S4 E6: Unraveling Hormonal Health and Stress with Dr. Laura DeCesaris

In this episode of "The Crazy Ex-Wives Club," host Erica Bennett sits down with Dr. Laura DeCesaris, a functional medicine expert specializing in hormone health. They delve into the overwhelming impact stress, especially from major life changes like divorce, can have on women's bodies—focusing on digestion, hormone balance, and overall health.

Dr. Laura offers actionable advice to improve sleep, manage stress, and optimize hormonal health, along with insights into the benefits of maintaining a holistic approach to recovery. Erica shares her personal struggles with health management post-divorce and discusses the "Stop the Body Bullshit" program aimed at boosting self-image.

Tune in to learn how to support your body through stress and transition gracefully into new life phases. For more detailed solutions and a health strategy call with Dr. Laura, check the show notes.

 

Ready to Stop the Body Bullshit?

If you are tired of beating yourself up for how you look and feel, check out this 30-Day Mental Detox. This isn’t a diet. This is your guide to finally putting down the weight of judgment, shame and blame on your body.

Learn more about the digital course HERE  

Learn more about this week’s guest: Laura DeCesaris

Dr. Laura DeCesaris is a functional medicine health strategist, specializing in women’s health and high performance. She takes a female-centric approach to health and wellness, teaching women about their bodies and brains so they can make better decisions for their health and leverage their hormones for optimal performance. Laura is a regular contributor to Rupa Health and is passionate about sharing functional medicine education with the general public.

 

You can find her contributions in outlets such as Forbes, NBC, MindBodyGreen, Greatist, Parade, Well + Good, and other publications. Laura is based out of Scottsdale, AZ, and works with clients virtually around the world.

https://www.drlauradecesaris.com
INSTAGRAM
FACEBOOK

Get your FREE Healthy Strategy Call with Dr. Laura: Fill out the contact form to set up your call. 

 

Unraveling Hormonal Health and Stress with Dr. Laura DeCesaris FULL TRANSCRIPTS

 

Erica Bennett [00:00:00]:

No matter if you are separated or getting divorced, just in general, a woman who's getting older, you've probably experienced some of the changes within your body, within your hormones, within your digestion. And overall, it can be incredibly frustrating because western medicine isn't really set up to look at the human as a whole. They'll break down the individual pieces. They'll try and find you a medicine or a protocol to take care of the symptoms. But when it comes to holistically caring for your body, which is so crucial after you've gone through some sort of a big stress, can be really difficult. I'm excited to introduce you to today's guest, a functional medicine doctor, here to help us understand some of those complexities and what we can do to start living a more healthy and balanced life. So, let's get started. Welcome to the Crazy Ex Wives Club, a podcast dedicated to helping women navigate the emotional journey that is divorce.

 

Erica Bennett [00:01:10]:

I'm your host, Erica. And if you're trying to figure out life after the big d, welcome to the club. Whether you're contemplating divorce or dealing with the aftermath or any of the many phases in between the club has guided you covered, each week, you'll hear stories from women who have been in your shoes. This isn't about spilling tea and divorce details. This is about giving, giving you the tools to take control of your own healing journey. Listen in weekly for advice, tips, and tools to help you move through each stage of the process. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Crazy Ex Wives Club. I'm your host, Erica, and today I have Doctor Laura DeCesaris with us.

 

Erica Bennett [00:01:50]:

She is a functional medicine doctor. She is all about hormone health. And I know for me, my hormones tanked from the stress of the separation and the divorce. So, when I had the opportunity to meet Doctor Laura, I was excited to have her on because I think this is such a huge opportunity for women to be empowered to understand their own bodies and their own healing. So welcome, Doctor Laura. Thanks for joining.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:02:15]:

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited for our conversation today.

 

Erica Bennett [00:02:18]:

Right? Because, good Lord, I can say that from my experience, I knew something was wrong, you know, but I didn't know what. And the reality was that the stress in my life, little by little by little, little had been added. So, while if you looked at my day to day, everybody would tell you that it was stress that was hitting all the rest of my symptoms, I felt relatively normal. But I knew that if we went out to eat and I had a cocktail with some sort of a dinner. By time I laid down that night, I'd be fine all night. I'd go to bed, lay down. An hour or two later, I'd be, like, shot out of bed with severe pain and bloating, oftentimes resulting in me losing my dinner and throwing it up because there was so much pressure and gas and lack of digestion going on. That were some of the first symptoms.

 

Erica Bennett [00:03:09]:

But then it moved into my cycle. My period completely changed. You know, I'm going to my OB, and I'm like, something's wrong. And they're telling you what? Well, you're getting older, and, you know, and especially now, like, even now sometimes. Um, you know, I'm mid-forties. Early. Let's say early, but I'm still early forties. I'm not mid-forties yet.

 

Erica Bennett [00:03:28]:

Let's slow. Slow your roll, Erica. Um, but for the last three years, those hormone issues have still shown up. I've continued to go in, and now they start saying things like, well, maybe you're just early, you know, menopause, maybe perimenopause. And I'm like, this is not the answer. There is something still happening. And the hardest part is, it's like a little domino effect. Right.

 

Erica Bennett [00:03:49]:

I knew by the time I got divorced that my adrenals were shot. I was not sleeping through the night. If I ate sugar before bed, I absolutely had to get up and pee in the middle of the night. My kidneys weren't processing correctly, my digestion wasn't working, and my cycle was a mess. But I couldn't figure out which was the domino that was starting, the trigger to be able to get to the root cause. I'm sure you hear this sort of challenges all the time.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:04:11]:

Yes. And, uh, same girl? Same. That was my own experience, and I went through my divorce. I think it's frustrating for a lot of women in general trying to get help for their hormones. It's still an area that's not really looked at holistically correctly in conventional medicine. It's still looked at just from a disease diagnosis standpoint. Meaning, are your hormone problems bad enough that we can stick you on a medication and put a diagnosis on you? If not, this is just life. Take some Advil, you'll be fine.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:04:42]:

And then, especially if we're talking hormone changes that are coming from a life stress, like a divorce or something else. A lot of conventional physicians are not comfortable talking with patients about emotional stressors, or they really don't understand how powerful those emotional stressors are at leading to physical changes in women's biochemistry. Meaning, you know, women might be told, like, oh, it's all in your head. Like, don't just go to therapy. Here's an antidepressant. And those things can help, but they're not addressing the ripple effect that it's had on our biochemistry. So, similar to what you were saying, your digestion's affected, sleep's affected, kidneys and detox are affected. And I think part of the issue, if we approach this more conventionally, is we look at everything individually, and we're like, okay, kidneys aren't working.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:05:28]:

What do we take for the kidneys? Right? Like, adrenals aren't working. What do we take for the adrenals? Gut's not working. What do we take for the gut? Rather than pausing and stepping back and being like, wait a minute. Body doesn't work in individual buckets that way. It's more like a big web. And where one section is pulled or affected, everything else is coming with it. And that can feel frustrating for a lot of women, I think, because it feels like it happens overnight. It feels like it came out of nowhere.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:05:53]:

But there were things that were slowly building until the body just literally couldn't take anymore. And then we have these full breakdowns of different systems. So big takeaway is, like, body is interconnected and complex, and there's also always a power in stepping back and figuring out, like, what's that triggering event? Like, what was that first thing that, like you said, started the domino effect? Because ultimately, no matter how much we manage the symptoms, we have to come back to that initial piece if we actually want long lasting relief and setting ourselves up for success moving forward to not have that issue happen again and again and again.

 

Erica Bennett [00:06:28]:

And as women, you know, we change a behavior. Like, I used to also get frustrated because I'd be like, okay, I'm walking more, I'm relaxing more, I'm doing salt baths, right? And I was still having, you know, another symptom. I was still having cyclical hair loss, and it would 100% go with my cycle. I knew that, oh, I must be ovulating because my hair's falling out again. And then, oh, my period must be coming because I got another handful, right? And I would do all these things, and then I'd be so irritated that it didn't instantly change. And I had to keep reminding myself that, you know, men have this 24-hour cycle, but women really have a 30-day cycle. And so, it's not something that just because you change. What was stressing you for a week means that now everything should just turn back on that.

 

Erica Bennett [00:07:13]:

It takes time. It took time to deplete these systems and it takes time to bring them back online.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:07:20]:

Absolutely. And to layer on top of that, we call it the infradiant rhythm, the women's rhythm over a menstrual cycle, which is, on average, 28 to 30 days, might be a little shorter, might be a little longer, really just depends on the woman. But to layer on top of that, then we also have to look at women through each decade of their life, which is then that cycle is changing. Right. So especially for women if you’re listening, you’re in their late thirties, they're in their forties. This is kind of like a perimenopause window where we see hormones start to transition, start to change over time as well. And really what that can feel like is all the things you used to do in your twenties and your early thirties and your mid-thirties, all of a sudden, they're not working anymore. And that's so frustrating when you're like, man, I used to eat this way and work out this way and everything worked perfectly.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:08:03]:

And now those things are not getting me the results. What's happening? We're so hard on ourselves about it, but we're not thinking that. Oh, okay, right. My biochemistry is changing. Like, new car, gotta learn how to drive the new car. Can't drive the old car the same way as the new car. And it's hard to change those habits, especially when those habits used to make us feel really good. But we have to learn about how to align with the new normal for us.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:08:26]:

Because if we're gonna fight that for a decade of our life, we're setting ourselves up for more stress and frustration and just misery that we don't need to put ourselves through versus taking the time to learn. Okay, well, what is happening in my body? Like, what is happening right now? What are the little things that I have to shift and maybe try some new things to support this new biochemistry biochemical version of me that's happening in my early forties, which is going to be very different than it was in your early thirties or your early twenties and so on and so forth.

 

Erica Bennett [00:08:55]:

Yeah, I'm totally in that. Totally in that. Because it was like I had my first, you know, the divorce. Great. That was the first wave, and my system was messed up. We can dig deeper because I want to really talk about, like, some of the other symptoms. We've shared some, but I have that one. And then I had the second, you know, quote unquote divorce from my job.

 

Erica Bennett [00:09:16]:

A 20-year career divorcing that life path. Right. Caused a lot of stress. Now you're launched into a whole new business model. A whole. There's not a w two. Right. There's not a corporate salary coming in.

 

Erica Bennett [00:09:28]:

That flipped me back into a lot of old habits and old stressors. And when I tried, I was like, oh, scales climbing back up. I've. I've dropped how often I'm getting to the gym and working out. Let me go back to the class I used to, and I went back to the class I used to, and I put on ten more pounds. And I was so annoyed. I was so annoyed.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:09:48]:

Not the outcome I was looking for. No.

 

Erica Bennett [00:09:50]:

And I was so pissed. But it was because the me that had to carry myself through those first years of separation and divorce, the warrior that had to show up to say, you can't just curl up and give up. You got to keep going. That warrior needed all of the big weights. That warrior needed these huge hikes that I needed to prove something to myself. And each time I hit those new challenges, right, it showed me I can do hard things well. Now I'm in a little softer phase, a little more safety and security. And pushing that hard did nothing but cause my body too much stress.

 

Erica Bennett [00:10:25]:

It couldn't. It couldn't catch back up. It was like, we've had a break, and you can't just leap back into what you were doing before. I'm in the process of carving new systems and figuring out what needs to happen.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:10:36]:

Yeah. And, like, I think that's one of the most powerful mindset shifts. Maybe the new hardest thing isn't the heaviest. It's, like, the stillness and the slowing down and the teaching yourself the fundamentals again. And that is really hard for a lot of women, especially those like you and I, who are, like, go getters, like, have wanted the big career, have done all of the intense stuff. Sometimes the hardest thing is taking that step back and trying to operate in a different way. Not saying that you can't still go on, like, a big hike when you want, but I know, for me, that was always one of the biggest challenges in the last few years of my life, was learning to, like. But, yeah, like you said, how to be in that softer season, like, how to literally take it easy.

 

Erica Bennett [00:11:16]:

Right?

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:11:16]:

What is that?

 

Erica Bennett [00:11:17]:

Yeah. The last hike I did, if you guys know the hikes, I'm sure I'm pronouncing it wrong, but the. The incline. The Manitou incline in Colorado Springs? Yeah. So, you know, just like, I don't know what I don't remember anymore. 3 miles straight up in a staircase.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:11:32]:

Fun story. My mom, actually, she took us there on her 60th birthday. That was what she wanted to do, was do the manitou incline. Shows you the kind of women I was around my life.

 

Erica Bennett [00:11:41]:

Yes. And this was, like, the one hike I hadn't finished the prior year. I had done a car camping trip through Colorado and hit all the major hikes that were left on my bucket list outside of doing a 14 er. So outside of really climbing to the peak, this was it. And I had saved it. Well, now I had shown back up. I wasn't working out five days a week. I was still relatively fit.

 

Erica Bennett [00:12:01]:

And I. I was doing it because it was a thing that was left on my list that I needed to accomplish, that I had left undone. And halfway up, I was like, I, this is not a thing I need to do anymore. It was hot. There was no shade. I, like, got to the point where there's one more mile of straight up, and I'm like, crap. And I have to do it. And I did it.

 

Erica Bennett [00:12:24]:

Thank God. Poor boyfriend sat on the phone with me for an hour. I was like, I'm going to quit. And he's like, take another step. I'm like, no, I'm going to quit. He's, no. And then I cried the whole way down the mountain because that person who had to do the hard things, it was time to, like, let her go. It was time to say, like, it doesn't always have to be that way.

 

Erica Bennett [00:12:44]:

And you're moving into a new season, which is a beautiful thing that I don't need. You know how to hit my back. Squat goal. I hit, what was it? 200 5250 that summer. Like, I'd hit the last remaining outliers. And now it's yoga and it's walking and it's stretching, and it's a much different form of caring for me.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:13:04]:

I love that. And I think it can be powerful to women to know, like, we're. We're literally wired. Talking about this hormonal pattern, this hormonal rhythm. We're wired to constantly be in an ebb and flow of, you know, pushing, of pulling back, of feeling more energetic, of feeling more reserved, of being social and feeling like you want to be around people, feeling like you want to be by yourself. It's always this, like, dichotomy of these two things going against each other.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:13:29]:

If we're always in one bucket or the other, it doesn't always serve us long term, but it's really understanding and getting to know your body and knowing when is the time that I can push myself and actually get the benefits of that and not burn myself out, stress myself out, like, add more fuel to the fire on the way to burnout. And one of the times that even if mentally, I've trained myself to think it's bad to pull back, it's actually what I need, like, on a cellular level. Like, I need to pull back. My entire hormone profile has changed and isn't supporting that anymore. And I go to, like, a bodybuilding gym, and whenever I see a gal in the gym, like, sitting under the barbell, starting to cry, I just want to go hunger and be like, honey, I know you're in your luteal phase. Like, what are you doing here? Like, go relax. Like, you'll be able to lift that next week again, I promise. I saw you doing it last week.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:14:16]:

It's just like, it's not hanging right now because the hormones are different. So again, with that power of, like, understanding what's happening under the hood, it starts to remind us of and reconnects us to our body emotionally for that mind body connection of, oh, I'm not weak, I'm not lazy for not wanting to do this. I'm actually doing myself a favor by finally giving myself this more rest, restorative time for me.

 

Erica Bennett [00:14:40]:

Yeah, and that was a big thing, too. The understanding, lifting ability, how it changes at different points in your cycle, was something that I just picked up in the last year, and I was like, oh, well, that makes total sense. Partnering that when I need to do really hard, strong things, whether that's in my business or in my physical fitness, I can time it to certain parts of my cycle so that I have more energy. Right? And if you think about it, you guys, you know, you're, as a woman, your body is creating new life, and so it's putting energy on where it needs to put energy to keep those systems alive. The pie is only so big. You can train the pie to get a little bigger, but at the end of the day, you can't keep stealing from one area to the next. It needs a certain amount of energy to run all of its systems. Let's talk about that, because what are some of the common symptoms at first start, the ones I always hear is in the biggest ones are not sleeping through the night.

 

Erica Bennett [00:15:34]:

I definitely had that problem consistently waking up between three and four, your body jolting you awake for various reasons. Sometimes mine was low blood sugar. I hadn't really eaten enough the day before. Sometimes mine was mental chaos. And that was when it was quiet enough for my mind to, like, get to the thought I wasn't willing to process during the separation and divorce. Sometimes it was just grief. My dad had passed away. My marriage was failing.

 

Erica Bennett [00:16:00]:

You know, all these things would come out in the middle of the night. Sleep, what are some of the other symptoms, or what are some of the things that you recommend people do then, for sleep specifically?

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:16:10]:

Yeah. To answer the first part of that, other symptoms around, like, hormone imbalance, especially, let's focus on, like, hormone imbalance coming from prolonged stress. I think that'll be just relevant for listeners. It's a good opportunity to just, like, quickly understand how interconnected all the different body systems are. Again. When we, we say hormones, I think most of us jump to, like, the sex hormones. We think of estrogen, we think of progesterone, we think of testosterone. But hormones all talk to each other throughout the system.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:16:36]:

The basis of hormone communication actually starts with the brain. A couple of glands in the brain are what signal all of the other organs throughout the body to make their hormones. If brain is under a lot of stress, if brain isn't getting the nutrition and the sleep it needs and is overly stressed and isn't getting the basic foundational aspects of life as a human sleep, sunlight, fresh air, human connection, good food, it can start to cause errors in those signaling. And all of the sudden when the brain was supposed to tell. Tell the thyroid to make thyroid hormone, it's not doing that as much anymore or where it's supposed to be telling the adrenals to make cortisol or DHEA, it's either not doing that or it's telling it too much. It's not talking to the ovaries to make the correct sex hormones at the right time. It's not talking to the pancreas to release insulin appropriately.   it creates this ripple effect where really, I think for a lot of us, what we need to do when we're dealing with hormone imbalance is, again, stop chasing the symptoms and come back to the foundation of which the brain is a big piece.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:17:33]:

The second foundational piece is the gut. The brain and gut are always talking to each other when we're stressed.   I already said stress impacts the brain. We know this. It's probably the most sensitive organ to stress, even stress, like, a little bit of dehydration, like 2% dehydration, impacts brain function. That's how sensitive it is. The gut is the other organ system that, again, talks to the brain. Super sensitive to stress.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:17:55]:

Stress can start this cascade in the gut where it actually changes the makeup of your microbiome, the kinds of bacteria that are in there. It can negatively impact how well you make digestive. Digestive enzymes, meaning you're not breaking down your food as well, can start to cause damage and breakdown to the lining of the gut, which leads to something called leaky gut, puts us at higher risk of food sensitivities, autoimmune issues. There's a reason they're more common in women. We tend to, like, have more stress in our lives for the most part. But from there, like, then it flows out and starts impacting all those hormone systems we talked about. When women say, like, gosh, I'm so, like, so much stress has been going on, whether they're already in the throes of burnout or kind of on their way there, or just in an acute stressor moment, you're right. Is often one of the things affected.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:18:38]:

And waking up in the middle of the night, and there's a lot of different reasons for that. Some of it has to do with that impact of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol kind of has a yin yang pattern with our sleep hormone melatonin, meaning when cortisol is up, melatonin should be down. When cortisol is down, melatonin should be up. We think of someone who's in an acute stress phase. Maybe they're in the early stages of a divorce, things like that. Cortisol is sky high. Guess what? We're not making melatonin because we're not balancing that out.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:19:08]:

We're not sleeping as well a lot of times. Also, what comes with stress is can cause a little bit of, like, liver congestion. Also, if you ever talk to, like, an acupuncturist, like, eastern medicine specialist, they will tell you that the emotions rooted in the liver are anger and frustration, which, let's be honest, like, those are real when you're going through a divorce. When we're figuring out what to do, the answer isn't always, let's just. Let's go take ten milligrams of melatonin. Like, that'll do it. Go grab some night. We'll knock ourselves out.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:19:38]:

It's more looking at. Okay, how do we restore these systems for sleep? What do I need to do in the evening to help bring that cortisol down.

 

Erica Bennett [00:19:44]:

Right.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:19:45]:

As hard as it is, how can I carve out a little bit of time to help my body unwind and come down and have that restorative effect? Right. Maybe it's some gentle stretching and movement. Maybe it's something like breathing a breath work, a guided meditation that helps slow the heart rate, calm us down, get us in a stage where we can actually make that melatonin. And then there's lots of stuff that you can do just for your circadian rhythm. And by that, I mean our sleep wake cycle. So even if we're waking up in the middle of the night, we're trying to make sure we go to bed and we wake up at the same time in a dark room. We don't have our face in our phone before we go to bed, getting a bunch of blue light in our eyes. Those are all things we don't want to have.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:20:23]:

As tempting as it is, when you wake up in the middle of the night to be like, guess I'll scroll the grammar. Worst thing to do. We don't want to do that. That's going to send a signal to your brain to wake up for the day and make it really hard to fall back asleep. And then we also want to support that liver and cortisol clearance. And these are things that we often call, like, detox modalities. I don't mean like a juice cleanse or anything like that. I mean things like, right.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:20:46]:

Maybe I need to do lemon water and get more bitter greens in my diet. Maybe I need to look at a supplement that has things like milk thistle in it. Maybe I need to make sure I'm not having so much wine every night and really make sure I'm hydrated and I'm slowing down and chewing my food so that there's an easier time with digestion. We always want to jump to, like, the quick fix supplement side of things. But all of these foundational things become so much more important when we are in a state of ongoing stress. When our bodies are so stressed, we need to, like, make the effort, rather than saying, God, I'm so stressed I got to go, like, kill it in the gym because it'll help my mind calm down. But it's not what your body needs. Your body actually needs to, like, repair and take care of itself and reduce the stress load on it in those seasons.

 

Erica Bennett [00:21:28]:

And then because we are so stressed about that, we can't turn it off, you know, like I think about, I'll be thinking, okay, my body needs something a little bit softer, more soothing. Right. I'm not craving the gym. I know mentally, I feel better after the gym, but my body's getting really tired afterwards, so I know it's too much for what I'm doing. Then I take a break for a few days, and then my thoughts are, oh, you're going to lose the gains. Oh, you haven't been there in a week. Oh, you. Right.

 

Erica Bennett [00:21:54]:

And it kicks up all that stress and brings us right back up into the heat of it.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:21:59]:

And I promise it, like, doesn't happen that fast. I think people, what people see is they see, like, the swell of the muscle go down, and they're like, look at, I'm losing my muscle already. But it's just the pump. They just lost the pump. Like, the muscle is still there. You'd have to really be, like, not eating. Like, really strict. Like, it would take longer than that for someone to actually lose muscle that quickly.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:22:20]:

So sometimes it's a helpful reminder when women, after just a couple of days, are like, I'm already losing my muscle. It's not. It's just the pump. Like, the muscle tissue is still there. It'll come right back. When you. When you. Whenever you do get back in, when you drive the nutrition into it, I.

 

Erica Bennett [00:22:33]:

Promise it will come back. And I've been reminding myself that there are. There's space in between. If getting a little bit of something in will help me stress less about it, then doing, you know, fire hydrants or glute bridges or, like, some small leg work, nothing that is super strenuous, but a little something. I can be like, okay, you're at least maintaining tone, right? Or do five or ten push-ups every single day, and all of a sudden, ten become really easy, and you just add a few more. Like, I'm a big proponent of not over pushing. Find. Find your, like, edge and just do that.

 

Erica Bennett [00:23:09]:

Just do that. And when that becomes easy, then do a little bit more and take on some more outside of it.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:23:15]:

Sometimes it's movement just for the sake of movement. I was actually having a conversation in the gym this morning with my trainer because I'm kind of in a season right now where I'm not lifting super heavy, which is challenging for me. I'm doing all these, like, athletic body weight, isometric, like, explosive movements, and it's so hard. I'm like, this is so much harder than deadlifting 250 pounds. Like, so much harder. And that was the conversation we were having; is sometimes you need to have these seasons where you just come back to movement and it's not about like feeling the activation and every part of your glue and hip thrusting 300 pounds. Sometimes it's like, can you move away? That just like brings your core together just with your body and that's like a little fun and that you're jumping and sometimes, like, we need that. And I think seasons where we have a lot of stress, those can be great workouts mentally and physically, because they're not quite as demanding on the body.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:24:06]:

Sometimes those really hard workouts that we want mentally, we don't have enough gas in the tank to actually get the benefits. We feel good for a moment, but then two months later we look back and again we're like, why am I not making progress? Like, why did I gain weight around my middle? Like, what is happening here? This shouldn't be how it works, but it's just the wrong programming for the season of life we're in.

 

Erica Bennett [00:24:24]:

Food was another big stressor because trying to figure out what I could or couldn't eat, what was going to make me sick or not make me sick, was really hard. Now, my microbiome was off the charts, like off the charts high record level of SIBO. I had small intestinal bacteria overgrowth that had triggered some extra candida and fungal imbalance. Like, we're talking about everything, you know, you do a breath test, reads the breath test, and he's like, you're like a level five tornado of your SIBO. And I'm like, yeah, well, it's, it's been going on for a while for.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:24:57]:

Cheaper through and through.

 

Erica Bennett [00:24:59]:

That's literally what I text my mother. I was like, look at me. I can't just do it normal, gotta do it extra. But it created a lot of stress because there are so many different schools of thought as to what you're supposed to eat. It's also, you know, I had cut all breads, but now I needed to put some, I needed to put rice back in, which hadn't, that had been gone for years. Now it's. Is it an anti-inflammatory diet? As I'm battling allergies or inflammation? And there's so many things, and that causes a lot, a lot of stress. If you're digestion is struggling.

 

Erica Bennett [00:25:29]:

I did start the lemon water every morning, but what else are some, some ways that they can take a step back? Stop trying to jump from diet to diet or eating manner to eating manner and reset for a second to then figure out what your body needs.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:25:43]:

It's this weird thing to wrap your head around that if you're in the thick of it with you're reacting to foods, you're feeling bloated, like you have SIBO, you have IB's, you're constipated. Like, you think that, oh, I must be eating something that's bothering me. But the reality is, oftentimes it's. It's really not the foods. I mean, granted, if someone's eating like McDonald's every day, like, yes, there's some stuff in there that's probably not going to serve you all the time, but a lot of the times, it's not that, like, the rice or the potatoes are like, making you gain weight so much as it is the underlying microbiome and gut physiology, like the machinery of how you digest and absorb food, that's what's shot. Especially if someone feels like I react to everything, like I react to every food. It's not the foods. You know, reactions to foods are not a root cause.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:26:25]:

They're a symptom of underlying gut dysfunction. The best thing that we can do, I think, is, first of all, I think if someone's at the point where they are having reactions to foods, there's nausea, there's constipation, there's bloating. Like, get your gut tested. Nothing will streamline the path to you feeling better faster than seeing what is happening in your gut with your microbiome. You can guess and you can experiment, but it'll generally take longer. And there's a couple reasons why we test. First, like we said, like you had issues with candida and SIBO, we see the makeup of the microbiome. If somebody has growth of all these opportunistic, not so great bacteria, if they have parasites, if they have fungal overgrowths, if they have h.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:27:02]:

Pylori, these other problems, it's not going to matter what you eat, because those things are wreaking inflammation and have wreaking havoc in your gut. It's like a little war zone in there. Whatever you put in the system, it's like, maybe we have the capacity to actually do something with this, but probably not, because immune system has bigger fish to fry at the end of the day. And then we can also see, especially when it comes to stress, I'm sure on this podcast, at some point, you've talked with people about, like, nervous system regulation and getting out of that fight or flight. But when we're stressed and we're kind of stuck in that sympathetic fight or flight overdrive, we never get the signal from brain to gut to produce digestive enzymes. We have to be in a parasympathetic state for that to happen. If we're constantly stressed, we're eating on the go, we're eating while we're stressed. We're not even giving ourselves a chance at like breaking stuff down.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:27:47]:

It's from the get-go. We're not, we're not breaking it down. It's going to be hard to absorb it. It's going to make us feel bloated. It's going to feel like stuff is sitting in our stomach. You can actually see that on testing. Is this person actually making digestive enzymes and stomach acid? Is there, what's the state of the immune system? Is the gut pumping out inflammatory molecules? And that can help a lot when people get into the supplement world. Like we can tell through supplement testing, does someone actually need colostrum? Do they need a digestive enzyme? Like do they need a detox supplement that can help guide that versus just blindly trying stuff and hoping it works way more cost efficient in the long run.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:28:23]:

But even a layer before that, if you're like, I don't want to invest in that right now. I just need to know something. I think the biggest thing we can look is at our eating hygiene. Meaning regardless of what I'm eating or drinking, this, this goes for even like smoothies and shakes. Am I just sitting and pausing and taking a few deep breaths before I eat? Am I putting away the phone and the computer for like two minutes while I do this and just letting my body start to relax to shift into that parasympathetic so that I can start making digestive enzymes before I eat whatever is in front of me. Then the next part is actually chewing that and not chewing it like three times. Chewing it probably more than you think you need to. And that includes smoothies.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:29:04]:

We don't want to chug a smoothie or a protein shake. We still to kind of like move it around in our mouth a little bit. Because digestive process starts with the release of amylase into from our salivary glands. We don't want to skip that step. Especially for carbohydrate metabolism, that's really important. Slowing down chewing our food and doing things like not chugging water during meals. I know it sounds crazy because you go to a restaurant and they're just constantly filling up your water glass, but all that's going to do is dilute whatever stomach acid and digestive enzymes you're making and lead to you feeling bloated later. We can have water before a meal, can have it later on after a meal, but it's like a 15-minutes window around a meal, just, like, sips of water just to, like, help with that, help decrease the bloating.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:29:44]:

If you do even those three things, you're gonna see such a massive difference in bloating and, like, digestion and just how you feel that it's already gonna just be helping you start to break down that food a little bit faster. Eating hygiene is always what we come back to, because most of us think we're like, yeah, I don't eat fast. And then you really think about it, you're like, oh, yeah, I chew that, like, five times, and then it's, like, down the gullet. It's like the conscious effort to slow down during those meal moments.

 

Erica Bennett [00:30:08]:

I remember it came from ayurveda, and I don't remember how many, but it's something like 20 chews before you swallow. Like, it's a lot. And it definitely made a difference. It was probably the first step into, because when I was having a lot of digestive discomfort. Right. What does western medicine tell you to do? Go take some tums, take some antacids, take some Prilosec, take some Pepcid. You know, I had. I got scoped.

 

Erica Bennett [00:30:31]:

They're like, there's. You don't have an ulcer. There's nothing wrong. And through my own research, I learned about that we have different types of stomach acid, and they should check each other, you know, and you'll know the specifics, but it's like a and b. And if b is correct, b keeps a in check. But when we take all, we don't eat right, we don't chew right, we don't get the right acid. B drops. Well, now, b can't keep a in check, and a is the one that sends us all to Pepcid, and a is the one that sends us all to tums.

 

Erica Bennett [00:30:57]:

Drinking, like, apple cider vinegar, and, like, if I had an upset stomach, putting a little bit more acid into it, lemon water or apple cider vinegar in some water instead of trying to reduce the acid all the time. And everybody thought I was crazy. And I'm like, literally, yes. I go, I have acid stomach right now. I'm going to put more acid in it. And they're like, you're nuts. But every person I've told when they have an acid stomach that they can't seem to get in control most people have found relief in adding more acid or chewing.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:31:27]:

Absolutely everyone thinks that, oh, if I have, like, acid reflux, I must need to reduce the acid. But the reality is, most of the time, sometimes it does come from, like, too much acid production, but most of the time, especially in the stressed-out population, it's coming from what we call hypochlorhydria, meaning we're not making enough stomach acid. And what that does over time, it means, sounds a little gross, but, like, food, especially protein, then sits in our stomach and isn't getting digested. It’s kind of, like, festers there a little bit.

 

Erica Bennett [00:31:56]:

Sounds very rotten.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:31:57]:

But that's why, like, bad breath a lot of the time can be seen in people with reflux too. Like, things are not being broken down and protein ferments over time. And now we have these, like, big hunks of food where it should have been broken down into this, like, mushy thing. And the, that can cause a little bit of splash, especially if we, like, lay back, lay down, and all of a sudden, you're getting that burning on top of that. Chronic stress can weaken what's called the esophageal sphincter, which is kind of like this little tight ring of muscle between your, your throat and your stomach. When that happens, that's when acid is allowed to splash, because that doesn't stay nice and tight anymore. And the way to fix that is actually not acid blockers. It's re acidifying stomach pouring in the nutrition it needs to make the stomach acid right? Things like betaine, things like zinc, things like different herbs, acidic things like lemon juice or vinegars, or apple cider vinegar, which sounds so weird, but it ends up helping sooner rather than later.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:32:50]:

Plus, with PPIs, with acid blockers, you also have to consider, I think most people aren't told this. Like, when people take those for years and years, they have negative long-term impacts on other systems. You're more likely to develop allergies. Like, there's other things. You don't want to be on those things for years and years that have impacts on, on histamine systems, on other areas of the body.

 

Erica Bennett [00:33:08]:

They're always related, you guys. They're always related. If now you're like, oh, my lord, this is so overwhelming. I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna dig my way back out. I will say stress management is the first piece because I spent years chasing supplements. You know, sometimes I was up to, like, 18 supplements and they'd be like, oh, my gosh. Oh, and you have this new symptom. You should also do this.

 

Erica Bennett [00:33:31]:

And I was like, I cannot. I cannot do anymore. There's no more time in my day to put supplements in my system. And it really was doing the testing, and I will say that it was. I could not find any western medicine doctor to do the testing. I had to go to a naturopath. I ended up going to a clinic that specialized in SIBO. So, I looked around and found a SIBO clinic.

 

Erica Bennett [00:33:54]:

Testing before and after SIBO tests and stool tests and sinus swabs to see what bacteria my sinuses were resistant to. The tests helped because it. Otherwise, you're just shooting in the dark and you don't know what's going on.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:34:08]:

Yeah. And kind of what you said, like, I think if you're. If you're meeting with someone who claims to be integrative or functional and they're seeing your symptoms and giving you a supplement for each symptom, to me, that's a big red flag. That's not functional medicine. That's not integrative medicine. Supplements are meant to be there when we're like, okay, we need something to bridge the gap while we do these underlying things. But it should, like, people tell me they've been on the same supplements for two years and they're not getting better. Like, that's one of the most frustrating things ever, really.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:34:35]:

Those foundational things, like. Like sleep hygiene, eating hygiene, not just stress management, but, like, changing our relationship with stress, building resilience. These things have to come first. Supplements are there to, you know, put a little gas in the tank at the beginning, maybe address something that, like, is just one of your blind spots that you're like, okay, well, I don't eat that food, so I know I'm always going to have issues with zinc. Maybe that's a good supplement for me. But you don't know that. If you don't have somebody guiding you through, you're not doing testing to figure out what your starting place is. And supplements can get expensive.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:35:07]:

I mean, you're taking 20 supplements a month. That's a couple hundred bucks a month easy.

 

Erica Bennett [00:35:12]:

I think it was at $500 a month. It was $500 out of pocket, not covered by any insurance, of just throwing supplements in the pit.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:35:23]:

Not to make anybody's head roll. But if you're not sure that your gut is in tip top shape to break down and absorb those supplements, you might be paying for nothing. Right.

 

Erica Bennett [00:35:34]:

It's going right back out.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:35:36]:

Someone has digestive issues, and they're taking all these capsules, like, you can't guarantee that they can even break that down and absorb it on its way out, which can be frustrating.

 

Erica Bennett [00:35:44]:

Truth to accept, sometimes it can be frustrating. Okay, well, in our last minutes, let's make it positive so that these poor women are not like, good Lord, Doctor Laura and Erica, this was the most depressing episode. It's not. What we wanted to do is make sure that you understand that if you're feeling crazy because you're having all these symptoms and you can't ever quite seem to get any doctor to take you seriously, and no matter what you do, it's not changing. We're just trying to tell you that it's a big web of an internal system and we've got to be able to find balance in each of these areas in a way that's sustainable to you. Because again, if it's not sustainable, it's not going to stay. And you've got to have enough time, 30 plus days, to be able to let this new system fall into place.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:36:25]:

Absolutely. And I think when you are feeling like you have all of these symptoms and you feel so frustrated because you're already, like, mentally and emotionally pushed to your limit. Again, reminder, like, always come back to the basics. Don't look for the miracle cure. Be like, okay, my body is clearly telling me it's stressed because body's usually pretty good at bringing us back into equilibrium if we give it the time and the energy to do so. So, it's a great time to come back to your basics. Right? Like, am I eating all three of my macros? Am I eating my protein and my fat and my carbs? Am I chewing my food? Am I making sure I'm taking breaths throughout the day? Am I prioritizing that sleep routine? Am I getting fresh air? Am I talking to somebody that makes me laugh? Like, the basic things, the free things, like, come back to those first whenever you feel frustrated. And it's just, it's like pouring energy back into your body so it can bring itself back into equilibrium and help you better weather that stressful season that you're in.

 

Erica Bennett [00:37:21]:

Because the body does. I mean, you guys, our cells are constantly regenerating. They're saying, oh, that cell's not happy healthy. Get rid of it, replace it with a new one. They're always turning over. If we can give it the right building block, in most cases, it will find its way back to balance. Yes, there are always exceptions to the rules, but in most cases. So that means ‘are you feeding it right?’ Are you letting it rest and are you moving it in a way that supports it?

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:37:47]:

I would add just one thing to that that I think is, like, really important. If you're, like, in the thick of one of these seasons is your body hears everything you think. There can be a lot of power for your physiology. If you take the time, you can say it out loud to yourself if you need to, to just remind yourself, I'm safe, I'm good. I'm giving myself, like, the space to take care of myself. Telling yourself things you love about yourself, not, like, blaming yourself for everything. If you're constantly waking up every day looking for the things that you don't like about yourself, blaming yourself. I'm a bad person.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:38:22]:

I'm a failure. Like, body reads that is like, okay, alert. We are stressed. Continue. Stress cascades. So even if you are feeling stressed, there's a lot of power of just sitting back and saying, yeah, I'm. I'm in it. Like, I am feeling the stress noted.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:38:37]:

Here we are. But you know what? I'm also safe. Safe in my body. I'm going to be okay. It's going to be hard, but, like, I'm going to be okay. That you'd be amazed at the power that actually has on hormone function, on gut function, on stress response and everything.

 

Erica Bennett [00:38:50]:

My favorite one is definitely still. You guys have heard me talk about it. The karate chop, right? One hand is an open palm. One hand is like a little karate chop going down on the other one. To be able to just tap that outside the pinky finger to hit that acupuncture point in the middle and just repeat, I'm safe. I'm okay. It will not be like this forever. You know, right now, I'm overwhelmed.

 

Erica Bennett [00:39:11]:

I'm learning how to care for my body. You're just reaching for just a little bit better feeling thought, don't fake it. You can say it, really. You can tap and say, it really sucks right now. Like, I really hate this. I'm exhausted and tired of trying to figure out what I can eat without making myself sick. And I'm stressed about it. It all the time.

 

Erica Bennett [00:39:28]:

Then breathe, breathe, breathe. Right? And it will not be this way forever. I know that things can change. It didn't used to be this way. I can find my way back out of it. Then breathe. The ability to just rewire a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time leads you to who you need. Led me to having Doctor Laura here today.

 

Erica Bennett [00:39:52]:

Right? All these little pieces, these connections the insights, I remember I was listening to somebody talk and they were like, oh, yeah. And then I realized I had SIBO. And she said the word and it was like the word had little extra twinkles around it. I'm like, well, that's interesting. Took me another year before I actually went in and got tested. The little guidance is always there. We just have to be calm enough or de stressed enough to hear it. So hopefully you found a lot of ah-ha's in our chat today.

 

Erica Bennett [00:40:22]:

But on top of that, Doctor Laura does have an offer for you. If you are struggling, if you are looking for extra help, I know I'm going to set up some solo time with you, Doctor Laura, to talk through my current new issues because, good lord, they're baffling my mind some days. Um, but why don't you tell listeners what's available to them?

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:40:40]:

Yeah. I'm just creating space to hop on what we call free health strategy calls, just to talk about, like, what you're going through right now. And can we just identify like, two or three things that you can start doing ASAP to feel better? Like, sometimes that little bit of clarity, that little bit of guidance will just kind of like, like horse correct. You set you down the right path, make sure we're not missing any red flags that like, hey, you really actually need to get this, this checked out because you don't have to do this by yourself unless you're sitting here and you're also a health expert. Like, most of us are not health experts, but we try and DIY our own health all the time. These strategy calls are just helped to, like I said, course correct, send you off in the right direction.

 

Erica Bennett [00:41:17]:

And that's so important because I did have to DIY a lot of years and it just was exhausting. It wasn't. It wasn't necessarily more helpful. In some ways it was because it gave me specific things to go ask about. But I still needed to find somebody who was like minded, who could then have the discussion with me, because otherwise it's. You're just constantly grabbing at straws and hoping that you're going to hit the one that is going to be the thing that finally changes what's going on. We'll have all the details on how you can connect with Doctor Laura in the show notes. Those are on all the podcast episodes.

 

Erica Bennett [00:41:49]:

It'll also be posted on thecrazyexwivesclub.com under episodes, where we'll have the full transcript. All the links will be in there for you guys to find. Doctor Laura to reach out for that chat if you're interested. I am also feeling inspired to pull out of the vault the program I wrote called stop the body bullshit. Stop the body bullshit. It was originally written love your body, and then I felt it needed to get taken up a notch. Stop the body bullshit. Stop hating on your body, stop judging it for what it looks like, constantly wishing it was something different.

 

Erica Bennett [00:42:28]:

The program is a 30-day mental detox. It literally is journaling activities and mindset and stress and rewiring how you feel about being in your own skin. Because when you start to love being in your own skin, you move different, and you feed it different, and you treat it different, and you walk different. If your whole desire of trying to get to the gym or trying to fix what's going on in your body so that you think you can look more beautiful, you can feel like you look beautiful now without anything changing. But the cool part is, is when you think different, the rest of it changes. So, guess I just gave myself an assignment. I gotta pull it, I gotta dust it off and pull it out of the vault and bring it back up. But we'll bring that up too for you guys.

 

Erica Bennett [00:43:10]:

It's a self-guided program. It's 30 days to detox your mind from all of those limiting beliefs around your body. So, thank you, Doctor Laura, for joining us. Today was such an important conversation, and I am so grateful that there are more and more functional medicine doctors out there that are helping women find their way through all of these intricate processes of our bodies.

 

Laura DeCesaris [00:43:32]:

Oh, thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me.

 

Erica Bennett [00:43:34]:

Yeah, absolutely. Until next week, you guys. Take care of yourself. Go do something that helps you unplug, de stress, activate that parasympathetic side, the rest and digest part of your nervous system. And until then, I'll talk to you guys next week. And that's it. Another great episode of the Crazy Ex Wives Club, a podcast for women learning how to heal from their divorce. Tune in next week for more advice and tips to help you figure out life after divorce.

 

Erica Bennett [00:44:04]:

And until then, give yourself grace. Do the best you can and know that this is all part of the process.