Jeremy Weisz 5:53
I want to talk about memberships and how you came up with this model. But I do want to talk about your background, how’d you get into this.
Dr. Kristin Oja 6:01
So I actually started as a personal trainer, and I just was going to be a personal trainer for the rest of my life. I loved motivating, encouraging cheering my patients or clients on at the time. And my parents were like, Kristin, you need a degree, like just go to school and get a degree. And everybody told me, you know, do nursing, you can always find a job in nursing. So I became a nurse in the ER, and actually loved it because I got 13 miles and a shift. You know, I’m a personal trainer, I’m really into my steps. And I got my Fitbit on and I’m tracking everything. And I love the adrenaline. I’m an adrenaline junkie. But what we were doing was we were treating and streeting in the ER right, we’re getting them stable and sending them home and having them follow up with their primary care. And I called it the brown bag, people came into the ER with this brown bag on their chest on a gurney. And in their brown bag was 20 pills that they had no idea why they were taking each one of those medicines. And at the time I was a nurse. So I was responsible for lining up all of their medications, putting them all into their chart, asking them why they were taking each thing. And my patient was like, I don’t know, my cardiologist prescribes that my pulmonologist prescribes that my endocrinologist prescribes that my gastroenterologist prescribes that. And as you can see, you know, what in the world is going on? Why are we on these 20 pills? who’s managing your care and uncovering what is the root cause of these things. So I quickly realized as much as I loved the adrenaline as long as as much as I love the steps, I needed to become a nurse practitioner to be able to sit down with my patients and actually make recommendations on their health journey. So I became a nurse practitioner ended up doing great through my program ended up getting a scholarship where they paid for me to get my doctorate. So then I went in and studied, my whole dissertation was on gut health. So I, you know, had 100 patients in my study, and I looked at functional gastrointestinal disorders. So those of you guys that don’t know what those are, and they’re like, hey, everything is fine. We did colonoscopies, endoscopy is bloodwork, everything is fine. We don’t know why you have these symptoms that you have, here’s a medication to manage your constipation, your diarrhea, your heartburn. And I put my patients in an eight week study. And all I did, I didn’t even change their diet, which I think is so critical. I didn’t even change their diet, because that’s a hard thing to, you know, make sure we’re being very consistent with. So all I did was put them on probiotics, digestive enzymes and glutamine for eight weeks, I did nothing else. That was it. And 88% of my patients had statistically significant improvements in their digestive symptoms, which makes you know that there is a cellular component of what’s going on there is a physiological component to IBS. This is not just in our head, right. So, you know, and then from there, I realized again, you know, I’m seeing these patients and integrative and functional medicine, but I’m seeing them for 30 minutes, twice a year. Am I really making a difference? And so I started going back into my mind, like now I’m doing exactly what I want to do. But am I really transforming my patients life? I want to see more often. How do I see my patients more often, I put a gym into my medical practice. Now you’re coming in and you’re moving and you’re exercising, and you have unlimited health coaching in this membership. So now I can see you multiple times coming in the door, we can do a quick some of our patients are like, I just need a 15 minute health coaching phone call on my way to work. I’m falling off the grid, and I need the accountability. And that’s why our membership was created.
Jeremy Weisz 9:27
I love it. I want to talk about the membership but you’re on you know, talking about gut health and supplements. What supplements do you recommend or what do you take?
Dr. Kristin Oja 9:37
Yeah, so I think there’s a few things we tend to not put everybody on the same protocol for supplements. We are very individualized and we customize every single treatment plan as much as my providers probably hate that because it involves a lot of free text and you know making a new plan for every single person that walks in the door. And we check labs. We’re very data driven So when I make a recommendation of what you need it is based on your actual lab results. And then we want to follow up typically at three months and recheck those same lab results and make sure we’re having improvements. But in general, what do I find that so many of my patients are deficient in vitamin D, you know, across the board, so many of my patients are deficient in vitamin D, we know about 90% of people have sub optimal magnesium. So vitamin D, magnesium, those are really big things. We check a lot of omega three fatty acid ratios. And you know, on a sad standard American diet, our omega sixes become really imbalanced with our omega threes. And that drives inflammation. So vitamin D, magnesium, a good fish oil, those are typically things that a lot of our patients need. And then outside of that it’s very, you know, individualized do we need probiotics, you know, our goal is not to take a probiotic, the rest of your life as much as I love probiotics. Our goal is to get a diet rich in fiber, and prebiotics to feed the good bacteria we have in our gut. So you know, to us you’re supplementing a healthy lifestyle, and we want to put lifestyle first above any other supplements. What are some foods
Jeremy Weisz 11:06
that are Kristin that were high and what people should consume for prebiotics?
Dr. Kristin Oja 11:13
prebiotics, so there’s so many different foods, basically, foods that are rich and fiber are going to have prebiotics, so even basic things like ground flaxseed, you know, throwing that into a smoothie, throwing it into your morning, oatmeal, chia seeds, asparagus, leeks. green banana powder actually is a really great prebiotic chicory root in Mulan, you know, there’s lots of ways of getting this and then we even look, casting a wider net things like avocado, you know, a lot of people think of that it’s just a fat, there’s about five grams of fiber and an avocado. And those are prebiotic rich foods. We’ve got things like Acacia fiber psyllium. Husk, beans and lentils. You know, there’s so many different ways to get this fiber and prebiotics that we need to feed our good bacteria in our gut.
Jeremy Weisz 11:58
What about you know, you have two young kids, what do other people have kids out there? What should or should they be supplementing with kids?
Dr. Kristin Oja 12:08
So typically vitamin D, the kids need that too. Typically omega threes, they need some good DHA for brain health. That’s a big one. And a lot of kids I actually do put on probiotics, depending on their pickiness, you know, sometimes when they become toddlers getting good veggies and fruits is maybe not the first thing that they always want. So I do like to put them on some probiotics. My daughter I have on some general immune support this time of year. So there’s a unicorn dust, you know that I will put her on and just mix it with water, put it into
Jeremy Weisz 12:41
a unicorn dust.
Dr. Kristin Oja 12:43
So it’s called unicorn dust. It’s actually
Jeremy Weisz 12:44
the actual name.
Dr. Kristin Oja 12:45
That’s the actual name. And they are they have an immune support supplement for kids and it tastes like juice. So they mix it with water and I put a splash of elderberry. And it’s just it’s a fantastic blend to kind of support their immune system. But even with our kids, like we do stool analysis on kids at very young ages, because we really believe in this root cause medicine world that your gut is the gateway to your health. And so we like to look at their gut, especially if your child has things like really bad seasonal allergies, or eczema, or ADD and ADHD. We also look at food sensitivities, you know, sometimes we’re giving our kids things that are healthy, but for them are triggering inflammation. So when you start seeing behavioral changes or focus issues, you know, we want to start at a very young age with these principles that we do you with adults as well.
Jeremy Weisz 13:36
There’s some really, yeah, I mean, there’s I’m blanking on the person’s name, looking it up, but there’s a bunch on how important gut health is. And do you know what I’m talking about? There’s a doctor. I mean, there’s a lot of books on gut health. But there’s this one doctor that I think is pretty prolific. It talks about that’s kind of I think he has the Grain Brain block and I’m blanking on the name now but someone who’s listening can look it up and but it he does talk about the kind of the foundation is in good health. I know like heart disease is a huge issue. And from a young kids even right now are being diagnosed with high cholesterol, high LDL cells, what are some ways that you recommend looking into to lower those?
Dr. Kristin Oja 14:31
Yeah, and we actually see a lot of high triglycerides in kids, which is really sad, you know, that we’re seeing these hyperlipidemia is and 10 year olds, nine year olds, we’re actually seeing and catching non alcoholic fatty liver and 13 year olds. You know, we’re seeing a lot of visceral fat and a lot of times parents think they’re doing the right thing. So this is not like you know, they’re just giving them sodas all day long. But we in our in our culture, our food quality is not good. And so we are getting A lot of high fructose corn syrup, still, we’re getting a lot of sodas, you know. And these things are really impacting the way our pancreas is making insulin, the way our body is storing fat. So, and I’ll go back and answer your question, but we have a hormone called insulin right? That pushes glucose into our cells, it’s a thought to be an anabolic hormone, it helps with building. So when kids are really active, and adults are really active, this insulin pushes our glucose into our muscles, right to be used for energy. But we are much more sedentary these days, children too, we’re sitting a lot. And our energy or our carbohydrates and glucose are exceeding what we can fit into our cells. And so instead of pushing our glucose into our muscles, which we want in the active state and moving and you know, getting up and down, we’re starting to push it all into our fat cells. And our fat cells are becoming very plump, and we’re becoming more inflamed. And we’re starting to store this that even in the very skinny people, we’re starting to store this fat around our liver around our kidneys, and that’s called the visceral fat. And we’re seeing this in children. So what can we do? I think, number one, we have to cut out high fructose corn syrup. Like, for me, I have my kids have certain things that I do not agree with that meeting, but I realized our kids and you know, sometimes they’re gonna have it. But there is a what
Jeremy Weisz 16:17
is in kids DNA that makes them want mac and cheese. I mean, I know it’s, you know, from him from a young age, our kids ate pretty well. We tried to choose, you know, brussel sprouts and other things, and they would eat them. And they hit a certain age, and they’re like, I just want mac and cheese or Yes, pizza, or whatever it is.
Dr. Kristin Oja 16:37
Yes. And the thing I tell parents is like, there are so many ways we can sneak things into these kids diet. So you know, one easy swap is like for the kid that loves mac and cheese, could you use bands and noodles, which is made from chickpea flour that has fiber and protein in place of regular white pasta like that swap alone, you just gave your child nine grams of fiber and protein, and they’re still eating mac and cheese, you know. So sometimes we have to trick our kids, you know, to get some of these healthier foods, I still really recommend talking about these things at home. Because we want to instill the principles we don’t want to just sneak a lot of parents are only sneaking things in, we need to talk about the benefit of eating vegetables and why having too much soda and juice is bad for our health and, and why you know, after Halloween, we need to limit their candy to one piece and you know, maybe have the switch which I heard, which I love that takes the candy and puts the toy there, you know, so that they have a little bit of it, but it’s not something they’re having repeatedly. But I think the biggest thing that we need to do with our kids is remember the same thing, it’s moderation. And kids are very, very smart. And so when they start to see behaviors modeled by parents, they want to get involved is at least what I found in my household. So I make a smoothie every morning, my daughter now wakes up and she wants to help make the smoothie she is you know, just turned to she’s opening our freezer. She’s pulling out the frozen avocado, pulling out the frozen bananas. She helps me put everything in how much spinach Do you want to put in the smoothie she gets, she has fun, and she’s putting five scoops of spinach. I’m like, wow, that’s a lot of spinach. You want to keep putting more she keeps putting more, you know, she’ll keep putting, yeah, but she will drink it. So she wants to put it in her little cup. And you know, it’s because she sees us making the smoothies every day. And then she wants to get involved. So as parents, we have to model behavior. But I think the biggest thing is how can we get our kids having some fiber? And how can we keep the high fructose corn syrup out? And how can we remember that, you know, we are designed to move as adults and kids and how can we get that throughout their day?
Jeremy Weisz 18:36
So cutting out high fructose corn syrup as much as possible or all that more fiber you know, modeling. So what what do you put in your smoothie, I’m always looking for good smoothie recipes.
Dr. Kristin Oja 18:49
So we always put a veggie so sometimes it’s frozen cauliflower, sometimes it’s spinach, sometimes it’s kale, but there’s always a vegetable, we always put a healthy fat. So sometimes it’s frozen avocado which we’re loving right now, because it makes it so smooth. Sometimes it’s just almond butter. Sometimes it’s a little bit of coconut oil or coconut flakes, but we always have that and we always add a fiber. So either ground flaxseed, chia seeds, Acacia fiber, we keep the fruit lower in the smoothies. So one of the things and I don’t know when this will be released, but fall is like our favorite season. So we lean into fall flavors and our smoothies. So one of our favorite ones is pumpkin spice. So we actually put a little bit of organic canned pumpkin into our smoothie, we put some cinnamon, we put some frozen avocado, spinach, some ground flaxseed and it tastes like pumpkin pie and you know it’s nice and creamy and delicious. And that’s very low sugar. I think one of the big problems that I see with my patients is they will tell me what they put in their morning smoothie and they did a handful of pineapple, a handful of mango, a whole banana they put for strawberries, you know and before they know it this thing has you know 75 grams of sugar. It’s full of nutrients. I’m not denying And that fruit is nutritious. But would you sit down? And would you eat that much fruit for breakfast? Would you have a whole bowl of mango, a whole bowl of pineapple, a banana, and strawberries before you left? So, you know, we got to think about what would you eat with a meal. And that’s what you’re putting in your smoothie. So I tried to keep fruit at one serving.
Jeremy Weisz 20:17
And with your smoothie, what kind of liquid do you put into it.
Dr. Kristin Oja 20:21
So I really liked unsweetened almond milk. So I do almond milk. Sometimes I do full fat coconut milk, if I don’t have another fat that I’m putting in there. I do like oat milk, but you just have to be careful with some of the additives in these things. Sometimes I just do plain water, like I’ll just mix water in there. Sometimes we’ll have organic green juice, and throw that in depending on the smoothie. So it really varies. But I think the biggest thing is, you know, some of these milk alternatives have a lot of fillers. And I actually was reading a study last night on Borg gum, which is really a it’s a fermented fiber. So like when you look at Gore gum, it doesn’t seem like by itself, it’s a terrible ingredient. But we’re actually seeing and people with IBD there’s a study that was just released that it was increasing inflammation in their colon. So you know, some of these fillers that we have in our mouths, you just especially if you have an inflammatory bowel process, maybe more harmful than beneficial.
Jeremy Weisz 21:17
Anything else from the too low for you know, maybe kids specifically or anyone lower LDLs, lower triglycerides. Anything else for for kids, as far as increased fiber cut off high fructose healthy, you mentioned, try and get the veggie to healthy fat and then the fiber, anything else that people should think about. So we
Dr. Kristin Oja 21:37
actually will supplement plant sterols as a supplement that we’ll use to help lower lipids and children. We may also do some low dose niacin, depending on what’s going on with the kid and what age we will also supplement fish oil. So there are some things we do from a supplement standpoint. bergamont is actually another thing that citrus that can really lower lipids. So it just depends on the kids age, the size and kind of what their baseline is, if someone comes in to me and they’re doing high fructose corn syrup, the kids able to have juice and soda, you know, every single day, we’re going to just focus on lifestyle first and recheck if they’re doing all the right things, and you know, we see a genetic sometimes there is a familial hyperlipidemia and my patients really are doing the right things will start pulling in plant sterols, we may start adding in some liver support, you know, things like silly Meran or milk thistle to help we’ll probably do a stool test and just see Is there anything going on with the gut microbiome that may be impacting lipid metabolism. And the other really big thing that we catch a lot is if you are doing all the right things, your child may have a thyroid issue, because we know that thyroid plays a role with lipid metabolism. And so I have found a lot of my patients with high lipids, when I check their TSH, you know, they’re at like 4.8, which is actually a true hypothyroidism. And once you get their thyroid doing better, they are able to break down their lipids more effectively. So, you know, even when we’re talking about lipids, it’s not always exercise more, eat less get more fiber, you know, we’ve got to look at the whole picture, your gut microbiome, your liver health, thyroid function,
Jeremy Weisz 23:16
and this goes into you know, start wellness and your model because I love in, you know if medicine, right, and it has its place in a lot of things for sick care, but for wellness care, you know, from from my experience going to the doctor and my kids, my doctor, there’s, you know, they have an issue, let’s just watch and wait, there’s no advice, there’s no feedback, there’s no protocol, you know, and it’s also very compartmentalized. And not looking at the holistic person. And so I love your model of wellness, which it looks at the whole person, the whole body, it looks at the data as far as what you know bloodwork it looks at their, you know their body type and other metrics. So when someone comes in and gets to SAS, what are all the things that you look at? Because I wanted
Dr. Kristin Oja 24:13
to share like two really, really quick patients for exactly what you’re talking about to get my blood boiling is I have the patient that comes in that was told they have Hashimotos and that there’s nothing they can do for their Hashimotos and they just every year need to check their thyroid and increase their medication based on their level that just like breaks my heart because there’s so much you can do for Hashimotos to get to the root cause of the immune and inflammatory issues. And so that is a perfect example or the patient that has a positive ama but they’re not sick enough for biologics. You know an AMA is anti nuclear antibody that looks for autoimmune disease. And so somebody may have a positive AMA and some vague symptoms, you know, they feel a little stiff in the morning, their joints hurt. They go in, they get a full assessment If you know your joints are looking okay, right now, why don’t you come back next year, and we’ll see how your joints are doing. And we can figure out when to start a biologic. Again, those patients exactly to your point, they just break my heart because this is a warning sign, you know, this positive ama is a warning sign that autoimmune is going to worsen if we don’t make changes. Um, so those are just like two quick examples that came into my mind as you talked about these these patients that are just told, like let’s watch. But to answer your question of like what we do so when you come in as a new patient, everybody gets a body scan, we don’t care about the weight on the scale at all, the number on the scale is not a good indicator of your health outcomes at all. So that we don’t care about we don’t even talk about the number on the scale, we talk about your composition. So we spend time talking about what is your muscle mass? How is your symmetry? What is your hydration? Where is your water sitting? Is it outside your cell? Is it inside yourself? Where is your visceral fat, that deep dangerous spot that we know is correlated with diabetes, strokes, and heart disease? So those are the markers that we want to see. And those are the markers we want to track, not the number on the scale. So we do that we do have some patients, we’re very mindful, we ask them, Are you okay to see the number on the scale, some of our patients come in, and they’re like, No, it impacts my day. You know, my, the number on the scale impacts my mental health. So we cover up the screen, we look at the data points, we talk about their composition, we put it in their charter, we never tell them the number on the scale, I think that’s really important. So we ask all of our patients that and then we dig into their health timeline. So then the next hour is spent talking about every single thing that you’ve been through throughout your life, when your symptoms started, what was going on in your life? What was your living conditions? Where were you living? And then we get into today? Tell me about what a day in the life of you looks like today? What time do you wake up? What time do you eat? What kind of things are you eating? How do you feel throughout the day? Do you want to take a nap at three o’clock? Are you feeling tired and wired at night? You know, we get into their whole history. And then we get into today? What does the day in the life look like? And then that helps us uncover what labs we should run. We don’t even run the same labs on everybody. So you may come in, and through your history, I’m like, okay, you’ve been on a lot of antibiotics, you’re dealing with some skin rashes, you’re bloated, you crave sugar, you have brain fog, you know, I’m gonna run some yeast markers on you, I may not run that on the person I see right after you, you know, or somebody may come in and everything is so inflammatory, they’re having migratory joint pain, you know, they’re having fevers out of the blue, I may do further autoimmune testing, and I may look at how their immune system as a whole is doing or see if I can see signs of CO infection. So it’s very individualized.
Jeremy Weisz 27:36
This is awesome. Um, do you do virtual?
Dr. Kristin Oja 27:40
We do. So we do virtual if our patients
Jeremy Weisz 27:44
listen to this, this sounds amazing. But you have locations in Georgia right now, wait to the state come towards you, how’s it work virtually.
Dr. Kristin Oja 27:52
So we work with patients virtually as what we call a consultant on their health. If we’re not licensed in your state, we actually medically can’t make recommendations. It’s tightly regulated, it’s a little bit better post COVID. But we couldn’t prescribe anything for you. And then if we do make recommendations from a lifestyle or supplement standpoint, we have a little clause, you know, you need to have a local primary care, make sure it’s fine for you to do this. So we work with patients as a consultant, but we actually do have a lot of patients that come into our office from out of state to establish the medical relationship. So then we are able to prescribe and recommend, and then we recommend they come once a year, and then we can do telemedicine all in between. So those are kind of two options. Some people are like, I just want to hear like what you would recommend, what are some things that you hear from our history? That’s the consulting part. You know, I really recommend that you further assess your gut, I think you need a stool task, you know, all of those situations.
Jeremy Weisz 28:49
Yeah. So it was a ritual, you may have a consultation, and then recommend they get certain testing done locally, and then they send you the the results of that.
Dr. Kristin Oja 29:01
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And there are certain things that you know, patients, they’ll be like, we use LDN, for example, low dose naltrexone, to help with the immune and inflammatory cascade. Some of our patients have gone to their primary care, their primary care is like, you know what, I don’t know if this is gonna work or not, but I’m happy to prescribe it. This is the dose you recommended. Here’s the prescription, let’s see how you do. Others are like, nobody locally is going to prescribe this. I looked into it, I hear what you’re saying, I want to come to Atlanta and see you guys and I want you to then prescribe LDN so sometimes we work a little bit backwards, like we started as a consultant and at some point, they’re like, I trust what you have to say so much and I can’t find a local provider. I’m willing to come in town, and then hopefully, you know, we’re going to be nationwide and then that won’t be an issue. That’s our goal.
Jeremy Weisz 29:46
Exactly. You know, we were talking earlier i It’s funny because you’re sitting here I’m trying I was like trying out new stuff. So he recommendations but I just actually got this which is like it’s a I don’t know I’ve never Right. I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s a mango peach smoothie flavor of Omega three is because I hate the taste of fish oil. So I like to get the flavored one so but you were talking about before we hit record, there’s a lot of people got health issues, right, and specifically Crohn’s IBS. And we’ll call them Gabi because I know you can’t share exactly the person but what happened with with her,
Dr. Kristin Oja 30:29
so Gabby, she is one of my favorite patients. She struggled with Crohn’s for over 20 years, she actually had traveled all over the nation, she had been a part of multiple research studies, and she was treatment resistant. You know, her Crohn’s disease, they were telling her there was nothing that she could they could do for her, she was losing weight, her joints were starting to hurt, she couldn’t even go for bike rides with her husband, because she’d have to stop and use the bathroom. She’d have 20 bowel movements a day when she came to us and didn’t feel like we’d be able to help her honestly, she was like, I’m just here, I have no like, thought that you’re gonna be able to help me. But I’m here. And I’d like to hear what you have to say. I’ve tried everything. And I met her at a breaking point. So we did a stool test. We did blood work, we found in the stool test, she was lacking so much of the good bacteria. And we found that there was significant amounts of inflammation based on a marker called calprotectin calprotectin as a marker that helps us say do you have IBS and irritable bowel syndrome or an inflammatory bowel process? So we love the marker calprotectin so that we can see, you know, do we need to scope and actually see the lining of your gut because we just like you said value medicine and if our patients have inflammatory bowel, we need to actually look at their colon. And her case she had had colonoscopy is about every year she’s getting them and her inflammation is through the roof. So we basically did two very simple things. I put her on SBI protect, which is a company it’s a product by orthomolecular. It’s immunoglobulin therapy from cattles bloodstream. And what it does is it helps heal the gut, we actually got three things. So I put her on SBI protect, I put her on what’s called BPC 157, which is actually peptide therapy. It stands for body protection compounds. She opened it up and put it in her water with the SBI protect and we started her on low dose Naltrexone at night. Those are the three things that I did. And she came back in eight weeks, and she was riding bikes with her husband, her energy was better, she was down to about four bowel movements a day. Her gastroenterologist was like, I don’t understand how this stuff is working this way, but keep doing whatever Kristin says to do, like keep doing it. And that for me was just such a good moment when this person was treatment resistant. And it was not these crazy things we needed to do her diet was already on point. I mean, she had done the, you know, low FODMAP, she had done the the specific carbohydrate diet she had done gluten free and dairy free and no sugar and all these things. But just looking at her guide, getting those good bacteria, which we didn’t even actually do until phase two, because sometimes when they’re lacking all of the good bacteria, and they have a lot of dysbiosis. And all that term needs is an imbalance of good and bad bacteria. Sometimes you have to calm the inflammation and get the gut lining a little bit stronger first before you just pile on probiotics, because they may feel more bloated, more discomfort. And so at eight weeks was doing a lot better. We then added in some really good strong probiotics, and she continued to have improvement. She’s still not 100%. But the fact that we’ve been able to cut her calprotectin in half, we’ve been able to bring her bowel movements from 20 bowel movements a day to four she feels like she’s a human, she has strength she’s putting weight on, you know, these are like our perfect example of of how functional medicine and you know, really working on the healing and the pathophysiology of what’s going on can make a huge difference.
Jeremy Weisz 33:46
Let’s talk about menopause. Yeah, I’m sure that’s common, too.
Dr. Kristin Oja 33:50
Oh, yes. So one of my favorite stories about menopause is I had a woman who was an executive, very, very high performer. She has been an executive her whole entire life. And she’s starting to feel like she’s not remembering things. It’s taking her longer to complete a task. She’s starting to feel more overwhelmed with stress. She’s having sleep issues for the first time in her life. She’s at lunch and literally forgetting the person’s name. She’s like, What is your name? Like? I’m starting to get really worried. So she goes in her primary care says that she probably needs a psychiatrist like she’s been under a lot of stress as an executive psychiatrist diagnosed her with adult onset ATD and ADHD wants to put her on a stimulant. She doesn’t want to take a stimulant for the rest of her life. Why I’m 51 I’ve had the same level of stress the same position for 20 years. Why now do I have adult onset ATD and ADHD? This just like blows my mind that this is these are real stories, by the way, like real stories where this solution is a stimulant for the rest of your life. So she comes into us. When was your last menstrual cycle started to become irregular at 49 She’s just now hit one year without a menstrual cycle. The average in the United States is 51. She’s kind of right on track with that. You are Peri menopausal until it’s been one full year without a cycle. She head if we look at her hormones, she is so depleted her progesterone is less than point 01. She has no progesterone in our body. All we did was start her on some progesterone at night, she came back for a follow up at eight weeks her progesterone was only up to 1.5, which in menopause, we like it above one. And she goes, Kristin my brain health is better, my sleep is better, I feel less overwhelmed with stress. And all I put her on was progesterone 50 milligrams a low dose to have progesterone at night, we’re all capsule helps the most of asleep. And that is another perfect example of, you know, understanding the root cause of what’s happening. And if she were to go the route of the rest of her life taking stimulants, what would that have done, you know, and there’s not anything wrong with stimulants when needed. But understanding the root cause for her this was not an adult onset ADD and ADHD and stimulants were going to suppress her appetite, they could make her have a lot of ups and downs could make her feel more emotional can increase her cortisol more, which we already know record is all as high because she has no progesterone, she’s not sleeping, and she’s overwhelmed. So you know what all is in her stress bucket, and that stimulant could have just tipped her where for us we were working on calming and relaxing and improving that brain health.
Jeremy Weisz 36:12
Kristin, one last question. And before we get to I just want to tell people check out statwellness.com Everything they’re working on there, check out more episodes of inspired insider.com. Last question is, you know, managing work, business and kids. Yeah. What do you do? How do you do it?
Dr. Kristin Oja 36:33
Yeah, you know, and I know we were talking about this before, and I am a person that has always worked even when I don’t need to work. I worked at Einstein Bagels at 5am. before high school, my dad was like, why are you working in Einstein Bagels, you made $10 This morning, before you go to high school. So you know, I want to preface this by saying part of this is deeply embedded in me this entrepreneurship and this grit that I thrive you know, on a on a full plate, and I do test my adrenals all the time I do saliva hormone test, I do bloodwork every three months. So I make sure my body is handling the stress appropriately, which I think is really important. But to answer your question about how you do it all kids business, you don’t The answer is you don’t do it all you can’t possibly do it all something is going to not be 100%. And we know that and it changes depending on the season. So the thing that I talk about with my patients and that I live by myself as I always have a couple of non negotiables. No matter how busy my season of life is, I have some very, very basic things that in the busiest of the worst of the busiest days, I will still do. And some of the most basic things that I do is I drink 16 ounces of water first thing in the morning, like I know I’m waking up dehydrated, I know water gives me energy, it fuels my brain every single morning, no matter how crazy it is, I’m drinking 16 ounces of water. I also started in my day, with four super slow, deep breaths, no matter what happens, I have a minute to do slow deep breathing every morning. And every night. It’s the way I ground myself. It kind of calms me down from the craziness. And it’s something that I can consistently do. So that’s a big thing. And the other thing is actually something I’ve had to train myself over the last two years of becoming a mom as to me, I was a marathon runner, I was a strength training coach, I was a personal trainer, when I exercise, I exercise for 45 minutes to 60 minutes. That’s what my workout was. I can’t fit in 45 or 60 minutes. And so for a while I just did an exercise, I realized I was like okay, I’m gonna eat really clean, I’m going to drink my water, I’m going to do my breathing, I’m going to prioritize sleep, but I just can’t exercise I can’t fit it in. And then I realized I coach my patients do this all the time exercise does not have to be 45 to 60 minutes, right. So we got some equipment in our basement and I realized all I needed was 10 minutes, I chose three exercises. So this is what I do now is I pick three exercises that I’m going to do and I do each one for a minute and I do three rounds. That’s nine minutes and then I do one minute of stretching and deep breathing. And that is my 10 minutes and I move for 10 minutes a day. And that is what I can commit to in my non negotiable if I have a good day and I can do a 45 minute workout. That is amazing and I feel so happy about it. But this all or nothing it doesn’t work right it just does not work and I got quickly into that trap. And so big things for me 10 minutes of movement a day and surprisingly I’m sore. You know if I have a high kettlebell and I’m doing kettlebell deadlifts, doing a minute of that three times, like you will feel it in your glute near hamstring. That was three minutes. That’s it. So that water every morning and deep breathing, those are my non negotiables and then the other big thing from a business perspective is tackle the top priority first thing in the morning. Don’t do the easy tasks that you want to check off. Don’t you know spend all this time going through all of your emails and adding to your to do list. What is the one thing that you have to get done before you go to sleep that night? Do that first because cuz then you go to sleep at night, right? That was the other thing like the really big things. I’m achiever, I love checking things off my list. So I would be like, okay, knock off all the things I can put these checkmarks in and feel really good. But then the thing that took the most brainpower and that was my top priority I like was putting off and then the kids go to bed and then I’m staying up late doing the thing I had to do rather than flipping it around. So you know, basic things, but I think don’t tell yourself that you’re going to do everything perfectly the way you want to do it when you’re doing all the things because you can’t. But what are your non negotiables? What can you commit to on the most busy day to always do for yourself? And then anything you do beyond that is excellent and awesome, but you did your non negotiable and then tackle the biggest task first. And then you can go to sleep.
Jeremy Weisz 40:45
I love that there’s a book I listened to a long time ago. Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. It’s exactly talks about exactly. You got to Eat That Frog first thing in the morning do what is going to be the most difficult. Dr. Kristin, thank you. Thank you so much. I could listen to you on and on and on for hours about different conditions but everyone should check out statwellness.com Check out more episodes of inspiredinsider.com And we’ll see you next time.
Dr. Kristin Oja 41:12
Thanks so much for having me on.
