Adrenal Transformation Protocol with Dr. Izabella Wentz: Rational Wellness Podcast 307
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Dr. Izabella Wentz discusses her Adrenal Transformation Protocol with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
0:37 Adrenal fatigue as a concept was first proposed by Dr. James Wilson in 1998 in his book of the same name. This concept was dismissed by the medical world but embraced by the Functional Medicine community, but now it has been discredited and seen as invalid even in the Functional Medicine world since the adrenals never lose the ability to secrete cortisol. On the other hand, there are many patients with symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, intolerance to exercise, feeling overwhelmed, etc. and salivary cortisol testing often shows reduced cortisol levels or cortisol not being released at the proper time, which we will call adrenal dysfunction.
3:15 Dr. Wentz suffered with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and she got off gluten and dairy and started taking thyroid medications T4 and T3. This made her feel better, but she still struggled with brain fog, fatigue and anxiety, and unrefreshing sleep even though I was sleeping a lot after having made these changes. She had heard about adrenal fatigue and had heard that it didn’t exist as a condition. Eventually she tried the recommendations for adrenal fatigue and they helped her to feel better. Her brain fog and fatigue improved and she started to have refreshing sleep. Her anxiety also improved due to balancing her adrenals. Most patients with Hashimoto’s (hypothyroid) have some degree of adrenal dysfunction where they either have too much cortisol, cortisol at the wrong times of day or not enough cortisol.
8:12 The adrenal/thyroid connection. Patients with hypothyroidism will generally break down their cortisol slower. Cortisol may supply some of the energy that the body lacks from the lower thyroid hormone levels. Or patients who get put on thyroid meds may feel better at first but then may crash and this may be because they start clearing their cortisol quicker and now they have too little cortisol. Dr. Wentz noted that about 60% of those tested for adrenals with Hashimoto’s have a low cortisol level all day long. You should also measure reverse T3, since higher levels of stress and cortisol can lead to T4 being converted into reverse T3 instead of into T3. Some of these patients will do better with a natural desiccated thyroid that contains some T3 as well as T4.
18:18 Recommendations for adrenal dysfunction. Patients should follow a paleo-like diet by getting rid of the most common inflammatory foods, including gluten, dairy, soy, as well as grains. This diet should be higher in protein and fat and perhaps a few more carbs at night to help lower cortisol to help with sleep.
19:25 Nutritional Supplements. Dr. Wentz offers a minimalist approach to help patients with adrenal problems turn their health around in a short period of time. To help with digestion, she sometimes recommends sea salt to stimulate digestive enzyme production or thiamine to stimulate digestion and hydrochloric acid production. Dr. Wentz does recommend adrenal adaptogens, magnesium citrate, saccharomyces boulardii, and myo-inositol. As far as adrenal adaptogenic herbs, the ones she likes the most are Ashwaganda and Rhodiola. Ashwaganda can also help normalize thyroid hormone. Maca and Shatavari are two herbs that can help with libido. She also recommends B complex and vitamin C. Dr. Wentz also recommends magnesium citrate, which can help with anxiety, with sleep, for pain, and for constipation. Magnesium can also help us to produce GABA. Dr. Wentz also recommends saccharomyces boulardii as a probiotic to improve gut health and improve our natural defenses and help to clear out candida, protozoans, and some pathogenic bacteria. Myo-inositol is another important supplement that Dr. Wentz recommends for adrenal issues at a dosage of 600 mg. and it can also help with thyroid, blood sugar, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder. The final supplement that Dr. Wentz recommends for patients with adrenal problems is L-carnitine at a dosage of 2000 mg per day and this helps to relieve brain fog. It can also help to remove ammonia from the body.
Dr. Izabella Wentz has a Doctor’s of Pharmacy degree and she is an internationally acclaimed thyroid specialist. She has dedicated her career to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009. She is the author of three books on Hashimoto’s: Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause, Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology, and Hashimoto’s Protocol, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Today we’ll be discussing her new book, ADRENAL TRANSFORMATION PROTOCOL. Her website is Thyroidpharmacist.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure and also weight loss and also athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111. Dr. Weitz is also available for video or phone consultations.
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates and to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me and let’s jump into the podcast. Welcome to our podcast interview today with Dr. Izabella Wentz, where we’ll be discussing her new book on adrenal dysfunction.
This is a topic that has been much debated within the medical community for some time. The idea of adrenal fatigue was first proposed by Dr. James Wilson in his book of the same name in 1998. However, the concept was initially dismissed by traditional medical doctors who said that if you had low functioning adrenals and low cortisol levels, you had Addison’s disease. And if your adrenal glands produced too much cortisol, then you had Cushing’s syndrome, and there was nothing in between. This concept of slightly underperforming adrenal glands, which Wilson discussed, was taken up by functional medicine practitioners. And then in recent years, the idea of adrenal fatigue has been widely discredited as an invalid concept since the exception of Addison’s disease, which is rare. The adrenal glands never truly lose the ability to secrete cortisol. Despite this, many patients continue to experience fatigue, brain fog, intolerance to exercise, feeling overwhelmed, and other symptoms, ensure reduce cortisol levels or cortisol not being released at the proper time on saliva testing. That is typically performed a number of times a day. Today, we’ll be diving into this topic with Dr. Wentz and exploring the nuances of what we call adrenal dysfunction and its impact on our health.
Dr. Izabella Wentz has a doctor’s pharmacy degree, and she’s an internationally acclaimed thyroid specialist. She has dedicated her career to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009. She’s the author of three books on Hashimoto’s, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause, which by the way is the most incredible book on thyroid and I’ve got it underlined and highlighted, and I’ve referred to that book so many times. Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology and Hashimoto’s Protocol, which became a number one New York Times Bestseller. Today, we’ll be discussing her new book, Adrenal Transformation Protocol. Dr. Wentz, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Wentz: Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Ben. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
Dr. Weitz: Great. So since so much of your professional focus was on thyroid, why did you decide to focus on the adrenals in this new book in your new program?
Dr. Wentz: I felt called to really focus on adrenal health because healing my adrenals was part of my thyroid journey. I initially got on thyroid meds, which were helpful, so we want to make sure we’re optimized on T4, T3. That’s a big game changer for people. I got off of gluten and dairy, which was life-changing for me as well, and I recommend that for others with Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism. Sometimes the condition can go completely into remission when we just do these things, but I still struggled with brain fog, fatigue and anxiety, and unrefreshing sleep even though I was sleeping a lot after having made these changes, right?
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Wentz: So I kept hearing the term adrenal fatigue, adrenal fatigue, and being like a skeptical pharmacist, I looked up the term and then I saw that it didn’t exist. It doesn’t exist, and I was like, “Okay, so I don’t have this.” I went about, tried other things, and finally it was like the 15th person that mentioned adrenal fatigue to me and I was like, “Okay, I will give this a try.” And sure enough, I tried the interventions for it and they helped. So I had this thing that didn’t exist and nothing was going to help, even if it did exist. And then the things that these crazy people were recommending. And then I felt so much better. So the brain fog improved. The fatigue was so much better. I could wake up in the morning and be full of energy, and I also had refreshing sleep, and I didn’t need to sleep so much. My anxiety was gone. Haven’t had a panic attack in 10 years, and they used to be a very frequent, unwanted part of my life prior to balancing my adrenals. And it’s like, “I can’t believe it’s been 25 years since Dr. James Wilson was talking about this condition.” And people are still saying, “It doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist.”
I’m like, “Can we please just stop gaslighting the people that are going through these very real symptoms and help them get the help that they need?” In my experience, just about everybody that I’ve worked with, with Hashimoto’s has some degree of adrenal dysfunction where they might have too much cortisol, cortisol at the wrong times of day or not enough cortisol produced. And there’s a way to get into balance from that. It’s not Addison’s disease. It’s not Cushings. It’s not a disease per se. This is a very predictable way that the body responds to stress. And not just people with thyroid issues, but other people who are struggling with all these symptoms. They’re presenting with this as well, and they’re walking around without a diagnosis. They think they’re crazy or lazy or just really anxious, edgy people.
Dr. Weitz: It sort of reminds me of the issue with diabetes, where medical doctors, your blood sugar could go from 80 to 90 to a hundred to 110. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. All of a sudden it hits 125, now you got diabetes. Maybe it was a gradual process where you weren’t handling glucose quite as well as you should have. And if you had recognized it earlier, you could have helped some of these people not end up with frank diabetes.
Dr. Wentz: I mean, yes. And it’s like the same with the thyroid gland. It’s like sometimes the person will have the reference range is 4.5 for TSH, and they’ll have a 4.4. Your thyroid is fine, right?
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Wentz: With really a healthy person should have a TSH somewhere around 0.5 to two if they don’t have a thyroid condition. And with the adrenal glands, it’s the same thing. So you don’t manifest with Addison’s disease until 90% of your adrenal glands have been destroyed. And you can also have other reasons for inadequate cortisol production, and part of it could just be this stress adaptation. So your adrenals may be perfectly healthy. You may not have an autoimmune response against your adrenals, but because your body is overwhelmed by stress, there’s going to be a disconnect between the hypothalamus and the pituitary and the adrenal glands and the hormones they secrete. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. You go enough times and say, “Okay, we’re stressed, we’re stressed, and more cortisol please, more cortisol, please.” Eventually the body is going to adapt and say, “We just can’t have this much cortisol produced at this high level all day every day. We really need to start shutting down production. And this is what happens with receptors when they get overwhelmed by certain messaging, they become desensitized to the message.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. So let’s talk a little more about the connections between thyroid and adrenals and how adrenals affect thyroid and thyroid affects adrenals.
Dr. Wentz: It’s definitely a two-way street. So in my experience, people who have hypothyroidism will generally break down their cortisol slower. So they end up with more cortisol in their body and more cortisol metabolites. It’s a protective mechanism. So the body is like, “Oh, you’re not making enough thyroid hormone? Let’s help you out by keeping cortisol around a little bit more.” And then you end up feeling more edgy and wired, but you get your cortisol kick from the adrenals, which isn’t the best type of energy, but it’s energy, right?
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Wentz: And end up getting a diagnosis of maybe hypothyroidism. You get put on thyroid meds, which can be incredibly helpful if you’re hypothyroid, but they can also uncover a low cortisol issue that maybe you didn’t know when your body was compensating because then your cortisol clearance normalizes. So that means it increases if you had been hypothyroid. And then a person will say, “I felt better at first with the thyroid meds, but then all of a sudden I crashed.” And I’m like, brain fog fatigue, all of that got worse. What is happening? And many times it’s like this uncovered low cortisol state. About 60% of the people that I’ve tested with Hashimoto’s that were symptomatic were actually in the low cortisol state where they had low cortisol all day long, and most of them were on thyroid meds. In this situation, it’s not more thyroid to overcome the fatigue, it’s less support to your adrenals to get back into balance. Now, the other part of the pathway, and I always ask people, what was going on in your life before you got sick? And usually they’ll say, “I was on a period of a lot of stress.” Stress can make us produce a type of thyroid hormone we don’t want. It’s known as reverse T3. Again, this is the body’s feedback loop where. The body is like, “There’s too much of this. We need to slow down this.”
Reverse T3 is the inactive thyroid hormone where that will sit inside of our thyroid receptors and block them instead of activating them. And then this usually goes along with low levels of active T3. And so people will say, “I take thyroid medications that are supposed to be converted to T3. The active hormone, levothyroxine is T4 and the less active thyroid hormone that normally should get converted into T3 in the body, but it doesn’t for a variety of reasons. So people will say, “I’m taking this medication, but it’s just not working.” And sometimes they do better on a natural desiccated thyroid that contains some of the three directly, and that’s because of that stress and cortisol component that drives up the reverse T3 production. This can even happen in people without a thyroid issue. So you can have a perfectly healthy thyroid without the immune system messing with it, but you just have all this cortisol and stress on board, and you’re going to end up with hypothyroid symptoms because of that reverse T3 blocking your thyroid receptors.
This has been a subset of my clients as well as as some friends reaching out to me that said, “Izabella, I have all these symptoms. I know you help people with Hashimoto’s that have these symptoms. I don’t have Hashimoto’s. Right?” But they can definitely have these symptoms and this is where something like a reverse T3 test or testing free T3 would be-
Dr. Weitz: And most of them probably haven’t had a reverse T3 test because that’s not a test that’s typically done.
Dr. Wentz: It’s not typically done. And if a person comes to me with Hashimoto’s, I’m not necessarily going to do it because I’m like, “I already know you have a thyroid problem and I already know you have an adrenal problem,” so let’s not-
Dr. Weitz: Get right to the treatment.
Dr. Wentz: Yeah. Let’s go right to the treatment options. We don’t need to feed the vampires with all this blood, but with a person who maybe has these symptoms, then I’m really looking at what’s going on in your body. And if they were open to doing testing, I would do something like an adrenal saliva test or maybe a Dutch test and some reverse T3. But also in my book, I just talk about the symptoms people can utilize to assess themselves because the testing is not always accessible. Sometimes the functional test can take weeks to get back. And by that time you could have really worked on your health.
Dr. Weitz: Typically, a couple of weeks to get test results back for functional medicine testing.
Dr. Wentz: Right. And the protocol can work in four weeks where within a… I’ve had patients and clients, and I’m sure you’ve had them too, where you give them a test and they’re like, “Yes, I’ll take this test.” And then three months go by and it’s like the test is still sitting at home and it’s collecting dust on a shelf.
Dr. Weitz: For sure. We make those calls all the time. You got to do the test.
Dr. Wentz: Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to give people more of a streamlined approach where they can really get to know their symptoms and learn about what their body is trying to tell them and how to care for themselves to get themselves in the best state. So whether they’re working with a practitioner, hopefully they are, they found somebody really good to work with that can support them. Or even if they’re trying to do things on their own for their own health, a lot of the strategies are safe and effective. We’re not talking about using hormones in my book, we’re really focusing on solid lifestyle things people can do.
Dr. Weitz: Right. I noticed in your book you talk about the relationship between cholesterol and adrenal function. And right now in health, we seem to be focused on trying to drive cholesterol levels as low as possible to stop heart disease and we’re constantly being told that, “That’s fine. There’s not going to be a problem with the brain function or anything else because all those other tissues make whatever cholesterol they need.”
Dr. Wentz: So cholesterol is responsible for making our hormones. And from a pharmacist perspective, it is a category X for women who are pregnant because their body is needing to have hormones, and it can be associated with a lot of damaging effects when we suppress what the cholesterol lowering drugs are. So when we suppress cortisol… Sorry, I’ve been talking about cortisol all day. When we suppress cholesterol production too much, we can potentially suppress the production of other hormones. And it doesn’t happen to everybody, but it can be something to be on the lookout for. The other thing to consider is cholesterol, high cholesterol actually can be a symptom of hypothyroidism and even low T3. So part of how we make hormones out of cholesterol is utilizing thyroid hormones, specifically T3. So getting your thyroid hormone in check and your adrenal glands in check can be a way to optimize your cholesterol levels. It’s like your body can drive up… Your body is like, “Okay, we’re under stress. We need to make more cortisol.” So cholesterol sits at the top of the pyramid and it turns into pregnenolone which is our mother hormone that gets turned into progesterone and cortisol and DHEA and our sex hormones and all these beautiful hormones downstream. But if the body’s like, “I need more cortisol because I’m in a lot of stress,” cholesterol can be gone up. And when we balance that stress response, that need for cortisol, that need for these other hormones, then we can actually help with balancing cholesterol levels as well.
Dr. Weitz: Cool. You talk a lot about helping your body to feel safe in order to heal and how to send safety signals to your body. What’s the importance of this concept?
Dr. Wentz: One of the reasons why people get stuck in this adrenal dysfunction is because their body gets the message that we’re under stress or we’re in the presence of a threat right now. We have these beautiful ancient bodies that respond to modern signs of normal life and they’re still interpreted by our caveman, cavewoman genes. So if we’re doing things like over exercising or overworking to a caveman or a cavewoman, they wouldn’t be doing that. Right? So it gets interpreted as in some cases, as stress. And if we get too many of these stress and threat signals, we shift into that survival mode. We shift into our sympathetic mode where we are in our fight or flight system. We’re in a catabolic state where the body is breaking itself down for fuel rather than being in our parasympathetic state where we are resting, digesting, healing, and thriving. We do need a balance of both. I’m not saying one is good and bad. We do need to spend time in both of these systems, but what can happen when people with adrenal dysfunction, they’re spending more time in that catabolic fight or flight state, rather than having a good balance of breaking your body down and building it back up.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Because the adrenal gland is our major stress gland, and that’s where adrenaline and cortisol comes into play that are secreted by the adrenals?
Dr. Wentz: Exactly.
Dr. Weitz: So let’s talk about the recommendations for how to feel better with adrenal dysfunction. Let’s start with diet. What’s the best nutritional approach?
Dr. Wentz: I really love focusing on a paleo-like diet. So we’re getting rid of the most common inflammatory foods, gluten, dairy, soy, as well as grains because they can be problematic for blood sugar issues. This is a 30-day plan and generally people can introduce some of the foods if they feel okay with it, such as the grains after a time period. But a lot of people do find that they feel significantly better. We’re generally going to be doing more protein and fat than the average person, a bit lower carb throughout the day, maybe some more carbs at night. Carbs can lower cortisol, so that can be helpful for people to getting to sleep. And then we’re also utilizing a lot of nutrient dense foods. One of the issues people can have when they’re in that stress response is they can have trouble digesting foods. So I utilize a lot of smoothies in the morning.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. What about digestive enzymes? I guess that’d be another way to get around that.
Dr. Wentz: Absolutely. It’s a four-week plan that really focuses on kind of a minimalist approach to get the maximum dose of improvement. And that’s those four short weeks. I use sea salt as a way to stimulate digestive enzyme production. But the back of the book also has advanced strategies such as using digestive enzymes or using thiamine to help drive energy production as well as hydrochloric acid production. It depends on the person. There’s so many options for ways to heal the body, and I didn’t want to give people sure too many choices at first, because I know one of the main symptoms of adrenal dysfunction is overwhelm. So I wanted to create a very straightforward and easy to do plan.
Dr. Weitz: Sure.
Dr. Wentz: And the whole second part of the book-
Dr. Weitz: You don’t want to overwhelm them with 20 supplements to take.
Dr. Wentz: Exactly. But I do have a section in the third part of the book on additional things to consider, such as doing more testing or additional deficiencies in what symptoms may indicate that you may need additional support.
Dr. Weitz: Right. You talk about targeted supplements and the supplements that you focus on are adrenal adaptogens, magnesium citrate, saccharomyces boulardii, myo-inositol. There’s adrenal adaptogens are these herbs that can help modulate adrenal and other function in the body, but there are a lot of them. Which ones do you think are the most important?
Dr. Wentz: I list out a few of them in the book, and some of my favorites are Ashwaganda. They can be very, very helpful for people with thyroid issues. They can actually normalize TSH in some cases. So I always recommend checking your thyroid hormone when taking that one. Rhodiola is another one of my favorites. It’s been studied in anxiety and depression. Then there are ones that such as Maca and Shatavari that may be especially helpful for libido issues. So I would say those are some of the more common ones I use. I really like Reishi for people, especially in the evenings. It can be very helpful for giving people a little bit more energy, but also for helping them sleep well at night.
Dr. Weitz: I’m assuming you’re using some formula that contains a combination of these?
Dr. Wentz: Generally, for the average person that’s not sensitive to supplements, I may recommend something that contains adaptogens, B vitamins, and vitamin C in it so that they can have a really kind of just one supplement to take. For nursing moms or people that tend to be more sensitive to supplements, then I might recommend utilizing one adaptogen at a time like Holy Basal or Tulsi tea is a really fantastic adaptogenic herb that can be utilized by nursing moms. Although I always recommend checking in with a midwife or a lactation consultant.
Dr. Weitz: And mag citrate?
Dr. Wentz: This is going to be something that can be incredibly helpful for anxiety, for trouble sleeping at night, for pain in the body, for constipation. And generally, magnesium is involved in so many processes in our body, and it can be helpful for producing neurotransmitters for helping us produce GABA, which is our internal chill pill for helping us produce L-tryptophan so we can rest and sleep better at night. It is something that works so well for attention and cramps in the body.
Dr. Weitz: And then saccharomyces boulardii, so this is a healthy yeast probiotic product.
Dr. Wentz: This is one of my tweaks because a lot of times one of the triggers for getting in that stress response, not a lot of people are aware of, but it’s actually having gut infections. Whenever we’re stressed out, our secretory IGA in our gut is lowered. This is our natural defense layer in the gut. So saccharomyces boulardii helps to raise that natural defense naturally. So then we can overcome these infections that are there. We can become less sensitive to the foods that we’re eating. We’re not as likely to catch infections. It’s helpful for candida. It’s helpful for various protozoa. It’s helpful for clearing out mold out of the body as well, and some pathogenic bacteria.
Dr. Weitz: And then myo-inositol.
Dr. Wentz: Myo-inositol is something that’s been really making the headlines in the last few years.
Dr. Weitz: I typically have always thought of it as something for PCOS.
Dr. Wentz: It has been used in PCOS, and it can be very helpful for that. In recent years, it’s been studied for people with thyroid issues as well. So it’s been shown to normalize TSH levels and get Hashimoto’s antibodies into remission. Now, not everybody, and it’s not going to happen for everybody, but it is such a profound effect that I always recommend testing if you are already taking thyroid meds. Because in some cases, especially in the early cases of hypothyroidism, this can help with normalizing that TSH. It is something that can balance blood sugar, and that’s why it’s so helpful for adrenal issues, which are oftentimes correlated with blood sugar swings. It’s helpful for anxiety. It’s helpful for obsessive compulsive disorder as well. Generally, people will say they take it and they sleep better throughout the night because they’re not having as many blood sugar swings. So this is something that it’s become a recent favorite of mine. And there’s been a lot of incredible studies with all the benefits of this nutrient.
Dr. Weitz: What is the dosage that you like for myo-inositol?
Dr. Wentz: Around 600 milligrams for the adrenal purposes. There’s been doses higher than that, that have been used for things like obsessive compulsive disorder. For the purposes of the program, I’ll use about 600 milligrams. And that’s the dose. 600 to 700 milligrams has been studied in hypothyroidism.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. I know for PCOS, a lot of products have a combination of myo-inositol and D-chiro-inositol.
Dr. Wentz: Absolutely. I have a little bit of a note in my book that talks about utilizing that for PCOS too.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay. Let’s see. You also mentioned L-carnitine.
Dr. Wentz: Yes. Yes. So L-carnitine is a mitochondrial supporting supplement. It is incredibly helpful for people who have brain fog. It’s been studied in thyroid fatigue, about 2,000 milligrams per day or so is what we’re dosing it at. A lot of the people in my program, I’ve had about 3,500 people go through it. We have about a 92% relief improvement in brain fog in just those few-
Dr. Weitz: That’s fantastic.
Dr. Wentz: A lot of people do credit the carnitine for that because what it does, it does a lot of things, but it helps to move fatty acids into our mitochondria. So the mitochondria can produce energy. It helps us remove ammonia from the body. A lot of times we can have ammonia buildup from gut infections, from constipation, from gut dysbiosis, certain gene variations. And ammonia can be incredibly neurotoxic and cause brain fog. Carnitine can help with clearing that out of our bodies.
Dr. Weitz: I listened to your interview with Hyman and that’s the first time I heard about ammonia as being an issue. That’s interesting. In Los Angeles, we not only have chlorine in our water, we have ammonia. It’s chloramine. If we’re drinking tap water and not purifying it like I do, we’re actually drinking ammonia. So I wonder if that could be a big issue as well.
Dr. Wentz: Oh my gosh, I had no idea. I’ll have to look into that. I know it can be generally definitely produced internally, but potentially external sources. I always do recommend filtering water because you never know what’s going to be in your water supply.
Dr. Weitz: You’re right. All the stuff we don’t know about, but that’s when they actually tell us they put in. You talked about mitochondrial support, and I noticed that the acronym of your book is ATP, which I’m sure is not by accident.
Dr. Wentz: Oh yes, absolutely. So ATP is our body’s energy source, body’s energy exchange, how our mitochondria makes energy. Right? So this book is all about transforming your energy, all about transforming your life, creating vitality in your life. It’s a new take on adrenal. So I really focus on a lot of the nutritional aspects, some of the foundations that I’ve taken from old adrenal protocols, but I also have a big piece of mitochondrial support that I utilize. And then transformational, personal growth techniques that really help us rewire that stress response. So we can take all the supplements we want and we can eat a super healthy diet, but if our mind is still stuck in survival mode because of past trauma or some of our wiring then we’re just-
Dr. Weitz: Or if you spend all day on Twitter or in social media.
Dr. Wentz: Or watching the news, right?
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Wentz: You’re going to be constantly getting this source of stress and danger, and that can be just from your own mind or from your own habits. So I really wanted to have a comprehensive plan for people to truly transform their stress response. So I have had adrenal dysfunction three times myself and I don’t want to have it again. A big part part of that has been really transforming my brain function and supporting my body and my mind.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. How can listeners find out more about you, your book, and your programs?
Dr. Wentz: My books are available on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, wherever fine books are sold. And then my website is thyroidpharmacist.com. I have a ABC’s guide for adrenals guide if people go to thyroidpharmacist.com/abc that I’d be happy to share with everybody.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Thank you so much, Izabella.
Dr. Wentz: Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Ben.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would certainly appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five-star ratings and review. That way more people will discover the Rational Wellness Podcast. I wanted to let everybody know that I do have some openings for new patients so I can see you for a functional medicine consultation for specific health issues like gut problems, autoimmune diseases, cardiometabolic conditions, or for an executive health screen, and to help you promote longevity and take a deeper dive into some of those factors that can lead to chronic diseases along the way. And that usually means we’re going to do some more detailed lab work, stool testing, sometimes urine testing, and we’re going to look at a lot more details to get a better picture of your overall health from a preventative functional medicine perspective. So if you’re interested, please call my Santa Monica White Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111 and we can set you up for a new consultation for functional medicine. I’ll talk to everybody next week.
