The following is an operation podcast production. Hello, T. We're doing it. We're doing it.
We're at the 21st of December. Brocken and Roland, how are you? I'm actually doing great. Surprisingly, I usually have pretty low holiday season.
I can say this is the first holiday season, where I'm just basically content. As the Dalai Lama would say, that's the ideal. It says we're chasing all this happiness, which I guess that's a different podcast for a different day. But anyway, working on enough being enough, working on enough being enough.
Now, listen, today's podcast, I found Dr. Heather Finley. I found her. I actually don't even know how I find her.
I found her, which means I was absolutely supposed to find her. And she is just like this gut health expert. I am so, so I was thinking, oh, gosh, you're posting this gut health podcast in the midst of the holiday season. Like, shouldn't it be more psychological what you're posting for the listeners?
And I was like, the gut is so psychological, actually. They call it the third brain. Tell us research coming out right now. I'm not a scientist, but I do stalk a bunch of them, but all this research coming out about Alzheimer's and the gut.
I mean, I'm just telling you, like, if you have a problem with sugar and you're not addressing the gut, I don't know. I mean, whatever, you do you, of course, but really focusing on your gut is really fabulous. It's like a really loving thing to do anyway. So I randomly found Dr.
Heather Finley appropriately stopped her to come on the show. And, you know, fell in love with her. But here's why. And this is also why I'm posting this in the midst of our thriving for the holiday season.
I've had a lot of people who got held on the show. I love every single one of them. I love Will Colle. I love all of them.
And I will say, I have never had a more concise, understandable, integrative conversation about, like, simple, what is it, what do I do, what do I not do, how do I think about it? You know, for me, I remember, like, in the movie, Philadelphia, you know, it's not Washington when he's the lawyer. And he's like, explain this to me like I'm a third grader. Like, I, okay, like, whatever, honesty is our love language on what you're creating.
Like, sometimes I'm listening to my doctor friends talk to me about the gut. And I'm like nodding, but I'm like, not understanding completely. Talk to Dr. Heather Finley, understand completely.
I mean, I'm telling you. So I was like, actually, during the holiday season, before everybody is about to walk in and down their lot coz and their Christmas cookies, it might be an optimal time to understand that a little better. Also, as you well know, she talks about artificial sweetener, which is probably my favorite thing to talk to you about. I'm just on my mission to have us stop thinking that artificial sweetener is better than traditional sweetener.
Anyway, here she is. Dr. Heather Finley, she's a registered dietitian and helps people struggling with bloating constipation, IBS find relief from their symptoms and feel excited about food again. And she talks about that on the show today.
Heather struggled with her own digestive issues for nearly 20 years and understands firsthand the impact that nutrition, lifestyle, and mindset have on digestive health. God, health shouldn't be restrictive, stressful, and all consuming. Yes, nor should your relationship with food. She developed a simple way that individuals can reduce digestive symptoms and add foods back into their diet.
Dr. Heather has a doctorate clinical nutrition from Maryland University of Integrative Health, and she's been featured all over the place. Anyway, I just think it's a great conversation. Also, if you fall in love with her the way that I did, her cookbook is coming out January 3rd.
Go get it, the Happy Healthy Cookbook, Yahoo! And while we're talking about Yahoo's, you know how I feel about Jan Wan, the vultures are a common, and I'm pretty opposed to it. And yet, here I am. So I have to have an event, so I can counter the vultures.
Honestly, we're having an online retreat, January 8th, 12 to 5. I should call it countering the vultures, but I'm calling it choosing me, because I think instead of all of this resolution nonsense, that is very far hard for us to end up like following through on, and then which increases our shame. I just want to talk about how we can better choose ourselves this year, better priorities ourselves, better ourselves like situated. It's a good time to do an overview of where we are and where we want to go.
But this whole, I mean, let me tell you, the vultures are ready to capture you, the diet culture vultures. They're ready to capture you. So be careful. And be careful who you choose.
Next week's podcast is all about that. It's really about being careful who you choose. So stay tuned. But anyway, so come, you can come sign up for that.
It's going to be amazing. mollycarmel.com slash choosing dash me. Also, we're doing intense saunty on the 28th. It's going to be amazing Wednesday night.
Also, there's the breaking of a sugar course. Also, you go to my website. I forgot to tell you this. I have this cute little like 15 minute video that's just like a little jumpstart, just like a little clarity, a little clarity boost.
So listen, I'm saying it's, I love you. I have a lot to offer. I love spending time with you. Also, I love a good DM.
I love the chat. I love a good idea. And it's enough out of me, my dog's yelling. I'm going to go get him.
And I'm going to leave you with Dr. Heather Fiffing. Just want to say I don't even know you and we're such good friends already. I love it.
I know it's always so funny when you hop on zoom with someone you've like communicated on email and social media with, but I love just like the part where it's like the ease in which we just disseminated like who zoom room were it like who are easy like Sunday morning. I deeply appreciate it. I'm so glad to know you more. I mean, it's just like nice when you meet other people who have ease as a core value.
You know, you're not on the zoom. I'm not, you're like, hey, we have two zoom dates. Where do you want to go? Yeah.
Where do you want to meet? What do we want to do? I mean, I imagine that is something to do with gut health. If I know anything about gut health, no stress, no stress.
Sure. Hi, Dr. Finley. Welcome to why you're craving.
Well, I'm so glad to be here. And you're one of very, very few people that I like sort of stalked to come on my show. You're at the beginning of my stocking. People I love it.
We thank you. My beautiful community and I thank you. So also love a good origin story. And you have such a good origin story.
So can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, do it the longer the short. I mean, I want the real. I want the part like honesty is my language.
So, you know, wherever that whichever one that is. Okay. Well, I always tell people I was born and constipated. Yeah, exactly.
And that's why we're here. So I get to the story. Yeah, that's it. Like, that's over here.
So yeah, I was born and constipated. I I honestly thought that everybody felt the same way that I did because I really didn't know anything different. I just thought that everyone had stomach pain and bloating and fear of food and everything. And then I realized, wait, I don't think everybody feels like this.
Like, there's something wrong. Why? Why do these other people not have these issues? And so I decided I was going to study nutrition in college for two reasons.
One, to fix my digestive issues. But two, I was a swimmer. And selfishly, I was like, I want to know what I can eat so that I can swim fast. So I went off to college to swim and study nutrition and sadly finished college and still had no idea how to fix my own digestive issues.
I graduated and kind of felt like a phony. Like, I just spent four years studying nutrition. And I, how am I supposed to help clients if I literally can't even help myself? And so I went on this quest to figure out all the things that were going on.
It was a really stressful time in my life. My senior year of college, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer, which was kind of a shock, honestly, because he was the healthiest person that I ever knew. And literally it came out of the blue one day and unfortunately lost his battle to colon cancer about a year to the day later. And that then further sparked this journey of like, okay, if my dad had colon cancer, what's going on with me and like, why do I have all these issues?
So I started getting more into like the functional medicine space and started to understand how instead of putting everything in a box, I was seeing now how the body all worked together. So it was kind of this big, like a biochemistry lesson. All of a sudden I was like, okay, so the digestive system is not separate from the brain and from the thyroid and from all these things and ended up going and getting my doctorate, which was more of a functional medicine approach. And now I always tell people, there's no reason that you need to get a doctorate to figure out your digestive issues.
I already did that. So yeah, I went on this journey to get a doctorate finally started having all these light bulb moments and realized that the reason that I was constipated, the reason that I was bloated, the reason that I now had Hashimoto's and all these other issues was not because of food. It was because of my gut and how my gut was actually processing these foods. And it was also because of stress.
My digestive symptoms flared terribly after my dad passed away. And I started learning about the connection between grief and stress and digestion. And so here we are. Now it's my pleasure.
I get to help empower other women to find relief from their digestive symptoms. And now I also get to train other dieticians so that they can do the same. So it's a great life. Love that.
I have some follow up questions. Yeah. But I do love that. And I'm so sorry about your dad.
That's tough. I come from the single parent like two. So really sorry about that. When you said like when you were little that you like, I just think that for just a therapist, I love that formation of like how the constipation turned into all of these other like beliefs about food and yourself.
What kind of you said that you had like a constipation which meant that I had like fear of foods? How did that all come to pass? I mean, I just remember thinking like, if I eat this, I'm going to be, I'm going to not feel good or like a story that I have, which is like slightly humiliating, but also now I can laugh about it. But I remember like specifically being on vacation with my family, we were in San Francisco and you know, San Francisco, the fun city and we should have been having a great time.
But I was so miserable. My stomach hurt so bad. And I remember we sat down at a restaurant to eat dinner and my dad looked at me and he said, Heather, what are you going to order? And I just, I mean, I was probably 12 or 13 years old at the time.
I just burst into tears. I was like, I can't eat. I haven't pooped in seven days. And I mean, my dad was like completely humiliated.
Like, what is going on? You know, then I'm like crying. We like left the restaurant. It was like, not a good look.
But I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, like, were they taking you to doctors and everything? That's such a long time to not have a bowel movement. Oh, yeah. Well, and I mean, they did.
But like, the doctors would say like, Oh, you're fine. Like, it's just sometimes people don't poop every day or like sadly, I mean, I'm not that old, but like sadly, back in the day, right? No, I was thinking that. Yeah.
They didn't know as much about the gut as we do now. Like, I don't even think people really knew about the microbiome or bacteria or anything at that time. Yeah. You know, this is like more than two decades ago.
So it's just brand, right? It was just crazy to say. But you know, it's, I think my parents did their best with like trying to figure out what was going on. But like really nobody had answers besides like, well, you're just constipated.
You know, take me relax. I actually remember one doctor telling me because I was getting really bad headaches. And one doctor just said, just take an ibuprofen every day. And my mom was like, surely that's not good for you, right?
Like, surely she at this age shouldn't be taking ibuprofen every single day, right? And they're like, no, no, no, it's fine. So we were just getting lots of like, well, just take this medication every single day. But no one was actually trying to figure out like, what's the problem?
And now looking back, I think it's a lot clearer to me. Like, probably there was a lot of reasons why. But yeah, like, no one could figure it out. And so I also think it's like, I was put on Citrosil, you know, when I was, I don't know, 12 or 13 like same, same, same, same, same, same, and like, when I think back and the little I know about health, which is really one of the thousands of reasons I want to talk to you.
But like, just prescribing like Miralax and Citrosil, what would you call those? I'm not a nutritionist, like, but this is medications for me to get normal and given like what I know from the little bit of following I do on Instagram or, you know, I guess I know a little bit more than a little bit. But the idea that that can be changed completely through stress and diet is. Oh, totally.
Yeah. And it's, I would just kind of classify it as a band-aid approach, you know, like, you're, you're not necessarily fixing the problem, you're just making the symptom go away, which is good because you don't want to have the symptom of constipation or, you know, in other cases, maybe people have diarrhea or acid reflux or whatever it is. But I think the question that we always want to ask whether it's digestive health or something else, why am I having the symptom, you know, even related to anxiety or depression and probably things that you see a lot in your practice? Like, okay, what's the, what's the core thing that's causing this?
Like, what's at the root of all of this? I'm loving on this research though, because for a billion years, like I would be saying, you know, this stress is getting in the way of, you know, your relationship with food or this anxiety or this, whatever, or this diet coke, which I want to talk about. And it's like, people just have such a hard time wrapping their head around the idea that our emotional health absolutely impacts our body that this sentence is off the charts. So I love, I mean, I just love the opening, first of all.
Yeah, well, and I mean, I think, like I said, you know, they didn't know much about the gut brain connection years ago, and it's still something that we're learning more about every single day now, but we know enough to be super dangerous now, like, okay, what's going on in your gut does affect your brain and what's going on in your brain does affect your gut. So these like highly anxious people or highly stressed people tend to have more digestive issues. So we, we can't just think about the gut when we're thinking about gut issues, we have to think about the whole body, we have to think about the brain stress situations, et cetera, call the gut the second brain, right? Yeah.
I mean, but I also like how I mean, I just like love scandal, like I was a hundred, and she knows me like, trust my gut. And I'm like, yeah, exactly Olivia Pope, I'm with you. I got so into that show. How good was it?
I just watched it. They cut the guys head off and I had to stop. I could not. So I haven't watched fast when they chop the guys that off.
I was like, I just watched it because of my own anxiety and the current status of the world. I just watched it over again. I was enthralled by it. Anyway, hi, I totally have to go back to it.
Oh, tell me if you do, because I would love to have a club about highly reco scandal. Also, very good distress tolerance skill. That show will just take you over. It's on who Lucas wondering.
So can you just take me to like a second grade understanding of this microbiome, like first grade kindergarten, like really, like my mom's always like, stop selling it, sit at therapist Molly, like really like five year old gods I could understand it. So the funny thing is my daughter, she's four, they had to bring a book to school the other day. And I have this book called The Magical World inside of you that is all about the microbes in your gut. And I'm like, poor girl, she loves this book because she's all into unicorns and rainbows, just like every kid her age.
And she thinks it's like the most fascinating book because it talks about this magical world inside of you and like your gut bugs. And so now we're like sitting down at dinner and she's like, what do my gut bugs say when I eat raspberries, you know, and so like make up all these ingredients in my own personal. I'm getting this book tomorrow. I'm sure it's on Amazon, but it was written by the founder or someone that works with a probiotic company called Hyperbiotics, I'll send you the link.
But anyways, I used to give this book at like baby showers because it's a it's a good like wooden like a part. Yeah, it's a great gift. And people are like, of course, you're giving this book, you know, but anyways, all that to say, that's how I describe it. Like, you have this magical world inside of you that you can't see, but it does so much for you.
And there's trillions of bacteria that keep you healthy. And we think I think a bacteria is like all bad, you know, get that off of me and you need to go watch my hands. But what you're saying is not all of bacteria is bad. No, in fact, lots of it is good.
And so especially if you think about the last couple of years, like in this pandemic time, most people have been become very scared of bacteria and viruses and everything else. But there's lots of bacteria that actually help us to fight illness and fight sickness and fight other chronic diseases. And so these bacteria we get from our mom when we're born. So the really cool piece is that, you know, you inherit your microbiome from your mother who also inherited hers from her mother.
So like by improving your gut health, you actually can create generational change, which is like when you think of it that way, like how empowering is that? So your route of birth influences this, even where you live influences this, what you eat influences this obviously exposure to antibiotics and all that all those things are going to influence your mood influences this. There's even research showing like negative thought patterns have a negative effect on the gut. So not it's not just what we eat.
And I think a lot of times, especially in just the culture that we live in, people are like paranoid of food. And I think a lot of people think that gut health is about what you shouldn't eat, but really gut health is about what you should eat because the more variety of foods that you can eat, this is actually going to influence your microbiome, because as it talks about in this little book, your gut microbes are picky eaters. And so the bugs that like raspberries are different than the bugs that like green beans and oats and whatever else. And so if you eat the same things all the time, you're going to have a very limited narrow microbiome versus if you eat a diverse array of foods.
So that's kind of a second grade. You have bacteria in your gut and they do lots of things for your body and you can fuel them by eating fiber from foods. You can also fuel them by exercising and sunshine and mood and laughing and lots of things. Can you walk me through fabulous?
Thank you. Yes, yes, yes. And like our like our main goal in life is to help keep the good bacteria happy and multiplying. I mean, that's not everybody's main all in life.
Happy and in your gut, because just like you need food to survive, they do too. And I guess the caveat here too, or the other thing that I'll mention is you don't just have bacteria in your gut. You have bacteria all over your body. The primary residence is your gut.
The most concentrated source is in your gut. But yeah, you have these bacteria and they influence lots of things in your body, which is really cool. How does it go? That anxiety impacts my gut?
Can you walk me through that? I have so many questions. I can't even handle it. I'm really.
Yeah. So have you, were you ever an athlete or have you ever given a speech or something that like made you very anxious? I was anxious before this podcast. I'm always anxious.
Thank you for asking. I look like I'm never anxious. I'm literally scared of everything all of the time. And I'm just walking through it all day.
Thank you for asking. Yes. Okay. Well, I can relate.
I think a lot of people can relate to that. So we're just going to normalize that. But, you know, we've all probably had an experience where maybe you were a track star or maybe you were a athlete or maybe you gave speeches, whatever, where you have like a really big event and you find yourself like on the blocks ready for the race and your stomach is in knots and you're running to the bathroom and we can all fill in the blank of what happens next. That is the perfect example of the gut brain connection.
So simply put, if you're good, things or if your brain thinks that it's going to be chased by a tiger because as you know, stress is stress to the body. So whether you actually are being chased by a tiger, which is pretty rare, I would say, or you're about to give a big speech or do a race or whatever, your gut and your brain are saying, Hey, I don't have time to digest a meal. I need to divert all blood flow to the muscles so that I can run as fast as possible from this tiger. So you're not, you can't digest a meal if you don't have blood flow and you're in a sympathetic state.
So when you're in a sympathetic state, this is going to slower your gut motility. It's going to lower your digestive enzyme secretion. It's going to lower your stomach acid. Like I said, it's going to divert blood flow to your muscles.
It's going to increase your heart rate because you're getting ready to run. So our gut is not meant to digest food in a stressful state. So that's great. That makes so much sense, doesn't it?
Yeah. So it's easy. Yeah, because it's like, I don't know if this is an actual tiger. If I'm about to take a math test or if I'm about to give a speech, I don't know.
All I know is I got to get ready to run. So if you're constantly stressed, it's going to affect your digestion, which is going to lower the diversity of gut microbes that you have, which can be a vicious cycle because the more diversity that you have in your gut, the more anti-inflammatory properties that you're producing in your gut that are going to be anti-inflammatory to your brain as well, which is going to help with anxiety, which is why you can't treat these things as separate entities. You have to think of them together because you need your gut to produce short chain fatty acids, which are these anti-inflammatory things that we want, but you have to be calm to be able to do that. So it's kind of a vicious cycle.
Heather, and then we're in this world. Yeah. Yeah. Our modern society doesn't really help us very much with that.
For remote gut health. I mean, but it does speak to these practices that I'm sure and I want to talk more deeply about, but it does really speak to attending to a meditation practice, not just for what we know about the psychic benefits of it, but it must really help your gut. Oh, yeah. Even, I mean, a lot of people I think are really intimidated by meditation because they are mind is so busy or they think that it makes them more anxious to do that or whatever.
I mean, you've probably heard all the reasons, but for a lot of our clients that have digestive issues, we're even just saying, hey, can you just hum happy birthday twice before you eat your meal? That's such a good one. Oh my God. I love that record.
So you're just like humming a song before you eat and that chills out your belly. Yeah, you're going to activate your vagus nerve. It's going to help you relax and it's going to help with digestion. So, you might eventually work your way to meditating, but maybe you start with that, which feels more doable.
And then if you have children and meal times aren't necessarily super relaxing, at least the whole family's involved and everyone gets a laugh and it's fun. So I love that. So where does the constipation come in here? Can you walk me?
Because I'm sure there's everybody is, first of all, what is normal bowel health in your opinion? Yeah, so normal bowel health is going to the bathroom. Number two, one to three times a day. Three is not necessarily better than one, but essentially by the end of the day, you want to feel relieved and you want to feel like there's nothing left.
You don't want to be straining, trying to force out super hard pellets. And you don't want to feel like heavy. It's not there of nights like a ball tonight, like a late dinner. I'll feel heavy in my belly when I go to sleep.
That's not ideal. No. Yeah. And then on the bloating scale, the question I always get asked is like, well, what's normal for bloating and what's not?
So bloating can be normal. If you eat more than you normally do, you might be bloated. That's okay. There's no judgment there.
That's just what's going to happen. If you are eating lots of sugar alcohols or what people use as like diet products and you're more, can we put a pin in that one friend? Because I need a long chat on that. Yes.
Yes. You're probably going to be more bloated. If you eat a massive plate of broccoli and cauliflower, you're probably going to be bloated. And that's okay.
So those things, I would say are normal for the situation. If you're bloated, regardless of what you eat, if you're waking up bloated, if you feel nine months pregnant and bloated by the end of the day, probably not normal, especially if it's chronic, meaning that it's happening continually. If it happens for like a week because maybe you're super stressed and you just aren't sleeping well, but then it goes away, that's fine. You just noticed that gut brain connection at work there.
But if this has been happening for weeks on end and you're not getting any relief, then that's not normal. That's so interesting. You know, as professionals, I guess, like yesterday, I just had like such a bloated day, but I was so stressed about a million things. And today I took out a really good night's sleep.
I ate really, you know, I ate in a way that was really loving to myself. I sort of had the bloating still practice loving behavior, I guess I would say it. And this morning, I'm like, Bippity-Boppity-Boo. I didn't think about that.
It's true about this emotions and gut health stuff. So when you're thinking about, okay, I only have a bowel movement every other day, I'm bloated all of the time. You know, look, where do we start? Where do we start?
I mean, obviously we should call you. I'm very into. But well, if we don't do that, I think you should first start with before you just start chopping out a bunch of foods out of your diet. What I think you should start with is the foundations.
So we always describe the store clients like, you know, building a house or doing a remodel. You're probably really excited about putting up fancy wallpaper in your bathroom or the couch that you're going to buy or whatever. That's way more exciting than like, how big is the foundation going to be? You know, here's the cement and whatever.
But you can't put the wallpaper up if you don't have the foundation. So the foundations would be adequate sleep. So seven to eight hours of sleep at night, adequate hydration, my drink is not going to sleep because I'm telling you, I just always bring my sickest self and my sickest self is like, really? So can you explain why I need adequate sleep?
Yeah. So sleep is actually when you rest and digest. So you need to sleep so your body can digest so it can repair itself, so that it has a break in digestion as well. And it's adequate.
You need it for optimal hormones as well. So if you're not sleeping enough, your cortisol might be dysregulated. Maybe you are like the person that's like, Oh, I always sleep five hours and I wake up and I run 10 miles every morning. Like you probably are going to benefit more from sleeping versus waking up at five AM and sleeping five hours because eventually that's going to totally drain your sex hormones and all your adrenals and everything else.
So which you need all of those to promote optimal gut health. So that's very obviously like, I know, but I think it's such, it's a great overview because I didn't think of the hormone, the sex hormone, I mean, and I think both of us could repeat this every single day to everybody. I'm just thinking about my best friend and how I like want to center this podcast early because she has like the worst, like, and like, she probably like, you know, it's just takes a while for people to really get on board with something that's a massive change in their life, right? I mean, it's a lot harder, you know, like, and it's not sexy, you know, it's not like, Oh, I'm doing, you know, there's like juice cleanse and I'm taking 15 pills and like whatever, like those things can, I'm not a juice lens, but like taking supplements could help you and whatever.
But if you're not sleeping, if you're not eating and bouncing your blood sugar, if you're not hydrating optimally, which could be a whole podcast in itself. If you're not doing all these things in like the supplements, the like everything else that you're doing for your gut health is not going to be as effective. I mean, we see it all the time. And also, if you are not managing your nervous system, which is where you come in, but like you, you can't work your way out of gut issues if you're just constantly in fight or flight.
Well, and I think what I'm hearing you say is you also can't work your way out of gut health, like medicinally, like where you can't, you're not sleeping and you're not hydrating adequately. You could be taking every probiotic in the world, but it can't, it still can't give you what you need. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, I mean, we've seen so many clients that, you know, they've exhausted every single option as far as gut health, they have SIBO, they have parasites, they have whatever.
And they're like, I have tried everything. And I'm like, have you really tried everything? Are you sure? And then we asked them and it's like, I took this medication, I took this supplement, I did this elimination diet.
And I'm like, okay, what did you do on the lifestyle side of things? Well, I'm too busy. I don't have time for that. I'm like the last answer.
The last house on the block and no one wants to live there, right? Because it's hard, you know, like it's hard to prioritize sleep. It's hard to say no to things that you really want to do when really you should be saying yes to resting and sleeping. It's hard to say yes to like prepping some meals so you can balance your blood sugar throughout the day.
You know, like these things, they take work and they take consistency. It's also hard to say yes to getting into the practice of either like you said meditation or any kind of nervous system practice that's going to help with regulation throughout the day, where people are just, they're constantly stressed, they're constantly wired and running on adrenaline, but like our systems are not made to work that way. And so I think it's like, it's, I think that there is a, I mean, and this is what the stress hormone does. I mean, it's so hard to eventually you become aligned with fight or flight being what it is, you know, so often I'll say to people like, you know, I have these women that are, you know, just treading water with their head above the, with their head above the waves.
And they think like, because they can breathe above water that that's good enough. And I'm like, there's an island over there with like cabana boys and like, daiquiri, well, sugar free daiquiri, well, not daiquiri, Celcer, you know, just waiting for you. It just takes a little bit. And I think, especially, what do we think about this?
I also think for people who have made like a big life change, people listening to this, they've done a lot of work with their food or something, like that, you're saying, no, no, no, and you need to work on sleep and you need to like, I think I could really rile a person up to say have to do more, huh? Oh, totally. And I don't even necessarily think it's about doing more. It's about doing the best yeses for you.
So like, maybe all these wellness practices that you're doing, they're helping, but they're not moving the needle as much because you aren't sleeping and bouncing your blood sugar and working on your nervous system, then you can add in some of these other things. But, you know, we kind of get shiny object syndrome a little bit. And so that's a great way to look at it though, which is what I'm doing to impact my health, the most optimal use of my time. That's really good.
And it's going to change, right? Like maybe right now you have small children and you have a really busy schedule. And so sleep is what you need versus like maybe in a couple of years, your kids are in college and you have more time. And so you can prioritize some of these like more trendy wellness practices, right?
Because you have the finances, you have the time, whatever it is. But, you know, sometimes it's going back to the basics and really like weighing in on those. But all that to say, this was like a really long answer to say, I'm obsessed with this answer. And they follow up questions to this answer.
So keep talking system. Okay. Well, we see, I mean, so many clients in our program that feel like they've exhausted every option, they feel really hopeless, they feel really stuck. And the reality is they don't need to do more, they need to do less, but they need to do the right things.
And so, a lot of it is actually simplifying digestive health, going back to the basics, not making it complicated, and making it doable. Because, you know, if you're put on some kind of like detox or elimination diet or medication or whatever it might be, and you're like, I cannot wait to be done with this in 30 days, I cannot wait to be done. Like that's not sustainable. We're trying to make your gut feel good for the long term versus like just for 30 days.
So, like, let's hear what we're going to do for you. My thought was also about like, in my experience dealing with all this diet trauma, like the level of like hyper vigilance that comes with people's hopelessness, like you're explaining it. When people come to me, they're adrenal, when you said, did you see what I wrote, when you're like, I'm just going to like go to the bathroom, I'll be like, take your time bad for the adrenals, like that's, I say that all the time, don't rush, it's bad for your adrenal system, but it's so true. And that mindset of, I'm never going to get well, I'm trying everything that, you know, it's just like, even that is just so bad for the nervous system, the adrenal system, the endocrine system, like, I just, it's such an important thing for us all to remember, which is like, take a breath, like everything's fixable, like, we'll figure it out.
Yeah, let's take a deep breath. I know we have, we have clients that do that and they'll mess adjust and they'll like send like one massive run on sentence. Okay, before you press end, I want you to take three deep breaths. And then I want you to decide, like, okay, is this the most effective, like, I'm like, am I going to actually get the answers that I want?
If I send a frantic message versus like, can I, can I call my thoughts to like, ask clear questions so that, because then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you've confused everybody, no one knows what you're actually asking. And, you know, you know, and also like, just as you were, I'm trained in, in breath work, and I remember when I got trained in it, you know, she was talking so much about how we brace our breath, which effectively is how we hold our breath, which I'm sure is miserable for gut health, like, in and of itself. And just as you were telling that story, because I know it all the time, but just as you were telling that story, like my whole body, I just started to, my entire body just braced. Yeah.
It's not quite imagined. I used to sit up when I used to live in New York, I would just sit on the subway and be like, Oh, my God, I'm bracing it, reading emails. I stopped, I stopped reading every time I read an email. Yeah, that's really bad for my gut health, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you got to, you got to have oxygen down there so that you can adjust. So I mean, I don't know about that. Wait, I know it's a longer podcast, but can you just tell me a little bit about hydration? Oh, yeah, of course.
You know, I think a lot of times people think, Oh, I drink plenty of water. So I'm hydrated, no big deal. But I would say most of our clients that come to us, even if they have diarrhea, constipation diarrhea, where every fall in the spectrum, you're probably not adequately hydrated because you're lacking minerals and minerals help hydrate your cells. I had this Instagram post that was like a huge hit a couple months ago.
And I show this visual, basically how minerals make your cells go from raisins to grapes. And that's really what minerals do is they're helping to draw water to your cells. So an example here is if you drink water, but you're just constantly peeing all day long, you're probably not adequately absorbing that water. And that's going to affect your gut health, because you need your guts and muscle, you need to draw water to that muscle so that it can function so it can contract, so it can move.
So the main minerals that I'm talking about are potassium, sodium, magnesium, and calcium to an extent. Obviously, there's many other minerals, but those are kind of the core ones that we want to think about. And so we typically are having clients actually add minerals to their water, whether that's adding salt to their water, whether that's adding some kind of electrolyte replacement, it's going to vary by person because some people need more salt than others, some people need more magnesium than others, some people need tons of potassium, some don't. So you can start with just a basic electrolyte powder like Ultima or something that's like pretty low dose of minerals, but it's going to help just replace, especially even in the filtering process.
Most people are filtering so many minerals out of their water, which isn't good. What aren't most of those filled with, I just, this is my own question. I'll pay for the session, but are most of those filled with fake sugar? Not like Ultima has stevia in it, but most of them don't have, well, I guess it depends.
There's lots of them that have stevia and monk fruit, there are some that have aspartame or whatever. I mean, my body is so sensitive, so that stuff gets really, is there any that's like super, I want to do this, any that's like, I think that's the one MD ML or something. I'm going to try that one. Oh, elementy?
Yeah. So that one, we could play the best charades here with me. That was amazing. You just got five seconds.
That one is really high in sodium, which typically most of our clients need. I think a lot of people are scared of sodium, but most people need way more salt than they think. So element is one of my favorites. It tastes like a margarita.
Not even sponsoring our show. No, yeah, I forget everything. But there are like, if you are sensitive to stevia and monk fruit and all that, you can get, there's trace mineral drops that are just trace minerals. I don't want to have a sweeter in them.
I'm like a big Amazon list at the end. Maybe I'll put it in the show notes. My Amazon list for my time with other trace minerals in the book. I love it.
So look in the show notes, everybody. So I want to hear two things. I know you don't want to talk about this, but can you tell me like top three things that are really bad from, we understand stress, but that are really, really bad for my top three foods. And then I want to talk about what to do.
Let's see, top three foods that are really, I would say sugar alcohols, which isn't a food, but like, yeah, it is. I think people would consider that. I think at this point, the amount of quest, the round of like quest bars, people are shoving down their throats thinking that they're doing something good for themselves. Yeah, just stop with the sugar alcohol.
I was fixing some friends about this the other day. It was actually a really hilarious conversation, but they're going to cause you tons of loading, tons of gas and tons of just abdominal discomfort. So like anything that ends in OL, probably not great for your symptoms. I also say that xylitol is poisonous for dogs.
Oh, is it? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. I mean, like in just like it's no big two.
I know it's like really my cell and artificial sweeteners. These days is like, it kills dogs. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's how it turned people seriously.
I didn't know that. That's really scary about it. It's like kind of poison in the sick. It's man made.
It's not like, you know, like onions aren't so good for him either, but you know, but yeah, like, they're going to kill him. But yeah, right. Exactly. Um, I'd probably add alcohol to the list.
Um, you know, I like to enjoy a glass of wine here and there. I feel like the older I get the less I enjoy it, but you know, if you're drinking wine or drinking alcohol every night, that's not going to be great for your gut. There are, there's lots of research that shows that alcohol damages your gut lining. It's also going to increase typically people are going to have diarrhea after consuming alcohol or like a looser stool, you know, especially if you have histamine issues, it can, especially red wine can trigger that.
So not saying never drink alcohol again, but like just be careful about alcohol consumption, you know, limit it to like once a week or whatever. Um, and I don't mean like then just go crazy once a week. Oh, so see us, don't you? Yeah, like free for all.
Oh gosh. And then a frat party. Yeah. And then what would be the third thing?
That's enough actually in the spirit of doing it. I don't want to stress anyone out. I think those are two great ones. So I love this idea of you being a functional health person and like what, what attracted you there and like, why do you love functional health?
Like, and what is it also just in case we don't know? Yeah. So when you're looking at health from more of a functional perspective, really what you're doing is like kind of what we were describing earlier instead of bandating the situation or the symptom or the circumstance, you're getting to the root. So you could describe this like, let's say you have a beautiful tree in your backyard that you provide lots of shade and you love it and all of a sudden, one of the branches starts dying.
Instead of just chopping off the branch to then have another branch start dying and chopping that one off. And by the time you only have a couple branches left, you would probably call an arborist to be like, Hey, what's going on with my tree? Like are there termites or whatever? You know, what's poisonous bugs?
Whatever. I don't know. I'm not an arborist, but you'd probably, you'd probably call an arborist to figure out what was causing this issue with your tree. And that's really what functional medicine is doing is, okay, instead of just like cutting off the branches or masking the symptoms, let's figure out why this tree is not flourishing and let's address that issue.
So whether it is a bug issue or termites or whatever, you're going to address that issue. And the reason that I love it is because it gives people tools to navigate their health long term. Typically, it's a lot less complicated because instead of just stacking medication upon medication upon medication, because symptoms aren't going away, they're just being masked, you're empowering people with tools to be able to navigate things forever and problem solve in between. And then you're also not treating symptoms as separate issues.
So you might be thinking, Oh, I have constipation and I have acid reflux and I have migraines and I have brain fog and I have thyroid issues, whatever it is, you might be going to like 17 doctors for all these things and nobody's, you know, nobody's talking to each other and this person's giving you this thing. And like, obviously, there's a time and a place for your doctors. I'm not saying don't ever go to your doctor again. But like, we want to get on the same page, right?
We want everything to be communicating well, because when your gut is functioning well, that's going to affect your brain fog that's going to affect headaches. And you're seeing it all as like, how is my entire system working together versus like trying to put everything in a box? I think for so long, especially with my digestive issues, I was just trying to figure out like the exact box that I fit in like, okay, here's the like protocol for constipation, like you take me relax and you do this and you do that. And I'm like, why is this not working?
And so a lot of my health journey and a lot of the journeys of our clients is actually getting outside of the box. Like, okay, you don't actually fit in this box because your situation and your health and your genetics and your environment is unique to you. So it can be more complicated because there's a lot more digging, but it also gives you long term relief versus like just waiting for the next about of symptoms. I love that.
That's a great. So can you tell me about, except for you, which you're like, brand, you're like breakthrough central, like what's your most heartwarming client that you've had make like the biggest breakthrough? Oh my goodness. There's so many.
It's not a great. Well, that's great. I didn't expect that. But what's like a great story you have for us about someone who's healed or got with you?
The one that comes to mind the most is when it impacts generations. And like, there's this woman that worked with us, it was probably a year ago now. She had really bad digestive symptoms, like chronic diarrhea. Every time she left her house, she was so paranoid, she was she had young kids, she was isolating herself from like, she didn't even want to go to the grocery store.
Like she just every time she got in the car, she had symptoms. And what she didn't realize is how much it was affecting her kids. Like, you know, mom was the one that never wanted to do anything because she didn't feel well. And I don't think she realized the impact that that had on her children, because mom was also the one that couldn't eat anything.
And so they they had lots of cultural foods that they enjoyed. And she wasn't able to eat any of them. And so anyways, she worked with us. We were able to resolve the diarrhea.
And what she said to us after is like, I didn't realize how life changing this would be, not only for me, but for my family, because now like, I can go to a holiday event and create and make the traditional Indian foods that we would make. And no longer like my daughter has said to me, like, I'm so glad that you can eat again. And she's like, I'm just, I never wanted to be the mom that was like causing an issue for my daughter. So those are always the ones that like just make me emotional because it's like, you think that your issues just affect you, but like your kids are watching and they're so impressionable and they care about you more than you think that they do.
And so that story, and there's been many others like those are always just so wonderful. That just brought a tear to my eye. Let me say something. Speaking of trusting their gut, I'm obsessed with myself right now because I am so happy to have had you on the show, like go my gut.
If anybody's as obsessed with you as I am, can you let us know where all the places we can find you? I'm going to get that Instagram post in a minute, but tell us. Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram.
That's where I hang out the most. My handle is Dr. Heather Finley. I also have a book coming out.
So if you are, I don't know if I have you on again before it comes out. Yeah. So it's coming out. It's in pre-order right now.
It's coming out December 20th. So if you pre-order it now, it'll be on your doorstep just in time to put in a stocking. Yeah. And we'll put the link in the show notes, get.
I mean, I'm psyched about that. I didn't even know that. Look at this. Yeah.
So what's it called? It's called the Happy Healthy Gut Cookbook. So it's a bunch of information at the front about your symptoms, how to understand them, how to navigate them and like relief tools. And then the back half of the book is over 50 recipes that personally I obviously really like because I created them.
But honestly, what makes the book is the pictures, which I can't take credit for because I didn't make them or I didn't take them, but I credit for them. Heather. No, no, no. My friend Becca took the picture.
She did an amazing job. But if you pre-order the book, you also get access to a series of videos that will be releasing about gut health. So if you're not ordering right now, I mean, when we go to it right now, but wow, okay. So we have Instagram with that when we have your website, right?
Yeah. So it's Dr. Medifenly.co and actually, our program is getting a whole new website right now. So it's gottogetherprogram.com.
So soon, I don't know when this is airing, but soon that website will be live. So amazing. Amazing. Oh, yeah.
I'm psyched. I'm so excited for you. I'm so excited to have had you on the show. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me. I was so fun. I was thinking, you know, it takes a certain kind of gal to sit and want to like be obsessed with gut health. And here we are.
And I'm so good. I was like, I wouldn't anyone else would be as intrigued by this because I am, I mean, I hope all of our listeners and I just think you're great. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
This was fun. Thanks so much for listening to this, our great thing. And do not forget to follow, rate, review, leave a comment. I'm so obsessed with hearing from you.
We can also hang on Instagram at Molly Carmel and my website, mollycarmel.com, where you'll find all the in-time scenes actions, you know that you'll and we'll do it all again next Wednesday. And listen, if no one's told you that they love you today, know that I'm sending you lots of it. XOXO.