If you're a woman in your 40s, 50s, or beyond, you know that hormone health is key. But did you know that gut health is essential for hormone balance?
In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Lindsey Parsons, a Certified Health Coach specializing in helping clients locally and nationally heal gut health issues and reverse autoimmune disease naturally as well as lose weight without cutting calories and hosts the podcast "The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome", joins us to discuss the gut-hormone connection.
Lindsey shares with us:
How the gut and hormones are interconnected
How to heal your gut for better hormone health
The link between gut health and autoimmune disease
Type of tests to diagnose gut issues
How to create a healthy gut environment
Why some people suffer from SIBO as a chronic long term illness
The latest treatments for GI problems like fecal microbiota transplant, breathwork, and colostrum
And more!
If you're interested in learning more about the gut-hormone connection and how to heal your gut for better hormone health, tune in now!
[00:00:00] "I'd rather pay for healthy food now than healthcare later." Would you? So the big question is how do women over 40, like us keep weight off, have great energy balance. Our hormones in our moods feel sexy and confident and master midlife. If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself again.
[00:00:23] As an OB GYN, I had. Discover for myself, the truth about what creates a rock, solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy. After 40 in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results.
[00:00:41] And to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenge. Join me for tangible natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to The Hormone Prescription Podcast. Hey everybody.
[00:01:00] And welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me. My guest today is Lindsey Parsons. She has an amazing podcast called The Perfect Stool, Understanding And Healing, The Gut Microbiome. When I discovered her recently, I saw her podcast and I saw all the amazing guests she had and just really the depth and breadth of her knowledge in gut health and healing.
[00:01:26] And I know how central this is to hormone health and overall health. I had to have her on the podcast. And I reached out and she kind of said, well, I don't really do that kind of thing. I said, no, please, you gotta come talk to my ladies. So I bring her here to you today and I hope you enjoy her as much as I do.
[00:01:45] In addition to hosting the podcast, the perfect stool. She's a certified health coach and she works in Tucson. She specializes in helping clients nationally heal gut health issues and reverse autoimmune disease, as well as lose weight without cutting calories who doesn't want that. She also has this wonderful quote about a calorie not being a calorie.
[00:02:06] And she tells a little bit of a story about that, but you don't want to miss. She talks about fecal transplants, which if you don't know about that, you're gonna wanna hear about that. She talks about colostrum use for healing gut issues. We talk about SIBO testing. What tests to do.
[00:02:28] We talk about everything.
[00:02:29] So you'll see this episode is a little all over the place because I was super excited to talk to her. I knew I only had her for max an hour, so I was trying to jump around and hit all the things that I really wanted to chat with her about. You like it, and I hope you take it as an invitation to listen to her podcast and go more in depth into a lot of these issues that are of interest to you.
[00:02:54] There are way more than we could even cover. And I think we talked for 35, 40 minutes, so she has even way more available. So without further ado, please welcome Lindsey Parsons.
[00:03:06] Thank you.
[00:03:08] So glad to have you here. I don't remember where I found your podcast, but I was super excited when I did the perfect stool, understanding and healing, the gut microbiome, and then all the amazing guests and topics that you've had and how in depth you go.
[00:03:27] I was like, I have to talk to you.
[00:03:31] and I have to have you on the podcast. So thank you so much. Yeah, well, I appreciate you for inviting me. So I think that a lot of people in the general public who are looking for answers to their health, tend to only look for physicians. I'm glad to see that that's changing because I think there are some amazing health coaches, for instance, like you out there who really go so much deeper into a lot of these issues and really are better experts than a lot of physicians on things like you are for gut health.
[00:04:06] So talk to us about how you became so passion. About gut health and really what led you down that.
[00:04:15] So it was really my own health struggles that led me into this path. So years ago, unbeknownst to me, my, an episode of food poisoning led to something called Post infectious IBS, which I only actually found out within the last year or so is an autoimmune diagnosis that I have because I didn't have a typical presentation of IBS, which you might think of as, you know, may having diarrhea six times a day or severe constipation.
[00:04:47] I didn't have either of those, but. I did have gut symptoms that, you know, including bloating and reflux and things like that, that went on for years. And when I did see traditional doctors didn't really get a lot of help other than suggesting I take proton pump inhibitors, which I did for something like 10 or 15 years.
[00:05:08] And now they super strict about not taking more than two weeks at a time. So, you know, the long term damage from that, you can only imagine. . And when I did eventually find my way to a functional medicine provider and was put on a course of herbal treatment for something called SIBO or small intestine, bacterial overgrowth, which is what happens when you have this post infectious IBS.
[00:05:29] What happens is you have an autoimmune situation where the Migrating motor complex or the process by which food is cleared through your intestines after eating is impacted negatively and is attacked by your own body. Therefore, you don't have that clearing of the intestines and clearing of the bacteria and the intestines.
[00:05:50] So you get these overgrowths and stagnation, and then you end up with bloating every time you eat, because it's coming, the food's coming in, and immediately the bacteria are going crazy and producing gases. So I had that going on for years and you know, you meet a lot of people that have a lot of bloating after they eat and they just sort of rack it up to, I ate too much or, you know, a whole number of things.
[00:06:12] So. I did finally see somebody and they cleared the placebo for me. Eventually it took herbals and then followed by Rifaximin, which is a prescription, very expensive prescription drug that, that takes care of it. And then over time started changing my diet, getting rid of gluten, getting rid of dairy.
[00:06:29] Really, you know, reducing sugar significantly. And all of those things contributed to me getting much better. And then I also had several autoimmune diagnoses that, you know, cuz when you have these kind of gut issues, you can have followed on autoimmune issues. And so I had Hashimoto thyroiditis, which really, you know, when I found out about that, that really kicked me into gear about trying to turn things around because the doctor had said to me, oh, you can just wait until your thyroid's gone.
[00:06:55] Then we'll put you on. You know, thyroid hormones. And I thought, oh, I'm just gonna sit around and wait until my entire thyroid's destroyed by this. No, that's not what I'm gonna do.
[00:07:05] right. But that's such a typical mainstream medical approach. Um, nothing to do. You have raging thyroid peroxidase antibodies, you have Hashimotos and they do nothing.
[00:07:16] And then they literally say, we're not gonna do anything, you know, until you're you burn out your thyroid, which is just kind of insane. So then what happened at that point? I think I, all of this is a bit perhaps out of order, but I did eventually get off gluten, get off dairy and for a while off of Soy.
[00:07:34] Yeah, mm-hmm and, and, and I just kept retesting my hormones as I, my, I mean, my antibodies, rather my thyroid antibodies as I retested those foods. So it took a couple years. I, you know, I stayed off gluten for a year before I think I even retested, but then I, you know, you try it again and you see what happens and, and each of those foods.
[00:07:52] So anyway, I ultimately decided gluten and dairy are the two things that I'm most sensitive to. And then of course, everyone should stay off added sugar. So I try and avoid that in any case. And. Ultimately, I never had to take any thyroid hormones. My antibodies are now at zero. They're all completely normal and I never, now they can still see the damage from Hashimotos when they all use an ultrasound on my thyroid, but I still have normal TSH levels.
[00:08:17] I mean, not even just normal, optimal TSH levels. That's awesome.
[00:08:21] I want everyone listening to hear that clearly. She just told you that she healed herself from Hashimoto has no antibodies and has optimized thyroid function. This is what's possible with a root cause approach. And I think that when I talk about this on the podcast or on social media, people don't believe me because it's such an anomaly in mainstream medicine.
[00:08:44] And of course, regular doctors will look at you. Like you're crazy and say, that's not true, but it happens every day. We see it's an everyday miracle. So I love that you came down this path and you became so passionate about gut health. And I think to me, it makes sense why you focus on having the autoimmune disease or diseases focused on gut health, but I don't know that's gonna make sense to everyone.