Episode 4 | Burnout, Adrenal Health, and Healing HPV w/ Dr. Doni Wilson

Welcome to the modern day naturopath podcast with Dr. Sue. Real talk for those craving deep healing. While it's living in a modern day society, you'll be equipped with knowledge to make profound mind body shifts that utilize ancient wisdom and will facilitate your healing once and for all inspired by Dr. Sue's chronic illness journey and all the real and raw pearls she has learned along the way. Come as you are. It's never too late to start. Hi, welcome back. This is the modern day naturopath podcast. This is Dr. Sue. Today we're going to be talking about the topic of burnout since it's so prevalent in our society. So many people are plagued by it. So I invited a very dear and special guest, Dr. Donnie Wilson, who is an expert in burnout, recovery, stress, and also HPV and women's health. So Dr. Donnie Wilson, she's actually a licensed naturopathic doctor. She is based out of New York. She's the author to the stress remedy amongst some other books. She will share guys later. And I'm so happy to have you here, Dr. Donnie. Thank you so much for joining me, Susan. It's like so much fun to get to talk with you about. I know we were just talking before how we met because I had to do some clinical hours while I was in naturopathic medical school. And I wanted to make sure that I shadowed doctors that not only were in New York, because I did want to practice in New York. Cause I feel like talking to patients in New York is sometimes a different, it's different than the rest of the writer in a very fast paced society. And I thought it was perfect because Dr. Donnie, she specializes in stress and she sees people in New York. So it was a really wonderful experience for me. We were always joking because I used to be like typing like a crazy lady, all of the notes that I would be learning from you and learning so much from the patients. So thank you for that opportunity. It helped me so much. And I want to ask you, can you tell us a little bit before we kind of dive in to burnout, can you tell us a little bit more about your day to day? What are you doing every day with patients? I know you have programs you're working on. So can you share a little bit more? I remember those days in Manhattan in the office and, you know, like just soaking in, you know, exactly how to do everything. So you're probably like, well, what is Dr. Donnie doing now? I'm like, same thing I was, that was a bunch of years ago. I'm so proud of you for everything you've done and so many people that helped and, and, um, for launching this podcast as well. So congratulations. And thank you so much. I still, I still, still see patients as is now. I'm 24 years in practice as a naturopathic doctor. I'm also a professional midwife and certified nutrition specialist. And so that's how I practice in New York, but I really, now I help patients from around the world. So my practice is really virtual and I help people by phone and video. Um, yes, I still go into Manhattan. Is there like a day a week or it just depends on the time of the day? Yeah, yeah. And I love it too because it's like, you know, especially having come to the pandemic, right. We all were like so much working from home and in Manhattan really closed down during the pandemic. So I'm finding that finally now, people are wanting to like come into the office and wanting to interact in person. And so, um, more and more, I'm, I am seeing patients in Manhattan and as you mentioned it, it's Manhattan and New York in general is tricky for as a naturopathic doctor because the profession is still not licensed here to the degree that we're trained. So we're trained to be primary care practitioners. And, and, and the thing is, is that I found along the way that even though I'm trained as a primary care provider, meaning someone could come to me for, you know, annual blood work and physical exam and pap smear and right, we're trained. We could do that in Connecticut and in Arizona and in California, we can do that. So it's like, okay. At the same time, what I saw early in practice and especially helping patients in New York is that people needed help that they weren't getting from primary care. You know, it's, it's easy to go find someone who can do a physical exam and a pap smear under your insurance, but it's not easy to find someone who can help you recover from stress and help you if like, let's say you're having trouble conceiving a pregnancy and you want to try to do it naturally or you want to heal from an abnormal pap smear and try to avoid a surgery. You know, like these are the areas that women don't have so much access to. And so over those years, I really found, Hey, I want to specialize in helping people who are not getting helped. I want to help people to be able to prevent health issues, right? If we're under constant stress, we have trauma from our past. We have, we're experiencing burnout. As you mentioned, there's increasing numbers of burnout of all ages of humans. Um, not only women, men and children and teenagers around the world. So that's who needs my help. And so that's why, as you mentioned, I've, I've written actually now five books on Oh my God. I, I thought it was three. I thought it was three. I know the other one that we recent, I thought was, uh, master your stress. Those of you who are listening on or watching on video, you'll see master stress, recite your health. Um, which is yes, available like on Amazon and where you will find books. Um, it's because I've, I've just spent so much time researching this. And of course it comes back to Dr. Sue, my own history of stress, right? Like it's what we go through ourselves that and, and what we learn as practitioners attempting to heal ourselves that we then can learn from and help others with. And so that really is what I do. I, I look at some, you know, when to answer your question, what is it that I do is I, I like say, I take what I learned from my own health journey and bring that to the people who are looking for the same people who are, who are wanting to be able to understand, to have awareness for what we're experiencing as humans in terms of stress, burnout, trauma to, instead of just bury that, right? Like the tendency is, Oh, we're just going to keep pushing ourselves harder. We're going to anything we've been through that was difficult. We're going to shove it under the rug and we're going to just take some more caffeine or Adderall and or sleep medications. And we're going to try to get through the next day, you know, and that's so common. So many people are existing in that reality. Even college students, even of all ages, right? And it's, and, and it becomes the reality. The reality is this state of burnout and just trying to stimulate ourselves enough to get through the day and do what we need to do. And then knock ourselves out at night. Even some people are drinking alcohol or taking meds as it means it right to just knock yourself out so you can try to get some sleep. And you have to, right? Cause then you're like, I should talk to probably two patients this week who they're so hypervigilant at nighttime, but they're, he's like, yeah, I work seven days a week, right? He's a business owner and then I'm scrolling on my phone at this hour because I'm anxious. And do you think the nightmares I'm having and my, you know, these really intense dreams have to do with my stress. And it's like, yeah, it has to do with your stress, right? It's like sometimes there's just simple things. Like we literally just talked about, I talked to this patient yesterday. I said, okay, well, when can you put your phone away and what time can you go to bed a little earlier? And sometimes it could be simple things. And that's why I loved working with, you know, shadowing you was it doesn't always have to be. People think, especially New Yorkers, you know, that you have to do something really complex to move the needle. But sometimes it's just really small changes, maybe getting to bed an hour earlier or, Hey, do I really need to mindlessly scroll for 30 minutes before bed? You know, creating that then effect on our melatonin. Cause I have blue light getting, you know, in my eyes before bed. So I love when you said, you know, because patients ask all the time, they say, oh, well, could you be a primary care? And so even though in the state of New York, right, we see patients all over the country, we can help people other places. But in New York, we, you know, we can't access technically their primary care, but it's easy to go to a, you know, to go to their doctor and get a physical exam and have them do heart, lungs and thyroid check. That's easy, right? But we're, there's not enough of these naturopaths who are helping you actually work through your stress. And I, I also love how you said, it's not just adults because of course we have the adults. And I remember like again, shadowing you. And even with my patients that talks to an attorney last night working really crazy hours. It's not just them. It's now children, adolescents, now kids going through trauma. So there's, I'm just really happy that you're working so diligently in this field because I think that people are not really correlating the level of stress and then the physiological changes that are happening, which we'll talk about, you know, but thank you for mentioning that. And also guys, I want you to just press pause and follow Dr. Donnie on Instagram. She has great tips. She talks all about women's health, burnout, recovery, stress, HPV. Her handle is Dr. D R Donnie's D O N I Wilson W I L S O N. And I want to talk a little bit about the difference between someone saying I'm tired and I'm burnt out. Because my experience, they're very different between being tired and being burnt out. So where would you say if you had to maybe give a picture of a patient, whether you're thinking of one in your mind or putting one together, what would you say that patient looks like? And maybe also distinguish between I'm just tired versus I'm chronically burnt out. What would you say? That's a great question. And certainly fatigue is a possible symptom of burnout. You know, burnout can look different for each of us. In fact, in the, my recent book, the master stress reset your health book, I identified five different stress types. I call them stress types, which are really our burnout types, you know, which is to say that there's five different ways that burnout can show up. And even then there's many more possible symptoms for each of those types. So while yes, a person might feel tired or fatigued or exhausted, it may or may not that doesn't really tell us exactly what's going on inside, inside your system. In fact, when someone's more tired than they think they should be, we, first of all, we even have to look at like, are you getting enough sleep? As you mentioned, sleep is so important. We need to look at their anemia, iron deficiency, because that's a really common cause of fatigue is their low thyroid function. Right? Another really common cause of fatigue. And then we look as a naturopathic doctor, we would look at the adrenal function. Most practitioners stop maybe after anemia and thyroid, and they aren't looking at the adrenal function because it doesn't show on standard blood work. We have to do different testing. We want to know like where's the cortisol levels and adrenaline levels. Cortisol and adrenaline are our two main stress hormones and they're made by the adrenal glands and the adrenal glands are above the kidney. So like in your low back and they're there, they have a really important job. I think of them as our bodyguards, you know, when we're under stress and we're navigating our stressful day, let alone if you know, like a hurricane comes along or a pandemic and then we've got a whole nother level of stress happening. The adrenal glands are going to help us, you know, try to protect us from whatever that stress is that's coming in. And, and again, it could be, sometimes it's daily stresses of work and deadlines. Sometimes it's being in a toxic relationship or going through a divorce or death in the family. You know, stress shows up in many different ways as humans. It's not like we can just wish that we could eliminate all the stress. It's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. So it's not about, Oh, so I'm never going to say, Oh, we're trying to be stress-free. No, there isn't. In fact, if we're stress-free, we're no longer here on this planet. Like, I don't even know if that exists. Like what does that actually look like? Right. It's, it's adapting to that stress and supporting your body, right. And your adrenals to be able to handle. And that's where you shine in the sense of you're wanting to give people the building blocks to be able to handle the stress. You're not saying stress doesn't exist. And what really kills me is when I see the doctors just doing like a total cortisol in blood or a, just a one, you know, one cortisol reading like morning cortisol. So can you talk more to, I know you shared about the adrenals where they are, but can you talk a little bit about the testing and how looking at a graph throughout a day and looking at that kind of diurnal rhythm, circadian rhythm, it's helpful. And then knowing how we need to support that particular patient and how it could look different. Exactly. It is that it's much better to measure cortisol at different times a day. Optimally. It's not that we want zero cortisol either. We don't want zero stress and we don't want zero cortisol. Those are not the goals. The goal is, as you're saying, optimal. So we want optimal cortisol, which is a little bit higher in the morning and gradually decreasing through the day. So it's lowest at night. So if we only have a blood drawn in the morning, we're not going to see that. Right. We can't. And so even if you're, if a practitioner runs a morning cortisol test, it's not really giving you the right answer. And if they do a 24 hour urine, it's not getting the right answer either. Cause it's all in one collection. So what we want to do, what I suggest is doing a either a urine or saliva collection because you can, you can do it at home. First of all, you can spit in a tube at different times a day. You could pee on the strip or in a cup at different times a day. So we can actually see, Oh, here's the cortisol at the time you wake up. Here's a cortisol in the middle of the day, in the evening, in the bedtime. So we actually get to see what your adrenal glands are up to all throughout the day. And the other thing I found in my research is that it's not enough to just measure cortisol. We also should be measuring adrenaline because adrenaline can be measured in urine as well from home and a single urine sample. So now we have a much more comprehensive picture of what's happening in the adrenals. And I look at it as, this is a snapshot of how your body body is both impacted by your past stress and how it's responding to your current stress. So because a lot of people will say to me, Oh, is it just because I have my stress exposure that day that I did the collection and actually, no, it's not, it's right. Look at it. I was like, this is a cross-sectional view. This is a check-in point in saying, because our bodies learn our stress response and our stress response is based on our genetics, partially. Some of us are genetically more likely to have a high cortisol and low cortisol and our metabolic pathways, right? All those methylation and COMT and MAO pathways, how our body metabolizes adrenaline, for example, as well as cortisol. And it's impacted by our stress from the past. Even stress from when we were in utero, let alone childhood impacts our cortisol and adrenaline today. So I think so. So when we measure it, I look at it as this is giving me like your fingerprints of your, how stress has impacted you in your lifetime and how it's now responding under stress from this moment forward. And so it gives me a real understanding and it's so unique to each individual. And it's so essential to know that because the treatment's different. So even though we talk about burnout or adrenal fatigue, as if it's the same for everybody, it's not the same for everybody. It's so unique. And still like example, like when you say so unique, for example, you would do something different if someone had low cortisol mapped on their cortisol pattern for the four, right? Four different low verse if they were high throughout the whole day or if they had the opposite circadian rhythm, right? Where they were low in the morning and high at night. So you would do very different things for those patterns, right? So, and I'm, I wanted to make sure that was understood by everyone that that's why, yes, everyone can do things that will help their stress in general, right? The lifestyle, the self care stuff, but everyone's so unique and presenting so differently. How many times have you thought that someone had high cortisol and then you see them and they have like barely any, right? I thought, wow, this person seems like a high cortisol person, you know, based on their symptoms and he ends up having low. And then if you do something or right, well, let's just say Dr. Nani, right? No one had really low cortisol throughout the day and you're giving something to them that's a glandular product or licorice or things that can make cortisol high and they're already high. Giving adrenal products to patients. They don't even know what they're. Adrenal patients come in and they're like, Oh, I've been someone, some practitioner said I had a burnout and they gave me this. Yes. Glandular. That's a classic, like a glandular to support their cortisol assuming that their cortisol was low. I never tested it and never tested the adrenaline. And then when I finally guide them to do the right test and we get the results and it's like, actually, now your cortisol is way too high and it's a completely wrong treatment at the wrong time of day. And it's, and so it's, it's very common, unfortunately. I mean, I'm glad that practitioners are becoming more aware of cortisol and the importance to address the adrenals. But I think the next step is we have to actually do the testing to give the patient the right treatment because otherwise you could be making things worse. You could be making things worse. Exactly. So that's why if let's just say a patient say, you know, Hey, right now I can't do that test. There are things that we can do besides the lifestyle. You know, what personally, and I'd love to hear what you think. I will give adaptogens when I don't know, right? Like instead of, because if I'm, if I'm giving, you know, glandular products and licorice to someone with high cortisol and that, that to me can be dangerously, I mean, they can have severe symptoms from the cortisol going even higher than it was. So with adaptogens, we think of things like ashwagandha, holy basil, luthro, rhodiola. Those in my opinion seem to be safer because they're more adaptogenic. Like in the sense of if cortisol is high, it will help them go low. If cortisol is low, you know, and vice versa. But that's the most I'll usually do besides the basic like adrenal support and the B's and the C's and stuff like that, because you don't want to make someone worse. So I'm really happy we're talking about that because I, even with thyroid, I see integrative doctors giving thyroid glandulars and they don't even know when someone's thyroid and we're like, okay, now we can create a hyper picture, right? So we're kind of seeing this, we want to help, but it's kind of missing the target a little bit. And do you happen to use, I use the Dutch test. Do you use Dutch test? Yeah, the Precision Analytical Dutch, which is a dried urine test. Yeah, I like it. I especially like the Dutch test for a measure because they can use it to test estrogen and estrogen detoxification and it'll show cortisol levels so we can get it all in one. Like I'm always like, okay, you can send your urine to this one place and we get a lot of information. Um, I also, um, no, they don't, they can show us the breakdown of adrenaline. They don't show us the actual adrenaline level. So if I want to know the actual norepinephrine, epinephrine, like adrenaline levels, and I also like to measure neurotransmitter levels. So serotonin, GABA, then I'll send that to a different lab than I prefer for measuring neurotransmitters. Because here's the thing is when we're under stress and we're depleted and we're in this burnout mode and our, it affects our energy, mood, sleep, focus. That's what our neurotransmitters do. So very likely not only is the cortisol and adrenaline off track, but the neurotransmitters are likely off track. And when you go to the standard, like in, in our standard medical system, you would go to a psychiatrist and they were going to prescribe a psychotropic medication, but those medications don't actually optimize our neurotransmitter levels. They just sort of like are treading water and causing a lot of side effects. So much better is to measure the neurotransmitters and then address those neurotransmitters with them. Precursor nutrients, which are amino acids. This is a whole nother thing that I help with. Yeah. That's what I was going to ask you. Do you like, is there a test that you, so when a patient comes to you, some of the main testing that you would do is obviously this adrenal testing. And then of course, if you want to check their sex hormones, that could be done in the Dutch. And now I love that. The Dutch also has oxidative, those acids, right? So oxidative stress markers, some B vitamins, they have dopamine, melatonin, biotin, but do you have a special test like your patients that you use for your patients for the neurotransmitters that they can get through you? And there are now several labs that offer neurotransmitter panels, but my preferred one, you know what? I'm always like looking at all of them and looking at how the reports come out. And then I'm looking at how they're helping patients. You know, whenever I'm working with any tests, it has to meet certain criteria for me. And, uh, and the one that I use most recently is, um, called Sanesco lab. But I was going to mention Susan because you made such a good point that, that, um, sometimes people are not, you know, able to invest in these tests. So they're like thinking, Hey, what can I do in the meantime? And like you could do, you could do a cortisol neurotransmitter panel for probably $500 or like a Dutch panel for four or $500. So it's just so people have a sense of pricing. But it's one thing I did, um, is I went through and studied over a hundred different results. And I identified this breakdown of the stress types or burnout types that I mentioned. And then I created a quiz that people can take that helps them based on their symptoms, identify their most likely, uh, scenario, whether they have high cortisol, low cortisol, high adrenaline, low adrenaline. Um, and that quiz is both in the book, the master stress reset, your health book, which also comes as an ebook and an audio book, but it's also right on my website at drdonnie.com. So if you, if anyone wants to do that, you go through that. So if they don't have, right, because you know, unfortunately not everybody can go and invest in all these tests right away. And we don't want to say that you can't invest on these, you know, in these tests right away, you know, there's now a way to take a quiz. I even do that Dr. Donnie with patients who, because they see a lot of Lyme patients because of my own history. I do that with the Dr. Horowitz quiz, right? I, I can, if his quiz to people, and I say, Hey, if you can't afford X amount in Lyme testing, look, we think you might have Lyme, let's treat it, right? Like there's no harm in doing that. So it's the same thing to take advantage of her website DrDonnie.com, D-O-N-I. Yeah, you can go to, uh, yeah, just, well, you can go either drdonnie.com or D-O-C-T-O-R-D-O-N-I.com. And you'll see it at the very top. It'll say stress type quiz. And it takes like two minutes. It's really fast, but it's just know that it's, we've, we've gone through. And then what we did is we have people take the quiz and then we have them do the actual cortisol adrenaline panel. And we can see that it correlates. So it says to me that the quiz is really good at predicting. So this way, as even as a practitioner, it helps you to know, like, okay, you know, like you said, we can use holy basil pretty safely because it's not going to push the cortisol too far one way or the other. But if a person's still experiencing fatigue, anxiety, sleep issues, all these burnout symptoms, and then you're like, okay, well, at least this quiz will help you get a closer sense of like, where are, which stress type are they or burnout type and what then are the next steps? Because, um, I've then created a, a three phase protocol for recovery from that, right? This is the point is that we don't have, our past doesn't have to determine our future, you know, just because we've had, uh, you know, traumas from the past or stressful relationships in the past or, or even our genetics, right? I mean, um, that doesn't have to determine our health future or the way we experience our health in the future. We can actually recover from these effects of stress. We can get our cortisol to optimal and we can figure out which herbs to help us recover and nutrients and then how to maintain it over time. So to me, that's really the goal is, and I think everyone who's interested in longevity, living longer, preventing any kind of health issues, not just fatigue, but just like cancer, dementia, weight gain, any of the things that we're trying to prevent, heart disease, diabetes, anyone with, with those goals, you know, I want to live long and be healthier needs to know their cortisol and adrenaline and get into optimal because that those, those hormones are literally communicating throughout our body, right? Our cortisol communicates with our digestion. How well are we absorbing nutrients? Do we have leaky gut? How's our microbiome? That's all affected by our cortisol levels. Same with our hormonal, like you mentioned, thyroid, insulin function, ovary function. These are all affected by cortisol. Uh, also our immune system. If our cortisol is too high or too low, we're more susceptible to infections, autoimmunity, allergies. So it's like, Hey, if we solve the cortisol, we can solve a lot of things. Yeah. And you know, it's funny that it's not just the patient who would benefit from that quiz, but also practitioners like myself, not only for our own personal health, but for our patients, if we just tell them, go take that quiz, right? So that's really helpful for any practitioners listening, doing that quiz can help us get more data to help our patients. And just to what you just said in terms of all of the downstream things that we don't necessarily think of, they're like, Oh yeah, my, yeah, I think I know my stress is affecting my gut, but, or I think it might be, but I don't think people, and you tell me if you hearing this, it seems like almost, I have to convince my patients that their stress is a bigger deal than what they're, than, than, than they're making it seem for them. And it, and to that point, I don't want this to be mistaken for, I go to the doctor and my doctor says, I have nothing wrong with me. It's just my stress because, because of stress and trauma, there's then now all of these downward things that can happen. So we do have to work holistically and work on the physical body too. I haven't had a patient that are down into this day that said, my doctor said it's all my stress. And when I did blood work or extensive panels, like we're talking about, there's not one person in the past nine, 10 years that hasn't come up with physical issues too. So we're not saying it's in your head and it's just your stress and you don't have, but it's both right. It's it. We have to support that physical body while we're also supporting that stress. And so you did talk a little bit about digestion and leaky gut. Do you happen to see when you do stool analysis on patients, do you happen to see that the ones that have the most stress end up with a lot of like leaky gut markers or what do you, what's the pattern that you see the most when you do like a comprehensive stool analysis? I don't know if you use Genova GI map or what you use. I happen to use both of those. Do you see patterns? Or do you see a lot of deficiency patterns in like commensal? Do you see a lot of overgrowth? Do you see leaky gut? I happen to see a low secretory IGA, which is that whole community a lot, but I'd love to talk more on the digestion part because of the stress that affects people's gut and all of those psychosomatic type sensations from getting stressed to them. They're having such an important point that we're in this is as naturopathic doctors, right? We see that we are interconnected humans, even though in the standard medical system, it's like separate. Oh, you go to one practitioner for something that's going on with your mind and you go to a different doctor for something for your gut. Whereas you and I are looking at it as, Oh, these are all interconnected systems. We can't separate it. And definitely our, our, even our psychoemotional stress is going to affect our gut. That's what's called the gut brain axis. In fact, do what's going on in our gut is going to affect our emotional state. Both goes both ways. So absolutely. I mean, what we know from even if we break it down from say, yes, you're going through a stressful time and your cortisol is either too high or too low at different times a day, that's going to send signals to your digestion. And we know that when our gut gets stressed signals, it decreases our digestion. So we don't digest our food as well. We don't absorb our nutrients as well. We're more likely to become nutrient deficient. Our intestinal cells are not recovering as well. So we're more likely to develop leaky gut or what's known as intestinal permeability. And it sounds like maybe you've covered that a little bit already. And it affects our gut microbiome research shows that when humans are under stress, let alone when we have to take antibiotics that kills our gut bacteria or eating gluten that disrupts our gut bacteria, but stress alone disrupts our gut bacteria. And those gut bacteria really are another huge protective mechanism in our human existence, right? We, we know now that we have a good balance of gut bacteria. They're going to be able to help not only signaling to our brain and our nervous system, but they're also signaling to our immune system. And so we, if they're off track, we're more likely to have, you know, say if it's reactivated Lyme or Epstein-Barr or I also see the connection because the research shows there's a connection between the gut microbiome and the vaginal microbiome. And that's not always talked about, right? We hear this gut brain connection, but now there's also a gut vaginal connection. And women who've experienced vaginal yeast or vaginal PV, you probably are already thinking, well, is there some relationship to my gut? But most people aren't necessarily realizing that except the research now is so clear that once our gut bacteria get thrown off, it's likely going to disrupt the vaginal microbiome as well. And women become more susceptible to vaginal infections, including testing positive for high-risk HPV. We most all, just like we're most all exposed to Epstein-Barr virus, right? That's like something that happens. Usually by age 20 we're exposed to Epstein-Barr virus. With HPV, most all of us are exposed by age 50, 80% of us. So it's not about with HPV virus, high-risk HPV virus, which is associated with cancer risk, like cervical cancer, vaginal cancer, and other kinds of cancer, like even rectal and oral cancers for women that we're most all exposed to it. So a lot of times people think, oh, it's, it's not going to happen to me. I don't know, maybe I've only had one or two sexual partners. Well, it happens to most all of us, even with one or two sexual partners. And so it's not just about the exposure, right? We know that with Epstein-Barr too, it's not just about being exposed to Epstein-Barr. It's about the health of your environment. And if you're, if your bacteria, if your microbiome, your gut microbiome is depleted and you've got leaky gut, Epstein-Barr is more likely to reactivate, right? You specialize in helping people in this. Well, the same thing happens vaginally with HPV. When our microbiome is depleted and you know what, guess what? When we, when women go through perimenopause and our hormones drop, so now there's estrogen and progesterone drops, that also affects the vaginal microbiome. So now they are not protecting women as much from HPV. So between the stress perimenopause and whatever else we're exposed to in terms of, you know, toxins and, you know, different exposures, now this HPV has this opportunity to thrive and more and more women are testing positive to high risk HPV virus. It's actually, first of all, doctors are testing for it more, but also the, just in the United States alone, 11,000 over 11,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year. And, and, and it's even higher worldwide. It's, it's over 600,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year caused by high risk HPV virus. And the problem is just like you mentioned, the doctor in the doctor's office, I might say, this is caused by your stress, or sometimes they even tell women it's not caused by stress, which is completely wrong because the research is very clear that that HPV is related to stress exposure. But women are sent out of their gynecologist office being told there's nothing you can do. That all you can do is come back. If cancer develops, then we can do a surgery or we can do chemotherapy, but they don't give women a treatment. And so women are in a place of like, what am I supposed to do? I have this virus that could cause cancer. What am I going to do? That is very scary. So, but the fact is like what you and I are talking about, this is a perfect example of we can restore healthy microbiome, right? We can, we can restore the healthy vaginal microbiome, gut microbiome. We can re optimize cortisol. As we talked about, we can get the immune system working again so that your body can clear these viruses, right? The virus, the body can clear HPV. It can clear EBV. It's possible. Yeah. I think people are not talking about what's possible because they don't do it in the conventional, excuse me, in the conventional model, they're not doing those things. So I don't think people are realizing what's possible. And what Dr. Donnie too is talking about, and a lot of people may not know what this word means, but we use the word terrain, right? Like that just means the environment. It means like, in other words, our soil, right? I know from my mentor, Dr. Senseney, we should, we would talk about this all the time. It's like he would even bring up this example where if a person would have cancer, they would go and cut out wherever the cancer is. And he's, he would say, it's like a game of whack-a-mole, right? You, you cut out that. And then it's going to grow somewhere else because that soil was not changed. So I think, I think the important thing to remember here is yes, while there are things you can do to support HPV virus, I think the most important thing that we need to do as naturopathic doctors is get down to that root cause of what's going on with our cortisol, our neurotransmitters, what's going on with our gut health, what's going on with our immune system first. And then we could say, okay, we can add in now these other things that are really good. Like I'm sure, for example, we know that certain green tea extracts can be good for, you know, HPV or beta carotene or vitamin A. These are lovely things we can use, but I also want to make sure people know that while that's great to use, you want to get down to the root cause of why your environment is like that to begin with, right? It's true. We can use immune boosting, you know, yes, like vitamin C, vitamin A, we can use, we can use mushroom extracts. We can use antiviral herbs. We can, we can have a whole arsenal of naturopathic antiviral things we can do and do. I do help women to do that. Except that what I found over the years cause I've been helping women for this for over 24 years is that that's not always enough because as you're saying, if the state of your, of your, in your body, that's what, what, you know, in terms of the terrain, it's like, what is this, what is the status when you really, and it, it takes us being honest with ourselves, doesn't it? So it's like we have to be honest enough and we're taught to like blame it on something external and distract ourselves. And it takes enough, it takes enough time to just sit still and breathe and, and realize, first of all, I'm important. My health is important. I'm a priority. My health is a priority. I deserve to solve this to feel better, right? We kind of have to take in those mindset shifts first enough to realize, wow, if I'm important and it's possible for me to heal, then now what are the next steps that I can take to gain awareness for what's my body really trying to tell me? Is my body been trying to tell me that it needs attention, that it needs me to take breaks during the day or go to bed an hour earlier, like you said before. But sometimes we can't choose those things until we realize our own self worth and loving ourselves more. I was just going to say it, but then it's like that self worth part, which comes back to which we always talk about the trauma component, right? Like do I feel worthy enough or do I even feel safe enough to feel my feelings and feel into if I'm living in a way that's not serving me? Do I feel even like I can go there with myself? And sometimes maybe it's not the right time. Maybe you're, you know, you're working 12 hours a day at work and maybe that's not the time to go into something deep and dark that needs to be processed, but those things need to be processed. And I think we talked about this. Me and Dr. Donnie, we had, you had a podcast. I think we talked about this subject. I don't remember. Do you remember the name of it? If you look up my podcast is how humans heal and you can just search Dr. Sukhachar and you're going to see it. And it's about trauma recovery. We did talk about this. Um, that's a great point. We can go find that that conversation you and I had a few years ago. Yeah. Like if you know, we get to that a certain point sometimes where we realize a lot of times it's when someone really realizes that either they're just not happy in their life and they're like, I'm not okay with just suppressing this anymore. I'm, I want something to change. Sometimes it's because a big health scare comes up, you know, because maybe there's an abnormal pap smear and cancer is, you know, sort of on the edge, you know, like I, I'm not willing to get cervical cancer. I'm willing to do, if I didn't change my diet, if I have to take some herbs, if I have to do some vaginal suppositories and if I have to face my trauma, I'm willing because I'm not willing to get cancer. Right. Sometimes it happens something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And it has to be, sometimes it's unfortunately something like you said, something scary that comes up that pushes people, right. When they don't have symptoms, right. That's almost like that silent. I mean, just like what's lingering in the background, right. There's no symptoms and you're like, Oh, I'm fine. But it's like, are you, are you fine? Yeah. Are you really, are you really experiencing joy and passion in your purpose? And, and, and sometimes we do feel that we get stuck. We get feeling like, well, I don't want, I'm in a relationship and I don't want to disrupt this relationship or I'm in a job and I'm afraid of losing my job. Right. We get afraid of the identity or the roles that we've kind of gotten ourselves into. And yes, sometimes when we look a little closer, we might realize, actually, I want to be doing something different with my day. I want to be doing, I want to, I, I'm, and maybe it doesn't match with that same job or relationship that you're in. And then, and you go, you're then going to go through a process of self-discovery. But what I find is, and when someone goes through that kind of really, I call it, I call it a heroine's transformation because you become your own hero or heroine to say, Hey, I let everything else fall away. That's, that's keeping me stuck because that's what's disrupting my train and making me susceptible to health issues. I had to learn this the hard way myself. You know, like I had, you and I have this experience of migraines. I had migraines for, for decades and I wasn't telling anyone. I didn't, I was probably having migraines back when you and I were working together and I probably didn't say anything because I know it's like, it's like something you don't want to touch. It's like almost feels like, I don't know if it feels like this to you, but almost it feels like I tell someone I have migraines. Does that mean, I don't know. It's like almost like, am I weak or am I, it's almost like badge of like shame. I don't know what it is. Did you feel like that way too? Like I should have these if I tell someone that I did. And I felt like I'm a naturopathic doctor. I'm helping people with their health. So I'm not supposed to have an issue with my health. And sometimes even like recently, like I, I caught a cold virus and you know, and I was like having to reschedule patients and it's like, there's a joke. The doctor is not supposed to get sick when actually it's a reality. We are still human. I just saw a patient before we chatted today and she was telling me a story about, you know, how she has to, you know, in crisis care, take a medication for something. And it was for, you know, lack of sleep. And I, I, I actually shared with her and it made her feel so much better that look, I'm human too. This also happened to me. And I think sometimes sharing with them that we also experience like these literal human experiences helps them. But as naturopaths, we almost feel like we have to be so perfect in our health that, you know, we don't also have potentially stressful events that happen to us. We all have, you know, throughout the years, I've shared a little bit more. It's been very uncomfortable for me, but shared more about my own, you know, childhood trauma coming out. And I'm still dealing with and healing from all of that and all the stuff that's been shoved under the rug for so long. Right. So it's like almost as a naturopath, we feel like, Oh my God, we can't tell anybody because we're the naturopath and we have to be this, you know, example for everybody. But we're human just like everyone else. And we may realize that we have too much stress. And, you know, they also say, who used to say this? And, um, oh, we went to different naturopathic schools, but there was this professor who used to say, you know, you teach what you have to learn. Right. So it's like, okay. I, you know, I was talking to some of these patients. Okay. Get to bed hour earlier. I have to look at myself and say, well, am I in to bed an hour earlier? Right. So it's like almost like, I don't know about you, but it like checks me every time I talk to someone and I will share with them when indicated when there's a human experience that makes them, they're like, Oh, I feel so much better. And you can just kind of feel them take a breath. And I absolutely, I see this too with patients and with myself. And I found that once I started talking about my experience with migraines and really sharing about it, it really made a huge difference. And now I don't get those migraines anymore. I mean, I, I also use it as a, like I said earlier, I learned from my own experience. How do I, how do I get myself through a cold? How do I prevent a migraine? How do I keep myself out of Ehlers-Danlos pain? Those things that I learned from my own health and I can use for my patients. It's a, it's, it's a source of wisdom. And I, and then I, I'm also always willing to try things on myself before I try them on patients because it's, it's, then I'm speaking from real experience with myself and I, and I then become the proof that it's working, you know, that, and you're right. Like, you know, to be able to write a book on insomnia or one of my books is on insomnia, one of my, and then on the stress books, I had to apply this information to myself. I had to literally master my own stress and master my own self care in order to feel comfortable sharing it with others. And, and I feel like that's really important. That's something that I recommend people look for in a practitioner is someone who's not just saying stuff because it's in the science or it's trendy, but someone who's actually doing it themselves, walking the talk, learning from it themselves, going through the healing journey themselves. We're all, ultimately we're all humans and we're all on a healing journey. And if, if then I can be a better guide on that healing journey, then that's my goal. Absolutely. And connecting with your practitioner, it's, you know, I shared recently, you know, there's this, there's a relationship between this right doctor and patient in a sense of there should be this like healing relationship. It should feel therapeutic, right? It should feel, you should feel comfortable and you should feel like your practitioner is one that's not judging you, that's helping support you. And also in those moments of weakness, sharing things that may be personal that we'd help them in their journey. And a few things before we close that I thought was important was people who say they're tired, like Dr. Donnie said before, right? That's just one way that burnout can show out that they're tired. Yeah. Generally most burned out patients will say I'm tired, but beside it, just let's say their iron and their thyroid is normal. I personally see a lot of these burned out patients usually having a significant mood component of it, right? Like lack of motivation. Do you see that a lot? Like there's like a lack of motivation, inspiration. I see a lot of depression around that. So when you see the these personality type where I used to be really happy or I used to find joy in things and I'm not finding joy anymore, I don't want to go to work. I wanted to just mention that because it's, it's different than I just had a bad day. It's almost like this chronic low or more swings, right? Up and down mood. Do you, do you notice that too? In your patients who are burned out? It's like there's their, their mood. I come back to these four areas. I always, and this is something that I could encourage everyone who's listening to do it daily, what I call a daily check-in, you know, it's basically saying, how are you? But to yourself, and it raises your awareness for your what's going on inside your own experience and your train. So it's, it's, it's actually five things. One is, and this relates back to the stress type quiz, by the way, one is your energy level. So you're mentioning fatigue or tiredness. Okay. How is my energy been lately or yesterday or today? Am I feeling tired? Am I feeling overstimulated? How's my energy? Um, and the second is, how was my sleep? Am I, because a lot of times we are not even paying attention. Am I getting seven and a half to nine hours of sleep? Is it broken sleep? Is it, you know, was it restful sleep? You know, ask yourself, how, how am I sleeping? How was my sleep last night? Um, how is my mood? So this is exactly what you're touching on now. You know, are you feeling anxious, overwhelmed, depressed, unmotivated? Uh, you know, what is your mood? Because I think sometimes we just go based, you know, someone says, how are you? And we say good, but we're not really, how really am I, you know, like, um, and, and you and I always want to know the real truth from our patients. How is your mood and how is your focus? Do you feel like you have brain fog or do you feel like you're, you have to, you know, take a stimulant in order to focus? Or do you feel like you can get tasks done and, and, and take breaks when needed? And then the fifth area is in your body. What signals is your body giving you? Are you having pain somewhere? Puffiness, swelling, redness, rashes? You know, what is your body showing you and telling you? And from those five areas we can gather so much more information about the state of burnout, the state of your state of health, the state of your terrain, all of these things we're talking about so that we can at least now have an honest starting place. This is your point A. And then what you and I do is help people get to point B, which is feeling good and thriving and not just managing stress. A lot of times people hear about managing stress. To me, I never use that terminology. I say master your stress. Because to me it's not just about like treading water or partially drowning in our life experience. It's how can we be surfing the waves, right? How can we be saying, I can take on challenges, I can face fears, I can do things I've never done before. And I also then I'm not going to be crashing afterwards. I can get through it and feel good and feel inspired and feel, you know, like how can we actually enjoy our lives and not wear ourselves out in the process? So. Right. You come from a piece of power, right? Like that self empowerment. So you're basically saying, take inventory, ask yourself these questions, be honest with yourself. And what would you say the top three things that are free ways that people can support their burnout recovery that they can do every day that doesn't really cost anything? What would you say? Well, I, I break it down into using the word care as an acronym. So it's actually would be, I suppose, four things because care is a four letter word. C is clean eating. So looking at how can I clean up my diet, even a little bit, it's not like you have to go from, you know, from here to here overnight, but how can you either choose a little bit less inflammatory foods, a little more nutrient dense foods, less pesticides, you know, like work your way toward cleaner eating more foods that are serving your health and your physiology. A is adequate sleep. So look at, okay, if I'm not getting seven and a half to nine hours of sleep, what can I, what are the little steps I can take? Like you said, maybe stop the scroll or turn down the lights or put on a meditation or, you know, little steps until you can say, Hey, I'm actually getting better sleep. R is recovery activities. Recovery activities are a whole menu of possibilities from taking deep breaths to listening to calming music, spending time in nature, spending time with animals, friends, loved ones, journaling and more. There's so many more and there's even recovery substances. This is where I would say that plant medicines or psychedelic medicines can come into play as helping us as humans to recover from the stress we've been through. So those recovery activities or recovery substances that we can use to help us recover from stress. And then the E in care is for exercise and movement. How can you bring in appropriate for your body exercise and movement? You know, not expecting yourself to run five miles if you haven't been running, but how can you start to bring movement into your day? And one of my favorites is dance. And so I'm bringing more and more dance into my life and bringing that to patients because it is an exercise and it's a stress recovery all in one. I think I saw you. I think I saw you. I think it was on Facebook or Instagram and you were doing in the ballroom dancing. I remember texting Dr. Jillian Finker, which we're friends with. And I was like, Oh my God, did you see Dr. Donnie? She looks amazing. She was like, Oh my God, I can't believe how amazing she looks. So that's actually so funny because I literally just said the other day, I think I want to start doing like a hip hop class or something. I used to do that when I was younger just to get that, that energy out. Like moving your body can be fun. It doesn't have to be doing boring something at the gym that you don't want to do. So I love that you're doing dancing and I love the acronym because that makes it easy for people. These are free things that you can do. And lastly, Dr. Donnie, tell us a little bit about your psychedelic training that you started. I'm so excited about that. As I mentioned, I mean, these, these, oftentimes what we consider other plant or herbs really that have psychedelic properties. What research is showing is things like psilocybin, for example, from mushrooms or other psychedelic substances, even ketamine, ayahuasca. These are substances that have existed back in time and other civilizations have used for healing and recovery from stress. But since the seventies, they've been, um, on schedule one not allowed in the United States and many other countries. And yet now researchers really starting to catch up and say, actually these substances really help humans. Now most of the research right now has been related to anxiety, depression, like some of these symptoms we talked about with burnout, anxiety, depression, also end of life care. When someone's really facing, what is my purpose in life? And am I facing end of life? That's where a lot of the research is, but more and more research is coming out with how beneficial these substances can be. The thing is, is that of course, with any substance, even like you and I talked about with herbs that help cortisol, we need to make sure they're being used correctly and safely. So the training that I'm completing is with a institute called integrative psychiatry Institute. Um, and it's a certification in for practitioners on how to help patients to access and benefit from psychedelic assisted therapy. And it's to me, it's good. It's the future. It's the future coming quickly to help us as humans recover from stress. So yeah, anyone who's wanting to know more, you're welcome to reach out. And also anyone who has gotten an abnormal pap smear and feeling like, what am I going to do? I'm facing this HPV virus and abnormal pap smear and I'm scared to death. You can just go to clear HPV now.com and find out all these resources because these things that can really paralyze us with fear, whether it's an abnormal pap smear or, or having these moments in life where we're like, what am I doing? It, there's ways to help you navigate it. So I really want anyone listening, wherever you are, what happened, what's happening for you. Find that belief, even borrow the belief from Dr. Sue and I that there's ways to support you through this. It's not that, that's not the end of the road. There are other options. Even if you're not hearing about it from your other practitioner's office, there are other very successful approaches and, and we can always help put you in touch with someone who can help guide you. Thank you for giving everyone hope and sharing your brilliance. You're so good at all things, stress recovery. I'm so excited to have had you here to chat with you about how you've helped so many people. And Dr. Donnie, like I said before, she can be found on Instagram at Dr. Donnie, D-O-N-I Wilson. You can go to Clear HPV now, check out her books. She has more than I thought she had. But her newest one is Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health. Correct. I'm so happy. I have to get, I don't think, I think I have your other, your other two, but I don't think I have that one. So I have to get, Oh my God, I'm so excited. Thank you so much, Dr. Donnie. I so appreciate you coming and I would love to have you back to talk about Ehlers-Danlos and hypermobility because that last thing I have to say, I remember five years ago, Dr. Donnie said to me, Oh, I think you have Ehlers-Danlos. And I said, I don't even know what that is because I don't think we learned about it in medical school. I don't know what she's talking about. I'm too stressed to even think about it. And then I actually got diagnosed with that. So thank you to you because that was so validating. And I wanted to even say this today that I'm so grateful that you even said that because it puts so many pieces together for me. So I'd love to talk about how that presents in patients the next time if you'd come back, because I know so many people now that I can now recognize that I never recognized before. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. I look forward to it. I can't wait to talk more soon. Thanks so much for listening to modern day naturopath podcast with Dr. Sue.