Claudia Petrilli on Healing Your Gut Naturally

In this podcast episode, health coach Claudia Petrilli and hormone specialist Katie Jo explore the crucial link between gut health and overall well-being. They advocate for personalized dietary choices, emphasizing a balanced diet rich in whole foods while reducing triggers like dairy and gluten. Stress management and mindful eating play key roles, stressing the importance of a calm approach to meals and proper hydration.

The conversation critiques current health trends, promoting a thoughtful and individualized approach to health. Overall, this enlightening discussion provides practical insights into improving gut health and achieving overall well-being.

Head to www.thrivelab.com or find us on Instagram @thrivelab_women to learn more about the benefits of BHRT and women's hormone health.

Transcript

Katie Jo:

Welcome to today's webinar from ThriveLab.com, where we make hormone healthcare accessible and affordable nationwide. So you can balance your hormones and offer your gifts to others at the highest level. I'm Katie Jo, I'm a nurse practitioner with ThriveLab. We have a very special guest today. I'm happy to introduce to you Claudia Petrelli. She's the creator of The Hormone Rescue. The Hormone Rescue is an online program where you can balance your hormones through the powers of your gastrointestinal system, also known as your gut. She's a functional health coach. She's an integrative nutritional health coach who's been offering women's health support for many, many years. Claudia is going to dive in today with a deep focus on hormones and how they're related to your gastrointestinal health system. Before I let Claudia introduce herself, I want to focus on the founder of modern medicine who would call Hippocrates. Most people know who Hippocrates is, but I don't think of him as being modern. I think of him as being ancient. But so many years ago in his teachings, he said that all disease begins in the gut. And we know that to be true today, mostly true, with our modern medicine. So it's not in the foot, it's not in the pinky toe, it's not in the neck. It's in the gut. Although you might have symptoms in your neck, you might have a tight neck, you might have some numbness and tingling in your pinky toe, maybe you're having some type of arthritis in your foot, it all could be connected back to the gut. So today we know that the CDC, the Centers for Disease, recently published that six out of 10 people, that's 60% of people in the United States have some type of chronic disease. And many people, 40% have more than one chronic disease. I know in my health journey that I had one autoimmune disease which ended up with two autoimmune diseases which ended up with three. This is abnormal. And so today we're gonna dive in deep with Claudia to talk about how we can normalize our gastrointestinal symptoms. We want to know that we don't have to suffer with gas, with bloating, with hormones that are imbalanced. and she's gonna dive in deep in what that means today. So Claudia, I'm gonna hand over the talking stick to you and go ahead and tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you became connected with Thrivelab.

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah, so well, thank you for that introduction. That was lovely. And thank you for having me. So as you said, I'm a functional health coach and I work with women with hormone imbalances, essentially. And I've been doing this for about a decade and I got into this work because of my own health issues. You were saying how, you know, so many people have chronic disease. From a young age, I had a lot of hormone imbalances, horrible periods, I dealt with depression. weight gain, thyroid issues, breast cysts, like you name it, I had it, thyroid issues or nodules rather, and doing a lot of my own advocating in the doctor's office eventually led me to diving deep into health and women's hormones specifically so that I could find answers to my own symptoms and health issues. So over time, I have been really diving deep into hormones because I just love it. It's really interesting to me and just helping as many women as I can with their hormone issues. And I guess we connected, I think on Instagram with Thrive. And one thing that I have been diving deeper into over the last couple of years is hormone replacement therapy. I am a fan of it. I am pro hormones. I use them myself. So I have been referring some clients over to Thrivelab because I love the work that you're doing and it's so needed.

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Katie Jo:

It's so beautiful to see that overlap between functional medicine and nutrition hormones. Going back to Hippocrates, it begins in the gut. I tell our clients, it's not what you eat, it's what you absorb that makes a huge difference on your health and your wellbeing. I want to ask you, you mentioned that you focus on hormones or GI support for women. What do you notice the difference between men and women in regards to gut health? Why do you think more women are affected? actually you have some evidence to show that women are more affected by gut health.

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's because of hormonal fluctuations, right? So our hormones metabolize, our gut metabolizes hormones and our hormones regulate our gut microbiome like estrogen, for example. So there's a lot of fluctuations in hormones on a daily basis, month to month basis, as well as the different stages of life. So not to say that men don't experience gut issues or have hormone decline, but women are definitely seeing those fluctuations a lot more. So that's going to affect, you know, your gut. So for example, progesterone, what I find a lot is with clients say in their second half of their cycle, if they're getting that nice peak in progesterone, that can start to slow things down. So they may have like constipation, which is no fun. Or when estrogen starts to fluctuate in that second half of the cycle, a lot of women may notice the opposite effect, like loose stools or even bloating. So I would say that a lot of it has to do around the menstrual cycle. But then of course the other pieces, you know, women I believe are more susceptible to stress, especially as we get older and our adrenal glands are a bit more compromised because they're taking on the job of hormones. The other piece is a lot of women are using oral contraceptives. That seems to be, you know, the norm. A lot of women use them. I use them myself and that can certainly affect your gut microbiome. You know, things like leaky gut, mineral and vitamin deficiencies we see. Some women have yeast overgrowth like candida, SIBO, things like that. So it's a few different reasons why I think women are more affected. Yeah.

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Katie Jo:

Women, we get to be wonderfully complex. I was studying Dr. Robin Chutkin. She's a gastroenterologist and she was pointing out that she noticed in studies of endoscopy where you're putting a tube down into the upper part of your digestive system into their gut to have a camera to visualize that many times they would say that women's were incomplete. They were unable to completely visualize the... I said endoscopy, may have been colonoscopy. They were unable to completely visualize it. And they thought, well, maybe that's because women have more curvy intestines. They're not as straight as men's. And she thought, well, what's the reason why? Why are women having these incomplete studies and being told they have what's called tortuous intestines, which means your intestines are curvy. No one wants it to be called tortuous. And what the study found is that actually women's intestines tend to be about 10 centimeters longer than men. So like, sparked her, like, well, why? Well, one of the thoughts is that women's intestines need to be, especially the small intestine and the colon, where we absorb some water, that we need to be able to absorb more water, especially when we're growing another human being, when we're growing a baby. So it makes more sense that we'd have more intestines in men because we need to absorb more nutrients from it, because we are the procreators of life and giving birth.

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah, exactly.

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Katie Jo:

Another part of the study also pointed out, women's pelvis, our pelvic cavities, we have a uterus, we have ovaries, we have fallopian tubes, while men on the other hand, they usually have a prostate. So women, our anatomy lends us to be more complex because we have more tools in our tool belt in regards to our hormone cycles that change every month. So great job there telling us some of the differences between men and women. We do primarily see women reaching out for help with hormones. However, we have many men that also have similar symptoms. So men that are listening today, don't stop when you hear the word women because many of these gut health issues impact men, but they may show up a little bit differently. One of the major factors that people reach out for us for hormone healthcare is either pain or vanity. So maybe you're having pain, maybe you're having joint pain, maybe you're having GI issues where you're... so swollen that you feel like you're pregnant and you can't button your jeans and it's actually physically painful. I've experienced that before. Vanity ties over to more weight. Maybe your skin is changing. Maybe you're losing your hair, but hair loss can be painful emotionally. So weight is one of the huge drivers. So tell me what do you notice in your practice between the gut health and women's ability to lose weight?

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah, there's a few different things that we see. You know, we like to look at your diet, of course, in terms of, you know, are you detoxing properly? Are you eating foods that are gonna support detoxification versus foods that may be causing some inflammation in the body? But then on a deeper level, we like to look at different bacteria in your gut. So there's been studies in terms of akkermansia that is a really gut supportive or health supportive bacteria strain that's been linked to metabolic issues. So we'll often see low akkermansia say on a stool test for some women who are having a hard time releasing that weight. And then another thing that we see is low bacterodine, probably butchering that name. And that's one of the main bacteria phyla in the gut. So when we see that load, that can also point to insulin resistance. And that's gonna cause inflammation as well. And it's gonna be really difficult to lose weight if you have insulin resistance. And then of course, there's the estrogen piece, which, you know, if everybody uses the term estrogen dominance, right? And there's some truth to that, you know, in that if somebody has some excess estrogen being circulated in the body. It's not, and that could be due to an imbalance of gut bacteria, right? If they don't have enough of the enzymes, one specifically is called beta-glucuronidase, that can make it difficult to eliminate that estrogen. So it's like a few different things, for sure.

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Katie Jo:

I often will give the comparison to my clients. When you're looking at hormone health, it's like making a cake. Although we're not encouraging to eat cake, but you need the little ingredients. You need flour, even a little bit of baking soda, you need some oil or some butter. All these little small ingredients add up to make the perfect cake. And looking at your microbiome and your digestive system, all these little tiny microorganisms have a huge impact on us. One study I read say that our cells and our digestive system, it's about 10 pounds of bacteria, is what I read. And I thought, that's incredible. And you talked about the bactericides. There's another one called, firmicutes.

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Claudia Petrilli:

Firmicutes. Yeah, haha.

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Katie Jo:

I call it the firmicutes. If you have a high amount of firmicutes, you're not gonna be firmi-”cute” because those are the bacteria that are opportunistic that we don't want that can help negatively impact our gastrointestinal systems. And I love that you're able to offer this. precision data with testing for the bacteria. Because many of our clients, they feel it. They know something's off in their gastrointestinal system. They're having the constipation. They're having the loose stools. They're having the irritable bowel-like symptoms where they’re having the stress and then they have to go to the bathroom and often impacts their quality of life.

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah, absolutely.

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Katie Jo:

So me with the testing that you offer your clients, how is that different than what they might find at a conventional doctor's and tell us more about what you would recommend in testing as well.

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah. So, I mean, there's some women who will go to their doctor, maybe it's a GI specialist or even the regular PCP, and they may test, they may do like, what is it called, an OBAS something. It's like a parasite test and it's very basic. But unfortunately, you're not going to always see parasites in stool. So they're typically looking for parasites. They may not be looking at intestinal markers, digestive function. If you're lucky, a doctor may test for H. pylori, but typically it's with a breath test or maybe blood serum. It doesn't give us a full picture. You know, and of course some people may need like an endoscopy or a colonoscopy depending on what else is going on, depending on family history, things like that. But I like to look at your stool to see what's not literally looking at it, but look at the data that comes from your stool to see, you know, what are the bacteria levels in your gut? Do you have any that are more on the inflammatory side? Do you have low bacteria, like I mentioned, akkermansia, for example? Do you have some bacterial overgrowths or infections like H. pylori? What level is it at? Does it coincide with your symptoms? And then in terms of, we do sometimes see parasites in stool, and they're not always problematic. Some are worse than others. And then we also see your intestinal health, meaning, are you digesting fats properly? Do you have enough pancreatic enzymes on board to break down the foods that you're eating so that you can properly digest and absorb the nutrients in your food? Do you have enough estrogen metabolizing bacteria? Do you have any lower colon inflammation? So things like that are really helpful. And then we also get some insight into your immune system and your immune health. As I'm sure you know, a lot of your immune system resides in your gut. So we see something called secretory IgA, and that gives us some insight into what your immune response is. And then we also look at a gluten marker. So there's a protein called anti-gliadin, and that gives us some indication if you are sensitive to gluten. So... It's pretty comprehensive. I think that's a nice way to get a deeper dive into your gut health. But the other thing that I do like to look at is also blood work. And I'm sure you've seen some blood work, some indications that there may be some GI issues going on.

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Katie Jo:

Definitely, you can see it in the blood work, you can see it in the stools, and my sweet children growing up, because I wanna know what does your poop look like? And they're like, mom, we don't look at it. I said, you better start looking at it today and every day for the rest of your life. It tells you a lot about your health and wellbeing. If you don't wanna look at your poop, you don't have to, but it does give a lot of valuable information. And the testing that I use for parasite testing is called. Parasitology, and it collects three samples of the course of multiple days, because we know that single sample that you may not be able to assess for a parasite, because it may not show up, especially if it's in the certain growth cycles of the parasite, maybe it's in the egg laying cycle, or maybe it's in the cycle where it's growing into a larva. I see a lot of parasites in my clients, and on the blood work, we often will see it in your differential, which is the different type of immune cells. So if you have an elevation in your monocytes, if you have increased lymphocytes or decreased neutrophils, you may have an intestinal bacteria that's overgrown. And that just can be conformatory, just more data. There's so many times when clients tell me, Katie Jo, I knew something was wrong when I went to my other provider, they said you're normal. Well, we don't wanna be normal because the status quo for normal in North America is sad. And we say sad, standard American diet will make you sad. And so speaking of diet, you mentioned earlier that diet is one of the components with your program. It's a huge component. So tell me about some of the dietary recommendations. Are there certain dietary recommendations that you make routinely or does it really vary based on what you see in the testing results?

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah, so we don't like, I don't run any food sensitivity testing and we could talk about that later to get like an idea of what is something that somebody is really sensitive to. We typically focus on bringing more foods in, meaning a variety of fruits and vegetables because your gut needs fiber, as you know, for many reasons. We focus on protein, getting quality protein in, of course. So it's more about bringing more whole foods in and then we typically will have them remove some common triggers or sensitivities like dairy and gluten. And we also look at their symptoms. But we like to kind of start with those just so we don't overwhelm clients because I find that when you give a really strict elimination diet, that can just be really stressful. And I mean, you know, people are under enough stress nowadays. So that's typically what we start with and we try to keep it pretty basic in terms of, you know, what to eat. Like I said, mostly whole foods, getting your healthy fats in, your quality proteins, some complex carbohydrates, as well as some fermented foods because that's going to help support, as you know, your gut bacteria.

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Katie Jo:

I love the fermented foods. I was telling a story this week about how, when I was in the hospital working with a bedside nurse, I brought my lunch in and I had kimchi for my lunch. And I go to the break room to get my kimchi out with my lunch and it was gone. Someone, I think it was a charge nurse, had cleaned the fridge out, opened my container, smelt what smelled like rotten cabbage, kimchi, fermented cabbage and then proceeded to throw it away. And I was very sad that I didn't have my kimchi that day. But kimchi can be great. I do know with some clients, certain microbiome testing may not show this, but if you have certain types of bacteria, certain supplements can actually feed the bacteria. They may feed on vitamin D. They may be feeding on what's in your capsulated probiotic. They may be feeding on your iron, which could lead to iron deficiency anemia or signs of dizziness, lightheadedness. In combination for many of our female clients, if you're having heavy periods and you have a bacterial overgrowth and it's also eating your iron, you're at increased risk for anemia that can be really debilitating. You might even need an iron transfusion. I've had a few clients that have had that. So this connection with the digestive system and your overall health is so connected. I also wanted to ask you about the, go back to my notes, ways that you could naturally heal your gut. So we're talking about many of the imbalances, but what are some of the methods that you use in your program that are holistic that someone could reach out to you for support? How could they naturally heal their gut if they're having some of the symptoms?

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah, well, like I said, diet is first and foremost, we look at what you're eating, what can we start to bring in, what could we start to remove to create a better balance of that, we do focus on bringing in some probiotic foods, some prebiotic foods. I think a lot of people focus on probiotics, which is fine, but prebiotics are gonna feed the good gut bugs, so to speak. So we'd like to bring those in. And we monitor people. If somebody has like really severe bloating, then we have to tread lightly and move a little slower with certain foods. Again, reducing any sort of inflammation. And typically inflammation is gonna stem in the gut. So it's like, well, what could be contributing to those things? We try to remove certain things like highly processed foods, a lot of sugars, sugar alcohols, like I said before, some dairy, things like that. But then we also really focus on the stress component and mindful eating. I find that, especially nowadays, people are always on the go, always rushing, and we're not really taking the time to sit down and enjoy our food and chew, chew. So I tell my clients, you know, please try your best, even with kids running around and everything, as best you can, get into a calm state. Maybe take a couple of deep breaths before you eat and try to chew your food as much as possible before swallowing, because that's also, you know, you have enzymes in your saliva, so that's gonna help to break down the food. You're gonna digest your food better. And we also tell them to minimize the amount of liquids that they're consuming while they're eating, because that can kind of affect their stomach acid and digestive enzymes. So we basically say, you know, sip a little bit of water here and there if you have to take supplements. And obviously you wanna hydrate throughout the day. That's really important as well to keep things moving. Stress management just in general. I mean, when we have a lot of high stress, it's gonna slow down our digestion and vice versa if there's something going on in our gut, like inflammation, infections like H. pylori that's gonna affect our cortisol. So that's gonna cause a stress response in the body. And then supporting your nutrients in general in terms of minerals. So I feel like this is often a missing component. Minerals are something that pr etty cheap to come by and they're so basic, we need them. We need minerals like sodium, potassium, zinc, magnesium to make stomach acid. So that's a huge piece. And even something just like adding some mineral salts to your water or electrolytes, ones that aren't filled with sugar and all that junk. And then movement, it's just sticking with those basic foundations, making sure you're moving your body every day and not overdoing it. I find that a lot of women are, when they come to us anyway, they're often over-exercising and I have them kind of slow down, take it down a notch, go for walks, just do more restorative type of movement.

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Katie Jo:

I see that too. Many of the women, because they're having the weight gain, they revert back to how they exercise in their more youthful period, which would be crossfit workouts, extreme workouts. And I'm like, Katie Jo, I'm in a calorie deficit and I'm going to the gym five days a week, an hour and a half each time, and I'm not gaining weight. And I said, you're not going to lose any weight because your cortisol is through the roof right now. Your body thinks you're being chased by a tiger and it says, no way am I burning any weight. I'm keeping all of this fat for when that tiger comes so you can chase it away. And so the over-exercising is huge. And that also is gonna impact your digestive system because when you're exercising like that, causing the higher cortisol, you're not gonna absorb those nutrients as well. And you're gonna blow through your minerals. You're gonna use up your magnesium. You're gonna use up your sodium. I also see the zinc deficiency, especially on the lab work. We checked the alkaline phosphatase. And when I see that low, I say, let's look for a pattern. Let's look at your sodium and potassium. Let's see if you're having adrenal stress. Is it acute stress? Did you have a hard time in your marriage? Did you lose a job? Did you lose a loved one? Okay, we can support you through that. But if it's chronic stress over years, we can support you, but it's gonna take a lot of work from the client because we've set in these patterns of being over years. I tell my clients that our adrenal glands, which are one of the main consumers of our minerals, are like grandmas. They wanna go to bed when the sun sets. They wanna wake up with the sunrise. They wanna have a easy morning and sit down and drink some tea. They wanna have nourishing meals at the same time every day and they wanna take a bite, put the fork down to their food and then take another bite. It's not this frantic, I have five minutes to eat and then I have to pick up my kids and come home and make dinner. And there's so many stressors in our modern world that really do contribute to our overall poor health right now. Are you noticing any trendy solutions to health? Maybe some trends that you think are actually beneficial. Are there some trends in health that you think, this is a trend, this is horrible advice, please don't follow this trend, come and seek my help instead.

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Claudia Petrilli:

Right. Well, I think there's a few things, but like you just saying, these are horrible trends. I mean, I hate to judge people because I understand when people are just not feeling their best, they're going to try anything. And there's a lot of people selling things in the online space, especially like parasite cleanses, detox teas, all that stuff. And you know, I think sometimes they can do more harm than good. I'm not opposed to doing those things necessarily, but there's a time and place. And sometimes people will do like a harsh detox or a cleanse, but they haven't really prepared their body. And if they're not eliminating regularly, these toxins and whatnot, they can get recirculated in the body and then you can end up feeling worse. So that's one thing I see that I'm a little hesitant to tell, I just try to guide clients in the right direction that maybe they don't wanna be doing anything super extreme. You know, even just taking supplements without knowing if they even need them. There's a lot of gut healing supplements out there and not all of them are bad. I see people taking, you know, probiotics or collagen, things like that. And sometimes they're not really necessary or really helping the problem. They're not getting to the root cause, so to speak. So even something like probiotics, I feel like everybody thinks that they need to be taking one. And oftentimes they'll be taking the same one long-term. That's not necessarily a good thing either because you need a, just like our hormones need to be in balance, our bacteria in our gut needs to be in balance. And if you're taking one strain or a couple of strains long-term, it's like what's, could there be an imbalance there? Are you overdoing it? And then in terms of probiotics, they kind of pass through the system. Versus something like prebiotics, which I spoke about earlier, that's gonna actually feed your gut bacteria and help it to flourish. I find sometimes probiotics can just be kind of a very expensive waste, not for everyone. And there's a time and place, there's certain ones that I do recommend, but I often find that doesn't need to be the priority, whereas I think prebiotics should be more of a focus. Some people like to take powders, like green powders, things like that. I think that's because a lot of people assume that greens and fruits and vegetables are gonna support detox. And yes, they can. But when it comes to a lot of these green powders on the market, if they're not organic or if the sourcing is not great, they can have some pesticides in there, herbicides, things like that. They may be high in heavy metals like lead, cadmium. which can be problematic because that can also affect your minerals. I really, I just think like most people could get that from their food sources, ideally, right? Eating lots of, a variety of vegetables, different colors, a nice amount of fruit, not being afraid of fruit. I think a lot of people are afraid of fruit, which just breaks my heart because it's so nutrient dense.

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Katie Jo:

I was in that category for a while. I was afraid of fruit. I only would eat berries and I realized there's so many nutrients. And you mentioned the prebiotics. One of my favorite prebiotic recipe is taking a green banana, slicing it finely, just a little bit of oil, putting some cinnamon on that, and then just essentially stir frying it a little bit. It's so delicious and it needs to be green because that has the prebiotic. So that's one of my favorite prebiotic foods. And then in regards to the greens, I 100% support you in that. If you don't know the source of the greens, if you're not able to verify that the company is third-party testing to make sure it's pure, the FDA does not regulate the supplement industry very well at all. And it creates this flood of supplements. There's a supplement company that less than 10 years ago was billed billions of dollars because their supplements were tested and didn't have in it what they were marketing. And they had things that were poor for your health. Like you mentioned, cadmium. My clients who know me know that I love to gather my own greens. Right now, nettles in season, so I'll gather nettles. I'll dehydrate them, gather beets, slice those thinly, dehydrate them, and then mix them in my powerful blender and make my own powdered nutrients. And I'll add that to drinks, I'll add that to smoothies. If you're not able to make the time to gather and dehydrate and make your own greens, then just making a really healthy smoothie. You can add beets to your smoothie, which is great for the liver and the gallbladder. You mentioned earlier with that digestive process, if your body's not clearing out your toxins very well, when you eat, they get reabsorbed through the bile and the gallbladder and the liver. It ends up being this ferris wheel of death where your toxins are being reabsorbed. They're not clearing out of your body. And like you said, you often feel worse if you try to cleanse because your body's not clearing it out. I tell my clients, your body needs to be able to take out the trash. If your body can't take out the trash very well and you keep adding supplements on top of it and more supplements, or you're just making a bigger trash pile because the body has to clear it out. So often with my clients, if they're having symptoms of what I use the ICD-10 for, defect in the complement system, which all that means is your body's not taking out the trash very well, then let's start at a clean slate. Let's minimize and eliminate most of your supplements, and then let's add in things one at a time to see how your body responds. You gave the example of the prebiotic. If someone comes to me and they say, Katie Jo I've been taking this prebiotic for six months. I said, great, did you notice any difference? No, all right, well, let's do something different if you haven't noticed anything different. And we're

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Claudia Petrilli:

Exactly.

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Katie Jo:

creatures of habit often. So when we get in a habit and we think it's a health habit, for example, women have been told that long periods of intermittent fasting is a wonderful thing to do. Not every day, not multiple times a week, not when you're stressing out your adrenal and your thyroid and you're hangry and grumpy and can't focus on work, but maybe you lost a little bit of weight. So those would be some of the health trends that I noticed that aren't supportive long-term, the powdered greens, the long intermittent fasting that's impacting your organ reserve over time. So Claudia, I'm so thankful that you got to come on today's podcast. Tell me a little bit more where people can find you. For those that say, yes, I'm experiencing these symptoms of gut health. Yes, I have achy joints and I am bloated and I'm losing my hair. And I think it's based on what I'm eating and I have such bad sugar cravings that I need someone to help me. Where could they look you up and find you?

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yeah, thank you. So my website is just claudiapetrilli.com. I hang out a lot on Instagram. So my handle there is @healthcoachclaudia. And yeah, they can send me a DM if they wanna say hello. Happy to chat.

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Katie Jo:

And for those, Petrelli is spelled P-E-T-R-I-L-L-I, Petrilli. Her name will be

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Claudia Petrilli:

Yes.

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Katie Jo:

in the notes from today's visit. And I'm so thankful that we have practitioners like yourself that can help support hormone health. We know that our hormones are often made by what we eat. And if we're not able to optimize our diet, then we're not gonna be able to produce our hormones very well. And by the time someone comes crawling to our doorstep, They've tried the different trendy diets. They've tried the extreme fasting. They've tried the over-exercising. And all those things that have been pulled back when you look at the base, which is that what we said in the beginning, that Hippocrates, Hippocrates said that disease starts and ends with the gut. I also wanna add onto that, let food be thy medicine. Any closing remarks Claudia before we finish our time together here today?

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Claudia Petrilli:

No, I think you said it all. It's all so important. The body is connected. The gut is really important. And I often have to educate a lot of women on that because they think that their hormones are just not working or not functioning. And yes, the hormones obviously are problematic, but always wanna know why. Like what else is contributing to that at any stage of your life. So yeah, I am all about repairing the gut as best you can.

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Katie Jo:

And that put one closing thought in my mind that I do wanna add on. We also, when you meet with a Thrivelab provider, we're gonna look at your medications that you're taking. Because we know that many medications, if you're taking certain medications for depression, the antidepressants, that can deplete some of your B vitamins. That can create a nutrient deficiency. If you're taking something for gastrointestinal reflex, GERD, especially proton pump inhibitors, they make your stomach less acidic, they make it alkaline. Well, you know what your sudden needs? It needs acid to absorb your B vitamins especially. So you create a vitamin deficiency and then if you try to wean off of the acid blockers, then you have this rebound effect where you have high levels of acid and you feel even worse. I've had success with several clients that we've been able to wean off using whole foods, using some supplements to wean off of these proton pump inhibitors and to reestablish that gut flora. And one of my clients said, I'm able to eat foods now, whole foods, that I haven't been able to eat in years. I can eat a sweet potato now. I can eat homemade beans now, and I'm not feeling horrible. So we know that these small changes can not only improve your nutrition, but improve your quality of life. If you resonate with what me and Claudia had talked about today, you can also go to thrivelab.com. We have a chat there, enter the chat, tell them that you saw this podcast today, mention Claudia's name and we'd love to be able to help you on this health journey to restore your thriving life so you can offer your gifts at the greatest level to others. Thank you for taking time to listen today and until next time, take good care.