all the things so yeah thyroid's a big deal luckily when people are talking about fertility we have a more narrow reference range with regard to fertility when we look at TSH so you know if you look at a basic lab TSH goes up to like four and a half sometimes a little higher which is like way too high I mean you feel most people feel terrible with the TSH of four not everybody right but like I felt terrible with the TSH of four um so anyways with regard to fertility the studies would support a lower or more narrow reference range with an upper limit of norm of two and a half and so I really you know work I scrutinize people's thyroid labs really closely but not only TSH we look at free T4 and free T3 so and reverse T3 so if I you know have a patient and maybe their free T4 looks okay but they have a low free T3 they can still be kind of functionally hypothyroid it's not the thyroid fault it's a conversion problem and so sometimes they're under converting between T4 and T3 and their T3 will be somewhere in the twos which can still be in the reference range but like it's too low right at free T3 of 2.2 is still normal on the labs but like I mean that is like their minimum to survive if you ask me so you know looking at free T3 is a big deal and then reverse T3 so somebody who's making a lot of reverse T3 that's when I get really like I just look at the big picture like why are you shunting all your resources to reverse T3 which is like the brakes and I think of it as you know like from an evolutionary perspective why do we make this thing because inflammation talks and stress not enough calories like all these things we want to shut the you know press on the brakes and hide an arcade and that's not going to get anybody pregnant so we just have to address like what is it maybe it's stress maybe it's some other maybe it's problem with the gut you know there's so many other problems that can influence that or maybe it's a problem with the environment yes oh gosh I think that's so important again you're the expert here not me but I've had dabbled enough in it I remember way back when I first started functional medicine and I had like a 45 year old woman wanted hormone balance when a thyroid health and like okay I can do this we didn't talk about babies she's 45 she thinks she can't get pregnant anymore and I fixed her thyroid fixed her hormones she came back a few months later and she is pregnant with twins and it's so funny because like now literally I get Christmas cards from her every year because she has these amazing twins that she was never expecting surprise babies and she's so happy that I remember the time she was angry yeah I was going to say another word but but she was so mad you know just the first thought of it was like 45 I've got twins what am I going to do with my life should not be the best thing and she's so happy and she she still loves me since Christmas cards this day but my lesson was wow you've got to know where women are because often they will think they can't get pregnant and they'll be in their late 30s or 40s or they've never used birth control and they've never been able to get pregnant and you start to like again I was not really thinking about possession at all I was thinking about just overall health but the beautiful thing is when we treat mold toxicity we treat environmental toxicity we treat thyroid we treat hormones of course the body wants to get pregnant we're made to conceive if we're in a relationship and having intercourse so um this was it was funny because it shouldn't have surprised me but I remember being like I still remember her in my early days as being such a shock because we weren't expecting that but it's beautiful that yeah I have a patient like that as well and she was actually on low-dose naltrexone so now when I give people low-dose naltrexone like careful because might improve your fertility and that might be a great thing but that might not be what you desire right so absolutely um you know we don't have this on our list to talk about but I always like to mention it and I'd love any insight you have do you think there's anything to do I mean what would you say is there emotional work that needs to be done or is there like what kind of like mind-body spirit pieces have to do a conception is there anything in particular to recommend or huge yeah gosh I don't know I mean in particular like I'm trying to wreck my brain about the most helpful things I mean I think it's just for everybody it depends on the trauma but I think part of stress and relationship and relationship trauma I mean like how many people have met somebody who's in it has like an interpersonal relationship that's an issue whether that's their partner somebody else and so I think that that can induce a lot of issues but I don't know I don't have any like specific work I love to do aside from you know just addressing that with either your therapist or right just yoga or yes whatever it might be what about you can you think of anything yeah well the one thing I was thinking about was just the fact that a lot of you know young couples are like let's get I have a dozen of these right now where they're like okay we're going to get pregnant the next year and they're the type A's and they have a plan and they think this is how it's going to happen and whenever you have a plan and you're so type A that you're that structured and controlled it never happens according to plan and so kind of that surrender and release and I think it affects the cortisol axis the most so what happens is they're you know under stress and they're producing too much cortisol and that can affect fertility as well so usually it's kind of that surrender piece and of course with a therapist I'm not the expert there but getting them to kind of relax their plan and let go and surrender and often the moment they start to surrender it happens magic yeah that's such a good point I love that and I don't know one of my family members I won't reveal any names but a lot of sister-in-laws and she had natural pregnancy and then quitting your pregnant for many years you know three four five adopted and then we did some interventions with testing and found out she was gluten intolerant and convinced her to go off gluten and immediately she got pregnant yeah so four children now but we didn't talk about that but that's a big deal isn't it when someone is either celiac obviously because this affects immune system and immune system can affect fertility pretty dramatically there's a lot of autoimmunity that can prevent you from conceiving so if you are stuck and you haven't you've looked at thyroid you've looked at hormones you looked at all these other you know traditional things and you haven't looked at autoimmunity that could be your thing and often if someone wants to get pregnant they haven't been able to I'll say try going gluten-free it won't hurt you I don't have to even test sometimes I just say try it what's your thoughts on gluten as a trigger yeah for sure I mean I that's my personal story too you know like I'm kind of all around that same timeframe I went gluten-free and I mean I think part of the reason I had a successful consumption was that but there can be so much underlying inflammation from a food sensitivity um so I think it's important to address but I always tell my patients like with the exception of celiac of course it's an autoimmune condition but it's like if you're reacting to foods they should be benign so what's going on in your gut so I just go back to that like gut health piece but absolutely again removing the foods that are more inflammatory gluten than sometimes dairy dairy yeah sugar for sure yeah this is the number one if there's only one thing I have and we negotiate and then the three are gluten dairy sugar yep and if we go out to seven it's gluten dairy sugar egg soy corn sugar alcohol those uh-huh yep you can name those really quick yes totally agreed well and let's talk just a little bit about gut because I love talking about gut and this obviously affects so when you mentioned if someone has food sensitivities part of the reason for that is because you have permeability it's like the tiles that line the gut are the grout in between them has dissolved and you have this pathway between the gut lumen and the bloodstream and if you every time you eat have no grout and you're leaking contents of either bacterial coatings like lipopolysaccharides or if you're leaking corn antigens and wheat antigens and sugar antigens into the bloodstream this creates an immune response and what's interesting is it actually relates to the pandemic right now because the same cytokines that are stimulated by that crossover of either foods or bacteria it's aisle six it's teen of alpha and it's the same party of cytokines that happens in the viral infection that causes all this inflammation in the body and lung damage so this is like a systemic trigger and it can happen in the brain from leaky brain it can happen in the gut but this systemic inflammatory response even if you don't have autoimmunity in the face of leaky gut is a trigger for things to happen like not getting pregnant or having miscarriages or depression anxiety insomnia heart disease obesity diabetes etc etc etc and i even wonder christine who knows this is completely postulatory but back when you mentioned did you say you had gestational diabetes with your first yeah and i there is a clear link between endotoxemia which is what i'm talking about yes that crossover of the bacteria into the gut due to a permeable membrane and there's highly correlative studies showing that probably the root cause on almost all diabetes obesity and heart disease is related to this crossover and so gestational diabetes is another microcosm of diabetes and i wonder if that happens in a woman who has more permeable gut i don't know but i wonder that's a really interesting question i think it from a personal perspective yes totally i mean i had i was chasing my blood sugar for years even when i was trying to get pregnant i would be checking my blood sugar a lot so gestational diabetes i learned how to check my blood sugar four times a day and i would like monitor it like a hawk yeah and i ate very specific foods and was very careful because i was not going to go on medication and then when i was trying to get pregnant and i was having the recurrent miscarriages my blood sugar was like so wacky and it wasn't pcos because of course you know polycystic ovarian syndrome is another whole piece of infertility that can cause issues because really it's a metabolic thing but but yeah i was like chasing my blood sugar all over the place and i think it was probably largely related to endotoxemia from gut issues but i see patients too right where you're like uh your blood sugar shouldn't be this high it's obviously it's not insulin resistance their insulin's totally normal but their hemoglobin a1c is pretty high and they're having these you know um like peaks and valleys with their with their blood sugar and it's like what's going on there's this underlying sort of inflammation and cortisol or maybe it's a life of polysaccharides i don't know but yeah that's an interesting well then the other thing you mentioned in your story and my story of my friends is the mold and we know mold will cause a couple weird things to happen it'll lower msh which msh when it's not present in mouse models low msh produces Crohn's and colitis so massive permeability and inflammation so you actually need msh to have the tight junctions to have the grout and then the other um underlying thing that can happen in mold is this trigger of the cytokines cause left and resistance and kind of induce a prediabetic blood sugar issues state so it's interesting because maybe some of these patients too would have a little mold exposure or the um gut leaky gut issues and they're probably all connected yeah totally all of the above with their fungal despiosis and yeah then there's candida we didn't even know this well yes me too me too um gosh one and this is relevant because what i see is i don't i again i'm not the expert preconception i do some of that but that's not my primary thing like dr christine but what i do see is post pregnancy or children and parents and i see them in the office and what i see is very interesting say i see a seven-year-old kid and their mother they often have the same patterns of despiosis so if they have fungal overgrowth or clubzella or strepococcus they will often have very mirror images and of course it with a vaginal delivery the mother inoculates the baby so then the baby comes into the life with whatever floor the mother has so what would you say to preconception with whether probiotics or other recommendations with the mother's gut health yeah i mean that's where it's that's where i love doing organic acid testing and i do you know gi map like stool testing to see what's going on i mean sometimes people don't even know they have gut problems but you know obviously like somebody who has digestive symptoms somebody has food sensitivity somebody who has autoimmunity i know there's something going on with the gut and we know by addressing that you'll have better fertility but better pregnancy outcomes because like you said baby's going to inherit that microbiome so i mean i can just say from a personal perspective i wish you know with my middle son he has eczema and he has digestive stuff and it's all so obvious that it came from me yes with my you know my first daughter she's fine she can she can eat gluten and she's fine you know my second one he can't and so it's just very obvious to us to look at like oh the difference in their health is totally reflective of the difference in my health when i conceived so um yeah so for moms who are who are for women who want to get pregnant or moms who want to have another baby um gut health is is complicated right so i mean i i really kind of to simplify it it's like that for our program like find out what the infection is remove that remove any offending foods which are usually gluten dairy sugar maybe eggs and corn and others um and then replace enzymes so digestive enzymes are so important maybe stomach acid has been lost but all of that to help remove the infections i mean some of the really common infections that we see are bacterial overgrowth like SIBO which can influence nutrients as well you know so people often have low b12 when they have SIBO um fungal overgrowth or candida overgrowth which is largely unrecognized in the conventional paradigm um or you know there's other kinds of infections with dysbiosis and you know dysbiosis is incredibly common but um sometimes parasites you know so remove and replace and then i don't often um in terms of probiotics it depends because if you start a probiotic and you feel worse i mean you're the expert here but like you start a probiotic and you feel worse it's probably because you have bacterial overgrowth or something else going on so i think we both are fans of mega sporbiotic that is one where i think there's a big question is the safe use during pregnancy i personally think it is but it hasn't been studied right so um so probiotics and then and prebiotic type foods are are great for somebody who doesn't struggle with gut infections i mean how to like increase your gut bacteria is just eat a lot of prebiotic foods eat foods high in probiotics like kimchi and sauerkraut um and then avoidance right like most of it's avoidance of all the junk that we get exposed to the chemicals um gardening can be great for your gut pets can be good for your guts we're gonna get a puppy just for my gut right i'm like yes okay i'll get the puppy it's good for my health um so i mean there's so much so many different influences but one thing i think about too is the hygiene hypothesis and have we ever been more hygienic than now but the hygiene hypothesis it's like it's not good for our gut microbiome we're like scrubbing everything down we don't want to touch anything and while that might be uh important right now i think there's also side effects to it oh gosh you brought up so many good points i would love to comment on like those for probiotics they haven't been studying pregnancy i agree with uh christine that i definitely do still prescribe them and have patients take them bifidobacter tends to be very prevalent in infants and so if you had a concern about um probiotics or your baby needs more probiotic there's bifidostrains that are for infants or children that you can get chewable or if it's a powder you can put it in the brother's breast milk or even on the mother's breast so that the baby gets extra probiotic and of course if the mom's taking probiotic and breastfeeding she's gonna transfer that in her breast milk so you don't really need to give the breastfeeding infant extra probiotic if you give it to the mother but the one thing about the the soil-based probiotics haven't been studied as well and i feel like there might be a more dangerous zone the soil-based are not the same as spore the spore have actually been studied maybe not in pregnancy but there's a lot of human studies so i always lean towards the purely spore probiotics versus the soil-based especially in pregnancy and i do find people with sebo-sepo those gut disorders they tend to do better on the spores than just pure lactobacillus so often i'll kind of shift that direction for the tough guts um and then let's see you mentioned um talk about probiotics gut preconception gut health all these things are so critical um so again if you're thinking about it and it's going to affect your life in a good way no matter what so treating that gut is really really core awesome oh my gosh this is so fun um let's see we talked about nutrients we talked about toxicity we talked about mold we talked about breast milk breast health what do you recommend for length of breastfeeding um no yeah yeah i think it just depends because as uh i mean i fed my first daughter she was two and a half with my son i had health issues and i stopped when he was 11 months and then my third i stopped it at when she was 12 months i mean i think it would be awesome like if women can go till two years that's amazing but the thing is it's really taxing on our bodies and there is already this depleted state for many women so many women already go into pregnancy like just at the brink where they're almost depleting a lot of nutrients and you know we're stressed out to the max and then like we add pregnancy to it and we deplete things a little bit more and then we have a baby and we go through this like very difficult labor that is yeah a labor right it's not it's an in our surgery and then it's like postnatal depletion is a real thing and then you're breastfeeding on top of that and so it's really just about sort of how resilient mom is how much she can take and and just it's such a personal decision you know it's like it's a special bond with your baby and some women can't breastfeed for women who can't breastfeed them always suggesting like thyroid let's look at your thyroid really closely which we can talk about post-conception lamps too because i think those are often ignored but but anyways i think postnatal depletion is a really real thing and i think for me i couldn't breastfeed past 11 months with my second one like i did everything i could to keep my supply up but it was to my own it was to the detriment of my health yeah so you know there's like right there's a fine line it's a fine line i love you bringing that too because what i see a lot is shaming right shaming of new moms and there's too much of that because we have this idea that we have to have the perfect career the perfect baby postpartum we're supposed to be running you know in a few you know a few weeks and all this kind of stuff and or breastfeeding until five years old it's some ridiculous kind of thing and that is not even based in reality and so i think if anything we can give permission to see yourself and granted if it's three months is all you can do and your breath you know that that's fine you're going to give your baby at least three months and if it's a year great if it's two years even better but there's no shame here and that's really important because so many new moms are totally burdened they're already their hormones are out of whack and we'll talk about that too but like the postpartum period is such a tough period for so many reasons how would you support your postpartum mom's best like what would you yeah i like to give my postpartum mom's a lab order and i say four to six weeks have somebody come to your house and try your labs things might be a little different in the pandemic but i you know autoimmunity as you know very well is we're at high risk for that postpartum and we don't necessarily know why i think there's a lot of different reasons including you know having another human's dna inside of us you know but i mean there's a lot of different theories as to whether it's just a great hormonal shift or whatever it might be or stress because we're not sleeping because we're breastfeeding and we're nutrient depleted and we're not sleeping at night we're waking up every two hours of breastfeed whatever but autoimmunity is a big one and thyroid too you know so we can postpartum there's a lot of different things that can happen with our thyroid postpartum thyroiditis typically doesn't happen at four to six weeks that's for like four to six months but it's pretty terrible when it happens people feel you know super anxious and they're like postpartum anxieties are already a real thing and then you add like hyperthyroidism onto it and then they just crash and they're like super tired and their breast milk sometimes crashes and so i think it's just important i think new moms need to know it's not just because you're a new mom all the time i think that too often their concerns are dismissed as well you're a new mom it's you know yeah it's hard but it's extra hard if you're have physical struggles you know with your health so yeah so the way i support my my patients postpartum is i give them that lab order we check their labs four to six weeks and we just try to maintain really good nutrition and really good supplementation just based on you know what they need and of course i always encourage them to get all the help they can get it's not easy being a new mom right i love that you say that because it's just to validate you know whether you're going into it you've experienced it um or you never do and you have friends or family who do it's there's a lot of compassion needed because i don't envy especially nowadays i mean years ago when the family was all around and they had help to help the grandmother live next door they weren't working maybe full time or they were at least were it's just there's so many differences now with the expectations and i think that's just even releasing those expectations it's a hard time and it's okay to get help and it's okay to not be perfect and all of you know i'm so important yeah i'd love to uh talk about uh your new company and where people can find you and what kind of resources you're going to be putting now tell us a little about this new venture yeah so my new venture is with a very dear friend of mine dr alice carasco she's in austin we used to you know we got to know each other in austin we moved both the functional medicine practitioners there um but alice is also the mama three and she's an md i'm a dio and so it's called hey mommy m a m i like the latina mommy it's kind of like a bit of a pickup term but like in a sweet way you know um so hey mommy is going to be kind of all things preconception pregnancy postpartum and into mommyhood i mean postpartum doesn't end at six months or a year right like we're i'm still postpartum my baby's two and a half right so um so that that goes for a while but we're we're our mission is really just to support women in their health during these phases of life and encourage women to um take care of themselves you know for the for like a healthier and happier mommyhood is really the idea behind it so we're launching soon right now we have some awesome resources if you go to our websites just hey mommy calm and we have a really great nutrition site there so you can download our like one page nutrition um tear out sheet but we're going to have some really awesome definitive guides on there that will walk you through sort of like everything you need to know before you get pregnant or everything you need to know when you're pregnant often we find that a lot of the resources um aimed at people who are trying to get pregnant or pregnant are really fear-based yeah and so we're not into that we're more just about empowering women like these are the things you can do and i have seen some of your stuff previewed and uh you guys are in for a treat like i said the beginning i just want to repeat i actually put the link in so if you're watching you can go below and click on that and get your resources and stuff but stay tuned because this is going to be big i don't see anyone doing this well and so i see this as being just a credible resource and i think it'll really take off because it's a needed thing and i think whether it's someone like me who needs a forgiving to patients or someone who needs it for their daughter or sister it doesn't mean that everybody's in that conception phase but everybody knows someone who is so share that with the people that you love that might be in that phase um very cool any last bit of um we haven't talked at all about the virus pandemic people are probably pretty bored about that but yeah right right um i'd love to know before we kind of sign off of any like just personal life lessons or things in this time it feels like a time at least personally and for most people i talk to you of transition and growth and there's you know a lot good going on a lot bad going on but what have you what's been your like takeaway anything um life lessons through this last several months yes and it's not just me it's a lot of i work with a lot of moms you know and i i call a lot of them and they're like i'm actually kind of happy me too like secret right like i'm secretly enjoying my kids like all over town and go to soccer practice and like run and put something in a crock pot and come back you know so um so i think the takeaway is really like things aren't going to go back to normal there's no they're like they're not going back to normal but we have the opportunity to create our new normal and what is that going to look like i mean i've tried to really sit down and think about like what's my new normal going to be i'm not how do you how do you keep yourself from getting back into the same habit of go go go rush rush rush and really sit down and and quietly enjoy the people around you and not have to drive all over town i feel like life's more simple right we're not getting our nails done and our whatever done you know like there's less um this is the first time i've put jeans on and a dress shirt in like three months you're welcome yeah yeah totally so i mean but it's nice yeah that's okay i don't i don't blame you um you know it's it's kind of nice to just um let go of some of the expectations and some of the i think we got a little wrapped up in things i do too i could not agree more and it's funny because i think the majority of people like i said it's almost like a secret ancha k are you okay you know you don't be insensitive if someone's suffering absolutely i mean i know there are people who have lost and are suffering right i mean that's very real um but on the other hand there's a lot of people who found a new way of life and there's some good things and i would say the same for me um i traveled all over the place before and i'm like i'd like being home i don't know if i'm gonna do that again i mean i might do to some extent but not every weekend that was too much and my system is happier and the other thing that's interesting you mentioned nails and all that well i had like my massage therapist my physical therapist my all these therapies right i was like trying to improve myself and make sure that was healthy and all that stopped and i'm like i'm good my back's good yeah i'm like i'm fine with that and it's probably like four to five hours a week i would do whether it was personal counseling physical therapy training i mean all of these appointments with people to help me and i'm like you know what i'm good and i saved like five hours a week i know and that's a lot of time i mean i can totally relate to that and i feel like i'm actually sleeping better you know so it's like interesting cool cool i guess we've all got it like a little reset button i didn't ask for it but we got it anyways the good stuff in yeah well it has been so fun to talk to you and i'll make sure that your website your resources are all linked here and um thank you for taking the time today to share it was so fun thank you for having me it's always fun to talk to you you're welcome and i always learned something every single time so i have like i should bring a notepad when i talk to jill