Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:01:46] My pleasure, thanks for having me on.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:02:12] So half the statement is accurate. Your body has detox systems. No question about it. The part that I would take issue with is the part where you say you don’t have to do anything about it because that was probably true, I don’t know, a thousand years ago when we didn’t have any toxins and we didn’t sort of… Look at all of our lives, so we didn’t have plastics, we didn’t have gasoline, we didn’t have beauty products, we didn’t have anything unless it was natural. So in that setting, sure, you have detox and it’s going to do just fine. But where it doesn’t do just fine is when you start to load the system up.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:02:55] Think of the body like a rain barrel, and the more that you add to it, the more full it gets. And there’s going to be some point where you’re going to overexpose your body to toxins, and it may not keep up with the excretion. So it’s going to overflow with symptoms. And that’s when we get involved in functional medicine and say, OK, well, you know, those headaches and rashes and bloating and gut issues and weight issues, those have a cause. Sometimes they’re not toxins, right? Genuinely, sometimes you’re just eating the wrong foods, but sometimes it is toxins, and that’s really where we dive in and figure it out.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:03:44] Ok, so I would say for women in particular… So men are very different and men, if they change their diet, they lose weight. So I’m going to sort of set the men to the side for the moment and say, OK, if a woman has said to me, I have done everything, I am eating right, I exercise, I get enough sleep. I love my job. Sort of the perfect scenario for her life and yet she can’t lose weight, that’s when I start to suspect toxins. That’s sort of an easy, low-hanging fruit. You go, oh, I’m doing everything right and I’m not losing weight. Either you’re eating the wrong foods or there’s a toxin involved. So that’s a that’s an easy one.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:04:24] Hair loss. Once you’ve ruled out that there’s no thyroid issue, hair loss and no thyroid issue and no celiac because I lost my hair with celiac too. So hair loss is another big one. Persistent fatigue, persistent gut issues. And again, you’re doing everything right. You’re supporting the adrenals. You’re eating a great diet. Either there’s parasites that we haven’t found or there’s toxins, and it’s just a matter of sleuthing it out. A lot of people come to us already having done the work on their gut, and they’re not where they want to be. That’s when I start to go, OK, this is a toxins issue. Autoimmunity, skin issues, rashes, lichen sclerosis, anything that changes the skin is often a toxin.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:05:23] Such a great question. I love this question. So let’s set aside, I think, and my mom always teases me, I think linearly. If A then B, then C. And so typically we don’t start with the toxins workup unless you’ve done everything, you’ve already had all the testing. Then we start with toxins, but you really need to make sure that the body’s optimized and that it’s got the nutrients it needs. Otherwise, if you started on toxins, people feel even worse. That’s not nice. You don’t want your patients to hate you. So set to the side that we’ve already done the full adrenal and gut and food sensitivity and minerals nutrients workups at that side. It’s already done.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:05:58] The toxins work is pretty straightforward. We use urine testing and we do the heavy metals test in one group. That’s a pre-test. So you get up in the morning and you pee. That’s it. That’s the test. That’s just showing what’s kind of floating around the system. And then we give you a medicine that provokes the metals that are in your bones and your fat and your organs to come out. It binds to it and then you pee it out and then you collect. So you do a new test that collects your urine for six hours with that provoking agent. That’s the metals. And really, what we’re looking for are lead or mercury. Those are the big ones. I mean, I’ve seen a couple of patients with arsenic and we have to talk about eating a lot of rice or do you have a partner who doesn’t like you? You know, one of those two scenarios. And then we see Thallium a lot that’s elevated from people who eat organic food from California. So those are the metals that we’re looking at.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:06:48] But I will say I think it’s better to eat the organic food and deal with the Thallium as opposed to not eating organic and dealing with the chemicals. So it’s always like, what’s a better option? And then the other toxins we do in another urine test that is mycotoxins, which are the toxins from mold, environmental toxins. That’s things like gasoline fumes, beauty products, beauty product toxins, I’ll say that are endocrine disruptors. Plastic. Styrene. Anything in the environment, things to prevent fire flame retardants. So all of those things are the environmental and then the pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, and glyphosate. So all of that’s in one test and that’s a urine test. We provoke things to move by giving you glutathione and having you take a hot bath and then you pee. That’s the test.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:08:13] I’m seeing a skewed group because people who come to me, either they really love functional medicine or they’ve failed conventional medicine. So that’s a pretty winnowed-down group. But I mean, we wrote our book because I am the poster child for healthy living. And I mean, I stopped painting my nails because… actually someone just told me about a really clean one that I haven’t had a chance to look up. But basically, I’m the poster child and I have all these toxins. So I think it’s really prevalent, especially because when you layer on the way we live and the way we don’t sleep enough and the way we stress a lot and then layer on that, we just have been in almost two years a pandemic that’s changed people’s lives and the impact that’s had around anxiety and sleeplessness and financial concerns.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:09:01] And then layer on that there was a racial justice movement, and there’s just been a lot that people are exposed to. And so then you layer on the toxins. We haven’t even gotten to the toxins and already the system is stressed. So I think it’s pretty common. I mean, especially that most parts of the world, or I’ll even just stick to the United States. A lot of parts of the country aren’t eating organic food, so they’re getting exposed to all the toxins. So it’s pretty prevalent.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:10:09] People chalk it up to age. I’m just getting older.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:10:36] No, we totally reject the idea that you’re supposed to fail every decade and in fact, flip it on its head and say, we believe you’re meant to be vital, vibrant, healthy, alive. Here’s the part where I always debated with my partner because he would say, able to have sex and I’m like, you have just irked the entire female audience because the whole female audience can have sex but has no sex drive. So we added in the not only able but interested in intimacy until at least a hundred and every decade, you get better and better. That’s the goal.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:11:17] So it’s not a direct A to B, you have toxins, you have low sex drive. However, when you have toxins, if you’re not excreting them, it creates an environment of inflammation. And then that inflammation for women gets manifested in a million different ways. So head to toe, hair loss, brain fog, thyroid dysfunction, other endocrine dysfunction leading to menstrual dysfunction. Hot flashes, perimenopausal issues, weight gain issues, gaining weight, bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, heart palpitations and when you don’t feel well, sex and intimacy aren’t a priority. They’re nice to have.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:11:57] So when your body is out of whack, sex becomes… It’s definitely not evolutionarily needed. It’s not a survival-in-the-moment thing, so you set that to the side. Your sex drive goes down, but it’s not oh, I have toxins, so I have a low sex drive. It’s oh, I have toxins, it’s messing me up and that’s tanking my sex drive. And we can’t forget for women, especially, we’re really sensitive to, I’ll call it, alterations in the relationship. So if there’s anything incomplete or out of whack or not working in your relationship, that’s going to impact your sex drive. So there’s a lot that goes into it. And then I had a lot of women say to me, oh, you know, I just can’t even concentrate on sex because I’m so busy and I’m like, well, yeah, you’re too busy. It’s time to offload and delegate a little bit.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:13:03] Yeah, really. And I think it’s important to, I’ll call it offload. But the balance in relationships is often so different and I’ll speak to actually any relationship. Male-female, male-male, female-female. There’s always someone who assumes more of the thinking work, but that thinking work can be devastating for your sex drive because your partner wants to fool around, and all you can think about is what you didn’t get done. And so those are the opportunities to offload a project that you can’t get out of your brain to your partner so that the balance is a little more even.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:14:07] It feels like my story has two parts. So the first part is where you learn about how I have terrible genetics and have two genes for celiac disease and was a child of the 70s. So we ate a lot of casseroles and sloppy joes and was a child of the 80s with microwaves and microwaved plastic and processed, you know, prepackaged food that was so great and so quick and then decided to be a doctor, which was super stressful. And my brain has high stamina, but my body does not have huge stamina so I chose a specialty that wasn’t the best choice for me from a physical standpoint. I’m not meant to be up 36 hours in a row. I just don’t do well.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:14:54] But I love taking care of women, so from the brain standpoint it worked but what’s it like from the boots on the ground? Those are the layers. So the first part of the story, I got really sick and had difficulty conceiving and was able to get pregnant twice, actually. But really, I felt awful, so I had pretty much every symptom that I listed to you about 10 minutes ago. Hair loss, brain fog, thyroid dysfunction. I had anxiety and I’m not really that anxious. I’m high strung, but I’m not anxious and heart palpitations, bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation. I was wasting. I was like 10 pounds lighter. My joints hurt. My periods were messed up. I had trouble getting pregnant. So it just was like, I don’t know what’s going on.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:15:38] And that’s when I was diagnosed with celiac. So that was about 16 years ago. Then I went gluten-free. And really, that was my introduction into functional medicine. And I became a functional medicine provider because I felt like I need to do that for people. You know, I need to do for people what he did for me. And so a few years later, I left my regular practice and went into a functional medicine practice. And then the second part of the story is that so am I’m now perimenopausal, which I feel is a cruel and unusual punishment if you’re stressed at all because it makes it worse. And that’s actually the next book we’re writing is on how to transition into menopause gracefully because we need to.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:16:20] So anyway, our family took a vacation to France and London, and when we were in France, it was 10 days after Notre Dame burned and we were slogging through all this dust. And I said to my husband, we’re going to need to clean our sneakers, and it’s so dusty here. And about, I don’t know, a month after I came home from France, I gained nine pounds, overnight. I sort of just plumped up and my hair started falling out in just tremendous amounts and I was like, what’s going on? So I just kind of figured, OK, well, maybe I’m tired.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:16:59] I checked my thyroid, the functional medicine baseline approach and everything was normal. And about two and a half months after we came home, I heard this report on NPR that said, Oh, when Notre Dame burned, it released 500 tons of lead dust into the air. And I said to my husband, I got a lead exposure. And in that last year also my neighbor had taken his house down and it was a post-war 1940s house. And when he took it down, I remember freaking out, being like, shut the windows, shut everything. There’s lead in the air. So there was a little exposure there. But then after France, it went crazy. And so I did the test for lead, and I had been mildly positive in the past, but this time I was clearly positive. And so I said, Oh my God, I have to do this treatment.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:17:46] So I started the metals treatment. And within three months, my hair loss slowed, pretty much starting the program. Now, that doesn’t mean my metals were gone. It just means that I was able to start compensating, so my body wasn’t protesting, essentially. But it was only about six months ago that I was able to lose the weight. And I mean, we’re talking 20 months in. So the weight I would say to people is the thing that’s going to drive you craziest, but it’s going to be the last to be fixed because it’s just your barometer for what your body telling you that it’s in a state of stress. So it’s not going to move until you fix it, which nobody likes to hear.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:18:34] But actually, I will say, I feel, that’s such a great point, Maria, because I feel really grateful that I got that exposure because it got me to my bad enough point. I call it the bad enough point, right? It’s not bad enough to do anything about it until it gets bad enough. So I hit my bad enough point. Hair loss and weight gain and also a rash on my face. Those are the things that I was not willing to put up with, and they got me to take action, which I feel a lot better now than I did two years ago. So that’s good.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:19:37] In the soil.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:20:09] Yeah, I love this. So it’s a long list so brace yourself, Ok? So and let’s just preface this by saying Rome wasn’t built in a day and you are not going to clean it up in a day. Don’t try. It’s overwhelming. Someone said to me this morning, I drive the carpool and she said to me, I’m on Chapter four and it talks all about stress. So now I’m going to start meditating. I’m like great. She goes, I’m going to be like you someday. I’m like, buddy, I’ve been working on this for a long time. Don’t compare yourself to me, compare yourself to you. Only make change that works for you and don’t overhaul your whole pantry overnight. Just level up as something expires or you run out of it. That’s really important for the listeners.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:20:48] Don’t try to do this overnight. It’s not worth the stress. You’ve been living in with it for this many years, another month isn’t going to change anything. Ok, let’s go heavy metals. So for the Thallium, that’s the leafy greens, particularly from California. For lead, the sources are generally environmental. So pipes, living in an old home, doing construction on an old home or living next to an old home that was demolished, like I did. So those are usually clear exposures. Mercury is heavy metal fish like you mentioned. So the tuna, mahi-mahi swordfish, Chilean sea bass, which used to be my favorite – used to be being the keywords. And then fillings, if they’re amalgam. So if they’re silver in your mouth, they have mercury in them. If they’re white in your mouth, there’s no mercury. You don’t have to worry about it.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:21:39] And then arsenic for rice. Typically brown rice does have arsenic in it, and then I think the jasmine rice does not, but it depends where it’s grown. So rice. Well, let’s keep moving because that’s a whole rabbit hole unto itself. There’s glyphosate, which is the most commonly used herbicide. It disrupts the microbiome. It’s been implicated in different cancers like non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s pretty much not in your favor. The nice thing is the body will get rid of it if you stop exposing. But the downside is it’s really hard to stay away from it because all the grains are contaminated. Drift back to drift.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:22:19] One field sprays, the next field doesn’t, but it drifts into the field. So even organic grains are often contaminated. And horrifyingly, even the organic chickpeas are contaminated, all of them with glyphosate. So what you want to do is not say, OK, I’m never eating hummus again. Someone called me. One of my patients, she called me and said, my son eats a container of hummus every day. I said, OK, test his levels. See how he is and don’t pick a fight until you test the levels. Let’s get the data first. So that’s another source. So foods that are not organic, you’re getting exposed to the herbicides, insecticides, pesticides. People don’t think about their lovely landscaper who comes. You’re in New York so this is less of a concern, although your other concern is smog and plastic and fumes from the cars. But you don’t have to worry about what your landscaper is spraying on your lawn because there’s no lawn. So there’s an upside to everything.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:23:30] Yeah, OK. Yeah. Be careful with that.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:23:36] That’s the thing that I would say is, I mean, it makes you crazy when you think about all the exposures. And so the goal isn’t zero exposure. I went out to dinner with my best friend who flew up for my birthday and surprised me, and we’re at dinner. And just as a preface, I don’t go out to dinner because I’m severely allergic to gluten. So if I get a gluten exposure, it’s awful. It used to be three months long, but since I’ve dealt with the toxins, it’s now 12 to 24 hours, which I think is pretty manageable. But I never eat gluten, but I don’t like to be exposed, so I usually get my food in a takeout container because I don’t want to be exposed to the forks and knives and platters and cooking utensils and all that stuff.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:24:17] So he said to me, that’s plastic. I said, I know. I said, you have to pick your battles, right? So a gluten exposure to me ranks worse on the what’s the worst choice than a plastic exposure because A – my food’s not that hot. B- it’s lined with paper. And C- I know I’m going in the sauna every night and I’m going to get that out and I sweat and I move around and I do glutathione. I’m really actively working on detox, so it really can be crazy-making. And the goal isn’t zero. It’s, make a better choice.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:25:11] Sure, I will say, Maria, we didn’t actually finish the conversation about foods and toxins because you can get exposed to okra toxin, which is a micro toxin through a lot of foods, grains, moldy food, leftovers. So my daily life is organized around detox. So backing up, I don’t eat any grains. I do eat rice twice a week, probably, and I don’t drink alcohol and I don’t eat sugar. So those are for me, background. Meaning I’m not thinking about that on a daily basis. That’s just the way it is, and I’m really lucky my husband’s extremely supportive and it upsets my mother-in-law when I don’t eat her food. So she stopped cooking a lot of things that I don’t eat because it upsets her. So she makes more things than I do eat.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:25:57] So I get up in the morning and I’m still… It takes a really long time to get rid of mycotoxins, so I’m still working on my mycotoxins, two and a half years in. So I get up and I take my binders and then I go wake my kids and I go stretch. And about an hour, hour and a half later, I start working on the metals protocol. So I’m taking a silicone binder and glutathione and vitamin C, both liposomal because they’re absorbed through the skin. I do intermittent fasting so that I can give my body a chance to rest. And I also do that because that gives me an opportunity to get all my treatments in because some of them you can’t have with food. So on the way to work, I take DMSA, which is a metals binder, and I can’t eat for two hours

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:26:45] So I get up at seven and take the first set of binders, wait a couple of hours, take another binder. And then at lunch, I have my first meal, which is BioClear, which is our product that is designed to improve phase one and phase two in the liver. So that’s a protein shake that naturally detoxes me, sort of supports ongoing. And I do that for lunch and I do that for a snack around three o’clock and it’s got about 20 grams of protein and it helps detox. And then I do more of the silicone binder and more of the glutathione, and I do supplements to replace what I’m pulling out for the binding. And then at night, I go in the sauna and I take niacin to help me detox, and it also causes a flush, which is sweating. So it’s kind of like the whole day.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:27:28] I do exercise probably two to three times a week for cardio. I’d like it to be more, but I just haven’t had the time. And then two to three times a week with a trainer, I do weights. So it’s all about I mean, it’s all focused on how to detox. And then for food, I eat leafy greens and lots of vegetables. I do eat meat. I know for vegans that’s not something that’s negotiable, but meat and flesh does give you phase two detox support, which I really need. So I do eat meat.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:28:03] Yes, all of them, I eat. Yes, I highly recommend them. I eat them. Absolutely.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:28:21] Yes, and one thing that I’ll say is people who have a thyroid disorder, it’s better to lightly steam or cook the cruciferous because that can, at high doses, interfere with the thyroid. But generally, you’d have to eat a lot to really interfere.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:28:49] Your skin is your biggest detox organ, actually, and so when you sweat, well, so there’s two parts of that. But one is what difference does a sauna make? And the other is why does it matter to sweat? So the sauna, especially if it’s a near mid and far infrared sauna, is penetrating deep into the cells and helping the cells to pull out toxins? And then it’s important to sweat because it gets it out of your body and then it’s important to shower so you get the toxins off you so you don’t reabsorb them because your skin will both detox and absorb. So that’s why, when I played with Mercury in my hands as a kid, that was super unwise because I absorbed it in my skin and sauna might not be accessible for everyone.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:29:33] So there are portable saunas that I usually recommend. Try to let them off-gas because they’re made of PVC. But there are portable saunas that break down that are like a pod. It’s kind of like a seated pod, and that’s great for people, for small spaces. You can also do Epsom salt baths. If you’re super sensitive, you can do an Epsom salt foot bath, but then just sweating, going out and exercising will get you what you need. Also, it’s everything. Everything helps. Everything is better than nothing. I’ll say that.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:30:22] So it’s funny, I used to live in a house that was across from a radio tower, and I never slept when I lived in that house. And then I moved out and I was like, oh, maybe it is the house. So I do think that some people are sensitive to it and some people are not. I would say generally at night I turn off my Wi-Fi. I don’t turn off the Wi-Fi in the house, but I turn off my phone’s connection to the Wi-Fi, so it’s not transmitting and the Bluetooth, so it’s not transmitting. I think that for some people, it can really be a huge source of stress, and for some people it doesn’t bother them as much. So you have to figure out where you are. I know I have a patient. I recommended she move, I want to say it’s Virginia. Don’t quote me on that.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:31:06] There’s a place where there’s a government facility with the telescope and it needs like a 10-mile radius of nothing. Everything is wired. So there’s no Wi-Fi. There’s no connections unless it’s wired. And I said to a patient, you should go on vacation there to see if you feel better when you’re there, because I think you have a huge issue with all of the energetic EMFs that you’re getting. And we’re still waiting. I don’t know that she’s gone there yet, but some people are really sensitive. But then some people aren’t.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:31:49] A hundred percent.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:32:02] Yeah. Tons, Maria. And this is great because there’s the part of toxins where you say, don’t get exposed to them. Try not to put it in your body and work with a functional medicine provider to get it out of your body. Ok, so that’s like the funnel and the excretion. But then things that you do can shut down detox because detox is a thriving behavior. Detox is not a survival behavior. So if you’re in survival like on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, if you’re worried about your safety, where your next meal is going to come from, you can’t pay your rent, that is not a body that’s going to be able to focus on detox. So the more things that you can do to make the body feel safe, so that’s get enough rest. Eat food that works for your body – minimally processed. If you’re going to drink alcohol, don’t drink too much too often. Sugar is really a special treat as opposed to a daily thing.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:33:17] I’ll characterize it in a couple of ways. Anything can be a toxin. If there’s too much of it, it can act as a toxin on you. So alcohol. Toxin. If you drink enough of it, you could kill yourself. Sugar, it’s harder to directly kill yourself, but you’re going to shut down the systems. So sugar will throw off your microbiome. Sugar also feeds yeast, which throws off the body, and yeast love when there’s metals, so they like to grow when there’s metals. So you often see yeast with metals. So sugar, what it does is it’s a distraction. It’s not, I mean, it can act as a toxin, it can make your skin bad but it’s really more of a distraction for the body.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:33:54] Because if your body is busy dealing with, oh, I have to deal with the gut dysfunction, it’s not doing detox because again, you kick yourself back to survival as opposed to thriving. So it’s just a distracting agent. So being a stress ball, if you’re anxious or worried about things or perseverating or stuck on what if, what if, what if, what if, what if, you’re not going to do detox because that activates your adrenals and when your adrenals are activated, it puts you in a fight, flight or freeze. Fight, flight or freeze says to the gut and the liver. Stop the presses. We don’t need to focus on this right now.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:34:31] We need to focus on running from that lion that’s about to eat us because our bodies are super primitive and it’s not thinking about, oh, it’s just an infection or it’s just a bad boss, or it’s just a bad job, or it’s just a bad day. Our bodies don’t recognize that it’s like an on-off switch. So making sure you manage your stress either with meditation, training, cognitive behavioral therapy, training the brain so that it’s working in your favor instead of against you. It’s hugely important. So making sure that you’re not in survival, that even opens the door to being able to do detox.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:35:26] And it can be the most impactful because you can have a thought. And if that thought is disempowering, you will shut down your digestion and shut down your detox pathways because it’s not a priority right now. If you go into fight, flight, or freeze, your body thinks, Oh, I really need to survive. So you’re not doing detox. It’s critical.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:36:06] I usually recommend people work with someone for Candida because Candida can be persnickety. You can get rid of it and it continues to be your Achilles heel and just the slightest thing for some people will bring it back. So typically, think of it like a bar stool, which you won’t be drinking beer on a Candida protocol. But one part of it is don’t feed the Candida. That’s eliminate anything that converts quickly to sugar. And I had Candida years ago in my gut, so I stopped eating cake, candy, cookies, bread, pasta, cereal, beer, wine, sugar, all the fun stuff, right?

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:36:38] So one part of it is don’t feed it for about a year. And the caveat is you’re human. You’re going to have excursions. Just don’t let those excursions be the excuse for not going back on your program. Have the excursion. Get back on. Ok? The next part of it is to actively kill off the yeast because it doesn’t belong there, so you kill it. Usually, we use NICE statin. You can use Diflucan but if you take Diflucan for long periods of time, it can impair the liver. So we don’t want to do that. So typically, NICE statin is safe. It’s tolerated. It can cause stinky gas when you first start using it but other than that, it’s really safe and it’s well tolerated. You take that for three to six to nine months, depending on how you do, and then you inhibit it by herbals and keeping it from growing back.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:37:24] And then the fourth part of it is build up the good bacteria. So take great probiotics, wide spectrum, high dosing and eat the foods that are going to build up the probiotics in the gut. So those four components help you deal with yeast. It can come back, if you go back to your old ways, it’ll come back. If you have metals that aren’t dealt with, it’ll come back. So you’ll have some ways that it can return or it won’t or you can’t get rid of it, if you have metals. That’s the hardest part. But it can grow pretty fast. It’s annoying.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:38:33] Yeah, I would 100 percent echo that. That’s critical.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:38:57] So the ifm.org is a fantastic reference to use because it has listings of all the functional medicine doctors in the country and actually world, who have taken the programs and signed up and are members. That’s a great way. Most functional medicine practices do not take insurance. They’re cash-based. So we have, I would say, we have a bigger vision. Our vision isn’t just do practice and retire. Our practice is bring functional medicine into typical use so that it’s the way medicine is practiced. So that’s our overarching goal. And so when we looked at how we would practice, that led to, well, we can build a cash practice, but that’s not going to bring our overarching goal into fruition. So let’s build an insurance-based practice. Get the word out there, get this accessible.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:39:48] So we have an insurance-based practice and we have a membership. Because insurance does not cover the cost that the time it takes to do functional medicine, it takes a lot more time. And there’s a lot more testing and it’s a whole training. So people can work with us. Covid has expanded telemedicine. It is state by state if you’re allowed to see someone in another state, so that’s kind of an offline conversation. But there’s also a cash pay for anyone so people can find someone close to them or find someone remote, and either way, you’ll be able to be taken care of.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:41:10] Yeah, it works for our practice, and I think it works for the patients. It’s not to say it’s cheap, but it’s accessible.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:42:01] Yeah, you said it beautifully. That’s exactly it.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:42:13] I think the most important thing is to not stress about it. I mean, everyone who reads the book says, I just didn’t realize how much there was to do. And I’m like, don’t stress. One thing at a time. So that’s the most important thing is don’t stress. It’s not meant to be stressful. It’s meant to be joyous. It’s meant to be freeing. It’s meant for you to take back control. So do that as fast or as slow as you want. Just make an improvement. Level up every week in some way so that at the end of the year you go, whoa, look at all the ways that I’ve made improvements and you can pat yourself on the back and be proud of it. You’re never, ever going to be perfect, and perfection is not the goal. Improvement is the goal. Continuous process improvement. Don’t give up on yourself.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:43:07] I do. So we know that when you’re listening to this and you go, oh, where do I start? That it can be a little bit overwhelming. And so we spent a lot of hours putting together a guide that we normally sell. But we want to give away to your listeners, and it’s all of the ways that you can level up with your cookware and your beauty care and your furniture. And what are all the things that you can start to look at and again, one at a time as it works. Don’t do it all at once, but if they go to fivejourneys.com/promo, they can get the guide. It’ll be emailed over to them.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:43:55] Awesome. Thank you, Maria.

Dr. Wendie Trubow: [00:43:58] My pleasure.