030: Beyond the Symptom— Treating and Preventing Food Sensitivities with Functional Medicine with Dr. Heather Stone

low Thyroid Hashimotos Autoimmune issues. And we really work to help them to overcome the symptoms that they're dealing with from a place of restoring function, and allowing their bodies to heal so that they reduce their need for medication. Awesome, thank you. Appreciate you sharing that. So what is your speciality and background? Dr. Heather Stone a: I am a classically trained as a chiropractor, but I've been practicing functional medicine

for about 22 years now. So that's pretty much all I've ever done. And the reason I practice functional medicine is because I've dealt with my own health issues. My own issues overcoming thyroid and all the symptoms of low thyroid, and I've worked with thousands of patients at this point. Wow. So what was the leap from doing traditional chiropractic work to practicing functional medicine? Dr. Heather Stone a: For me, in chiropractic, you're always

taught to look for the root cause of why someone has a symptom or a disease process. And in chiropractic, a lot of it stops at the spine, or the mechanical, or biomechanical misalignments. But for me, I was like, okay, well, what causes a misalignment? What causes a subluxation? And we're also taught that it's emotional, or spiritual, physical and chemical. So I thought, all right, so what is going on at that deeper level that is creating dysfunction in our

body. Not just a misalignment in the spine, but what else might be going on underneath the surface that creates all of these chronic degenerative diseases? And so did you need to take additional studies or additional coursework to be able to really dig deeper into your practice as a functional medical practitioner? Dr. Heather Stone a: Yeah. As far as functional medicine is concerned, there is no training in traditional school, in chiropractic school and medical school, in any traditional

doctorate program. At least not when I was going there. They do not have traditional or a certification program. So yes, I have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of training outside of the traditional education system to figure out how to practice functional medicine. In school, that's what I did on the weekends. I was really digging and diving in, because that's where my passion truly was.

a new chiropractor, because I lived in New York and Mexico City, and now California, I can put my legs in the same position, and they will make the same adjustments because I still have scoliosis. You know what I mean? It's interesting, because what you're talking about is so much

deeper, so much more comprehensive. To me, Essential Ingredients in the podcast that goes back, we look at food, and the impact of food, and the impacts that food has on our health and wellness, agriculture, or the world, etcetera. So I'm wondering if you could walk me through, how you see that fitting in and be what you're hopeful for by now changing from chiropractic work, functional medicine, by using those tactics. Dr. Heather Stone a: I think that the chiropractic adjustment

is super important. And it's very helpful. I still incorporate that in my daily practice, in my health practice, and in my family's care. But if we think about this, like you said, you go to a chiropractor. You can go to 10 different chiropractors and they're gonna say, okay, you have this short leg, or this thing is out of balance, or blah, blah, blah, and they adjust you and you feel amazing. And then you go about your day. But right after you get adjusted, let's say you go

eat a Big Mac. Then because you just insulted the body again and you created all of these negative chemical reactions inside the body, well, that subluxation is coming right back. So for me, I was like, well, I can't sit here and adjust the spine every week, every two weeks exactly the same way without truly addressing the cause of why we have the subluxation or misalignments in the first place. So if we don't look at the body as overall health, what is it that we're

eating? What is it that we're putting into our bodies? Where do we have the nutritional imbalance? What all is going on underneath the surface that causes the symptoms or causes the misalignments? I feel like we are just scratching the surface. I felt like that wasn't really any different than taking a medication to cover up a symptom. So we had to really dig deeper to really achieve true health and address the root cause. So I think that it's interesting. Because for me, I

teach a lot of nutrition, I teach a lot about food. I live on a ranch, we are almost completely farm to table in my life. And so I think it is so important. I always tell my patients that you can't achieve health without addressing the diet. But diet alone isn't usually enough to achieve optimal health. There's other things that we have to do, and things that we have to be aware of how we're thinking. The emotions that we have. The activities that we have. The

exercise that we're doing. And the nutrition that we're also taking. So you have to address your health and an overall perspective if you're looking to optimize. I couldn't agree more. I think it's all of it combined. And it's a really complicated and comprehensive way that we need to look at these things in order to have

better health and live a better life. So when you first got into doing more functional medicine, and before we even go on on that, can you tell me in your words, because functional medicine, we hear about functional doctors all the time. What does that mean to you? Dr. Heather Stone a: So I was practicing this way before that ever became a term, functional medicine. And I'm glad it became a term because now we have some kind of awareness or some idea

about what that actually means. But for me, in functional medicine, we're always looking to get down to the root cause of why someone has a symptom or a disease process. So your body communicates with you in a way of symptoms. So if there's some kind of imbalance, so the body is always trying to reach balance or homeostasis, and it's always working to create that scenario. But if there's something outside that is creating an imbalance that the body can't adjust to, it will

start to give you a symptom. And so I always look at symptoms as blessings because that allows you to say, okay, where is the imbalance? What do I need to do? What can I do to help the body correct and start to heal from the inside out?

It's true. If I eat many strawberries, I think it's the sugar in there, but it makes me nauseous. So what do I do? I eat fewer strawberries. I just eat like two or three instead of the whole box, which is so tempting. But equally, if you're paying attention and it makes you feel a certain way, you know that maybe that's not the right thing. And I think people are now more days, now more than ever pay attention to how they feel as it relates to food. And it helps.

Dr. Heather Stone a: Yeah. I'm excited because I think now with social media and more access, it sometimes does create confusion the more access we have to information. But I think we have more of an awareness, we have more control over our health. And we're not just at the effect of our genetics. Or even of the medical system of someone saying, this is the way you have to go. You just have to take these meds, and this is the end of the story. Now we're like, okay, I think I can take more

ownership of my health. I have way more control over my health than I ever thought that I had before. And now, we're starting to get into a place where we're looking to optimize health instead of just looking at health as the absence of disease. I think it's an interesting time, it's an important time. People are becoming more aware, self aware of how all these things impact how they feel. So to be able to have that support from a doctor that knows how to have that

conversation. Whereas years ago, that was not really common practice. It's still just coming around, it's still new. When you get insurance, they're not telling you to go to a functional medical doctor. It's probably half the time outside of the scope of what is usual and customary for you to go extra, which is unfortunate. So I'm curious, what is the one thing you wish more doctors were educated on?

Dr. Heather Stone a: At a very basic level, if they were educated on knowing that the body was born to heal instead of looking at everything as a label of a disease, and then we've got to give a medication, but what is it that we can do to work with the body so that we can encourage the balance back into the body instead of always overriding the body's physiology? But that would take an entire re education

reformatting of the entire medical system. So the other thing I think is important to say is that traditional medicine has a time in place. And it is very helpful for so many people. But there is also a time and place for us to know that our bodies can heal and to support normal human physiology. The body is strong, and it does want to heal. But like you said, it's important to know. I can share a

story with you real quick. When my mom had breast cancer, there were treatments out there, but she wanted to go and do all these different holistic things because she was scared of the remedies. But at the point that she had first gotten diagnosed, had she gotten the treatment, it would have been over in a heartbeat because she didn't do that. And because they got rid of it a little bit, it came back much more aggressive. And then

there was much more larger decision. She had to make bigger decisions that she had to go Western medicine, which was a good thing. But they were able to cure, and she's 77. And that was at 50. So I think that there really is a time in place. And I think that if we look at that Western medicine really was

integral in that. But I also think that looking at your diet, and looking at inflammation, and I'm not a doctor here, but looking at those things in collaboration, correct me if I'm wrong, is only going to help, right? Dr. Heather Stone a: Yeah. And I think to the extent of what in traditional medicine, if you go to a traditional doctor and they say, oh, my gosh, you've got pre diabetes or diabetes. You need to go lose weight and exercise. And the patient will say, well,

how do I lose weight? And they say, well just reduce your calories. Well, I have a load of patients who have reduced their calories to like 500 calories a day. They're exercising like crazy. They barely have any energy to do anything, they're dragging their bodies around. And guess what? The weights not coming off. And so I think traditionally, you just don't have a lot of education in what you should be doing as far as

diet and what you should be eating. And I think that that's why Functional Medicine and Traditional Medicine can work hand in hand. Because the hours that I have spent learning about nutrition and how the body works, and how to customize a diet based on where a person is that looking at their blood sugar, their adrenal glands, food sensitivities, there is not one diet that really fits with every single person. And it

takes a lot of time. You have to spend a lot of time with a patient to optimize how they're feeling, which is why to expect traditional medicine to kind of fill the gap with all of these things. That's why I think a lot of people get frustrated because you're expecting something from like their PCP or their endocrinologist that they're not trained to do. And so if you could work with a team of doctors, that's where you're

gonna get the best rounded healthcare. I had a patient that I saw yesterday, and she was diagnosed with Addison's disease. And so she had the lowest hormones I've ever seen. Her cortisol was just flatlined, and she needed medical intervention. And I told her, you're not a good fit for what I do. These are some dietary recommendations, but you need to go get on hormone replacement therapy because the gland is not

working. So it's about knowing where to lean and how to build a team of doctors around you for the best result.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that more and more when I look at what would be ideal, what I wish I often put fine is as practice where people were together. So you have your chiropractor, you have your medical doctor, you have your osteopath, you have your acupuncturist, and I'm just using these for illustrative purposes. But when one thing comes up, and you Dr. Stone, you get it. You're like, you really needs medical attention here.

Let me talk to Dr. Colin. Dr. Collin's a medical doctor focuses on X, Y, Z. So because it's so hard when you get these doctors in different places, for them to have conversations so that we're all working on behalf of the patient, or so everyone is working on behalf of the patient, I think that we just need a practice. Did you see the TV show The Practice? It was like an offshoot of Grey's Anatomy, and they all had the practice in like Orange County or something. I don't know where

it is, Santa Monica maybe. It was a women's clinic, but there was a women's doctor, there was a psychiatrist, there was an acupuncturist, and they would bring the challenging cases to talk to each other about it. So I didn't invent this idea as I bring it up. I'm inspired by it. Dr. Heather Stone a: We'd really like, yeah, that would be an amazing solution. I think there's many tweaks that we could make to our health system for sure.

I totally agree. I totally agree. So are there any cutting edge medical endeavors that you see currently going on within the functional medical field? Dr. Heather Stone a: One of the things that we are just starting to integrate into the practice now, it has been out for a while that sometimes we gotta fix little glitches as new

technology comes out. But I have started putting every single one of my patients on a continuous glucose monitor, because the foundation of every chronic degenerative disease is insulin resistance, or a blood sugar or dysglycemia. Which means that you can have low or high. And I have been quite shocked and surprised that even when I look at their blood work and all the markers that we relate to blood sugar look okay. But they still have symptoms of having dysglycemia, or some kind of

blood sugar issue. It's difficult for them to lose weight. Maybe they get tired and fatigued after meals, maybe they get hangry, or they have to eat often, or they feel that hypoglycemic moment, low energy, hair loss,. All the symptoms that are related to low thyroid, you can just plop onto dysglycemia or insulin resistance. And so what I've noticed, and even in myself, we have a lot of blood sugar variability where blood sugar is going up and down all day long.

And you don't see it in the bloodwork. Because if you're looking at fasting blood sugar, it's just what it was. Then in the morning when you went into the lab, if you look at a hemoglobin A1C, that tells us a 90 day average. Well, your blood sugar could be really high up and down. But the average looks really good. And we think, well, there's no blood sugar problem here. But we're having patients where a continuous glucose

monitor first allows us to know that there is a problem. Second, it allows doctor and patient to see how food is actually impacting their blood sugar. And it allows you to also see how lack of sleep and how stress impacts your blood sugar. And it's been really eye opening. First, it helps patients stay accountable. Because that is one of the things as a doctor is like, are you sure you're following recommendations? And they're like, yeah, I'm sure. Then you're like, okay, write a

diet diary. And you're like, I know you thought that you were, but it's not quite what I had in mind. So making sure that there's compliance, and it holds patients accountable. They can see in real time what their blood sugar is doing. And even me, I've put on a continuous glucose monitor. And this was several months ago. Because now, I'm addicted. I just went all the time. But I drink a margarita, which I don't ever do. But I thought I'm just gonna see what this does. And my blood

sugar, oh my gosh, it went up to like 200. And my alarms were beeping at the restaurant like, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. This is so embarrassing. I just could not believe me with normal blood sugar that my blood sugar would go up to 200 with a margarita. So I'm like, okay, no more of that. Now that you see what happens and you're like, oh, okay. I'll never drink another

Margarita. I'll try something else, but not a margarita. That's super interesting. I wonder because I haven't heard of wearing one all the time, especially if you're not necessarily a candidate in the clinical sentence. So is this something you think we're gonna see as common practice going forward? Dr. Heather Stone a: I do think so. There are several companies

out there now that they kind of sell a membership. And they will sell and prescribe the continuous glucose monitors, but it has to be outside of insurance because insurance usually only covers a continuous glucose monitor if you're on insulin. And I even have had patients on insulin that have a hard time getting their insurance to approve it. So you just have to remember that insurance is a sick care model. They give you drugs and surgery, and only when you're sick.

They're not trying to help you optimize your health. That's not a goal of theirs. And so if we can kind of step back and say, all right, my insurance has a purpose for sick care. But if I'm trying to optimize care, we got to figure out a different way around that. And so you don't have to wear a glucometer all the time because it does become expensive. But for me, I'm like, because I'm addicted to it and I really want it, I like to see how my workouts impacted my all of that stuff.

But I just budget it in to make sure that it's something that I account for. I think of health care expenses as an investment. So when I buy organic food, or grass fed grass finished beef, or all the good quality protein, I look at it as an investment in my health because I know it will decrease my medical expenses later on. And I don't have medical expenses outside of the things I'm using to optimize health.

First of all, can you share the link for the glucose meter so we can share it in our notes, so that anyone listening or watching could have access to that should they wish? So what would you say is the most important thing someone could do to take control of their health? Dr. Heather Stone a: Well, the first thing that you could do is work to clean up your diet. I would say to really choosing

whole foods would be the first thing that you could do. So Whole Foods means good, healthy animal protein, vegetables, and fruits. And even for some reason you can't afford organic, if you got just vegetables and fruits and you got rid of all the processed food, that would be making huge strides. And then if you wanted to go a little bit deeper, typically what I find is if we get out gluten, dairy, soy and corn, those are the big things that cause a lot of inflammation. I could literally

talk for over an hour on gluten and how that has changed? Why it causes so much inflammation and blah, blah, blah. But gluten, dairy, soy and corn are the ones that either raise your blood sugar really high or create a lot of inflammation. And then of course, getting rid of sugar, or minimizing it as much as possible. That literally will make the biggest change. I have ladies that just implement that and they start losing like 20, 30 pounds. And then we start talking about mindset. And I've

had a lady lose 100 pounds, and I've never even seen her. So just starting to implement those practices is huge. I think those are great takeaways because they're something that people can do. It's tangible what you're doing, and you have control over that. I think that it's also people being diligent about it. But I'm curious, I have a philosophy that everything in moderation, because then you don't feel like you're starving yourself or

denying yourself with anything. And really, I could go out or somebody orders a dessert, I don't really want the refined sugar, or the gluten, or the eggs that are in there because I'm intolerant. But if I have a fork full, I've had enough. So I'm curious, what your philosophy is on that, and what the impact is? I'm having one forkful, is that gonna set me back? Or is that a good way to approach it?

Dr. Heather Stone a: So when you're dealing with food sensitivities, like gluten, one forkful, one bite will cause an immune reaction. These antibodies that when you eat gluten, if you have Hashimoto's, it'll cause an immune attack on the thyroid and on the cerebellum of the brain. And those antibodies stay circulating for 90 days. So gluten is like, no, you not even a forkful for gluten. How about dairy? If you put a little half and half?

Dr. Heather Stone a: It depends on how your body responds. I can have a little bit every now and then. Or if I accidentally get into some dairy, it's not going to throw me over. But gluten, it does. And I don't even necessarily feel it. But I know that if I checked my antibodies, and I've been into gluten, then they are going to be high. But this is what I typically tell patients, if you're in a state of disease, you have to be 100%

on. Once the body heals, once the body can tolerate a little bit of sugar, or not completely 100%, then you don't have to stay 100%. Like for me, I'm usually like 90/10 or 80/20, depending on what I'm doing. For example, I was traveling this last weekend. Yes, 100% gluten free. Yes, I'm pretty much eating protein and vegetables. But for dessert, they had a flowerless chocolate cake. Am I going to have that? Yes. Not the whole thing. I just have a bite or two. Because once you change

your diet, your taste buds change. And it's almost like you just get that little bit and you're like, okay, I'm good because you get the communication from your brain to your body. Like, okay, that's enough. But so many of us, that communication isn't there anymore because of how much insult we've had to the body. There's times where, maybe I start to have symptoms, and then I got to get back 100%. Like if I start to gain a few pounds, and for some reason, my body had

a complete reaction to that. And I'm like, okay, it's compounding with all the other stress I'm dealing with. So I'm like, okay, I can control my diet 100% So I'm gonna get back on 100%, minimize the stress. And then I'm sure that I'll be able to eat dessert again at some point.

Yeah. I know it resonates with me. Because if I eat protein and vegetables, which is mostly what I crave, I could wake up and eat a steak, honestly. Or fish, or whatever. I don't eat sandwiches, I never did. I don't eat mayonaise, I think it's disgusting, but that's just a personal thing. That white creamy stuff in the Hellman's bottle, it just makes me want to hurl. I can't even let that my friends know. Like, move it. If anything comes on the table, they're like, okay,

we gotcha. Gotcha. But I really do feel better when I do that as well. And then of course, you have the holidays. The holidays come around, depending on what you celebrate. I make a great noodle pudding. And the thing in my mind, I make it for everyone else. But when there's leftovers and it's sitting in my fridge, I'm like, oh, my God. Once a year, I gotta eat that little bit. So I have a couple of bites, and I totally get a lot more sciency. I get a lot more all these different things

because the dairy for me is what sets me off. It makes me more congested, and I can feel it. The gluten may be a little bit more of a silent kind of thing. But I think when you're paying attention to your diet, so I've often tried to have conversations about being culturally competent and recreating these recipes in this day and age so that we could make better for you options with different chefs and different

innovators out there. Because of this, both personal, but it's also practical because I'm not the only one that has those challenges, I'm sure. If you think about all the different ethnic food out there, the family, food, holidays. Dr. Heather Stone a: We all deal with that, and we all kind of get stuck. But for my family, I'm the oldest child. So somehow, I get stuck planning everything. I was the first to really start to make the changes and to have the impact on my

family. And first, when I first started changing over, I said, just let me do the cooking. And we're gonna figure this out. So all the recipes, I'm like, how do I make this so that it's compliant. So that I feel like I'm not missing out, but I'm also impacting everybody else's health. And they won't even know what's in it. So the first couple of times, you're like, Heather, this is not good. Yeah, it's not that good. But I will

get better at it. And so as they started to implement the practices as well, it's pretty much just known that that's how we're going to do it. So a little bit of dairy kind of gets in there. My sister is so intolerant to dairy, and so is my niece. I have to really be careful and make sure that none of that is in any of the food. And we were foodies. I love food. I think coming from a person who did diets my whole life, and was always made food the enemy. Now, whenever I look

at food, food is like the nourishment in our bodies. And food is not the enemy. So how can we treat this in a way where we can all enjoy and love the food that we're eating, and it'd be nutritious at the same time? So just changing some of those recipes and playing with it. But I'll say two. For me, I don't usually eat grains. I don't. Either vegetables, no grains because they raise your blood sugar. But when it comes to the

holidays, maybe I make a gluten free bread. Yeah, I probably am going to make a gluten free bread, or I'll do a gluten free dessert or something like that. But it's really just for the holidays. I have that one piece or whatever, and then we move on. So I mean, you want to enjoy it. If you do it once a year or twice a year, and not once a week or twice a week, it's a big difference.

So I'm curious to that end, are there any hard hitting statistics that you know of about the impact of food on our health, and how making more informed choices and better for your choices really can change your trajectory? Dr. Heather Stone a: I don't know any specifics directly or statistics. I should say directly. But I will say that if we started to change our food as a nation, we would pretty much, I would say almost eliminate all chronic degenerative diseases.

And the other thing I think that is important is that the industry responds to the consumer. And so if we would stop buying all of the processed foods, they would change. But a lot of us say that we wish that we could change the food industry, but we actually have the ability to change by where we put our dollars. So I think that that's really important to stress. Dr. Stone, thank you so much for all of this information. It hit home both personally and

professionally. And I really think is a great resource for those that are looking to innovate as well as just create a healthier life for themselves. So thank you again for joining me. Dr. Heather Stone a: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. It was fun. And if anybody is interested in learning more about you or getting in contact, what's the best way to reach out? Dr. Heather Stone a: The best way to reach out is to go to

Facebook. I have a group called Happy, Healthy and Lean. And at the time of this recording, I have almost 32,000 people in that group. And it's really a ladies only group. It's a place where we can go any space on our health journey. And it's important that we're part of a community that is like minded because we know that it's quite difficult sometimes to start making big changes if those around you are not making big changes and they're fine sticking with where they're at.

So surrounding yourself with minded women is going to be super important. So the Facebook group is called Happy, Healthy and Lean. And I always do master classes. I pretty much do a master class once a month, and so tons of content and information for those ladies who are interested. Awesome. Again, thank you so much. And for those that are tuning in, if you liked this episode, leave us a thumbs up and continue to subscribe and download new episodes come out every Tuesday.