FHP – Ep. 16 – “Women’s Weight Loss; What’s Different?” feat. Dr. Beth Westie

Transcript

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:00:01] Thank you so much for joining us here on the Fearless Health podcast, I’m your host, Dr. Ann-Marie Barter, and today on the Fearless Health podcast, we are going to be talking to Dr. Beth Westie. We are talking about everything seed cycling, female hormone reproduction everywhere from pms to menopause. We’re talking about how to regulate your hormones with food-based interventions. Beth Westie is the author of The Female Fat Solution.

Intro [00:00:36] Welcome to the Fearless Health podcast with host Dr. Ann-Marie Barter. Dr. Barter is on a mission to help people achieve their health and wellness goals and help men and women live their best lives fearlessly. Dr. Barter is the founder of Alternative Family Medicine and Chiropractic in Denver and Longmont, Colorado.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:00:57] Thank you so much for being on with us today. I’m so excited to have you here.

Dr. Beth Westie [00:01:02] Yay. I am super excited to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:01:06] So I want to hear about your story because it’s super interesting and it’s ebbed and flowed, and I’d love to hear what got you here. Yeah. And tell us about this field per se.

Dr. Beth Westie [00:01:18] Yes. Yeah. So my quick background and story is I was an athlete growing up. I was a three four athlete in high school playing volleyball in college. I actually got invited to play on a couple of pro teams and overseas, not in the U.S. They don’t really have proteins there. But I got invited in Australia and one that toured around Europe, and I turned it down to go to grad school. I just I had a few friends that did that and I was like, That’s not the life I’m looking for. And you know, right? You know that you know that life. I was like, Wow. Like, I my my goal as an athlete was to get it to pay for my school. So I paid for my school and then I was ready to apparently go to grad school and then start my dad. I don’t know my student loan debt, but but, you know, I felt like that was not. That wasn’t the right path for me long term. So I went to grad school, I went to chiropractic school while I was in chiropractic school. I actually got trained in acupuncture, eastern medicine. And that’s what opened up my whole world to a really alternative way of living and health and just started to explore that, which was very new to me and sometimes still is like, sometimes there’s still stuff where I will be doing research. I’ll be learning all these things and I’m like, This sounds crazy. But when I look at it at the Eastern Med. Eastern Medicine model versus the western medicine model, it’s very different. But you know, I feel like there’s a time and a place for so many things. And as long as you know your parameters of how to help people, you can really serve people on a different level that they need. So that’s where all that started for me, I actually had my first two of three kids while I was in school a student. I wouldn’t recommend it for me, although I’m not an easy time. Yeah. And then I graduated starting a business and then, yeah, I graduated, took my board, passed my board, started a business and then found out I was pregnant again. And that was all within four months. So, yeah, and I was like, Oh God, I said this all along. And that’s super interesting for for my youngest since she was actually, I’m a high risk person, a High-Risk pregnancy person, and she was actually born almost two months early. So she was, yeah, so preemie in the nick you for 23 days. So long a long time, she and she was healthy, likes to find tune early, so had to gain enough weight to go home and everything. But that was sort of the beginning of the end of where I was. You know, at in my life in terms of the drive mode, right? I was a driver in college, I was a driver all the way through grad school. I didn’t let anything stop me, you know, drive, drive, drive to opening a clinic and all the way through pregnancy. And then all of a sudden I had this third baby, tiny baby and I was in the nick. You, you know, still trying to work from the, you know, Nick, you sitting there trying to schedule stuff and do things on my laptop, you know, just just a crazy time, but and then going back to work everything else. And you know, I really I try to just keep going with everything because, you know, business is hard, right? It’s tough to keep things going as healthy as I was trying to be. I was still stressed and I still wasn’t sleeping enough, and I definitely wasn’t eating enough or fueling my body correctly. And I started getting ovarian cysts. Really bad ovarian cysts and the one sided healed, you know, from my last infection and everything else, and I went kind of back in the full swing of things. I started getting these cysts every month and that happened for over a year and a half, and they would be so bad that every month it would burst. Put me on the floor. It was awful, awful, awful, awful. And you know, for those of you that have had this, you know how bad it is. You know how much pain you can be in with it. So I was really frustrated, of course, you know, when you’re a health practitioner of your friends or health practitioners. So I was looking to everybody else for help. What do I do? What do I? This is happening. How do I? How do we fix this? And nobody like, Oh, you take the supplement, take that supplement, take this, take that. And I was like, OK, great doing it. I’ve taken a basket of supplements at one point over 35 every day. Just trying to this fish oil or this vitamin D and vitamin A together is going to be the thing that does it. And I was like, All right. Yet no one was really asking me some of the basic things about how how’s your life going? How’s your health going? How are you feeling now? I’m exhausted and stressed out, and I’m running myself ragged, of course. But I mean, I just kept going and kept pushing. And then my husband finally got really worried about me, put me in the car, drove me into the E.R. when one of my bursts and I couldn’t get off the bathroom floor. And they were like, Well, you know, here’s your birth control, and here’s a fake ID. That’s how you’re going to fix this. And I was like, that’s it, so the Opry, and I thought that they doped up the rest of my life like that was because I was like, This is not, you know, my my personal struggle with just being put back on birth control that I have side effects from it. I don’t like it. I don’t need it. You know, my husband had a vasectomy, so we’re good there. I don’t, you know, I’d prefer not to be on it, but they’re like, Oh, this is what’s going to regulate your cycle so you don’t have this anymore. And then when you do have a set, you just need to be on Vicodin until the pain goes away. And it’s like. I can’t drive, I can’t take care of my kids when I’m on bike it in. That’s not a that’s not a good or safe idea. And they’re like, Well, this is just what’s going to help with the pain and this is what you’re you’re in for your life. So it didn’t like that, didn’t jive, right? I didn’t didn’t jive with who I was or what I wanted to look for, so I started really looking into alternative ways, alternative things. I had done some continuing ad with fertility, work for women, fertility work and acupuncture and everything like that. And what I found was that in the in the eastern medicine world, when you know you can do fertility acupuncture treatments and they’re different each week for your hormones because your hormones are different each week. And I was like, Oh my gosh, what can I do more about this? What can I dove into more about that? And then I just sort of expanded it to my entire diet, like shifting and changing my all everything I was eating each week of the month to match with hormones. And it helped get rid of my system. I haven’t had one. You know, and my youngest is nine now nine and a half now. So eight years, at least eight years, I haven’t had them. And it’s really been through foods and things that that has been able to do that to align with with my hormones, to help my body do what it’s designed to do and fuel it properly and give it more nutrient versus just trying to, you know, I don’t know, slap a Band-Aid on it. And not that the supplements that I was taking were bad. It was like supplements are just that. They’re supposed to be a supplement to what you’re doing. And I feel like none of them got the opportunity to actually do anything because the foundation of my health was so. Wrecked is a hot garbage with stress and sleep, and everything that wasn’t wasn’t going well, so yeah, so that’s that’s kind of a long and short version of my of my story about how I got started. I’m doing what I do now and you know, I work with I work with patients in my own clinic for a while doing this until I got to a point because I had my own clinic for almost seven years before I sold it to do what I do now, which is, you know, write books and speak and you know, and podcasts and everything to really help spread the message of what women can do more with regular foods, with other things in alignment with their hormones and their cycle just to either get healthier or just stay in a healthier pattern. And and also just more information, because I don’t know if women know enough about their how their bodies work.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:09:59] Right, right. Did you change your lifestyle at all other than the foods? Did you just totally revamp your lifestyle as well?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:10:10] So before you know, it’s funny, before I started grad school, you and this was something that, of course, hindsight is 20 20. And knowing what I know now, you know about health and everything. Yeah, I, you know, I look back. I was always a sick kid. I was always sick. I was, I mean, I got pneumonia. Or like every other year, I had mono twice. I got it and then got a relapse of it the next year when I was in middle school. I, you know, it was I always was sick. I always had strep. I always had bronchitis. I always had these illnesses, I was always on antibiotics growing up. And then, of course, I was an athlete and I’m super tall. I’m six to shoot, so I

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:10:57] don’t like that big. I know you’re very small.

Dr. Beth Westie [00:11:04] But you know, I went through such bad growing pains and it’s so funny. Oh my middle. She’s 11 right now, and she was like mom and she hurts. My knee hurts really bad. And she was pointing right to her, you know, to be able to voracity. You know that I would, Slaughter says. And she was like, It hurt so bad. And I was like, Oh, babe. Growing pains. I’m so sorry. I would like be my me. I still have my bump there from when I was 30. You’re welcome.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:11:33] All right.

Dr. Beth Westie [00:11:35] All right. But I had such bad growing pains growing up that I was on for ad for ibuprofen every four hours. Pretty much all day. I mean, that was that was what they told you to take. I used to get that big jumbo size of ibuprofen and I would keep it in my, my bag, my my gym bag, whatever it was, I had one for my softball bag. I had one for my volleyball bag, one for my basketball bag, one for my track bag. All of them for every four hours, all day. But Candy didn’t even need water to swallow them and just popped them in like candy. Yeah. Uh-Huh. So so I’m thinking about all this stuff. I mean, imagine what my gut lining was like. Yeah, awful, right? And and then I was sick all the time, right? Yup. And then I was sick in college a lot. I remember getting. Yeah. Just having, like Horrible. I remember having tonsillitis, I remember having all these other things and then it wasn’t until I started chiropractic school and all of a sudden I was reading all these different things and reading these articles and looking at all this different information and different types of books that were around. And I was like, Oh my gosh, all these stomach problems, I have all these other things like this, all like when it lists off these things for like gluten intolerance, I was like, That’s me. Those told me so. So the only thing dietary wise that I did that was a big. Shift was actually before I even ever got pregnant because I went gluten free because I did not feel good. I had a lot of digestive issues, like if I ate salad, it would be a salad with like chewed up leaves and the toilet like that was. I wasn’t digesting and processing my food. I was not. I was not feeling well for months and then I went gluten free and it literally changed my life and I never went back. And so that was I actually think, you know, like when I when I put all these pieces together for how sick I was, everything else and I stopped taking all the ibuprofen. I stopped eating gluten. I started, you know, just taking more fish oils and doing all that stuff. It was about a year after that that I got pregnant. So that’s right. Right. But I was like, Oh my gosh. Okay, yup, here we oh look. My body got healthier and then I got pregnant. Oh yeah. So I made that. That was a big change for me, you know? And this was, I mean, my son is now 13, so this was 15 years ago. Fifteen years ago, nobody knew what gluten free was.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:14:16] Yeah, I thought I was with you at that time. Yeah, yeah, it was like a menu.

Dr. Beth Westie [00:14:21] And they’d be like, You have to pay for your food here. I’d be like, No, I know you got free, gluten free. I don’t want to. I’m not asking you for free food, sir. I’m here to pay for a meal at your restaurant. I’m just wondering if I can eat it.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:14:33] Yeah, that sounds about right because I started my journey about 20 years ago, and that’s when it’s like the low fat craze. And I’m over there with this steak and vegetables like, oh my god, steak and vegetables. How many times a day because I was starving to, I mean, you, you live it like you walk through it. So when you are having all the major cysts and you are running a very busy clinic and and doing all of that? Yeah. Did you I mean, how much do you think the stress was contributing to the cyst to the ovarian since you were that were rupturing every single month?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:15:11] Yeah. I want to say it was at least 50 percent, if not more. I mean, I don’t think I did the right things postpartum to help my body really heal, right? Like, I didn’t really take time off. I didn’t really, you know what I mean? So and I think that and I went through. You know, a pregnancy. And then I gave birth and then I had thyroid issues as well postpartum thyroiditis. So fun. So then I went through a bunch of things to help my thyroid. And that was, I think, to I wanted to breastfeed, so I had to be on some type of thyroid support to help. Otherwise, my milk production would stop. So then I would do that, and I want to be done breastfeeding. I would when I start weaning off the thyroid and then I got pregnant again, there again. None of this is planned, right? Look how life goes sometimes. And then I got pregnant again and they were like, You have to stay on the thyroid support because otherwise the baby could not be developed properly. I was like, Oh, shoot! OK. So I stayed on that. So I was on thyroid medication and still had thyroid problems after each pregnancy. But after my last I was, I was like, I’m done with this. I’m, you know, I’m not going to be on this anymore. And so they started, though, before I started weaning off of the thyroid. It was a really I think my body was in such a depleted state to start with. And then it was the stress on top of it. So if I feel like if I wasn’t so depleted, maybe not, maybe it wouldn’t have been as bad, but mainly it was. It was the stress to the stress of everything of life, of having a preemie, a two year old, a four year old at home, not sleeping and then running myself ragged with 70 hour weeks. You know,

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:17:00] definitely. And at. So you started doing seed cycling, I’m assuming, is how you regulated their hormones, can you talk about what that is?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:17:13] Yeah, yeah. So seed cycling is a great place for people to start. My book that I have out is actually extends into all of your foods. You like the tone of all the foods that you eat, but seed cycling is a great place for people to start because it’s it’s simple, it’s easy to do and and it does make a big impact on your hormones. So when we’re looking at, you know what it is, what what that is, how that works, all that stuff. Simple explanation is of your 28 day cycle. The first half of it, the days one through 14 day one being the first day of your period, the days one through 14. That is going to be the phase that your body’s higher in estrogen and a 15 through twenty eight, your body is higher and progesterone. So when we look at those and seed cycling is just matching seed to estrogen, seeds to progesterone. So those different phases or the luteal and follicular phases, no one, you know, knowing no one other than medical people know what that is, really. So I don’t use the a lot but days one through 14, the estrogen phase, it’s the two seeds are pumpkin seed and flax seed, and it’s just one tablespoon a day of each of them. And it’s best if they’re raw, you know, organic seed, you can add them to anything. You can add them to a salad, you can add them to a smoothie or something like that. I like to grind them and add them to my shake in the morning. Super quick and simple really takes no time to do, and it makes a really big impact. And then when you flip over and you ovulate and you go through day fifteen through twenty eight of your cycle, the progesterone phase, then the seed that you use are sesame and sunflower seeds. So again, same thing. One tablespoon of each raw organic seeds, because they hold the most nutrient when you roast the seed and sort of take some of that fresh nutrient out that actually helps you work with your system the most. But that’s it. Yeah. And the only thing that’s a little weird is that I mean, some people, I eat sunflower seeds, those are good. Grape sesame seeds are a little more. Bitter. Oh, you know, they’re a little different flavor. But again, I like to my favorite way, so I still grind them and put them in my morning shake. And there you go. Super easy to add in.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:19:45] So if somebody has maybe a reaction to one of those seeds or good sensitivity tests are positive. What do you recommend doing in that situation?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:19:55] Yeah. So the premise of the seed cycling and everything and how it works in the body is a little bit different. So there’s specific nutrients. In the pumpkin and blacks that work with estrogen and unspecific nutrients in the sesame and sunflower that work with progesterone. So they’re they’re designed to really help produce and maintain the correct amount of those hormones in your body. Naturally, just help your system work better on that pattern. And when you’re eating in a different pattern, shifting your nutrients throughout the month, you’re matching and helping your body support that natural pattern it should be in. Because we, you know, our bodies aren’t the same every day our bodies go through that shift in ebb and flow throughout the month, so sort of leaning into how our bodies do that. So when you have so if somebody is allergic to pumpkin, I’ve had this Oh my god, I’m allergic to pumpkin. I can have everything else, but I’m allergic to pumpkin. How do I do that? You can still have a flaxseed and still have the other things, even if you do just one seed. It will still benefit you. It might take a little longer for you to notice the full effects of it, but you’re still going to have the benefits of it, for sure. For sure.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:21:07] And how long do you think it takes to notice some of the full effects?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:21:12] So this is something that’s super fun for people because the hardest thing about it is that you do have to be consistent, you know, you’re only taking it for two weeks at a time. Right? So if you only take it every other day, are you going to notice an amazing effect from it? Really quick? Probably not, right? But if you’re taking it at least 12 or 13 days of those 14 and then the next 14 days again, 12 or 13 days out of that, you’re doing it like 90, 95 percent of the time you’re doing your speed cycling. Most women will notice a quicker result with it, a quicker turnaround with it. And I have had women. And then it depends on what you’re what you’re working with. It depends on. Kind of where you’re at right, in terms of your your overall health, I guess a lot of girls, you know, if they’re like, Oh, I just have really bad PMMA, my cycles are terrible and I have really, really bad PMS. They start cycling and in, you know, anywhere from four to eight weeks, they’ll be like, This is crazy. This is so great. My cycle has been spot on. My PMS is diminished by 50 percent. It’s not like gone totally, but so much better and more manageable. I’m feeling way better. This is so great. And so it’s, you know, that’s to me. That’s a pretty fast turnaround to have a hormonal impact, you know, anywhere from four to eight weeks. And that difference actually can depend on, you know, how bad it is to begin. How long was this going on? Are you twenty five and having issues or are you forty two and having the same issues for the past 42 years? You know,

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:22:50] does this help going into perimenopause?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:22:54] Yeah. Yes. You know, it’s crazy, and this is more of an eastern medicine process on it is that women here were we’re not educated on menopause other than, oh, you don’t have a period anymore. There you go. Perimenopause, it’s all over the place. Who knows? Who knows what’s happening, right? But it’s insane how being on some type of pattern or helping your body with that regulation, it helps women decrease hot flashes of time a ton a ton of time. I can’t tell you how many perimenopausal women I’ve even seen articles on it where they talk about. One of the biggest things they’ve done for hot flashes and things is seen cycling, which sometimes women are like, Yeah, I have a period every other month. I don’t really know blah blah blah, but it just works. Yeah.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:23:42] And you know, when you’re looking into menopause, for example, you know, all hormones are low, you know, you’re not functioning anymore, et cetera. But you know, women really struggle because they want to have a some sort of libido still left. They don’t want to have vaginal atrophy, vaginal dryness and all the other things and things that come along with menopause, especially sleep disturbances, you know, weight gain. Have you seen any improvement in keeping the hormones that kind of a just a very low level, obviously not pulling somebody out of menopause, but have you seen any improvement with those symptoms?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:24:22] Yes. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it’s so funny, you know, so there’s a gal, oh, she’s been so much fun to work with, so went through menopause. And in her process of going through menopause, she just had a time in her life. She was under a ton of stress, a ton of stress and so interesting so that she went. This was like three or four years for her. This really tough time job was changing all this stuff and and going through menopause. At the same time, her hair was always curly. Right? So she was like, You know, I went through that and it was terrible. But I think I’m beyond it now, all that stuff. But the weird thing is, is that I have curly hair I used to and my hair isn’t curly anymore. My hair isn’t curly anymore. I don’t understand. Why know that can happen with women, you know, especially, you know, through pregnancy, things like that. It’s like the hormone level shifts and changes. And it’s. The way I describe it is like the, you know, being pregnant, that hormone, you know, things get leached from your body, right for the baby. But even going through menopause, if your body is under a lot of stress, it reacts differently to it. So again, that everything can get leached from your system. So for her, one of the things that showed up was her hair just wasn’t curly. It just didn’t have that curl anymore. And after it was at the six week mark going through working with cycling and everything for her. And, you know, we were working on other nutritional things as well, you know, cleaning up some stuff, you know, not not drinking diet pop every day. She she sent me this email and was like, OK, I don’t want to sound crazy, but my hair’s curly this morning. I think it’s a fluke. I think it’s totally random or whatever. Have you ever heard of this before? Because it’s kind of freaking me out a little bit, and I said, No, that’s that can be a thing. Let’s just see how it is over the next week or so. Does it say curly baby is really humid today? I don’t know. You know, her hair is curly. She said curly like it was before she even had kids curly. Yeah. So so that menopausal thing, you know? Yes, the body does shift and change. And not to say that, you know, everything’s going to go back, but sometimes it’s just those those seeds, those those nutrients that your body still needs, even though you’re not having that same pattern that you were having before you went into menopause. It’s amazing what your body can do when it gets better nutrients. Yeah, yeah. That’s just that was one of the most fun thing that’s happened in the past six months and working with people, it’s awesome.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:27:00] I think you’ve made a couple points about stress and stress being related to email hormones. And I think that’s a really important point for listeners to understand about how the stress depletes the hormones. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:27:22] Yeah. Yes. And this is something that’s actually a little bit split in the female hormone world. There are some that will say absolutely if you have higher cortisol levels, if you’re getting into adrenal fatigue, it will literally pull out the progesterone and throw your cycle up. Throw everything off, make things ten times worse. If you’re in menopause, pick up that fat storage, for sure. And then there’s other people who say, No, no, the cortisol doesn’t have a direct pathway connection with the progesterone, et cetera. When you come at it from an eastern medicine viewpoint, stress and too much stress, it just again it’s depleting for the system and your body doesn’t have the resources then to help support regular hormonal function and whatever stage of life you’re in. So absolutely, the amount of stress that we’re under, it impacts everything so much more than we think. And the hard thing that I think for people when it comes to stress is that it’s not something you can see, you know, like you get a cut, you get you can see how long is the cut, how deep is it? Do you need stitches or a Band-Aid? You know, it’s very clear, right? Are you bleeding a lot or a little bit, you know, very easy to see when we’re looking at stress? How do you measure it? How can you tell, right? Because you can look fine from the outside, right? But how do you know, you know, and then when you can, everybody does the thing too or you compare. My cup of stress might be heavier than your cup of stress or right or ends. And then we will look at people in their lifetime and everything else. If you have old traumas, old things that you know, your body gets triggered that much more easily in terms of the stress that you’re carrying. So if you had a tough childhood, if you had a terrible marriage in your early twenties or something, that even if you got out of it as you age and you have a stressful time at work, it can trigger things in your body to react stronger to that stress and you think you are. The way I describe it is that a lot of women will. We’ll think about, Oh, it’s not that bad or it’s just this one thing or, oh yeah, you know, it was just a little bit more stress. And I’m like, Yeah, but you’ve been at 99 this whole time. You’ve been at 99 for years. And just because you uptake by one to 100, you know that. Oh, it’s just it’s just a little bit more. Yeah, but you’ve been resting at ninety nine, you know, or you should be way lower than that in terms of stress. You know what I mean?

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:29:51] I mean, I think at the end of the day, I mean, your body doesn’t really want to get pregnant and have a baby if your stress levels at ninety nine, I mean, it’s trying to use its resources to put out all the rest of the fires going on in your system, as well as, you know, pumping out cortisol to manage your stress, right? So I mean, I think I think it’s just I just don’t think we’re in a place where we want to reproduce. I think our bodies know better that it needs to use its resources somewhere else, like fixing the thyroid or fixing the gut or dealing with that infection or, you know, fixing that environmental exposure, whatever it is. I think I think our bodies are so incredibly smart to manage it, but they definitely need some support on the hormone front. And that’s what’s going on. Yes. And so awesome. Do you have tips of things that the listeners can do to really get their health back in order?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:30:51] Yes. Yeah. You know, I always tell people to start with their Whole Foods first. And as much as you want to add stuff in, the more effective thing is to actually take out what’s going to make the biggest impact if you’re going to take, you know, we’re also busy. We’re all on the go. We’ve got so many things we’re dealing with and it is easier and it is human nature to be like, Oh, look at this, this supplement, this thing, I’m going to add this and that are the first steps. If you’re wanting to make a positive change, really is taking things out. First, get rid of the garbage. Right? If you want to clean your house, what do you do to get rid of all the garbage first? That’s the first step before you bring in and start adding new things to it because they were trying to build on a good foundation. But there’s still a lot of garbage floating around there. It’s not going to be a healthy, strong foundation. Got to got to quit. Quit with you. Artificial sweeteners quit with the artificial ingredients. All that stuff. It destroys your gut health. You know, we all work so hard, you know? So funny. I had a friend the other day. Good Lord, I love my friends and I try super hard not to be like, Oh my God, what do you think? But it’s so funny. We were meeting in the morning and here she is, and she’s got her little thing, a supplements, and she’s like, Oh yeah, I got this new probiotic. It’s so good. And then she’s chugging on this drink that’s just like fake, you know, fake sugars, fake stuff. And I was like, OK, but you’re taking a probiotic. I was like, You realize what you’re drinking is just killing all the bacteria like, that’s not all like, so you to waste your money like, Oh my god, I didn’t realize it. It’s like, I know this doesn’t got natural caffeine in it. I was like, OK, just natural caffeine doesn’t mean it’s good for you. So it is, you know, it’s so hard sometimes to know and read all the labels and everything else. But that’s that’s the best place to start, you know? But you’re absolutely right. If we’re under that stress that everything else when you said trying to get pregnant, there’s a lot of women that are struggle with their hormones and they wonder, wonder, wonder why they’re looking for what’s this thing that I can add in? But it’s really taking the crap away.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:33:08] Yeah, I think, you know, you make a really important point. Instagram and Facebook are powerful marketing tools. They’re super powerful and it’s, you know, it’s funny. It’s funny to listen or to read the back of the ingredients and be like, OK, well, this is a multi or actually, this isn’t a multi that you need just based on what the viral composition is or. But it’s so powerful marketing that you think you need it or and I think it’s important maybe not to fall subject to that, you know? Yeah. And and I think that maybe that happened to your friend. I just see that day in and day out. And I mean, as a comment on a side note, I did a I did a talk one time and I said in the talk that, you know, people that take tons and tons of supplements, they’re like, Oh, I’m going to take this for my heart, I’m going to take this for my brain. So I need this. And when they come in with a box of supplements, they are generally the sickest people I see. Period, end of story. And I mean, that was

Dr. Beth Westie [00:34:18] exactly horrific, Seth wouldn’t couldn’t do anything. And I was over 35 supplement. It would take me over an hour every day to take my supplement. Yeah, mean that was that was me.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:34:30] No, I mean, I definitely think there’s a there’s there’s a differentiation, right? Iki who has himself or a doctor has a fool for a doctor. Sometimes there are times that you have to take more, right? And sometimes there are times I know, right? And then sometimes there are times that they’re actually not. Doing doing your your system justice or you don’t need them or for whatever reason, their specialized testing to know like what you take or what’s going on. But I yeah, I see that so commonly that when somebody comes in with a huge box of supplements, I’m like, Oh, no, I was like, No, I have my work cut out for me. No.

Dr. Beth Westie [00:35:15] Oh, we’ve got to start over. I know, I know you want to put the work in because that huge box of stuff you. But that’s not the right thing, but you’re totally right. You’re totally right. The Facebook, Instagram. All these things. And it’s these little snippets that make it seem easy. It’s these little snippets that make it seem like, Oh, look, you’re so close. Just take this one more thing. Mm hmm.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:35:38] It’s it’s powerful. It’s interesting, too. You know, when I talk to people and they’ll bring up a topic and I’m just like, Have you listened to my podcasts on this? Like, I have like information from top experts on this in these particular fields, like why wouldn’t why? Why would we don’t know who’s behind that marketing? This person is then legitimized with a book or backed up studies or whatever else. It’s interesting, but anyway, powerful,

Dr. Beth Westie [00:36:04] powerful marketing is what you say about that. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Good marketing doesn’t mean it’s good health.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:36:14] So maybe tearing it down and really taking a good look at what’s going on and then going from there is what?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:36:20] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I’m a huge believer in your health being individualized. Mm hmm. I think that’s where we really have gone wrong with a lot of things. It’s very cookie cutter, you know, with everything, oh, you don’t feel good or you’re tired. Here’s these things. It’s like, Well, you know, OK, generally, yes, but you mean you really got to look deeper all the time and really figure out and uncover and unearth the right things for that person. Because, you know, when you get them on the right and you know, when you get people on the right stuff, their body responds and it responds really well. And it’s unlike anything else, whereas they could be spending years trying the wrong things and getting nowhere.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:37:04] So right. Awesome. Well, where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?

Dr. Beth Westie [00:37:12] Yeah, yeah. So I am all over the interwebs. Facebook, Instagram and website are all Dr. Beth Wasfi, the Typekit in YouTube as well. My YouTube channel. I do a lot of video, you know, educating on women’s hormones specifically. And that’s just Dr. Beth Leslie Typekit into YouTube, and you can subscribe and stay updated and get all my archived videos there. And then I have a podcast as well, which is the Female Health Solution podcast. And that’s, you know, I love I love my podcast because it’s my one place where I can really, you know, diversify in terms of my message for people. So yes, yeah, that’s those are all the places that you can find a lot of info. Yeah.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:37:58] Well, thank you so much for being on here today and sharing all of your knowledge and information.

Dr. Beth Westie [00:38:03] Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This has been super fun.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter [00:38:06] Awesome. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed learning with us today, please give us a five star review. Comments like and share our podcast with your friends and family. As always, if you’d like to learn more information about today’s guest, please head over to Fearless Health podcast Dot Com for links to their site and other educational resources.