Hello and welcome to this week’s show. I’m Janet Lewis.
And I’m Dr. Lewis.
And we are Green Wisdom Health, home of your low cost lab work, here to educate you and entertain you with another interesting, fascinating show. We are going to talk today a little bit about going down the rabbit hole with keto and other health issues, and we’ve specifically named it this because we have a very special guest with us today from locally here. I know you guys think that we only help people across the United States, but we actually have a very large patient base in Longview, Texas and the surrounding area. She’s been a patient of ours for about almost five years now. Many of you, I think you hear us, but you don’t really know whether or not what we tell you is true or if we’re just the same as somebody else or we’re just tootin’ our own horn.
Hey, I do that all the time.
I know. You toot your horn.
We thought we’d bring you a live person that is unpaid to come in here and tell us all about her experience and what she went through, and why she chose us, and why she continues to choose us. So, with that being said, we’d like to welcome Amanda from Troup, Texas to tell us all about where she has come from, where she’s going.
Well, thank you so much. I’m excited to be here, and yes, I have to let the audience know I’m not getting paid and nobody coached me on what to say. I really wanted to come in and talk about my experience because I think it’s important to know the patient perspective and how people can really benefit from doing their lab work consistently, sticking with good supplements that really help, your supplement, your diet. It’s just been a wonderful process for me.
When you say supplement, do you really think they are different than what you just pick up somewhere?
Absolutely. I was telling you all before, I grew up taking Flintstone vitamins and those little orange vitamin C’s that were chewable. I loved those. I would sneak extra.
It’s so hard for us to get kids off of those, too. They’re like, “They’re not the gummies like we’re used to.”
Yeah, we grew up with vitamins from Walmart or wherever, but the thing about what you all are doing here is that the supplements are obviously high quality, and we can prove that through the lab work. It’s just very important for me to have that proof and to be able to see progress being made.
Without going into detail about what’s on your lab, can you give us a rough idea of why you came in to start with and kind of where you are now with things.
Sure. I really heard about you all because at one point you all had a local show a couple years back, about five years ago. I’m a big fan of talk radio, and so I came across the show. I heard what Dr. Lewis was saying. It made a lot of sense, and I started to listen consistently. Then I decided I’ll go on the website, I’ll fill out the health survey, and I’ll just see what happens. I think the thing that really sold me on the process is that there’s this lab work that we can prove or we can see what’s going on. So, I had my lab work done and got a baseline, and met with Dr. Lewis, and felt very welcomed. I started taking the recommended list of supplements and just went from there and stayed consistent with it. Then the second lab was what was really exciting, when I had that second lab.
Why were you consistent? What was your motivation?
I guess I’m a rule follower, and so I like to see if a process is going to work. As I was taking these, sometimes there’s a lot to swallow, literally, and it’s …
Well, that’s how we intended.
We’ve done better at that. We’ve changed some products so things are better, so not so many.
I just wanted to get to the second lab, the six-month checkpoint, so to speak. I just wanted to see what would happen. Some numbers moved, and that was exciting. I made progress, and so I just continued on.
When she’s talking about numbers moving, when we do lab panels, our minimum panel is 12 different panels which is what we call our comprehensive panel, and we’re looking for things like viruses that are underlying in the lab, digestion, liver enzymes, three-month blood sugar to see if you really are becoming a diabetic before it happens or if you are one. Many times had backed out of it. High risk of heart attack or stroke. That’s something that’s not run very often. We run stored iron. We run vitamin D. Five parts of your thyroid looking for optimal levels and maybe Amanda will talk a little bit about that, and cortisol levels. Were any of those things that you remember?
Absolutely. Just about all of those things. I didn’t really come into this with a lot of major health issues, but I could see some things starting to happen and some things on the horizon that could cause problems. I know I have a family history of heart attack and stroke, and so what I found out from my lab was that my thyroid levels were off, and I was at a relatively high risk for a future cardiac event which was quite scary and just cortisol issues. When I started, I was in the middle of a PhD program and just caused a lot of stress.
So, see she’s actually smart, you all.
Not only very intelligent, but very educated, and maybe that could lead you into what it did to your cortisol, all the excess stress.
I would not have made it through that PhD program without the … What was it, the 5-MTF or …?
The 5-HTP?
Yes, and then the pantothenic acid, I don’t know what you all gave me, but I just could not have done it. I get pretty stressed out pretty easily, as my sweet husband can attest, and that really helped me.
5-HTP is the piece of God in a bottle.
Yes. Not to say I didn’t feel stress along the way, but that made me stay focused on what I was doing and it really provided … Without really even realizing it, it provided me some steadiness. I don’t know how to explain it really.
We tell people it helps you flow instead of hanging onto the sides of the river as you’re going down. It helps you flow.
Yes, and when you’re in a big project like a dissertation or a medical residency, or something like that, it is a high stress longterm marathon, and there’s small breaks in between big projects, and you really need something to help with that. I don’t know how everyone faces things like that, but it definitely helped me. I was looking back at my labs in preparation for today’s podcast, and looking at my cardiac … What is it, C-reactive protein?
Right.
I’m kind of speaking the language now that I’ve been doing this for five years. I came in some risk for cardiac event and then I could track it. As I got closer to my comprehensive exams, which is the big exam in my doctoral program, two day exam, you cover everything you’ve learned in the past two ye- Very stressful. I could see six months out and then a month before I took that test, my C-reactive protein jumped way, way up and my cortisol was just … You have to adjust. Just because you get on some supplements doesn’t mean that things are automatically going to improve, but you’ve got to keep track of things because life changes. So, you get on it for a while and you feel good and you say, “Okay, I’ve had enough.” No, you can’t do that. You have to keep going because life keeps changing, whether it’s stress levels, environmental factors, toxicity, all of these things that we come in contact with, this is going to keep happening, and so you need to keep account of your health.
I think Dr. Lewis puts it really good when people say, “Oh, this is all going all with my lab. Well, which couple of things can I pick out?” He always says, “Well, how ’bout we just put a little bit of gas in your vehicle. How far do you want to go? Where would you like to run out, at what place?” That’s kind of what it is with the natural medicine. You have to keep putting it in because I think people are so conditioned to medications that it, you don’t want to say heals their problem, but at some point it looks like it’s fixed because it’s a medication when that’s not necessarily true. I think they think that with natural medicine, it’s like it should be fixed at some point, and I stop. It’s like well, yes, some things get better and you don’t take as much or it changes, but just like you said, it’s kind of like eating food. It just is a different terrain and different products, and you just keep progressing. You just keep getting better and better.
Right. You’re supplementing your nutrients and the need for that never runs out. I’m not saying that just to say, “Hey, you gotta buy more products here,” but it’s really something that makes sense if you think about it from a non-medical model, and you think about it from a nutrition model. If you look at supplementing your diet, yeah, there’s supplements that I’ve gotten off of because levels have improved or whatever the case is. Then there’s also things that I’ve gotten back on because life changes.
Life changes.
That’s one of the points I always try to make is people say, “Well, what do I have to take?” I say, “Well, you know, it’s up to you. When I go to Montana, I fill the tank up. I don’t go with just one gallon of gas.” Some people say, “Well, don’t you think my body is gonna get confused with all this?” It’s like if you eat a sandwich and drink something, your body is smart enough to sort it out. I say things in a real smart aleck answer just to make people think about it differently. We actually did a podcast on Steven-isms, and I didn’t get around to many. I have a whole book full of them, folks. It’s not to be a smart aleck. It’s just to help impress upon you the need.
There’s this preacher that comes in here, and I just love him dearly. He says, “Well, Doc, how long do I have to stay on this?” I said, “How long do I need to read my bible and keep putting money in your offering plate?” He says, “Okay, that was harsh.”
So, to the degree that you want to or can, and that depends … I take less than Janet does and she says, “Well, you don’t need another new gun. You’re spending money on supplements.” I said, “You don’t need another pair of shoes,” at which point I knew I had messed up, and I’m still apologizing for it, so …
Big mistake.
Do it to the degree that you feel comfortable, whether there’s two or three things or many, many, many things.
My degree I feel comfortable at is filling the whole tank up and carrying a spare along just in case I run out. I take everything.
Well, both Janet and Amanda take a lot more than I do, but that’s why women outlive men 7.8 years on the average.
Well, we have to take care of you all, so we have to take more to keep up with that.
That’s right, honey.
So, with your thyroid, you did mention that you had some thyroid issues. A lot of people think, “Well, I don’t feel great, but my doctor has told me my thyroid is fine.” Did that happen to you also? Were you ever told your thyroid was fine or had you ever had it checked before you came here?
I don’t think I ever really had it checked. I thought maybe that’s an issue because of how the symptoms of a low thyro- I don’t even know the correct terminology, but how the symptoms of a low thyroid were described, and so I was dragging quite a bit. I remember as a kid we’d go to town. We lived 30 minutes outside of Tyler. We’d go to town to shop, grocery shopping, and I’d get so tired just as a 10 year old. Get so tired. I guess I’ve always been a little draggy. Dr. Lewis could probably speak more to my thyroid journey than I could, but I’ve notice a difference in the way I feel, but also it was important that I realized that the thyroid affects so many other things just like the gut affects so many things. The major thing that I’ve learned from this is that everything is speaking to other area … It’s all interconnected, and once you realize this, you start to understand that one pill doesn’t fix all. There’s things going on that you don’t know about that could be affecting things that are quite obvious to you.
That’s another thing. A lot of people say, “Well, I’ve had this since I was young, so it’s normal.” Well, just because you felt bad all your life or haven’t had the energy doesn’t mean it’s normal. It may mean you’ve really had a problem all your life.
Right.
When we’re looking at thyroid, we’re looking for where the numbers are optimal, not just in range. If your doctors told you that, “Hey, you look great,” which is usually a TSH which is not even the thyroid. It’s the thyroid stimulating hormone. You might want to consider getting some different parts of the thyroid run because when we run it, it’s the free T3 which is the big one, and making that optimal that actually boosts metabolism, weight loss. I think Dr. Lewis is going to talk a little bit about keto. Hashimoto’s, that’s a whole other subject. There’s things that can be really wrong with your thyroid that’s creating all kind of things including risk of heart attack or stroke. It does increase that, too.
It can be your toxic load. There’s research now that says we have 10,000 times more plastics in us than the heavy metals that we’ve never taken out. So, like Janet and Amanda do, they take a lot of supplements longterm so you up your nutrient level so your body can actually increase the different detoxification pathways. It doesn’t matter that you’re taking a lot out every day because you have to realize that the environment is actually putting these toxins back in, so the net gain decrease in your toxins is actually pretty small. So, that’s why time and consistency means so very, very much, and that’s why some people are very reluctant to lose weight because the fat cells don’t want to let go of the toxins unless you have the detoxification pathways going through. I just gained back 14 pounds just to experiment with some other things to see if I can create some weight loss there.
We were pretty blessed … We got on Drew Manning’s podcast, the fit-to-fat-to-fit guy, and I think he is the number one guru on keto and what you should do there, and actually the reason we named this podcast, “Down the Rabbit Hole,” was because Amanda said she thought I did a really good job on that podcast, and actually I didn’t because I felt bad. So, she is the one who started the rabbit trail or rabbit hole stories.
Keto is a big thing I think everybody should do it. I’ve been a big fan of Atkins paleo, primal, keto. I really prefer keto over paleo. There are some differences. Some of the things that we hear about, though, is well, if you have these symptoms, and there are symptoms that are associated with getting well, you can take more salt. They recommend the Himalayan, the pink salt, because of the mineral profile. Then they recommend different electrolytes.
There are many, many differences in what you’re taking. We use things called Reacted magnesium, Reacted multi-men’s, because they actually chelate them to different amino acids which makes them much more bioavailable so your body can absorb it, and that’s another thing some people don’t understand. Just because you put it in your body doesn’t mean you’re absorbing it because we have a gastrointestinal problem with the leaky gut. We were having great experience with some new products that actually helped to heal leaky gut which actually helps to heal leaky brain and you get better brain function by getting better colon function which should tell you about … Well, nevermind. I don’t want to go there. I’ll get in trouble.
Well, I know some people have talked about when they go on a keto diet that they start getting irritable bowel-type stuff. Is that product you’re talking about something that would help with that?
Very much. I love Drew Manning. I think what he’s doing really is good. I think for those that have other issues that the best thing they can do is get the lab work and reveal the issues because you’re starting to mobilize … You’re eating high fat, so you’re going to mobilize that and begin to burn it, but you have to have good digestive enzymes and that’s not always easy. It does matter where you buy them.
You have to watch the liver because if the liver doesn’t have all of its 11 detoxification pathways going through, you can get a clogged up liver and you can see that with your liver enzymes. The AST and ALTs will begin to go higher and higher, and if you don’t do something about it before it gets bad, you get what’s called non-alcoholic fatty liver. You don’t want that. And muscle cramps. People say, “Well, I have Hashimoto’s. Is keto gonna fix it?” Keto eventually is going to fix a lot of things, but you have to address these issues. It’s wise, I think, to watch these things and increase the detoxification pathways.
We’ve got a great new product which is 10 times higher in calcium D-glucarate than anything we’ve ever seen, and that is a major, major opening or helps the liver detoxify in a glucuronidation pathway, so we’re getting good, good, good results and we just started using it. Janet took a bottle home and said, “This is for you.” She didn’t give me a choice, so, “Yes, ma’am, I’m taking it.”
Well, what we’ve seen is that it’s really increasing hormone function in both men and women. It doubled a guy’s testosterone in three months.
And opened up more of it for availability, and it’s like I don’t know if his wife is going to say, “Thank you,” or say, “Cut him off. He’s too frisky now.” I don’t know, but …
Yeah. It’s DHEA for a man. It was a DHEA 25 mg and then this CDG EstroDIM.
And the Prostatrol Forte for the natural aromatase inhibitors. But, people say, “But I’m taking 25 mg of DHEA another brand.” Yeah, well it’s not working because I can see it on your lab. Not all supplements are equal and sometimes you’re taking a good supplement, but your body is not absorbing it.
For women, I’m being the Guinea pig here because women need testosterone, too, so I thought take it on the chin and I’ll take it.
Yeah, if she grows a mustache like mine, I’m moving out.
We might put Amanda on it pretty soon here.
Men, if you’ve got a woman, her sex drive has gone away, this CBG …
I’m waiting to hear what’s coming because you’ve got two women here, so go ahead.
Maybe I should leave.
No, no. This is going to be good.
No, I don’t have enough testosterone to talk about it in front of women, but once a woman’s testosterone comes up, they tend to have a better ability to lose weight, but their libido increases. I told one woman, I said, “When your husband realizes that you’re back to the girl he married, I want some Shiner Bock beer and dark chocolate.” He stopped us, he really did, at a restaurant and said, “Are you Dr. Lewis?” I said, “Yeah. He said, “I owe you some Shiner Bock and dark chocolate.” I said, “Hey, your wife’s a good listener.”
So, folks, these hormones can be altered by opening up these detox pathways. That calcium D-glucarate in much larger amount than anything we’ve seen before so far is working real, real well.
With this keto diet, isn’t it true they’re supposed to eat a whole lot of fats? Is that right?
Yes. That’s why I said you have to have the enzymes to do it because most of us don’t have the proper enzymes. Amanda, she stuck with us long enough. She used to take one digestive enzyme. We had really good results from it, and she actually won a bottle of it by answering correctly a question we had on the show. Now we have digestive enzymes that have … What’s the difference? I think the old one that worked so well had like 16 units to digest fat and the new one has 1008 units. Do the math on that. So, we have better enzymes to digest the fat. The more you digest the fat, then the more the body can start burning fat.
So, that’s part of what’s wrong when people tell you they’re on the keto diet but they feel like it’s not working or they feel like they’re getting constipated and they’re …
Gas, belching, bloating, constipation.
Some slow moving trains.
Amanda, what made you willing to go from one product that worked to another one? You know, she’s hung around a long time, and she’s been part of our experiment. We’re always getting better and more knowledgeable.
Well, I trust you and so if you say you’ve got a better product … You’ve never steered me wrong before, and so part of it is just the credibility that I perceive in you and just the understanding that there’s always going to be new discoveries or different products come about that improve on what’s been done. You’ve got to be open to a little bit of experimentation, and it’s always nice to have options.
That’s why they call it practicing.
That’s right.
You know what’s really scary. I’m in here with two really wonderful women, and God, if I knew I had that much power when I was 16, I’d have gotten in trouble.
You probably were in trouble. We probably don’t want to talk about it on this show.
No, it’s a G-rated show.
We do have a couple of questions, though. One of them was a commentary, I guess, from Dr. Lewis about vitamin D and how it could help treat diabetes. What did you want to tell us about that?
Well, one of the things I want to make … I am. I’ll get in trouble again. Oh, let’s go back to G-rated. That was scrolling across Good Morning America, “Vitamin D can help with diabetes,” and my answer to that is, “Duh.” I’ve been saying it 35 years and now all of a sudden after they poo-pooed nutritional supplements for so many years, now even Good Morning America is getting in on the deal.
Think about it. Two hundred years ago when we weren’t full of plastics and heavy metals, the sun was shining down on you at a very strong angle. You could burn 10,000 calories for energy and muscle while we were out playing with our cows and plowing the fields. In the innate wisdom of the human body, when the sun started going at a different angle because of autumn, the body would go down in vitamin D and say, “Hmm, I’m gonna have less calories ’cause we’re going into the seasons where there’s not as much food, so I can take not 10,000 calories, but I have to take 1,000 calories and actually put it into fat.”
We have low vitamin D because sunshine cannot be converted as much because we’ve lowered our cholesterol which is absolutely incredibly important to make vitamin D which is not even a vitamin. It’s actually a hormone. All these things is duh. There’s plenty of research that says you have to have this supplement, this supplement, this supplement because it’s not in your food, folks. Even organic food is a very good thing to invest in. I don’t care if it costs an average of 30% more. It has more nutrition in it and less pesticides, but to function toward 100%, you have to up your nutritional intake, and that has to be done by supplements and it has to be quality supplements like you want a quality spouse. There are differences, folks.
Interesting. As usual.
I got the look on that one from two women.
You leave us speechless many times.
Yeah, I wish that were true.
We both have similar spouses, too.
That’s why I like you.
Amanda’s spouse is absolutely awesome. I love him.
We also had a question about someone, and you briefly touched on this, but I don’t think they completely understand the answer. They ask about doing the keto diet, but they have Hashimoto’s, which for you that don’t know what that is, that’s an autoimmune problem in the thyroid. Does it mess with Hashimoto’s or can someone with Hashimoto’s do a keto diet? Do you have any weird symptoms because you have Hashimoto’s?
Wow. Can I take my memory pill and remember all that? I think keto diet is fine for Hashimoto’s, but there’s certain other issues you need to address, and the best thing to do is get the lab. Let’s find out exactly what’s going on and let’s address that so you can have better success with the keto diet.
When you’re saying diet, usually you’re telling the body something is going to change with it, and it’s going to starve, basically, or change drastically. If you have Hashimoto’s and it’s not in check, which a lot of people don’t realize there is a natural way to make it in check. We have two products that actually help with that one. It’s called Olive Leaf and the other one is IG26. One stabilizes the thyroid and the other one supports the immune system, so it quits doing the rollercoaster ride that it does on lab with your thyroid panels.
So, if your doctor keeps running your thyroid and they keep saying, “We can’t get this right. It’s all over the place,” and they keep changing your medicine, there could be a really good chance you have Hashimoto’s. Then you try to diet on top of it. Then the body already is sick and then you’re trying to make it lose weight, too. It’s a really great idea if you get the thyroid under control first and then address trying to lose weight because you really may have some issues and then you’re not going to know, “Hey, is this keto doing this to me? Is this my thyroid being wacky?”
They would make that correlation, but it would not be a causation.
Right, and that’s what …
Keto is good.
Right, keto is good.
For most people.
We don’t want you thinking, “Hey, there’s something wrong with this diet because there actually may be something wrong with the thyroid that needs to be fixed also.
Not to say too much out of place, but Amanda’s thyroid, she didn’t have Hashimoto’s, but it’s definitely gotten better over the years whether she feels it or not. Do you have an opinion about that?
Yeah, I definitely feel better, I think. To me it was subtle, so the only way I could track was just do the labs, but yeah, I’m very pleased with my progress. In fact, last time I had lab, you said, “You know, you could probably go a whole year without lab instead of coming in every six months.” I may still do the six months just because I like the check, you know?
That’s a great point because you should mention that about the … People ask that all the time. “How many times do I have to run this lab?”
Well, I think when you hit your sweet spot, that’s my term for it, of what you want to take as far as supplements, you’ve addressed the issues and given enough nutrition so your body could fight its own battles, then the lab work gets less and less important. Janet and I do our lab about every year. Amanda could go a year, but if she wants to knows more, six months is certainly not unreasonable at all. I probably should go more, but I’m a sissy and I get stuck, and I pass out sometimes when they do that. Yes, I’m that big a sissy, but it’s a really good thing. Yeah, that’s a good point about Hashimoto’s, too. It’s like well you have a GI problem. Therefore, you’ll have an absorption problem. It’s probably leaky gut. We do need to address that so you can have better success in weight loss, in energy production, in memory, in reversing or helping your body deal with diabetes, etc., etc.
Or people that have digestive problems like a bad gallbladder or no gallbladder are probably initially going to experience a lot of concerns when they start doing keto.
Yeah, you should have seen the look when she said, “concerns.” Yeah, you really need to know what’s going on and digestive enzymes would be incredibly important there to help digest that because without that gallbladder holding the reservoir of bowel, then those are the ones that get up in the middle of the meal and rush to the bathroom because it just runs right through, so you really need to have the digestive enzymes.
We used to do that for fun. I don’t know, we’re very sick individuals. We go to a restroom and go, “That one’s gallbladder is gone. That one’s gallbladder is gone,” because they couldn’t make it through the whole meal before they had to go to the bathroom.
That was sick of us, but it was fun. We like to go to the airport and have a beer and talk … “That’s person is doing this and that person is doing that.”
With the digestive enzyme, of course.
Yeah, and that person needs its sacroiliac adjusted. It’s like, you know, look at them like that. It’s like holy cow they could really be healthy if they had this nutrition or this kind of an adjustment, but yeah, I’m weird that way.
If they just listen to this show, they would learn so much. Speaking of that, if you guys have someone that needs to hear this show, please share us with them and do not keep us a secret because we like to be passed around. We have come to the close of another exciting show. I can’t believe that 30 minutes flies by. We want to thank Amanda again for her input and being our guest today. We’re very thrilled. We may have you back.
Well, thank you. I enjoyed it.
She’s very eloquent, too, unlike me with all the Steven-isms, so we can have Amanda-isms.
Sure.
If you have questions or anything that you would like to have answered, please join our Shoot’n Straight with Dr. Lewis, and he’ll be happy to add you to his group and answer questions for you. If you want to get started feeling better, go to our website, GreenWisdomHealth.com. Fill out the health survey. We’re recommending for this show to do the comprehensive lab panel to see what’s going on with your health, and you can get started just like Amanda did. We’ll catch you guys here next time, or next week, with another exciting show. You guys have a blessed week.