Today on the Gut Health Reset Podcast, we are discussing how alcohol affects your gut health in unexpected ways with Dr. Brooke Scheller! Most people are aware that drinking alcohol can have negative consequences for their health, but many are unaware of the specific ways in which it can damage their bodies. Drinking alcohol can hurt your body’s microbiome, the collection of beneficial bacteria that live in your gut. This can lead to gut permeability, or “leaky gut,” which allows undigested food particles and toxins to enter the bloodstream, leading to inflammation and other issues. Finally, alcohol consumption can trigger an immune response in the gut, which can worsen autoimmune symptoms. For all these reasons, it is important to be mindful of how much alcohol you consume, and why abstaining from alcohol or limiting intake to moderate levels is essential for maintaining a healthy gut microbiome.

 

In today’s episode, we will answer these questions:

– Why should you cut alcohol out of your diet?

– How can wine trigger acid reflux?

– What happens to the microbiome when you’re consuming a lot of alcohol?

– How can alcohol affect autoimmune diseases?

– What steps can you take to change your relationship with alcohol?

– Where can you find useful, non-alcoholic drink recipes?

– And more!

 

Still want to learn more? Schedule with Dr. Barter today!

 

Recommended Products From Today’s Show

Sugar Cravings Support

Sugar Craving Support Kit

 

About Dr. Brooke Scheller:

Dr. Brooke Scheller is a Doctor of Clinical Nutrition, Certified Nutrition Specialist and expert in nutrition for alcohol use by impacting gut and brain health. She combines her clinical background with a passion for health-tech and innovation in the food, supplement and personalized wellness industry. Dr. Brooke is a leader in the space, pioneering the understanding of how alcohol impacts the gut, our nutritional pathways, and the brain through nutrient deficiencies.

Dr. Brooke is also the founder of Condition Nutrition, a nutritional consultancy that works with startup organizations and has worked with both individuals and organizations to build nutrition protocols that have helped millions of individuals eat better and integrate better nutrition into their lifestyles.

Follow Dr. Brooke on Instagram @drbrookescheller

Her website: https://brookescheller.com/ 

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Dr. Ann-Marie Barter is a Functional Medicine and Chiropractic Doctor at Alternative Family Medicine & Chiropractic. She is the clinic founder of Alternative Family Medicine & Chiropractic that has two offices: one in Longmont and one in Denver. They treat an array of health conditions overlooked or under-treated by conventional medicine, called the “grey zone”. https://altfammed.com/

https://drannmariebarter.com/

*As always, this podcast is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any condition and is for information purposes only. Please consult with your healthcare professional before making any changes to your current lifestyle.*

 

Transcription:

Dr. Brooke Scheller: There’s a lot that we’re doing from a mental health perspective. We’re addressing kind of traumas and these different, you know, neurological patterns that might cause us to drink. But when I really started diving into the work and thinking about it more, I recognized that there was such an opportunity for us to understand what’s going on biochemically, what’s contributing to that. Those reasons that we want to drink and why it might be more difficult for us to cut back and then how we might be able to use nutrition supplementation and again, those functional medicine principles to actually help us get sober or change our relationship with alcohol and make it easier for that to last as a habit or a lifestyle change for us.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Intro: Are you struggling with bloating, gas, constipation and fatigue but don’t know what’s causing these problems? The Gut Health Reset Podcast with Dr. Ann-Marie Barter dives deep into the root causes behind these issues that start in the gut. This podcast will give you the knowledge you need to heal your gut and reset your health.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Today on the Gut Health Reset Podcast we are covering how your alcohol habit could be played into your acid reflux, how alcohol can be making it get permeability and autoimmune symptoms worse. How alcohol causes gut imbalances that lead to cravings, making it so challenging to quit. And how to reset your gut. After years of drinking. Thank you so much for joining us here today on the Gut Health Reset Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ann-Marie Barter and today I’m really excited about our special guest. Her name is Dr. Brooke Scheller. She’s a doctor of clinical nutrition and a certified nutrition specialist. And in New York City, she specializes in nutrition and functional medicine practices to help change your relationship with alcohol, kill your body from damages of long term drinking and addresses, chronic health conditions and concerns from long term drinking. Hey, Dr. Brooke, thank you so much for being here. It is awesome to have you on the podcast. I’m super excited to talk about what you’re going to go into today. Yeah.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here and have been listening to some of the other episodes and really excited to dove into the topic today.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Awesome. So you really focus on working with alcohol and cutting an alcohol out, which actually tends to be a pretty weak point for most people. And a lot of people do overconsume alcohol. Why did you start to focus on this aspect? Yeah.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: So my background in as a doctor of clinical nutrition, I worked in clinical practice for several years doing work similar to you, doctor. And so, you know, working with patients, doing functional testing and diving into the gut and using supplements and things along those lines. I about five years ago transitioned out of clinical practice and actually started working in the startup world for a food company. And, you know, my history around drinking, I was always a big drinker. I was always around people who were drinking. I was always friends with the drinkers. And even when I was working in clinical practice, had a lot of patients who drank on a regular basis, and they would often be people who would be willing to take all the supplements to make all of the changes to their diet. But they didn’t necessarily want to make changes to their alcohol intake because that was something that they used for stress. They used for, you know, when they’re around friends in different social settings and they didn’t necessarily realize how much it may have been affecting their health. So my story, after kind of transitioning out of clinical practice, going into more of that start up fast paced living in New York City where all my drinking can continue to escalate. And so last year, last June, I got sober and recently celebrated 13 months, which has been exciting and it’s really been thank you, really been a life changing experience for me personally but also professionally. So, you know, having this knowledge in nutrition and functional medicine and really that deep understanding of biochemistry when I actually leading up to getting sober, I had the opportunity to author a textbook chapter in a textbook on complementary approaches to substance use disorders. So while my drinking was kind of getting to its worst point, I was actually working on a chapter on using nutrition and supplements to change your relationship with alcohol and other substances. So after ironically, I ended up getting sober the same month that that book was published, and after I kind of got through the fog of initially cutting out alcohol and initially kind of changing my lifestyle and shifting my habits a little bit, I started to realize that in the sobriety space, whether you’re looking to get totally sober or whether you feel like you’re drinking is, you know, causing problems in your life, or even if you’re someone who’s just in this kind of sober, curious realm where you’re kind of interested in what it would be like to cut back or what it would be like to start to live life with less alcohol. There’s a lot that we’re doing from a mental health perspective. We’re addressing kind of traumas and these different, you know, neurological patterns that might cause us to drink. But when I really started diving into the work and thinking about it more, I recognized that there was such an opportunity for us to understand what’s going on biochemically, what’s contributing to that, those reasons that we want to drink, and why it might be more difficult for us to cut back and then how we might be able to use nutrition supplementation and again, those functional medicine principles to actually help us get sober or change our relationship with alcohol and make it easier for that to last as a habit or a lifestyle change for us.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Well, thanks for sharing your story. And let’s dove in to what maybe, for example, wine could be doing to create something like acid reflux.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. So, you know, alcohol in general is it’s a toxin. So it’s very disruptive to our system. And a lot of times we think that when we experience symptoms like a hangover, for example, that there are just these kind of unnecessary symptoms that we don’t want to experience, but we’re not necessarily realizing how detrimental that might be for things like our gut, for things like our brain health, for things like our liver, and how our liver is processing things like hormones and cholesterols and all of those things we’re looking to balance. Right. And so wine is one that, you know, all alcohol is going to be disruptive to the lining of the gut or the lining of the stomach. And part of that is because this is a big part of where the alcohol is absorbed. So when our stomach is focusing on absorbing alcohol and metabolizing alcohol, it’s going to have an impact on not only our stomach acid levels, but also our stomach and our digestive enzymes. Right. So those are going to be impacted when we’re putting a lot of alcohol in the system. So part of that can be the reason as to why we might experience things like reflux or those upward type of symptoms. But alcohol can also be very detrimental when we start to think about the remainder of the gut and thinking about things like our microbiome, intestinal permeability or leaky gut and can really be disruptive throughout the entire system as it relates to gut or digestive health.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: So what happens to the microbiome when you’re consuming a lot of alcohol or wine?

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah, so it’s pretty well studied at this point that alcohol changes the effect of the microbiome. So we’re going to start to see a decrease in those probiotic bacteria and we’re going to see start to see an increase in some of that negative or harmful bacteria when that starts to happen. I know as you speak frequently about on your podcast how important the microbiome is in things like, you know, not only how this affects our digestion and alleviates things like constipation, but talking about how our brain is affected and how we might experience things like anxiety or depression, how our energy levels are affected, our hormones, our skin health, really the whole gamut. And the microbiome plays such a critical role in how we start to desire or crave different types of foods like sugar, carbs and also alcohol. So there’s this really interesting research study that shows that certain microbes actually feed off of alcohol. And so similarly to something like sugar, when we have overgrowth of these type of bacteria, we can also they could be part of the reason why we might be craving alcohol as well. So when we drink on a regular or really a long term frequent basis, we’re manipulating the gut in a way that is contributing to the reasons why we continue to crave this, in addition to all of those other negative symptoms that might occur with an imbalanced microbiome.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Great. And you also have said that alcohol will affect autoimmune diseases as well. Can you maybe go into that a little bit?

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. So this really gets into talking about intestinal permeability or what people often know as leaky gut. So some of the research shows that even a single alcoholic beverage can start to degrade the lining of the intestinal wall. So when we start to think about those healthy cells and what makes up a healthy gut lining when we start to put alcohol into the system, it’s really disruptive to what we call those tight junctions. And when this happens, especially over a long term basis, we start to have that degradation or that what we call intestinal permeability, where the lining of the gut starts to become leaky. We start to have different types of bacteria or proteins and things, leaving the gut that are supposed to stay in the gut and getting into the bloodstream. And when this happens there, it’s part of the mechanism as to how autoimmune disease can start to occur. So this is anything from your Hashimoto’s thyroiditis? So the autoimmune thyroid disorder, I see a ton of people with long term alcohol use having developing Hashimoto’s at a certain point. These are also things like rheumatoid arthritis, like, you know, lupus, multiple sclerosis, all of these types of autoimmune disorders that we oftentimes don’t necessarily associate with alcohol use disorders. But I actually see a lot of patients frequently showing up with autoimmune and having that long term history of drinking. So if you are someone who is experiencing that or has had that diagnosis and you drink, that could be part of the reason that that might occur. And also another thing to consider is I’m sure you see this a lot, Doctor, and like when people come into practice and they’re trying for so long to heal their gut, they’re trying to rebalance their microbiome. They’re trying to get rid of Candida. They’re trying to get rid of that intestinal permeability and heal the lining of the gut. And they’re having such trouble making progress. Sometimes alcohol can be part of what’s holding them back and can be really helpful in starting to consider when they’re really looking to make those changes.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: So I can I can hear the questions like, well, you know, I really. Don’t want to drink, but it’s like the only thing that relaxes me. That it’s the only thing that makes me feel better. But it’s what my friends do, and it just makes it really, really hard. So, you know, you’ve been through this, so what are the steps to take to be able to quit when you’re having these debilitating sugar cravings and alcohol is a sugar cravings? Yeah.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. So it’s a great question because a lot of people hear it and go like, whoa, I don’t want to change my relationship with alcohol. I don’t feel like I have a problem. There’s a lot of stigma around alcoholism and, you know, sobriety in general. And some of that is lessening with the rise of, again, sober curiosity and things like the boom in the non alcoholic beverage space. People are starting to feel like it’s a little more acceptable to not drink or to choose a mocktail, for example, over a real cocktail. Whereas many years ago the only choice was oddballs at a bar. Right? And so most people weren’t going for that because it wasn’t necessarily desirable. So it’s becoming much more easy to implement these changes. One thing that I can say is that while we feel like alcohol can be very useful in reducing stress and, you know, relieving kind of that frustration, at the end of the day, what we oftentimes find is that it actually makes things worse over the long term. Right. So it’s somewhat of a Band-Aid effect in that we might get that temporary relief from stress. But even after we have one or two glasses of wine or one or two drinks, it affects our sleep. It’s going to affect our energy the next morning. It’s probably going to affect our productivity or our mental clarity. And so this kind of snowballs into the effect that now at the end of the next day, you’re feeling sluggish, you’re feeling exhausted. And the only thing that seems to help again is another glass of wine. So by starting to break the cycle and break these patterns, we can really start to recognize the benefits that we feel from not drinking alcohol. So some of that is just finding new ways of coping with stress in that. I know it sometimes sounds silly, but like even a quick meditation or going for a walk when you finish work to kind of reset your your mind or your brain. One of the big things that I hear from people and you brought up in your question was, you know, I my friends all drink. And this is kind of what we do and this is the setting that we’re in. It can be really helpful to find people who don’t drink. So this isn’t to say that you need to leave your friends behind and find a whole new group of friends. But I actually developed and launched a an online network. It’s called the Functional Sobriety Network, and most of it women. There’s some men in there as well. And and it’s meant to be a space for people who are looking to change their relationship with alcohol. Maybe they’re wanting to go fully sober. Maybe they’re just kind of not sure how they want to change it, but they’re interested in learning more. And one of the biggest benefits and this is something that I’ve seen from different types of 12 step programs, all of the communities around not drinking is once you start to find people that you connect with over this topic, it starts to break down the barriers a little bit. It’s it doesn’t feel like you’re alone. It doesn’t feel like you’re the only one experiencing this. So finding people that you can connect with on this topic is really, really helpful for many people. The other thing that I’ll say, and I’m sure that you’ve experienced this, too, is a lot of times we just we have these habits with these people that we go out with and sometimes we’re going, Oh, shoot, I know when I go out with so-and-so, it’s going to turn into a wine night and like, we’re going to drink a bottle and then I’m going to feel crappy the next day. Most of the time the other person is feeling the same way, too, right? And we’re just not having this conversation. It’s like the habit is to go out and get dinner and have something to drink. So it can always be useful to either mention to your friends, Hey, I’m doing a dry challenge or I’m looking to cut back on my drinking, or even just suggesting something like instead of going to dinner, maybe we go for a walk along the lake, or we do something that isn’t necessarily in that same environment, because once we start to break those patterns, it becomes a little bit easier to be around friends or be in those settings and not having to necessarily pick up a drink. The last thing I’ll say about it is flavored seltzer got me through the early days of sobriety because sometimes it’s just having something in your hand that when we are in a setting, let’s say we’re at a party or it’s the summer, so you’re at a barbecue and everyone’s having beers or there’s, you know, cocktails around or glasses of. Wine. And sometimes you just don’t want to be there. Like, what do I do with my hands? All right? Like, if I’m not holding something, I kind of feel like there. There’s something off bright and early in my sobriety days, I just carried around a, you know, a seltzer and a koozie. And no one even asked, you know, what are you drinking? Why aren’t you drinking? Because sometimes it’s those questions that people have for us or the the feeling of I’m not part of that makes us feel like it’s not a sustainable lifestyle change.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: So many people struggle with bloating, bowel issues, brain fog, fatigue. You might not even have any gut issues, but did you know the cause of it could be food sensitivities or gut infections? What I have done is I have brought a talented, functional nutritionist into my practice. We have very similar training in the nutritional world. And her name is Alexis Applebee. She is awesome. So you can head on over to our website.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Alt alt.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Fam, fam, med medi and have a consultation with her and schedule so that she can help you get to the root cause of your problems. I think those are awesome tips because as you’re speaking, I’m reflecting back on I’m not really a drinker. I have a been I’ll maybe three times a year, four times a year or something like that. But I certainly I don’t really like alcohol. I no longer like the taste of alcohol. It’s just not my jam. And so as you were saying that, hey, let’s do a different activity. When I meet people or friends or when I do things with friends, we’re always mountain biking, we’re climbing, we’re going for walks. I personally, when someone says, Do you want to have dinner? I’m like, No, I don’t want to sit. I know. So for a lot of different reasons, but I would rather be doing something active. And so I think that your tips are really good to get somebody to that point in in that it’s just a huge struggle to kind of break out of that consistent like bar scene and all of that which keeps you up late. It’s going to be putting food in your body. That’s not ideal. It can be, you know, so it’s just a lot of things about it. But yeah, those are great, great tips. And it sounds like the community, it’s easy to meet like minded people. I think that’s great. Yeah.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: And that’s the thing is like we get so used to this is how I have fun, right? This is how I have fun is I go out with friends and I drink. And when you’re very ingrained in that type of behavior, you forget that there are things outside that that are going on. Right. So someone even asked me recently on Instagram, like, what do you do if you don’t drink? Do you just go out with your friends to a bar and not drink? And I said, You know, I only go to a bar now if it’s someone’s birthday or, you know, there’s something going on, the reason why I would be there. But when you realize that there’s mountain biking and there’s hiking and there’s art galleries and museums and all these other things that you wouldn’t do before because you prioritize drinking, the world becomes much larger and you start to say, Oh, actually I was limiting myself and you know, only spending time in these places. So it really is. And it’s interesting to hear someone who isn’t a big drinker how that’s the priority. Right? Whereas those of us who’ve spent a lot of time in those drinking patterns, that’s how we we prioritize things in the other direction.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Totally. You know, what’s interesting was during COVID, when all the bars shut down like the trails, you know, that I’m generally on doing all these activities like just blew up. They were so busy and like people continued those habits, which I think was really cool. But I was like, Where are all these people coming from? This is so bizarre. But that’s it’s amazing getting out and taking control for help.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. And then the other sense real quick on COVID is that there was a huge uptick in drinking behaviors. Right. There was a study done at the end of last year that showed something like a 41% increase in women who who drank on a regular basis. And so, unfortunately, that type of behavior carries over as well, because alcohol is something that is progressive. The more that we put into our body, the more our body starts to get used to metabolizing alcohol, using that as a source of fueling that hit of dopamine. And so that can become progressive as well. And so, you know, starting to think about that or consider that point in time as a reflection point of was that the start of maybe an increase in my drinking that now has kind of continued on?

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Can you touch a little bit more on what happens with dopamine, like why it becomes so addictive? Because I think that that’s important for people to hear about that. And I can I can chime in.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. So there’s a few different ways that we can talk about this, and I’d be curious to know your perspective, too. One of the things I’ll touch on briefly that I just read a few weeks ago was about how our body starts to recognize or starts to adapt to different things that increase our dopamine, right? So something like drinking has a really big surge on our dopamine levels in a different way than something like nature might. Right? So unfortunately, the way that dopamine responds to those two things are different. However, when our body has adapted to needing this big hit of dopamine for that pleasure or feel good, something like nature doesn’t feel as good, right? But our body can adjust and readapt. So when we start to change that behavior again, cutting out alcohol, things like nature, things like, you know, laughing with friends actually become more pleasurable than they were before. So it’s really interesting when we think about again, if we have this long term history, I mean, myself, I can say I started drinking as an early teenager. Right. I was very, very formed to this nature of big hits of dope. I mean, big hits of dopamine. And we see this in, again, like thrill seeking behavior or adventurous type of behavior where, you know, maybe you’re someone who likes to skydive or do kind of these extreme things because it gives these big, big hits of dopamine. And again, these kind of smaller types of pleasure don’t feel the same, but our body can readapt when we start to cut back on those things.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Yeah. So what they found in rat studies is when you’re given sugar and alcohol as sugar and I don’t know if that’s completely understood across the board, your or dopamine levels will affect up to 150% above normal. And so then you need a bigger and a bigger hit of sugar. And so I equate it to the there’s a Guns N Roses song that’s about addiction. And I think it sums it up perfectly. I used to do a little bit, a little went a little, got more and more. It was y you start out just to have one drink deal. Right now you have check in with y, you have one cookie, but now you have to have to actually get that same dopamine hit and then after that it drops lower than it did before. And so then you need more to get it up and it starts this crazy cycle. Yeah.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. And a lot of it plays into I talk a lot about nutrient deficiencies, right? So things like your vitamins, your vitamin C, all of your conversion, the tools that you need, the amino acids that you need in order to make these neurotransmitters are all depleted when we drink. So it creates this vicious cycle that we feel crappy, we drink, we deplete our nutrients, we still feel crappy and we drink, right? So we can actually break the cycle by cutting out the alcohol. Sometimes there’s a bit of a point in time where it’s like, okay, I feel like my mood is very low, but how can we start to again knowing that that happens when you start to change that behavior, being really mindful of, okay, what things can I do at this time to feel good, to try to do more exercise, for example, because that’s going to increase dopamine B in nature, you know, all of these things that still increase our dopamine because if we are cutting back alcohol and not starting to kind of rebuild those pleasure centers, we’re going to still continue to focus on. I can’t feel good unless I have alcohol. Right. So it’s all about breaking those patterns. It’s such a fascinating area, as you can tell. I’m really passionate about it because it is as someone who has the history of the addictive behavior or has the history of an alcohol use disorder, there’s so many people who kind of fall into this gray area and they’re not going to walk into an AA room because they haven’t hit a bottom. Things haven’t gotten extreme yet, but they still recognize that this is not helping them feel good. It’s not helping them hit their health goals. It’s not helping them kind of really hit the goals in life in general that they’re looking for, whether that’s career, relationship, etc. And really, alcohol can be one of those big things that’s holding us back so blatantly.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: And you made a really awesome point that I think is super helpful when people are going to a bar or going to a girlfriend’s or a friend’s house, and you talked about sparkling water or, you know, tonic water or a mocktail. What kind of recipes do have that are fun but maybe don’t have alcohol in them? That could be a really good substitute in your hand.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. So I think one of the biggest things here is I can say this for myself and I’ve heard from other people who have used alcohol on a heavy regular basis in the past. We tend to be very thirsty. Right? Like I know for me, I could have a beverage in my hands all day long. Right. And I in some ways transfer addicted to like seltzer water when I stopped drinking because I was like, whatever, as long as I’m not picking up an alcoholic beverage will work on the seltzer water thing later. Right. But sometimes, again, it’s just having that drink in your hand and water doesn’t necessarily do it right. But we can start to think of ways of some of it is just about the kind of like the pleasure that we get from having something that’s a little fun, it’s a little flavored. Anything from, you know, making a pitcher with fresh fruit. I’m a big fan of like cucumber lime throw a little fresh mint in there that’s, you know, a delicious kind of tree. Sometimes even putting it in a fancy glass still makes it feel a little fun, a little exciting. I remember when I recognized that when I stopped drinking, I had this whole shelf of cocktail and wine glasses, and I dwindled them down to only a few, but kept some of them to say, like, I still want to make a mocktail. I still want to do things in a fun glass. And I actually have some recipes on my blog, on my website for things like a turmeric and ginger drink, really simple with some fresh to mark a ginger seltzer, a little bit of lemon or lime can really complement that nicely, but really, again, trying different things. So maybe it’s a seltzer at a certain point of the day really takes your mind off of wanting to have that drink. The other thing that I think is really interesting and not necessarily drink related, more nutrition related, but a lot of times when we have that craving, especially at certain times of the day, sometimes it’s low blood sugar because the statistic is actually that about 95% of regular alcohol users have a tendency towards low blood sugar or blood sugar instability. So what happens is when we get a drop in our blood sugar, we start to have cravings for, again, sugar, carbs and alcohol. So if we are regular drinkers, that feeling for us usually triggers I need a drink when it can also mean I need something to eat, right? And so even just by having a snack or a. Incorporating some protein in at that point of your day can really start to change that craving. So a lot of times I suggest around that 5 p.m. time, maybe make a little mocktail or pop open a seltzer and have something to eat. So a lot of times people will find that that takes that craving away within a couple of minutes. And then after that, they’re kind of fine for the rest of the night. And it doesn’t have to be like a boring snack. Like, I’m a fan of a cheese plate, make up a little cheese plate with some fruit or some, you know, nuts and seeds and kind of make it like a tradition or a ritual on a Friday afternoon instead of I need to, you know, pop open the cork and have happy hour.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Totally. That’s great. And where can people find the recipes for cocktails on your website? What’s your website?

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. So my my website is Brooke Scheller dot com and I’m sure you’ll put that in the show notes. Well, spelling’s a little funny, and in my blog I have a lot of recipes. You’ll also find there other links to articles that I’ve authored or things that I’ve written that have not only links to supplements and recipes for food as well. So trying to be a resource to really start to help people understand that this can be a really big something that’s holding us back in our health goals. It’s something that might be holding us back from having our a positive mental health, good feelings or sensation around our lifestyle and what we’re doing, but also hold us back again from our goals professionally. Do we want to start a business? Do we want to get a promotion? Do we want to, you know, save more money? That’s something that we’re not talking about as it relates to alcohol as well. And so it can really be linked back to a lot of things in our lifestyle that by changing our relationship, we can not only feel better, we can live a better life and we can really start to achieve those goals and things we want.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Awesome. And and is the community also linked into your website?

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Yeah. So you’ll find information there. It’s called the Functional Sobriety Network. And it’s, again, a space where it’s a membership only platform. It’s essentially kind of like a Facebook group. It has its own app. And we do weekly Zoom meetings where we talk about not only alcohol and sobriety related topics, but also using nutrition supplements to be a part of that journey as well. So it’s a great space for people who are thinking they might be interested in looking more into sobriety from that health or wellness perspective and not necessarily from an addiction perspective.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing your amazing knowledge on the podcast. So really appreciate it.

Dr. Brooke Scheller: Thank you so much, doctor, and for having me and I look forward to speaking more to you and to your listeners.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter: Awesome. Have a great one. Take care. You too.

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