Be Organic Podcast – Season 2, Episode 27. Eat. Sleep. Move. Breathe.
It’s something we’re happy to ignore, but it’s massively impacting your body. That’s right, today we discuss mold and mold illness. Our special guest, Dr. Jen Pfleghaar, helps us learn about identifying mold illnesses, the best ways to combat mold, and even the common foods mold is hiding in. Dr. Jen is a double board-certified physician. Fellowship-trained and board-certified in Integrative Medicine, she works with her patients to diagnose and treat illnesses such as Mold Illness, Thyroid disease, CIRS, Estrogen Dominance, Hormone Imbalance, Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, and Lyme Disease.
We also talk about hormone imbalances in men & women and easy ways to limit excess hormone mimickers (Hint: it’s time to ditch the k-cups and plastic water bottles!). Dr. Jess helps shed some light on common illnesses that are overlooked by conventional medicine & give us practical tips to help your body heal and move along a healthier journey.
TIME STAMPS
2:30 What is mold illness? (jump to section)
5:01 How you can identify mold (jump to section)
8:17 Killing mold with bleach can make the problem worse (jump to section)
8:55 Mold in food (jump to section)
10:52 Coffee is one of the top moldy foods/drinks (jump to section)
13:22 Hormonal imbalances (jump to section)
14.49 Natural ways to fight hormonal imbalances (jump to section)
24:23 Treating men & women for hormonal imbalances (jump to section)
27:00 Ways to limit estrogen mimickers for men & women (jump to section)
28:21 Common illnesses that are overlooked by conventional medicine (jump to section)
31:20 How a beginner can start to move through a healthy lifestyle (jump to section)
Transcription Below
“ If you’re not sleeping well, you’re not restoring your body overnight. Your brain isn’t detoxing at night because your brain detoxes at night through sleep. You are not getting the rest, you are not getting the healing. So, sleep and actual high-quality sleep which can be affected by medications like Benadryl. Alcohol can affect your sleep. Sleep is very important.”
Landon Eckles: Be Organic listeners, hey guys, what is going on? This is Landon, CEO and Co-Founder of Clean Juice. So excited to welcome you guys into the Be Organic Podcast, which is of course powered by Clean Juice. We’ve got an awesome show for you today. As always, we’ve got an awesome guest for you today. As always, the title of our show is Eat, Sleep, Move, and Breathe; things that are vital to your life, vital for your health and wellness.
I’ve got an awesome guest named Dr. Jen Pfleghaar. We had a little debate on how to pronounce her last name. Her last name is awesome. But I’m going to refer to her as Dr. Jen, because I don’t want to mess it up. But Dr. Jen, welcome into the show. We’re so excited to have you. I’m going to give our listeners a background so they can get to you know a little bit before we jump into some dialogue. I’m really pumped to be chatting with you.
Dr. Jen Pfleghaar is a double board certified physician. Fellowship trained and board certified in integrative medicine. She works with patients to diagnose and treat illnesses such as mold illness, thyroid disease, CIRS, estrogen dominance, hormone imbalance, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and Lyme disease. Yes, she’s very smart.
Dr. Jen also helps with natural solutions to aging skin, wrinkles, stretch marks, acne, and skin tone. Her own health history of Hashimoto’s and having children sparked her interest in integrative medicine. She’s very passionate about helping patients with chronic disease and letting our body heal itself.
Dr. Jen is a certified yoga instructor with 200 hours with Oral Wellness Center, and kids yoga with Yoga Fit. That’s awesome. She’s a published author of a book called, Eat, Sleep, Move, and Breath; A Beginner’s Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle. Obviously, hence the title of our show today. We are so excited to have her with us. She is going to be teaching us a bunch of things about our bodies, that we probably didn’t know. So, Dr. Jen, welcome in. Thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Jen Pfleghaar: Hi, Landon. Thank you so much for having me.
What is Mold Illness
Landon: It’s our pleasure. I want to jump right into it. You cover some stuff that really isn’t well known out there or not really talked about a lot out there. The first thing that caught my attention was mold illness. I want to talk about what mold illness is. How can we prevent it? And how does it go so undetected? Why is this not talked about more?
Dr. Jen: Right. It’s really not talked about a lot. People are like shower mold, black mold, what does it mean for our health, right? So, mycotoxins are produced by mold. The mold produces mycotoxins. The mycotoxins are some of the most prevalent toxins in our environment. So mold spores can be very small, you inhale them, and you get them kind of stuck in your lungs and your intestines. They kind of hang out there because it’s a moist, warm environment, and they produce mycotoxins. That is where we run into issues. We have these mycotoxins produced by these fungi, this mold, and they grow on basically any surface if the environment is wet and warm. We see this on the inner walls of buildings, wallpaper, fiberglass insulation, ceiling tiles, anywhere. So, say you are in school, in a hospital, or a work building and look up and see the drop ceilings. Have you seen the ring that tells there was water damage, do you know what I’m talking about?
Landon: I know exactly what you are talking about.
How You Can Identify Mold Illness
Dr. Jen: You would be worried that there might be mold there. One of the common mycotoxins that you can test for is Arachitol Toxins. And Arachitol Toxin A can have adverse neurological effects, kidney problems. A lot of people that I see that are positive for Arachitol Toxin A, it’s almost a telltale sign. They get these like electric shock type feelings as they describe. They go to doctors and are dismissed. They are put on Lyrica or something, which is for pain. When someone tells me that, I’m like, “We are going to check you for mold illness.” Now, how can you prevent it? A lot of the time, people don’t know they have been exposed to mold. But sometimes people come to me and it’s easy. They’re like, “Yes, I lived in a mold building when I was younger. I lived in a basement that smelled musty.” That kind of gives us a good hint. Mold illness can look like anything from high blood pressure to insulin resistance to brain fog. It is pretty much all these strange symptoms and nothing is helping.
First, you would look in your house, right? You’d look underneath the bathroom sink, see if there are signs of water damage there. If you have a basement, see if there are signs of water damage in the basement. Or if there is any history of basement flooding. If it smells musty, you would also check behind walls, if something looks abnormal with a wall, We moved into a new house two years ago and they just painted over this closet by the garage. And it was starting to bubble out. I was so mad. I was pregnant. I am super paranoid about mold. Everyday I say to my husband, “Is our roof okay now? Is there mold in our house? Are we good?” We had a mold remediator, a mold company come out and test for mold. They didn’t even have the test. They took out some of the drywall and they’re like, “Yeah, you have black mold.” So, they remediated it. They closed off that entryway. We got a whole new roof. Because a lot of the times mold comes from roof leaks, bathroom leaks, shower leaks, and basement floods. Those are the big ways in the house. So, if you have had any of those or live in a house that was flipped let’s say. They just kind of cover up things. You need to remediate and get the mold out there.
Landon: Right. That’s so common, you know, these house flips, especially in the market today. So many people are buying houses and making them beautiful and that’s great. But I think that they don’t even know to look for these things, the contractors who are flipping these homes. But if we are just covering it up with paint, we are not really getting rid of it, right?
Killing Mold With Bleach Can Make The Problem Worse
Dr. Jen: Yeah, exactly. And that’s the thing, mold remediation can be very expensive. I’m actually working with someone now and we’re trying to treat her mold illness. But she’s living in mold. So, actually made the decision that she’s going to sell her house with the disclosure that there is mold because they did have it tested. But they can’t afford the remediation right now because it is expensive. Bringing it down all the way to studs with this mold problem and then treat the mold. One thing that I always thought until knowing more about mold is you can kill mold with bleach. But that actually can make it worse. When you are dealing with mold, you really want to make sure you are working with a good mold remediator. This is not something you want to do yourself. Don’t watch a YouTube video and try this. You want to get to an expert when you’re dealing with mold. It can get pretty nasty.
Landon: Yeah, absolutely. You described some of the symptoms that we might feel when we might even know it. We probably don’t even know that it is being caused by mold. So, I think it’s good you outline that because people are feeling this way. You can even argue that chronic coughs and things like that could be a mold illness, right?
Mold in Food
Dr. Jen: Right. And another source of mold that I haven’t touched on yet is mold in food.
Landon: Yeah, right point.
Dr. Jen: So, grains. A lot of the time I will have patients that have autoimmune problems or have thyroid issues. We take them off on a grain free diet. They do better. And part of me is like, is it the glyphosate, which is RoundUp and another toxin, or is it the mold? You have wheat and corn in these silos, which is warm and wet, and they get mold. Then they get the mycotoxin, and that can be found in beans, corn, rice, wheat, nut trees, even in eggs and meat. It is usually from Aspergillus and that’s going to cause issues such as abdominal pain, cancer, some liver damage, which affects your detoxification. You also worry about your food which is why you want to look for organic to help a little bit..
Landon: Absolutely. Totally agree with you on that.
Dr. Jen: The mold topic, it is frustrating, you know. I think the first step is just be aware of these things. If there is low-hanging fruit, like you’re in your home and did have some areas where there might be a chance there was mold, or mold behind the drywall where you don’t see it, that’s when you want someone to investigate. There is ERMI testing. A good mold in inspector that knows what to look for is probably gonna be your best bet if it’s on your radar at all.
Coffee Is One of The Top Moldy Foods/Drinks
Landon: Yeah, no, absolutely. I was gonna go back to the food thing. I’ve read and heard, and I’ve even talked about this on this podcast with other people, but isn’t coffee one of the things that’s most susceptible to mold? Have you heard that?
Dr. Jen: Yes. I talk about moldy coffee. There’s a really popular coffee chain and my husband likes to get coffee there. And I’m like, “Oh, drink your moldy coffee,” as a joke. But yeah, you want to make sure that it is actually independently mold-tested. I think I spoke with one of the local owners, Ross, that your coffee is tested, right?
Landon: Yeah, it is. We have a couple different coffees that we use for different products that we have. But one of the coffees is, Purity Coffee. That’s what we consume at home. It is tested for mold. It’s a fantastic coffee. We really, really like those guys. They are doing an awesome job.
Dr. Jen: Yeah, that’s so important. I’m not a coffee person anymore, I gave that up after residency. It’s been about 10 years since I really drank a lot of coffee as a treat all habit. But you don’t want to have moldy, pesticide-filled coffee. Sometimes I wonder, the young women I see in middle school, high school having all these PCOS problems. Their testosterone is elevated, their periods are irregular, but they’re drinking coffee from Starbucks, those sugar-laden frappuccinos every day, right? You have to wonder, is it the moldy coffee, is it the sugar, what is it? But yet, we have to bring attention to this because if we don’t, nothing is going to change. We will continue to serve moldy coffee.
Hormonal Imbalances
Landon: 100%. I totally agree with you. And it’s these little things that we don’t realize are affecting our health, affecting our mood. If we are not feeling good, it just comes out in an emotional way. So, I totally agree with you on all of that.
I love that you identified the mold illnesses in some ways that we can think about them and what we can do about it. Let’s move into hormone imbalance and chronic fatigue. I know that is a big part of your practice, what you do, and what you treat. Especially as it relates to thyroid disease. How are some ways people can check to see if they have these hormonal imbalances, maybe if they don’t even know what this is. But what are some of the symptoms they are having, how to bring some consciousness to this?
Dr. Jen: Right. So, hormones are complex. We think of hormones, we think about estrogen and testosterone. There is more than that too. There is progesterone, there is thyroid hormones, there is cortisol, which is a stress hormone in our adrenal gland. So, that’s why you really want to focus on a whole body approach.
So, things to look for. It’s not normal to feel tired all the time. It’s not normal if you are a menstruating woman, who has these menstrual cycles every 28 days. They should be every 28 to 30 days. If they’re too short or too long, that can mean hormonal imbalance. Women having facial hair, men not having a good sex drive. I mean, these are all indicators that something is off with our hormones and this is your body telling you that something’s off. For the thyroid specifically, if you are losing hair, your skin is pretty dry, or constipated are problems. Our bodies are so smart and give us these little signs that something is off. We should step in and try to help our body to find out what the root cause is before it turns into a major disease or illness.
Landon: Absolutely. So, you know, if somebody’s feeling fatigued and feeling some of these symptoms, what are some things that they can do? Some natural ways, right? I know there’s a lot of different prescriptions and things that they can take. What are some natural ways for someone to fight against these hormonal imbalances?
Natural Ways to Fight Hormonal Imbalances
Dr. Jen: The first thing for most, you know, foremost is food or nutrition.
Landon: Yup.
Dr. Jen: So, yeah, I mean, food is medicine. And I completely changed my diet after my residency when I really started to tune in more to integrative medicine. I mean, it’s embarrassing to talk about, but I used to think that margarine was healthy for me. I used to drink diet pop because I didn’t want the calories. I was a resident. I graduated medical school, right? And when you are a doctor, you’re patients are like asking for nutrition advice and we know the least about it unless we do extra training or learn it on our own. The low-fat craze, all that craziness. We know that was all nonsense now. Really what you put in your body is very important.
A well-balanced diet is not what the FDA tells us, right? It’s not. But I’ll tell you what, eating more vegetables is gonna decrease your morbidity and mortality. It’s going to decrease your chance of dying and your change of getting diseases. That is what it means. Lots of vegetables. Good proteins, right? Organic food so you not having the pesticides. Grass-fed meat. I think we are so stuck on red meat being bad, meat is bad. Vegan stuff is very popular. But grass-fed meat is very highly nutritious. It has lots of B vitamins in it and Iron that we need. Focusing on food is very important.
What does that mean? Cutting out processed food. Processed foods, things that you buy in a package at the store, those are the things you want to try and avoid. Drinking water. I think another problem is that all of these drinks, frappuccinos, stuff like that, are really popular. These Bang drinks, which kids in middle school are drinking these caffeine drinks.
Landon: Yeah. I have teenagers. They have their friends over all the time, and I’m like, “Guys, do you realize you are just drinking straight junk? Synthetic caffeine, which actually has been proven to decrease your testosterone. I’m talking to males, 14 years old, and working out thinking they are tough. It is very counterintuitive. But 100%.
Dr. Jen: I mean, if I drank that sort of caffeine in middle school, it’s first of all not good for growth and testosterone. But I’m just floored that it is sold to that age. You know, my kids will have friends over and they will ask for pop to drink. I’m like, no. What do you mean? We have organic juice boxes that we bring out once in a crazy time when we are a little crazy. My kids would drink Sprite all day if I let them. But that’s what we have to understand. Our body’s are wired to want and crave sugar because it gives instant energy. When we were in the paleolithic time and caveman, that sugar was very scarce. When our body sees it, it’s like, “Okay, I want that. I’m not going to get it again.” But that’s not true. We have endless supply. We have drive-throughs, Krispy Kreme on every block. We need to like use our own minds and put a stop to that and say, “Our body might say it wants this, but it doesn’t.”
It’s tough. It’s tough with kids. Parents with kids, I feel you. It’s really tough.
Landon: Because the supply that’s out there, it’s like 90% bad, maybe 10% good. But it should be totally the opposite. Like we should be eating well 90% of the time and believe you can have a treat every now and then. We are not meant to be perfect. If you are having a Sprite once a month or whatever as a treat, that’s okay. That’s fine. But if you are having four a day, that’s a big problem. I think we just have gotten to the place where the supply of all this crap food is just like, it’s crazy. We think, “Oh, there is so much of it. I should be having it all the time.” It’s just not the case.
Dr. Jen: It’s really difficult. Not only explaining that to children, but adults. It is tough. To be kind to people if they are listening and just want to eat sugar all the time, it’s hard for me, or eat out every day, once you cut out the sugar, give yourself two days without sugar, you will crave it less. Cut out the fast food, you will crave it less. It’s not that you need to just do everything at once. It’s tough. It takes a while to get to the point where you are doing 90/10. We probably do more 80/20 probably. That’s the thing, you don’t have to be perfect. When we restrict so much then people binge. That makes it harder.
Landon: 100%. I totally agree. At first, it was hard to make these changes. I drink a smoothie every single day for lunch. Going from a sandwich or a burger to every single day to have a smoothie, that was a big change. But once I did it, I was like, “Wow.” I cannot imagine eating a massive cheeseburger for lunch. I would feel like crap for the rest of the day. Your body reacts to these things in a really good way. In the beginning, your body might not be getting what it is used to, even if that is not good. Your body quickly adapts. It will feel way better having an organic smoothie from Clean Juice, you know.
Dr. Jen: Yeah. I’m a big fan of smoothies. You can always add stuff in to give more boost and everything. Just little changes. My favorite, sometimes I will crave green juice without any sugar in it. My body will just want that. I think listening to your body’s cravings is very important. They are good cravings. For example, after I had my last child, all I craved was green juice and broccoli. I would just steam four cups of broccoli and eat it all myself. It makes sense because you are going from a high estrogen state when you are pregnant to a normal to low estrogen state. And your body is detoxing all that estrogen. And it goes through phase one and phase two detoxification. DIM is one of the things that helps the Phase 2 reaction. It is found in broccoli. So, I thought it was really cool that my body was so smart. I feel like we are not in tune as much with our bodies. When I work with my patients, talking to them to write down their food diary and see how food is affecting them. They are able to get really intune with their body and it is really great.
Landon: It’s funny, your body will tell you what it wants. Even babies, they don’t know not to be in tune. Their body tells them exactly what they want. They will reach for it and reach for the thing they want. Whether it is a breast, whatever it is. They don’t know how to articulate it but they know their body wants it. They go for it. I just think as we get smarter, we get dumber, right? I think that’s a great point.
Dr. Jen: Yeah, that’s great. And another thing for people out there, eliminating something that might be triggering you is a good idea. Like corn for a month, usually four to six weeks is a sweet spot to eliminate it and reintroduce it. You will know how you feel once you bring that back in. That’s a good tip if you think something is bothering you. If you get bloated or something every time you eat a tomato, eggplant. Then take out night shades for a month, see how you feel, and then bring them back in. See if you notice any aches, pains, or bloating.
Landon: Right, exactly. It’s like all of our body’s are built so differently. While I might be able to eat five pounds of spinach a week and love it, like that could be really detrimental to somebody else who maybe be “allergic” or just doesn’t react in the body as it reacts in mine. It’s super interesting.
Dr. Jen: Yeah, absolutely.
Treating Men & Women For Hormonal Imbalances
Landon: Question, do you mostly treat women or do you treat men as well for hormonal imbalances?
Dr. Jen: Yeah, both. So, mostly women, childbirth, hormones, 20s to 40s autoimmune disease, gut health issues. And I do treat men optimizing testosterone, finding root causes to why that might be sub-optimal, gut health things. It is interesting because working with both men and women, they do present differently. It’s very interesting. But it’s fun. It’s fun to work with all ages, all sexes.
Landon: It’s interesting because I’m getting to the later part of my 30s, right? And so, you know, I feel at this age my friends are around the same age and telling me how tired they are, little energy they have for the gym, etc. I really think there is a male kind of epidemic out there of testosterone reduction. You hear of a lot of guys going on TRT and things like that. I think it’s the environment and so many things out there causing it, especially if you are not eating right, not getting enough sleep, too stressed out, working too much, etc., etc., etc. There is this massive issue where men just are not producing the testosterone they were, even 100 years ago.
Ways to Limit Estrogen Mimickers for Men & Women
Dr. Jen: Yeah, I agree. One big culprit for this is estrogen mimickers. All of these estrogen chemicals that we have in the environment, like phthalates and parabens and chemicals. That is going to decrease testosterone and compete for the binding sites through sex hormone binding globulin and all of this. You also have the men that start to get these belly’s, with this excess adipose tissue. Then you have your testosterone converted to estradiol through aromatase, which is in the fat cells. You have this chemical reaction. Then it’s just a perfect storm of losing testosterone and then it’s going to estrogen. Men are not supposed to have estrogen like that. It’s kind of like a mad cycle. Detoxing, estrogens, and making sure that you are detoxing the estrogen metabolites out of the body. It is a simple thing. Don’t drink out of a plastic water bottle. That is going to have that BPA, which acts as an estrogen mimicker.
The other thing I can’t stand is when people do the K-Cups, Keurigs. You have that plastic cup and you are literally shooting boiling hot water through plastic to get your coffee. I mean, that is a cup of BPA.
Landon: Yeah, I totally agree.
Dr. Jen: I lose my mind with that. And for women, it’s not good. So, I know it’s super cool and trendy. I don’t drink coffee, but I know that it is cool to have this instant, and it’s easy. And I’m like, “I have to talk some patients down.” They have to let it go and find a different way. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it.
Landon: Exactly. I have a machine where it grinds the beans every single morning. I drink it out of a glass mug. I’m aware of that. I don’t think a lot of people are. That’s why I love this show, we bring awareness to things like that. K-Cups are so popular. But you are literally putting boiling hot water into the plastic. You have to understand that some of that plastic, whether you see it or not, it’s in your cup, right? That is just not good for you. Great call out there.
We’ve gone through a lot of really great content. But I did want to touch on something that you mentioned before. I think it’s important. With conventional medicine, correct me if I’m wrong, you don’t get a lot of nutritional training, is that right?
Dr. Jen: Not when I went, nope.
Common Illnesses That Are Overlooked By Conventional Medicine
Landon: Yeah. So, what do you think are some of the common illnesses are that kind of get overlooked by conventional medicine that could deal with that realm?
Dr. Jen: I think they are almost all connected. I mean, if you are not eating correctly and getting inflammation, that is going to cause disease. Disease is caused by inflammation. Everything from hypertension to autoimmune disease. I think it’s all kind of related. It’s not just about eating your vegetables. It’s about having the right oils. You don’t want to have vegetable oils. It’s all the GMO food. Our food is really kind of being poisoned and has been slowly over the last few decades. All we are seeing is more inflammatory, chronic diseases. It’s really big. I almost wish that every doctor could do the integrative medicine fellowship I did. It was not only amazing for me to go through it because it was such an amazing program. But now when I work in the emergency room, I can talk with patients. We sit down, talk about diet, meditation, and just really bring all the aspects of a patient together. It’s not just a pill. But at the same time, the patient has to want to work. It’s not simple. It’s not really easy to live a healthy lifestyle, right? It takes work every day, as you do, right?
Landon: Yeah, it takes proactiveness, right?
Dr. Jen: Yes.
Landon: Exactly. You have to be intentional. It takes some intentionality, for sure. You can’t just wake up and hope that you are going to make some good decisions today. It’s like no, we have to be more thoughtful than that.
Dr. Jen: Right, right.
Landon: But then once we set up our lifestyle in that way, it actually becomes so easy, right? It becomes part of our normal routine. As human beings, we are just kind of prone to that. Is our routine getting in line at Dunkin Donuts and grabbing a donut and coffee every morning? Or is it swinging by Clean Juice grabbing a juice, making your own juice home at home, organic smoothie, whatever it is. You will have a routine, just what will it be? I agree with you on that.
Kind of finally, I love that we’ve talked a lot of about this stuff, but you don’t have to go to the doctor and get prescribed all these different medications. You can literally do the things that are found in your book, right? Like eating and sleeping and moving and breathing. Talk to us a little bit about your book. Talk to us about, you know, how just a beginner can kind of guide themselves to this healthy lifestyle through some of the things that you talk about in there.
How a Beginner Can Start to Move Through a Healthy Lifestyle
Dr. Jen: Absolutely. So, Lars Ezra, who wrote the book with me, and then Connor Martin, he is more of the experience piece. But Lars and I went through this fellowship together. We’re both ER trained, work in the ER, board certified ER doctors, and we went through this fellowship together. And we were just both fed up with seeing chronically ill people in the ER. We are like, we do what we can. So, that’s why we wanted this simple beginners guide book out there.
Now here’s the thing about it is that even if you’re not a beginner, you’re probably still gonna need help on one of these four areas. So, you know, nutrition is one of them. We spoke a lot about that today.
Movement is another one. You think about movement, you think about walking, you are moving your lymphatic system which is a way to detox your body from all these toxic burdens we are having every day. Movement is also good, weight lifting, to help with sarcopenia, which is the decreased muscle mass as we go. So, lifting is very important. We are not out working in the fields and lifting and doing hard labor. We are sitting at desks, most of us. You have to lift.
Sleep is overlooked so much. It’s one of the things I ask at every follow-up appointment, every initial appointment with my integrative medicine patients. If you are not sleeping well, you are not restoring your body overnight. Your brain is not detoxing at night. Your brain detoxes at night through sleep. You are not getting the rest, you are not getting the healing, so sleep and actual high quality sleep which can be affected by medications like Benadryl, alcohol can affect your sleep. Sleep is very important. So, in the book we talk about solutions to sleep, things to do. On my Instagram, I have a lot about sleep. I talk about that a lot.
And then meditation. So, I did not realize how important meditation and breath work was until I did my fellowship.I thought I was too busy to meditate. I didn’t really understand it. And now I truly believe it’s so important. Mindfulness, meditation, breath work, gratitude. It can change your life. For me, you know, doing a gratitude journal, it just helps with anxiety, it helps with worry. It just puts a new perspective on your life. Even if you have something bad happen to you, you are still grateful for other things and/or happened so you could learn from it. I think when we are not living in a state of gratitude, it is easy to let every little thing ruin your day, get to you, or stress you out. I see a lot of people that have chronic stress and it doesn’t go away. You are constantly living in this fight or flight, sympathetic, unhealthy state, where parasympathetic, rest and digest, it’s gonna heal your gut. It’s going to let your body heal and rest and repair. So, those four things are crucial.
They are the pillars of health. What you can do is just work on one at a time. If you’re super overwhelmed and you’re like, “Oh my goodness, I’m not doing any of these.” Just start with one. You know, go for a walk every day for 30 minutes. I just think that sometimes if we don’t simplify things, it can be overwhelming. That was the purpose of the book.
The four pillars are just, let’s simplify it. It can be overwhelming if you follow someone on Instagram, listen to a podcast, and they are talking about all this stuff like we started out. Like mold, and people are like, “Oh, my gosh, what am I going to do?” It’s like, start with sleep, or just let’s start with taking out french fries in your diet. Focusing on one thing at a time and doing it slowly so it can be not just a diet or not just a fluke thing. It really can be part of your lifestyle.
Landon: Amen. I totally agree. You gave so many great nuggets on how to improve our lives, health and wellness, and our mental wellbeing, right? We’re gonna have 60,000 thoughts a day. What’s the lens of those? What’s the filter of those thoughts? Is it built on a foundation of gratitude or is it built on a foundation of everything that’s going wrong in our lives? Gosh, you said such great things. You’ve been incredible, Dr. Jen. I really appreciate having you on the show.
I’m going to start following you on Instagram. Tell me where I can find you? Where can our folks find your book, your website, or if you have a podcast, tell us about how we can get more connected with you?
Dr. Jen: Yeah, absolutely. I am behaving on Instagram, so I should still be there. So it’s @IntegrativeDoctorMom. I have a website, www.IntegrativeDoctorMom.com. Also my office website is www.PflegMed.com. I started a podcast last fall. It is, The Integrative Health Podcast with Dr. Jen. I have some cool guests there. We geek out a lot because I like to do that. That’s how you can get a hold of me. I’m most available, talking a lot, and ranting on Instagram. That’s kind of where I hang out the most.
Landon: @IntegrativeDoctorMom, I’m checking out your profile right now. Tons of great content on here. Just really good advice. Some nice photos of you and your family it looks like. So, very good stuff, Dr. Jen. Thank you so much again.
Dr. Jen: Thank you.
Landon: You’ve been awesome. Some really great information on this podcast. I know our listeners are absolutely going to love it. Thank you for being on the show. We appreciate you.
Dr. Jen: So much fun, thanks for having me.
Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit.
Landon: So, if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode.
Kat: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about.
Landon: All right, y’all, thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to Be Organic.
Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer, we are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness and nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.
In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.