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Dr. Joel Rosen: Right Hello, everyone. And welcome back to another edition of the less stress life where we teach exhausted and burnt-out adults the truth about adrenal fatigue so that they can get their health back quickly. And I believe this is round three, for the last strength flex the last stress life podcast. I’m joined here with a special guest, Carrie Jones. I think by now like I told everyone knows who Carrie Jones is, it’s a real privilege for having her here, but just in case you don’t, she’s an adjunct professorship professor at that.
And then and you add them regularly, consults, lectures and writes on the topics of hormones, thyroid, adrenals, digestive issues, autoimmune, and more, both nationally and internationally. She is the medical director at precision analytical, the world’s leading laboratory in dried urine hormone testing. And she’s one cool, awesome. practitioner, friend, and colleague. So Carrie, thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate it.
Dr. Carrie Jones: Joel. I’m glad we got to reconnect and make it happen. I always have a good time talking to you on your podcast.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, um, you know, listen, I thank you. And I appreciate it. I’m watching all your social media, and you’ve really crossed that next barrier of just showing who you are, you know, I always remember one of the very first conferences that I heard you speak and you mentioned in a really diplomatic way about talking to some of the women about difficult hormone questions that they may be having, and, you know, not wanting that little hair on the chin there. And you have a really great sense of humor and down-to-earth nature about you. So why don’t you give us a little update on sort of What’s New for you in terms of where your interests lay.
Now, in terms of understanding when women and men for that matter, are overwhelmed or have all of these environmental triggers and challenges with balancing out their hormones. And now the Dutch test has so many tools to be able to give practitioners insight on how they can manage this? Where does that leave you in terms of what you’re seeing or what you’re doing? Or just kind of give us a little springboard to what’s new in the life of Dr. Carrie Jones?
Dr. Carrie Jones: Well, I will say it’s funny that with your tagline of you know, helping burned-out individuals in earlier 2021. So I want to say in a march timeframe, actually, I will just back up all the way into 2020. By the end of 2020. I was completely done and burned out. And I say that I was very lucky and that I maintained my job. And because everything shifted to online, I wasn’t traveling like I used to but the whole world went to global education, right online education. And I was working nonstop for many, many, many months about hormone education and in our field because we couldn’t travel or we couldn’t go to conferences.
And a lot of people had a lot of time to be at home on their computer watching, watching educational events. I was just going and so by just the time, December hit one it. I mean, it was a pandemic, which was stressful in itself. And then too, I was working all the time and I hit maximum burnout. And I say this as the medical director of a lab that tests cortisol and hormones, right. And so, I had been telling people on my social media that I was, you know, having bad days, I was tired. I was feeling burnt out, did a Dutch test, and lo and behold, of course, my cortisol not only was my cortisol low my free cortisol, but I was the enzyme that preferentially deactivates cortisol so makes it inactive, was up-regulated, meaning I was a deactivator So not only did I not make very much cortisol, I don’t think I was also deactivating what I had, basically, my body was like, excuse me, you’re burning the candle at both ends. You were not listening. So we’re gonna make you tired. Sorry.
And I was doing all the things I knew I was taking my supplements and I was you know, mixing up meditation or breath exercises, I maintained exercise. Through the pandemic. We were lucky where we live, we have this beautiful backyard and so much of spring summer fall we I was allowed to be outside even if we weren’t allowed to go to stores and restaurants and what have you. And still, it didn’t matter. It was my own. I had to get some mindset boundary stuff dealt with to handle the burnout. And when I posted the results, I’m very much an open book and a lot of ways and I posted my results to show people and of course, everyone’s like what did you take, what did you take, what supplements you take?
And I was like well, I took a few I shifted a few things around but I said it honestly had nothing to do with supplements and everything to do with me. I was the problem. I was I’m a Type A over Achieving take on too much perfectionistic person and I took it to the nth degree. And so I had to work on me and my boundary setting and mindset and, you know, priorities and what have you. And so it was a really good experience for me to go. It wasn’t necessarily like, Oh, I was deficient National Gondo, or I was deficient in B 12 or was deficient in whatever, you know, co q 10. It was those things are very helpful.
And thank goodness, we have them. But a lot of it was my own personal work that I had to do. And as I laid that out for people, a lot of comments, a lot of DMS, of folks who were like, dang it, I’m taking the supplements, but I’m not really doing the work. Like I’m not paying attention to the day-to-day or my mindset or what’s happening or, like, I don’t want to go there. I can’t go there. It’s too hard to go there. I’m struggling to go there. But okay, you’re probably right. In for a lot of folks, obviously, not everybody. That doesn’t apply to everybody. But it was a very good perspective for me. So it was like an insight springboard and what’s been going on since we last talk.
So now I better boundaries. But I did some mindset personal work, I had a couple of coaches that I worked with, that I hired and worked with to help me get through and, and 2021 has been much, much better, that’s for sure. But I just want everyone to know that even the medical director of a hormone lab is not immune, thick. We’re all vulnerable to.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, absolutely. I’m glad you had those smack-in-the-wall roadblocks in life to have to come up for air and, and get the smelling salts under your nose to all these analogies to stop being the shoemaker with major holes in your shoes. You know, at the end of the day. That’s what you’re saying. But I think a couple of things where I don’t know you’ve probably seen this shift to carry in terms of since COVID.
And since education and research, as bad as things get worse, as good as things get better. I think we’re moving towards that in the integrative functional world of not mindset per se. But the intangibles, the glue the self-love or the boundaries, or the saying no, or being able to understand how these variables don’t show up in a supplement bottle or on a lab test. Make those are potential eight those for working or not working in your favor. Yeah, read on that your see.
Dr. Carrie Jones: Yeah, And I would say a lot of people, not everyone, but I got a lot of just anecdotal feedback from people who were saying, I’m realizing what’s important, you know, that pandemic made me realize what, what I what truly deserves my attention, what truly deserved my, you know, focus, did I really care about that? And it also made me realize that things I could give zero F’s about, like, you know, like, wasn’t important, I should stop stressing, there are bigger things in this world we’re stressing about, worth worrying about.
And I mean, I think that pandemic, which is obviously still part, you know, going on some degree, and it’s, it’s, I’m not saying it wasn’t hard, it was extremely hard, but that it made the whole world pivot and shift and, and I just got that my comments in the DMS of people be like, you know, like, either their job or where they live, or they would focus back on family. I heard that over and over and over again, or somebody’s personal health, focusing back on their personal health because now they weren’t giving out all the time, right?
pre-pandemic, we could go out, we could, we could travel, we were working, like everything, we’d appointments we had a practice like everything was out. And when we got everything got on lockdown, everything was in. And so people started to look around and go, well, Dang, what is important, like, what do I want to maintain? And what am I What do I want to give up? And so I saw that a lot in my comments.
Dr. Joel Rosen: No, it’s excellent that that happens. And it’s hard like we talked about earlier, it’s frustrating when you get those counter comments like, Well, what about, you know, what’s the magic pill to fix this? And then there’s that education process. But one thing that I think you I would love to ask you in terms of you mentioned that on the Dutch test that you did, or the test that you tested your own hormones, not only where potentially your HPA axis or the total cortisol that you’re producing for the day was low.
Dr. Carrie Jones: But actually, that was fine. So that’s how I knew I made cortisol. My total cortisol was fine. My free was low, right? So I could make it I couldn’t keep it as free. And so I knew and then we, we, we check, we give you an indicator of that enzyme, and it turns out I was in deactivator.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right? Right. So so thank you for correcting me so that that’s not always going to be the case just because you’re deactivating that cortisol doesn’t mean you’re not making it up. So what I tell people number one is it’s just not as easy as I did a saliva test and it was, hi, I need to take Serien or phosphate, I get a saliva test, it was low. And I need to take licorice root or these nutrients. It’s there’s a lot of pathways that are involved. And one of the things that I’ve seen with what we’re talking about on your test is you have that total that you produce for the day for that given period metabolized.
And I look at that as more of the glandular function or the brain’s need for the hormone. But then you have that mind-body disconnect, which I tell people like basically, at the day, like your mind may say, yes, but your body definitely says no, and you’re not able to and your eyes are bigger than your stomach. And one of the ways that I think the Dutch test captures that so nicely is in that deactivation of that cortisol, I tell people, it’s like the Army Sergeant that says, hey, these troops need to go back into reserves, because either where it’s just your troops, your Sergeant knows the terrain of the body, and meet and preserve the troops in times of crisis, or just knows what’s best for the body versus us trying to micromanage it per se.
And not trying to overcome that. But bottom line is, is I think that what’s so great about that Dutch test is it shows a disconnect between what the brain wants the adrenals to do, and what the cells of the body systemically want the adrenals to do. So maybe kind of give us some insight on that because it doesn’t really you know, it does people listening to this that are exhausted and burnt out, may not have any clue deactivation, what is that what, why what’s going on there.
Dr. Carrie Jones: Right. So the body makes cortisol first and foremost that’s in free cortisol is what’s active, binds to receptors, turns them on does the things. However, cortisol is potent, powerful, it’s it can be a bully to a lot of receptors. And so the body is smart, and it puts this enzyme I don’t know who names these things, but the enzyme is called 11, beta h s d two and 11 beta HS D to D activates cortisol, it turns it off, and when it turns it off, it magically turns into cortisone. So a lot of you are familiar with hydrocortisone cream and you might think to yourself hydrocortisone cream, I have that for bug bites and Poison Ivy and whatnot.
Believe it or not, hydrocortisone is actually cortisol. It’s a naming thing when you put the hydro in front of it. It’s a fake-out hydrocortisone cream, when you put on your bug bites in your poison ivy, that’s cortisol. Take the hydro off just plain old cortisone, totally inactive dead in the water. So if you have a lot of cortisol in whatever places the body certainly likes your kidneys don’t like a lot of cortisol, your sweat glands don’t like a lot of cortisol, your intestines don’t like a lot of cortisol. So to protect you, it’ll turn it off if it’s getting too much. But if you were burning the candle at both ends, and you kind of have a lot of cortisol, basically coming out the system all the time.
The body’s like, you know what, this is annoying. You need to stop right now. And it basically turns off the cortisol into cortisone. So you don’t have a choice but to listen, you start to feel more tired and more burned out. And you don’t have the arm for the motivation may be that you used to now we are humans and a lot of humans can power through. They can mind over matter there. Like even though I’m tired, I’m still going to accomplish all these things. But the body says, Don’t do it. Don’t do it because you were pushing, pushing, pushing like a hamster on a wheel. And we need to turn off the hamster wheel.
So in my case, I had been pushing for close to a year. And when I did my test, it turns out my body was deactivating it was basically telling me to slow down and go back into the reserves. And so you’re right some supplements can reactivate. But by reactivating what I have solved any of my problems. No, because I if I was still a hamster on the wheel, and you’re just like, it’s the equivalent of like just IV, not the hamster and pumping them through full of caffeine, or cocaine or like quarters, like just straight, you know, stimulants, eventually the hamster is going to completely burn outfall off the wheel.
So it’s the same if you’re just taking supplements to reactivate yourself. But you continue to do the things that are burning you out in the first place. You continue to push and push and push. Then you have a problem. So when I saw it on paper, I knew what I was doing. Of course, I’m intelligent. But when I saw it on paper, I was like, oh, okay, I guess I’ll slow down. I guess I’ll listen. I’ll guess I’ll stop being the hamster on the wheel and Take care of myself, supplements help. I’m not saying don’t use supplements, they absolutely help. But again, the supplements are only as good, as are your habits. So if you are a hamster on a wheel, and you won’t stop, the supplements aren’t going to save you.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, no, I think there is an art to interpreting a test on what it’s actually telling you. And, and, and asking the carry or the person what’s going on. And in your case, you really were not listening to your body, your body was deactivating the cortisol, but your brain was powering through and wanting to continue to do things and you needed the ability to look at that and say, oh, okay, I need to, if my cells at the cellular level know that it’s too catabolic and too, too much impact on me, then I got to listen to my body. So that’s a great marker on there.
The other thing I would say on that as well, though, is that the art of interpreting the test means well, we could give you licorice root to decrease that HalfLife or increase the halflife. A little spill got excited with that we’re increasing now. We’re increasing half lives here. Yeah, no, that was exciting. So So as far as when May I ask from a clinical perspective, when would you tell the body that maybe not so much, it’s inappropriate, but we want to give you a little more oomph out of the half-life so it doesn’t deactivate? Or is that even a thing? carry that people would want to modulate that short term? At least for me?
Dr. Carrie Jones: Well, yeah, they can. Absolutely. I mean, definitely, if they’re doing the things, twos to get themselves off the wheel, at the same time, they’re taking the supplement. Fantastic, because you’re really addressing the cause, while just adding a little band-aid of a supplement to help give you some more oomph, but what I don’t like because they’re just gonna burn out even harder. It’s the people who won’t get off the wheel or won’t do anything about the wheel.
And they’re just like, just tell me to supplement Just give me the supplement, give me the link to the supplement, I’ll just take the supplement. But you’re not addressing it. Like it’s not going to help and may help for a week or two. But it’s definitely you’re going to feel just as bad and then you’re going to come right back at me and go that was crap. That supplement didn’t work. I feel terrible. I’m like, I know. You didn’t do anything. You were just trying to shortcut your issues. Based on these lab results. This is why when I saw my own lab results, it was a huge wake-up call. Not huge, but I was like dang it. There it is in print, right and colorful print.
That licorice wasn’t going to save me licorice wasn’t my problem. A lack of licorice. I didn’t have licorice deficiency. It’s not what I had. What I had was an overachieving type of hamster on the wheel problem. And that’s what I had to stop or address or reevaluate, right? I didn’t actually take licorice, to be honest, but a lot of people do in that case, would have just been a nice bonus to help. Just get some more own feedback for some people. But I didn’t need to licorice isn’t what I needed.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right? You could triage perhaps short term like I got an I got major meetings coming up the in-laws are coming, I need a little bit of entering whatever it is, but with the understanding, but I’ll add to the frustration from the practitioner side of things or for your social media followers because I get this too is that’s based on objective real-time labs if the person’s done it, but what about the person? Well, my cortisol is high, I need to lower it or my quarter. And I asked, Well, how do you know your cortisol is high? I just know it’s high. And then so there’s that.
And then I always say supplement companies get greedy because they try to put adaptogens in there where it may modulate either way, but then they’ll have ones that will lower it and raise it or preserve it at the same time. Right. So now they’re pulling in both directions. And I say that’s not going to solve the problem anyway, right? Because so that is definitely frustrating. For sure.
Dr. Carrie Jones: There are cases when people need to keep their heads above water. And I fully respect that. I mean, I had a lot of patients in practice who maybe were going through a divorce, or maybe they were about to have a big move, or they were finishing a program and they were like I literally can’t change my life. But I need to keep my head above water for the next two weeks, two months, whatever it is just to keep going. And then I can start to make changes. I’m like alright, in that case, supplements are a great band-aid, but I always told him the same thing.
I’m like, I’m putting a little more money into your checking account. But when you drain it back to Zero again, like, we’re back to zero. So the supplements aren’t going to carry you for the rest of your life. I mean, we, they can help keep your head above water in the short term, but it is truly in the short term, you still have to, we still have to recognize that at some point, you’re going to have to make some changes whatever that look like. And I found in the pandemic, it was a classic example I, you know, a lot of people were getting on there, making sure to take their supplements regularly taking adaptogens.
And they would say, Is it bad, you know, is this problematic, I’m like, just make sure you’re taking care of yourself at the same time. In a lot of ways the pandemic was keeping your head above water, we had a lot of restrictions, we had a lot of shutdowns, we have a lot of fear. A lot of things we can do, there was a lot of illness, there was a lot of death, there was a lot of job loss and monetary loss. And so like, let’s just keep your head above water. Absolutely. But when you can, if you’re going to have to make some changes.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I know, we talked about that earlier, like tripping over dollars to save pennies, or you mentioned in terms of giving you a little bit of extra income. But the real, the real success, I’m sure you would agree is in lowering the overhead obviously, right? So if we can lower that overhead now you saved, or you salvaged or you have extra disposable income that you didn’t have before.
So that’s where we talk about lifestyle behavioral modifications, and that that’s where I’m really excited to talk to you now about because I know you’re really getting into that as well. We talked about the continuous glucose monitor and blood sugar. So what are the different strategies with that being included, that save on the overhead that people can be empowered to do so that they don’t have to micromanage the deactivation per se?
Dr. Carrie Jones: Right. And I’ll tell you, I’m all about the free, cheap and easy. I’m all about the free, cheap, and easy. And so, you know, people will see things out, they’ll see, like we were talking about before going live, we were talking about like environmental toxins, and people will see the big $300 $600 air filter on they’re like, gosh, I can’t you know, I don’t know that I can pay for the $600 air filter. I’m like, Well don’t start with the air filter. Why don’t we start by just getting rid of the candles in your house, right?
Like why don’t we start by when you run out of the cleaning agent that you switch to a brand that’s actually truly a clean brand. So start with the 899 spray that’s better and getting rid of your candles or finding clean-burning candles as opposed to candles full of a fragrance that fake fragrance. When it off-gases when it releases into the air and you breathe it in. It’s causing all sorts of problems with your endocrine system. Let’s get rid of the tree hanging in your car to make it smell like leather or a Hawaiian island or whatever it’s making you smell like you know like so these, these free, cheap, and easy things.
When you run out of deodorant. Let’s find a clean version. When you run out of lipstick. Let’s find one that doesn’t have a lot in it. When you run out of shampoo. Let’s switch to one that has like that’s sodium lauryl sulfate-free, that’s paraben-free, like lets fragrance-free or you know uses full-on true essential oils. And so, but even then you have to make sure your essential oils are good. So it’s these like baby steps that I’m 100% on board with for people when they asked me if they should spend $1,000 on a water filter.
I’m like you can if that fits your budget, but let’s try some other stuff. Why don’t we first start with maybe even I mean, any kind of water filter helps the Britta I mean it’s not great, but it’s a start and that’s where you can afford a $30 Britta that fits in your budget, start there and drink out of glass don’t drink out of plastic right in or switch, switch out your plastic containers for glass you can find them really pretty inexpensively at Amazon or Walmart or even like, like, like goodwill and stuff, you know, just be you can make it to fit your budget instead of heating and plastic.
And now you’re getting the plastics, which is an endocrine disruptor stop using saran wrap that plastic wrap, switch to parchment paper. So again, these little things, and then we go up the tear. So then you can get a more expensive water filter that fits your budget, you can get an air filter, getting the CGM, the continuous glucose monitor, which is not about environmental toxins, but is about continuous health monitoring. You know, if it fits in your budget, and a lot of them. I think in the next five years, I think they’re going to be like, Advil, I think we’re gonna find them really easy to come by really inexpensive.
I know in other countries, they’re like 20 to $40 you can get them in a pharmacy, you don’t need a prescription. My friends in London are like, Oh yeah, we just pop in the pharmacy and get one I’m like, aren’t you cool? So whereas here in the States, you have to have a prescription, but having that information about how the food you’re eating is spiking your glucose and subsequently, your insulin will give you feedback on like, oh, when I ate Ice cream, my sugar went way up, and then it crashed way down like a big spiky mountain. And now I’m tired. Ha, maybe I shouldn’t do that.
Because that big spike caused the crash. And now I feel tired and I brain fog and I’m not motivated, I feel kind of bloated. And so it gives you that immediate health feedback, which is so nice. And so that’s why like, in working with what you can control, that there’s just like you said, Don’t trip over dollars just to pick up a penny like, like, you don’t have to, in this case, go for the low hanging fruit. Go for this stuff in your house, in your car, at your work in your backyard. What you spray your backyard with, that you can adjust to help your health?
Dr. Joel Rosen: No, those are awesome, free, cheap, and easy. I think a lot of the time people have major challenges with addressing some of the elephants in the rooms in terms of opening up old wounds or post-traumatic stressors or bad relationships or bad jobs. And it’s a hard thing to overcome. But there has to be like you said behavioral changes and approaching and modulating, diminishing, accepting whatever it may be. And that’s not going to be found in a supplement bottle for sure.
I would agree. So but you mentioned earlier because I think this is one of my Ahas with my CGM is we do focus on the continuous glucose monitor we focus on the foods which we should I think we should understand what particular foods cause a bigger rise of your glucose and other ones. But one of the things that really was an aha for me, Carrie was I already have a pretty long day as it is I ate I get home late I leave early. And then I have a later dinner. And then when I get consumed with work, I’ll be on the computer still like at 10 3011.
Like what am I What am I doing like I ate at like eight o’clock and I’ll look at my CGM. And because I’m responding to emails and not even going down the slippery slope of emf and insulin relationships. But my glucose was like at 148. And I had a load and I was like, wow, like, I need to turn it off. It’s Yeah, turn it off. So I think that’s a huge any aha that you’ve had, besides.
Dr. Carrie Jones: I was yell I was in the car. And I was Yeah, I was super mad. And I was by myself and I was yelling in the car, right? I was externally processing. And I was yelling, and it was about a 20-minute drive, I had checked my glucose before getting in the car. And by the time I got to the place I was going, I thought I’m gonna check my glucose and see how it was. And it went up 30 points, because my body was like, Oh, she must be fighting, she must be ready to fight, I’m going to increase her glucose. So she can have it for her brain.
And in her skeletal muscles. So she can fight whatever is she’s going to fight and protect herself. I was fighting like, myself, right? I was having this conversation out loud to externally process something. But there was nothing in front of me, I wasn’t actually going to go run or punch or do anything. And so now my glucose is 30 points higher in my bloodstream. And I’m not going to use it.
Right. Oh, and this is where I’m like, Oh my gosh, Imagine all the people who live their day like this all the time, they have chronic stressors, chronic fight or flight triggers all the time. And on top of it, they don’t have a release to burn off their blood sugar so to speak, right? They’re maybe not as they’re not as active as they could be. They’re not as mobile as they want to be. And so they’re not able to sort of burn up and use up this glucose and it leads to their increased risk for metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease.
And you know, it just perpetuates the stress cycle. And so that was a really big eye-opener for me that when I do get heated because I’m emotional before I’m logical, that is affecting my blood sugar and I should probably bring it back.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, that’s a that’s a big aha for sure. I know that one of the things that I teach the clients that I work with is to use the CGM first and foremost, but I find that for me, one of the other things that work very well is getting a little bit of movement after a meal to be able to bring get that sensitivity. It’s amazing when I have an exercise then I start contracting my muscles, how much more respondent my receptors are to insulin for number one, but to tie back. How does that have to do with adrenals? Just to tie back what is blood sugar have to do with that cortisol? maybe explain to our listeners why we would use CGM gas, where we get cortisol.
Dr. Carrie Jones: If let’s put it this way if glucose Had a resume. And on its resume, the very first thing was like its top skill. What is it good at? cortisol? When did I say glucose, Amanda cortisol, cortisol had a resume, the top skill it’s good at is managing glucose. That’s its number one job. Everyone thinks cortisol is about stress is a large general term. Or oh my gosh, cortisol makes me gain belly fat. But the why and the how is that it manages glucose.
So cortisol is a glucocorticosteroid, that’s the family of falls under glucose because glucose is the number one thing so when your cortisol goes up, then your body breaks down. Glucose for you, and makes it available into your bloodstream, primarily for your brain. But also, of course, for other things. So that you can deal with handle with being prepared for whatever’s in front of you. It’s a normal natural event, that is supposed to happen. But it’s supposed to be short-lived, it’s supposed to be I’m going, I’m scared, or I have this fight something I have to run, I need to run and protect myself, the body’s like I got you, I’m going to give you some glucose, I’m going to put it to your brain.
So you can think this through, I’m going to give it to your muscles, so you can turn around and run away. And then it will be done, you’ll have used it up. But what happens is like me in the car, we get mad at our phone, we get mad at our boss, we get mad at an email, we get mad at the news, we get mad at mail, we get mad at our kids. And we’re not actually going to burn it up fight runaway do something. And so it the high cortisol aspect of it can contribute to again, that metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity conundrum that a lot of people find themselves in. Now on the flip side, if you have low cortisol, you’re going to struggle to deal with your glucose.
Because if your cortisol is always sort of kind of low, then when the demand is there to have glucose, it’s just not going to be what you want, or maybe kind of erratic. And now you may find yourself hypoglycemic so that brain fog, hangry tired, especially in between meals. And so by improving your blood sugar, you will improve your cortisol by improving your cortisol, you will naturally improve your glucose by getting everybody kind of balanced out where they need to be. So they are best friends and go hand in hand.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and I think it’s interesting, like you said, I’d like to see that day where the continuous glucose monitors are gonna be available for that. Because right now the paradigm is what you eat and controlling your blood sugar not really thinking about what we’ve just mentioned in terms of your stressors, or your inactivity, or how long you’re under your WiFi for, or when you exercise and controlling all those variables to modulate the sugar handling, which is ultimately going to pay the overhead of the adrenal.
Dr. Carrie Jones: So yeah. And I agree, I see I learned about taking a walk after meals a couple of years ago. And it helps to have a dog My dog is very regimented. And so he likes walks out, you know, kind of around like mid-morning after lunch, and for sure, after dinner, and so having a CGM on, I can see a big difference I can eat, I can eat high carb, high sugar, you know, I can just blow it. And if I go for a walk, if I go for a 10 or 20-minute walk, even with a blood sugar starting to climb, it will be blunted and it will start to pull it because I’m using it I’m utilizing the glucose from whatever I’ve chosen to eat that day, or that for that meal.
And so it doesn’t have to be a high stakes hit exercise, literally walking my dog 10 or 20 minutes, will pull my blood sugar back appropriately, a lot of the time, which and how free, cheap and easy. Is that? Right? Go? Go for a 10 or 20-minute walk if you can’t, and it accounts people say, Well, if I walk around my house, yep. Do you want to know how many people start taking business calls while walking? or walking their house the inside of their house? You know, people say does it count if I’m on a treadmill?
Totally, yep. If it’s raining outside, and you do 10 or 1520 minutes on your treadmill, and I’m not saying speed walk, you don’t have to like you know, win the Olympics on it. Just go for a walk. It helps.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and if we contrast that to what’s going on in the world, I don’t want to get political and everything that’s going on but we public health in my mind and the preventative model and the educating model is out the window. It’s not even part of the policy. Yeah, what we’re talking about is really common sense stuff.
Dr. Carrie Jones: Yeah. Right. Driven by science-driven by science and data. You know if you’ve got and if you’re checking your blood sugar and Have, you don’t have to have a CGM on your arm to know this, like I have so many diabetics who just prick their finger, or I have type one diabetics, and they will sit there like we were taught that years ago.
Like we all know, like, our, my endocrinologist taught me that or my pharmacist said to do that, I mean, not that they do it, or it’s, but I have definitely heard this over the years from people way before CGM like that, that this the continuous glucose monitors an amazing tool, but if you if that’s not in your budget, or you can’t get it, you can still go for a walk, it will still work.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right? You can still be aware of what you would have learned if you had it. Yeah, implement those strategies anyways, Yeah, I was gonna mention with just the whole isolation is not conversing not moving, not engaging. And how that has that? I guess I won’t even say the natural law effect of adding more cortisol or just regulating more your blood sugar, causing you now what’s the relationship carry between that and immune health? So why would I?
Dr. Carrie Jones: Well, yeah, let me back up just to say the socialized isolation, we all know, we had the fight or flight system. And then we have the rest and digest system, the right part of our, of our body, but we also have is part of it, we have a freeze, right? So we have to fight-flight, freeze, rest and digest. And so freeze is literally, it’s a very old, they call it like a reptilian response. And it’s, it’s, it’s the response that people get where they like, play dead, they disassociate, they can’t handle it, they shut down, and you can go into flight, you can be constantly in and out of the fight, or flight, and eventually, it’s too much, and then you just start freezing.
And, and, and you know, you don’t want to get off the couch, and you don’t want to interact, and you don’t want to do it, you just can’t you literally find yourself in like, I just can’t I can’t do this. I mean, think of the animals who play dead, right? Like my dog picked up a frog or a lizard. And it just like goes limp. in its mouth. I’m like, Oh, that’s the freeze response. Because it’s helping if. my dog thinks it’s dead, it’s not fun to play with, it’ll drop and leave it alone.
Humans can do this too. So the freeze response and the fight-flight response are best managed by social activity in social interaction. That’s what research is showing social. So it’s, it doesn’t have to be like an extrovert thing. It’s the interaction with the person at the grocery store because they smile at you and they make eye contact with you. But now we can’t see smiles anymore. Those states still have masks mandates and for all of last year. It’s the hug that you give your family when you see them. Getting together sometimes with your friends socially, however, that looks like.
And so when you get the social aspect of either somebody you just friendly at the store, or somebody who you care about love that helps can help routinely pull you out of the freeze, fight or flight. This is what they’re showing. It’s not a perfect world, because but it’s extremely helpful. Now you put a world on a pandemic, and you tell everyone you have to stay home and there’s you can’t go out when you go out you have to wear a mask and don’t look at anyone don’t touch anyone stays six feet from everyone. And which I understand. However, it applies to this, this theory is called the polyvagal theory. Now, a lot of people have moved more into this frozen state or they get more triggered into the fight or flight, they’re more triggered into stress.
Because they don’t have their family and their friends and their neighbors and you know the thing like they couldn’t get their hair done. So they can talk to their hairdresser or their barber like they could even like like even little things like go see their dentist and again, like the dentist is in their best friend. But it was a friendly interaction. When you walk in, they say hi, you know. like you talk to your dentist or your doctor or your eye doctor or whatever it is.
And it’s these little friendly interactions that happen throughout the day. And that’s what helps ground humans and we lost it for a year. And so that alone, when you mentioned that I was like oh yeah, that’s it’s going to affect is it is affected not going to it is affecting the statistics are showing. It’s affecting people. It’s why people are desperate for the world to open back up again.
And they want right and they want they wanted they want to be able to see and hug and hang out with groups and gatherings larger than four are larger than 10 larger than 20. Because we need as humans we need that interaction. to some degree every human is different. But that’s what keeps us out of the freeze.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and also to I think that your there’s a cinder a Goldilocks zone for everything, like we need a certain amount of stress, right, we need to be able to be adaptive. We don’t want it on all the time. But in this instance, we don’t want to completely remove and not Stress our body whatsoever. You know that adage of just building your immune system in the sandbox, whatever, whatever happened to that?
So, but that’s sort of what I was getting at carriers if we’re not in balance in terms of the Goldilocks zone, and we have a freeze response, and we have just maladaptive stress response. What is that tie into the immune system?
Dr. Carrie Jones: Oh, yeah, it just carries right over to the immune system, because our immune cells are responsive and reactive to all of those things, our immune cells, even just an autoimmune or our internal, the cells that we make behind our chest bone here in our thymus gland. Our body is really intelligent. So when it makes immune cells for us, it makes sure they’re not autoimmune.
And so it runs it by a basically a fact-checker here behind our thymus gland and says, Hey, if you, you know, are you autoimmune? And if you are, if the body accidentally created an autoimmune cell that it has to get destroyed, because the body’s like, well, we can’t have autoimmune, that’s bad. And one of the things that helps trigger the destruction is the rise in cortisol in the morning. Well, if you don’t have a rise in cortisol, a healthy rise, if you’re flatlined, if you’re low, if you’re, you know, really tired and burned out, then you are at more risk for autoimmune.
And even if you have autoimmune, you’re more at risk for progression. And so it’s these like little, it’s like a spider web. If you plunk one into the spider web, the whole spider web vibrates. And it’s the same. If you plunk part of the cortisol system, it’s gonna affect everything all the way over to your immune system. And, you know, we kind of need our immune system.
Dr. Joel Rosen: It’s kind of important. Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting now, like when you know when I’m thinking you’re saying all this and then the art of interpreting hormone tests like the Dutch test, and seeing all these things, seeing Hey, there’s no awakening response, we know that’s problematic for immune dysregulation, your free is, is very low, we’re deactivating it, there’s a disconnect between your mind and your body, your metabolize This is okay.
But when we look at your sex hormones, we see that your estrogen may be low or whatever. But yes, to actually build a customized recovery strategy that is so much more than just licorice root or things that you know, yeah, modulate that. So awesome information carry as far as I guess I get us to throw another just ending question in terms of what would be your I usually asked you what would you tell the younger carry? If you didn’t? If you knew what you knew now?
What would you tell her back then that would have helped you with your health? Which I’m going to ask you that again? Yeah, you needed a slap in your 11 bait HSD face to know that you were not listening to what your body was telling you. So yeah, I guess what we what would be some of the words of advice that you would have told yourself but.
Dr. Carrie Jones: You know, so I think I said this last time like the way younger me I would have told to stop gluten back then I had the genes for celiac. And so I was on gluten off gluten through the years because of trial and different reasons. And then when I found out I have the genetics for it, I was like, oh, off gluten, got it. But I wish I would I would tell my younger self, don’t just go off of it. It’s going to fix your skin.
It’s going to fix your hair, it’s going to fix your allergies like it’s going to fix everything just go off gluten soccer. But then like recent past me, I would have told, like, Hey, you should really probably work with somebody about that high achieving type a perfectionistic thing. It’s great. Like Goldilocks like it’s great in the day to accomplish what I need to accomplish.
But when I do when I pull it when I pull you when I pull Joel and I’m still working at 1030 at night on my computer, and I do it consistently because I have deadlines and everything then I burnout and so I would have told you to know me in the last five to seven years, you’re as you get older you’re you are especially prone to burnout. So don’t do it. Knock it offset boundaries, take care of yourself building vacation that you don’t bring your computer and that’s what I’m having to learn as I get older.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, would you.
Dr. Carrie Jones: Think I know like I know intelligently No. But now it’s like really hit home.
Dr. Joel Rosen: No, you’re still carrying your defense. There are so many opportunities to be overstimulated in so many different ways beyond any other time in history and because that’s our problem is we’re so wide and not very deep and we have so many plates that are spinning daily that we have to control and I think the real wise words are having someone’s outside eyes that is objective and isn’t going to be Su and just say hey look, knock it off.
You have to do these things and have someone give you the insight because Your sphere of excellence is what we’re talking about. And you know, someone can coach you or teach you how to use your faults or your tendencies to get into that Goldilocks. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, awesome information.
Dr. Carrie Jones: I’ll need help. We all like we’re not all experts on everything we all need help.
Dr. Joel Rosen: We all need some Exactly. So what again, my audience probably knows you already but some people may not so how do we find out more about your social media and all the things you’re doing?
Dr. Carrie Jones: Instagram is the greatest place to find me. I’m at Dr. Carrie Jones. And then of course my website is Dr. Carrie Jones calm or you can go to Dutch test calm
Dr. Joel Rosen:
Awesome, awesome. And I will post the notes and when I posted on my socials in my media so there’ll be able to link back to you, Carrie, this is part three part four hopefully will not be a couple of years maybe Lee you’ll be able to have your different places to get out of the cold weather and the rain in the rain.
I appreciate everything you do. And thank you so much for being here and sharing your wealth of information.
Dr. Carrie Jones: Oh, Joe, I really appreciate it.