00:00:03:07 - 00:00:16:23
Chris
Hello and welcome to the ending Body Burn Out Show. We are your host, Chris and Filly co-founders of a multi-award-winning winning functional medicine practice, serving busy people with energy, mood and gut issues.
00:00:17:00 - 00:00:24:21
Filly
While busyness, addictive doing, people pleasing and perfectionism might be the norm, it's not normal and it's a major contributor to health issues.
00:00:25:00 - 00:00:38:05
Chris
Our goal with this show is to give you a holistic root, root cause approach to healing your body so that you don't have to continue doctor or diet hopping or popping a gazillion supplements hoping something might stick.
00:00:38:05 - 00:00:46:07
Filly
Sorry, get ready to heal your body, get your spark back deeply, connect with yourself and step into the life of your dreams.
00:00:46:10 - 00:00:55:00
Chris
Let's dive in.
00:00:55:02 - 00:01:25:09
Filly
Hello, wonderful people. Welcome to the body. Today. I'm so excited to dig into today's topic, which is all about weight, metabolic health and burnout. And I have the wonderful Dr. Mary Barson on the conversation today. So the reason why I wanted Dr. Mary on the podcast today is that weight and metabolic health is is a sign and a symptom that comes along with burnout.
00:01:25:11 - 00:02:01:08
Filly
And we're really going to dig into that and Dr. Mary is just the most beautiful person. I know that you're going to really enjoy the conversation. Not only is she incredibly intelligent when it comes to all things biochemistry and body systems and how to really support your metabolism, but she also has the biggest heart and is really in tune with taking a holistic approach to it, healing the body and having thriving health.
00:02:01:10 - 00:02:37:00
Filly
Okay, Sorry a bit about Dr. Mary. So she is a general practitioner based in Victoria. She is a weight loss doctor, an expert in metabolic health with qualifications in both medicine and biochemistry. Dr. Mary understands all things sciencey. She loves interpreting scientific research and can separate out true science from popular weekly. Dr. Mary marries her love of human biochemistry with her psychological skills as a counsellor and hypnotherapist.
00:02:37:02 - 00:03:02:01
Filly
Dr. Mary's passion is empowering people to improve their metabolism, their healthy and long lasting weight loss, as well as empowering people to gain the mindset skills to make healthy changes, fun, sustainable and lifelong. Dr. Marie has suffered with PCOS and used to be obese and therefore understands how difficult this can be for many women. By making the right lifestyle changes.
00:03:02:01 - 00:03:30:20
Filly
Mary has permanently lost weight, improved her metabolic health and her peaks, has gone into remission. Dr. Marie is a mum of two wonderful children. She loves public speaking and has the most infectious and very loud laugh. Also, people tell her you'll probably hear her laugh on the podcast today. She is also the founder of Real Life Medicine. And yeah, we I know that you're going to love this.
00:03:30:20 - 00:04:00:11
Filly
So without further ado, I am going to jump into the conversation with Dr. Mary. Now. Hello beautiful people. I am so excited to have Dr. Mary on our podcast today. She is a wealth of knowledge and I know that you're going to love her because she is not only a GP but also looks at the body and health and especially weight and the metabolism from a root cause approach.
00:04:00:11 - 00:04:07:14
Filly
So I'm just so excited to pick her brain personally. Thanks for coming.
00:04:07:14 - 00:04:12:16
Dr. Mary
On. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah.
00:04:12:18 - 00:04:34:15
Filly
So we always, when we have our guests on, we love to dig into your own personal story, especially, especially those who are now in the health space or the holistic health space, because generally there has been a bit of a body burn out story that has led you to do what you do, or maybe that's come along in doing the things that you do.
00:04:34:17 - 00:04:56:10
Filly
Nutshell But we will find out for you. So when that when we use that term body burner as well, I'm using that quite broad. So often it shows up as energy mood issues, but there can be a whole host of other symptoms going on. And I know you have a history or had a history of PCOS and obesity, and that can definitely show up in body Burn out as well.
00:04:56:12 - 00:05:04:12
Filly
So what was what was happening to you? What symptoms showed out when when was your big body burn out experience?
00:05:04:14 - 00:05:30:12
Dr. Mary
I think my biggest big body bed experience was when I was training in general practice. So I'm a I'm a very empathetic person, which is really high empathy, which like all character traits, it's both a strength and a liability. You know, it's it can be it's light and dark at the same time. So I've always been someone who can I've always been aware of how everybody feels around me.
00:05:30:12 - 00:05:53:11
Dr. Mary
I've always been aware of how people might feel around me. And it's been really useful for me to to navigate relationships. And it's always made I've always been drawn to people, but it also means that my my boundaries can be quite permeable, like I'm at risk of having those those kind of weaker boundaries. And I first find it.
00:05:53:13 - 00:06:13:10
Dr. Mary
So I love biochemistry and biology as a as is love nerding out at that really really you know that that deep biochemical level absolutely root cause like it doesn't get that much more root cause. You go down to like the level of the enzyme. So this totally love that and I did science, but I was working in science, I loved it.
00:06:13:10 - 00:06:32:03
Dr. Mary
But I sort of thought, now I want to work for people. You know, I'm more drawn to people. So then I did this little left hand turn and I got into medicine, and I did. I really enjoyed medicine. And then I sort of was drawn to general practice because I just kind of loved everything. Babies and and the elderly and pregnant women and all of these things.
00:06:32:03 - 00:06:59:00
Dr. Mary
And just people. Just humans. Just humans, you know, I loved it. And sharing my general practice training, we were given a lot of help about how to improve our empathy and how to be empathetic and how to ask open ended questions. And I love I love doctors, honestly, I do. Most of my best friends are doctors, but it's I don't think anybody would too surprised to know that the doctors can be a bit of an odd bunch.
00:06:59:00 - 00:07:21:20
Dr. Mary
And that's on the whole, there isn't necessarily high levels of empathy in the field of medicine. I mean, nobody goes into medicine wanting to, you know, everybody was going wanting to help people. I've never met a doctor who didn't actually care about their patients, but they're not necessarily of that more empathetic ilk. There definitely are lots, but not necessarily all of them.
00:07:21:20 - 00:07:43:20
Dr. Mary
And so, yeah, empathy, it's a learnable skill. So that is something that I actually teach in training. And so I was getting all these training about how to be more empathetic and to give more and and how to open up space for people and hold therapeutic space, which was, which was really great. But I just did it too much and I wasn't very good at yeah, at those at those boundaries and protecting myself.
00:07:43:20 - 00:08:17:22
Dr. Mary
And just as my training went on and on and on, I just found myself getting, getting trained energetically more and more and more and really getting these kind of like these sort of vicarious trauma injuries from all of the human suffering that I was seeing. And and more and more and more, it's like I was I was getting involved in people's lives necessarily, but I really took it all on and I didn't know how to not like and I didn't even really have awareness about this.
00:08:17:22 - 00:08:40:11
Dr. Mary
I didn't even really understand what was happening to me at the time, because I had never even though I knew I was an empathetic person, I didn't have a word for it. And and people would say, he just they you just just boundaries bound. You don't know what that was or how to do it. And I got sick or really did I got really my mood got really low.
00:08:40:11 - 00:09:10:18
Dr. Mary
I got really tired. I really turned to sugar in a big way to help me cope with my emotions. My weight got really, really I got I gained a lot of weight and I had headaches and all of these things were happening and really there wasn't any sort of great moment. I had all these tools. You know, I'd been a lifelong meditator because my dad had instilled that in me.
00:09:10:23 - 00:09:34:09
Dr. Mary
I survived the stress of medicine by being a meditator, and I knew that was a tool that helped me and so tried to lean on that a little bit more. I kind of knew I needed to step back a bit, so I wound my work back a bit and it really was only kind of slowly, bit by bit by bit that I kind of figured out what was happening and I decided to sort of reinvent my career really.
00:09:34:09 - 00:09:59:02
Dr. Mary
And I was like, okay, what do I actually love? What what are the bits that I like? Because this isn't working. I'm going to just have to leave this career if I can't work it out. And the things that I lost was that root cause, you know, the figuring out what's happening upstream and helping people really change their lifestyle to reverse disease, to prevent disease, to get people off medications.
00:09:59:02 - 00:10:25:12
Dr. Mary
That's just the funnest thing you can do in medicine, is to prescribe something. I just love it. Yeah. Get someone off that insulin. It's just like, Yes. Yeah. So I just kind of develop this idea that I can I, I'm going to do more of this. And that's what I started trying to put out to the universe. I also, you know, advertised in the local paper and it was beauty and it wasn't like Hot Down Under asked me to do some my, you know, do talk for them.
00:10:25:12 - 00:10:52:18
Dr. Mary
And it was building it was building. And then I met this wonderful GP who had also reinvented herself completely into lifestyle medicine. And I'm Dr. Lucy Betts. She's my fabulous colleague. I met her at a conference and I listened to her talk about how she just does lifestyle medicine. She just helps people improve their sleep, their mood, their gut health, that their lifestyle, their food, their stress management and all these great results she was getting.
00:10:52:20 - 00:11:32:04
Dr. Mary
And so, yeah, I befriended her and then Lacie and I actually formed an online business where we do this, what we love in a online health coaching group, coaching online course platform. And so being able to step into the things that I really love, that really helped my body burn out and with that increased sort of vocational purpose and a little bit more of a laser focus opened up more space for me to be able to, you know, I look after myself and I really have have healed and I haven't gone back into that burnout site for many years now.
00:11:32:06 - 00:11:47:18
Filly
Now is circle at circle living in alignment with what you love and then like creating the space is huge. Were you working at full time as a GP and just like patient after patient after patient?
00:11:47:20 - 00:12:13:14
Dr. Mary
Yeah, Yeah. And you know those things I loved about that and things I hated about that. And I worked in Rural General practice, so that was a lot of like emergency medicine stuff as well. So you were on call for emergencies. I mean, I like that. I do. It's, it's quite fun. But it was just that other added layer of, yeah, you have to say three or four people an hour and you never know what's going to come through the screen does It could be a dislocated thumb.
00:12:13:14 - 00:12:33:19
Dr. Mary
It could be a suicide or 12 year old, you know, you just don't know. And and then on top of that, you know, you could hear the sirens of the ambulance come to the hospital upstairs. And that added layer of stress that is sort of out there that without my, like intact self-care, because I just didn't even have a concept of what that was at that stage.
00:12:33:19 - 00:12:42:00
Dr. Mary
Now I do, but I didn't then. Yeah, you know, I was just a puddle on the floor usually at the end of work day.
00:12:42:02 - 00:13:09:06
Filly
I'm curious how you also have unravelled the empathetic side of things as well and the boundaries. Have you just were you just like, I'm just going to put clear boundaries in place or did you have to do something a bit deeper around deconstructing that side of things so that you could show up, especially in like group coaching where there is a bigger group of people that you are looking after and caring for?
00:13:09:08 - 00:13:19:22
Dr. Mary
Yes. Yeah, I did have to go deeper, so I did some at a few things. I found some nice mentors of non burnt out GP's.
00:13:20:00 - 00:13:21:01
Filly
That.
00:13:21:03 - 00:13:54:09
Dr. Mary
What because there's a lot of intact pays out there. Like it's a serious problem but I found a few of my colleagues and though they were all elderly white men bless them, but they were lovely elderly white men and I just tried to figure out what it is that they do. And one thing they all did, which struck me as a little bit selfish, to be honest, was at the time was ruthless self-care, like absolutely ruthless in my opinion, that the way that they prioritise their little moments of self-care.
00:13:54:11 - 00:14:10:06
Dr. Mary
And then I kind of thought about this and then I actually decided to reframe that as extreme self-care. So that was something to learn, haven't quite gone to the level that they did. You know, I must go for a sieve every single day, no matter what I can't do that doesn't fit into my life. Kids, but was part of it.
00:14:10:08 - 00:14:50:11
Dr. Mary
And then also talking to other GP, it had burnt out as well and that was often just trying to figure this out. When I, I don't have a scientific explanation for these. Well, we have a little bit of fringe science around this, but we are all energetic beings like we do catch each other's energy, we really do. And there are beautiful experiments that can show this in fascinating ways, that if you put a little a trace and a trace on a mum's head, a mum is just had a baby and you check her brain, which says, We can do this, we can see the electricity of the brainwaves.
00:14:50:13 - 00:15:13:21
Dr. Mary
And then you put a little ac j which tracks the energy of the heartbeat on a baby, and you can get the mum to just tune into her baby with her hand on her baby. They sync up. That's so it's amazing. So yeah, there is an example. So I actually started to think of my energy is something that I had to, I had to conserve and but I also had to refill.
00:15:13:23 - 00:15:41:13
Dr. Mary
And even just that, just that sort of awareness. So if I had a really tricky consultation, maybe, you know, there was there was domestic violence, there was, you know, situations that are really kind of horrible, the sort of suffering that you hold space for, how people navigate. And, you know, it's it takes a lot of energy, but you need to you need to share your energy with the beautiful person in front of you.
00:15:41:13 - 00:16:06:07
Dr. Mary
So you holding this therapeutic space, then I would just take a little moment after it's after that had come to its to its conclusion. And we had formulated a plan and we had moved on to the next stage, even just taking a moment of honouring the fact that that really took up a lot of my energy and just taking a few little breaths for myself and letting it feel back up again rather than going straight into the next one.
00:16:06:09 - 00:16:13:14
Dr. Mary
That really helped me and just saying, This is something I need to fill up and I had to fill back up again.
00:16:13:16 - 00:16:43:15
Filly
I love that. That's so cool. Okay, so you specialise in weight loss and metabolic health, so weight gain weight gain often shows up as a symptom of body burn out when someone has been going hard for too long. Why do you why do you feel that that is sorry? I feel like we've talked about kind of like the behavioural pattern type stuff that's going on, but also from a physical level or that biochemical level.
00:16:43:17 - 00:17:09:08
Dr. Mary
Definitely. I think there are a few things that are going on. One, definitely at that hormonal level and weight gain is hormonal. It's definitely not a case of simple calories. You need to simply burn more calories than you each. That said, overly these overlapping and complex hormonal pathways that will control how much fat we store and the rate at which we store fat, and whether or not we are going to let go of the fat and which spikes.
00:17:09:08 - 00:17:30:16
Dr. Mary
It's from a survival point of view, from an evolutionary point of view. So when we are in this sort of body burn out and like you said, there are many, many, many facets to that hormonally. Often what is going on is that we're getting dysfunction of a cortisol hormone or excess US stress hormonal axis on noradrenaline, hormonal axis.
00:17:30:18 - 00:18:10:10
Dr. Mary
And when cortisol is chronically elevated, when causal is out of balance, this actually is quite literally puts us in a fat, fat storing state in several ways. The elevated cortisol kicks up blood sugar high from releasing glycogen from a liver in our muscles, which elevates insulin and insulin. I spend a lot of time talking about insulin. Insulin is our master weight storage hormone, and when insulin is elevated, it's we store fat more readily and it's quite difficult for us to let go of our fat stores as well.
00:18:10:12 - 00:18:39:18
Dr. Mary
And also cortisol does a few things. It interferes with that hunger, which is also a hormonal system. So cortisol, elevated cortisol makes us more hungry and specifically makes us crave carbohydrates, in particular sugar and starches, which if we're eating those to a level that is more than our body really can can cope with, that's also going to keep insulin elevated, which is going to put us into this fat storing state.
00:18:39:20 - 00:19:07:00
Dr. Mary
And neurologically as well, we are spending more time in that fight flight phrase, sympathetic activation of our central nervous system and less time in that nice, calm rest and digest parasympathetic nervous system that also sets up a whole lot of cascades that are going to make us more likely to gain weight as well. So what is a hormonal weight gain and weight loss?
00:19:07:00 - 00:19:28:10
Dr. Mary
It's all governed by hormones. And for us to be able to, you know, be able to lose weight if we have a weight loss goal, to be able to be in a healthy weight and to be able to be metabolically healthy, we need everything to be in balance. And, you know, burn out is is basically it's in balance, essentially.
00:19:28:12 - 00:19:56:11
Filly
I remember when I was in my state of body burn out. Look, I didn't get obese, but I could swing I could put on five kilos really easily, even if it was just eating some kid, some cashews like, I had a handful of cashews every day in excess to my usual calorie intake. And that used to always, I don't know, confuse me because I'm like, cashews are healthy, like what's going on here?
00:19:56:11 - 00:20:20:04
Filly
But, you know, I was also eating fruit bombs as we chatted about on your podcast last week and chocolate and all the other things, but it was the stress that was the stress hormones that my body was just harbouring. We were not able to burn the fat very effectively no matter what I ate. So it didn't even have to be something like sugar that was just calories.
00:20:20:04 - 00:20:28:06
Filly
And food in general can make it really hard for the body to burn fat when you're in that constant fight or flight response extremely hard.
00:20:28:06 - 00:21:01:03
Dr. Mary
Yeah, because stress is a common cause of weight loss plateaus in particular. And I work in this space of metabolic health and helping particularly women, but also men to lose weight healthily by balancing their metabolic hormones is what we do see. And I real life medicine is what our business is called. And we do say stress justice can be enough to completely stall people's weight loss and often enough to get people to to gain weight as well.
00:21:01:05 - 00:21:22:12
Dr. Mary
But, you know, I, I know people want weight loss and I think weight loss is a perfectly worthy goal, you know, when it aligns with your health goals. But I'm actually more worried about what's happening underneath that, like the weight gain or the slow weight loss is a symptom, but the stress itself is causing a whole lot of of other problems and imbalances that are potentially more concerning.
00:21:22:12 - 00:21:47:20
Dr. Mary
So really getting to that to that root cause of the stress and helping people find a way to reduce the stress in their lives. But also I think even more importantly, improve their resilience to the stress that you can't avoid. Then you are doing lots of wonderful things for your body, including including helping your body let go of off more of your fat stores so you can get closer to that weight loss goal.
00:21:47:22 - 00:22:00:11
Filly
Yeah, I love that. From a body systems level, do you look at knowing much about detox pathways level and that connection between weight gain?
00:22:00:12 - 00:22:03:02
Dr. Mary
Yeah. Yeah yeah absolutely.
00:22:03:02 - 00:22:04:15
Filly
There I'm sure you know.
00:22:04:17 - 00:22:35:10
Dr. Mary
Yeah yeah. Yes it is. I think that it is amazing how mind bogglingly complex we are. Like there is detoxification pathways extraordinary. You know you guys got billions, billions, multiple billions of biochemical reactions happening every second in your body. Yeah, we are. We are misleading. We are doing all of these things to help just naturally and normally get rid of all of the toxins that we create just naturally.
00:22:35:10 - 00:22:53:22
Dr. Mary
Normally, being alive, even if you are living a really, you know, healthy, congruent in balance, life is still making less toxins. That's just part of being alive and your body needs to get rid of them. And yes, it's it's so incredibly complex. But we are we are complex, but but we are also simple.
00:22:54:00 - 00:23:02:20
Filly
And what about what are your thoughts between the connection between the liver detox pathways and weight gain?
00:23:02:22 - 00:23:34:08
Dr. Mary
Yeah, I think it's all intricately linked. So your metabolic health is intricately linked with every aspect of your health. And liver does this amazing job. It's an incredible organ, liver, passive, extraordinary, does all kinds of things. But a really important job is that it does detoxify the toxins in our body. And indeed most toxins that liver deals with are actually made by us.
00:23:34:08 - 00:24:02:01
Dr. Mary
So certainly it deals with toxins that we ingest, we breathe in that get on our skin, etc.. Absolutely. It does that, you know, alcohol being one of the most popular toxins out there, can keep your liver extremely busy. But actually most of the toxins it deals with, we create just the general business of being alive and our cells going through their normal cellular processes create all of these things that if they weren't dealt with, they would kill us.
00:24:02:01 - 00:24:28:20
Dr. Mary
Definitely. And so liver has to deal with this. And the way that it connects to our way. I think there are there are several ways. And you want your liver to be as healthy as it can be. One really significant association with the poor metabolic health and elevated insulin that can keep us in a fat burning state, that is, keep us out of a fat burning site.
00:24:28:20 - 00:25:00:23
Dr. Mary
Sorry is fatty liver. So our liver is amazing. It can deal with so many kinds of things. But when our intake of sugar and starch is beyond what our bodies are naturally able to deal with on a day to day basis, if we're still eating more sugar and starch then than is ideal for us and metabolism, then this extra sugar in our bloodstream gets converted into fat.
00:25:00:23 - 00:25:23:09
Dr. Mary
But rather than being stored in our fat cells, because if our fat cells are overwhelmed and the insulin resistance is increasing and elevated and making our bodies respond by increasing insulin and our fat cells are just so unhappy that don't want to take any more fat, they're getting bigger, they're getting inflamed, they're getting unhealthy. They'll start to hide their insulin receptors.
00:25:23:14 - 00:25:45:04
Dr. Mary
And so our body has to kind of yell at them by making even more insulin, and then they hide them even more. And we can get in this vicious cycle of insulin resistance, causing elevated insulin causing insulin resistance. And that's unhealthy for a whole lot of reasons, not just that it prevents us from being able to burn fat stores because insulin turns off our ability to burn fat.
00:25:45:06 - 00:26:06:00
Dr. Mary
Meanwhile, your liver is dealing with the fallout as well. And one thing that it does is it's not just taking on all these fats like. Right, okay, well, we can't have this sugar in our bloodstream, so give it to me. And it starts storing fat inside your liver cells. And this is called fatty liver. It is commonly caused by alcohol.
00:26:06:02 - 00:26:41:03
Dr. Mary
Alcohol gets converted into fat. And and if people are drinking more alcohol than their body can cope with the excess nutrients, the excess fuel will be stored as fat in the liver. And that's called alcoholic fatty liver disease. But now the rates of alcoholic fatty liver disease in our society are dwarfed by the rights of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease where it's not related to alcohol, it's related to sugars and starches and especially fructose fructose is a sugar that we ate that is in table sugar.
00:26:41:05 - 00:27:05:10
Dr. Mary
It's also in fruit, and it's only able to be converted into fat by the liver. And so all of us get packed with fat and then they're unhappy and unhealthy, just like big fat cells that are unhappy and unhealthy and not loving life. When the liver cells are packed with fat, they're unhappy and unhealthy and not living life and they can be inflamed and they could die.
00:27:05:10 - 00:27:37:10
Dr. Mary
And the dead liver cells cause more inflammation. And this can be a really, really unhappy state for your body. So there's that connection. But also when we are metabolically unwell with elevated insulin and insulin resistance, actually from a metabolic point of view, our bodies create more metabolic toxins with just the general active cells doing what cells need to do and are less able to clean them out themselves.
00:27:37:11 - 00:28:03:15
Dr. Mary
A liver is not our only detox pathway. We've got lots and lots of redundant overlapping detox pathways to help us stay alive and our cells have capacity to sort of clean up after themselves as well to an extent. And a lot of this is done at the level of the mitochondria in our bodies and this so important, these mitochondria, they are these little cellular components that make all of our energy.
00:28:03:15 - 00:28:28:06
Dr. Mary
So they literally take the energy from our food and they burn it essentially with the oxygen that we breathe to create our energy. And when insulin is elevated, our mitochondria are less able to use fat for fuel. And so that is forced to use the other for fuel that is mainly available, which is sugar. They can use protein a little bit, but mostly they use sugar.
00:28:28:08 - 00:29:03:02
Dr. Mary
And when you're in a mostly sugar burning state, the little mitochondria create more metabolic toxins. They are less numerous, your mitochondria are less numerous, they're less resilient, they're more likely to die and they can't grow as quickly. And you can get an increase of metabolic toxins building out just because from simple after being a primarily sugar burner and more toxins and less able to deal with them as well as also just literally less energy because it's a much more inefficient process for our bodies.
00:29:03:04 - 00:29:32:08
Dr. Mary
But with metabolic improvement in metabolic health, managing to get your insulin levels down and your insulin resistance into remission and your at the cellular level, your mitochondria are then able to burn more fat for fuel. And this is a much happier situation technically called fatty acid oxidation. Your mitochondria take the fat from your fuel, from the food that you eat or your stored fat, and they burn it with oxygen that you breathe.
00:29:32:08 - 00:29:53:20
Dr. Mary
That's the oxidation component. And when you're in, when you're primarily making energy through fatty acid oxidation, you've got less inflammatory metabolites, less oxidative reactive oxygen species. Your mitochondria are more numerous and more healthy. They're better able to clean up after themselves. And your whole system is working better.
00:29:53:22 - 00:30:31:04
Filly
my gosh. So much in that. I just thought. I want to backtrack to the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is actually being more prevalent than the alcoholic one. Something that I've seen in clinic is like a link between can data for fungal overgrowth and fatty liver disease or non-alcoholic because the fungi that can data which loves to eat sugar and carbohydrates and even alcohol and gluten also producing acetaldehyde which is basically an alcoholic by-product.
00:30:31:08 - 00:30:44:14
Filly
And so kind of what you were saying before, our body is producing all these metabolites and potential toxins. If they're not dealt with, they can cause harm to the body. So so everything is connected.
00:30:44:16 - 00:31:02:01
Dr. Mary
Everything is connected. Absolutely. And I like the thing about candy liver growth is that the same intervention helps both. Yes. Eat less sugar and starch and the candy that become less numerous because that's why they favour ever feel if you can get that into a much better balance. Yeah.
00:31:02:03 - 00:31:27:12
Filly
Which is really cool because everything like that you were just sharing with the body systems from a cellular level for someone else that might kind of sound really complicated and it's like, my gosh, there's so many different things we need to do to improve all these different parts of the body. Actually, there's a lot of things that one can do to support, so maybe we'll go into that because you're a big advocate of real life medicine.
00:31:27:14 - 00:31:59:11
Dr. Mary
Absolutely real life medicines. And I'm about Company I business, real life medicine. Yes. Yes. We are incredibly complicated, like mind bogglingly complicated biochemically, hormonally. And there is so much complexity to how we function and how we function well. But at the same time, we're also really simple. We're really simple because our bodies are clever and they naturally want to get into a nice homeostasis, like into a natural sort of healthy state.
00:31:59:13 - 00:32:15:21
Dr. Mary
And if you can simply sort of remove the blocks of the things that are getting away from your body being in a natural state, then everything can start to improve. And because everything is connected to everything else, even if you just start to improve one aspect of your health, it's going to have a flow on effect to everything else.
00:32:15:23 - 00:32:38:08
Dr. Mary
So the interventions you need are not really complex. You don't need a biochemistry degree to be able to improve your health. The main levers that you can push and pull is your nutrition, and it doesn't have to be super hard. You don't need a degree in dietetics. You focus on real foods and, you know, a lower sugar starch version of real food is going to be helpful.
00:32:38:10 - 00:33:09:04
Dr. Mary
Focus and prioritising your protein like that's. But that's not hard to do. The emotional overlay of, you know, of of making that work for you can take a bit of time and a bit of work, but it's simple. It's a really, really simple, easy thing to do. Sleep movement, social connection, hydrating your body, thinking about your toxic load and reducing that, you know, the big ones worldwide would be smoking and alcohol.
00:33:09:06 - 00:33:23:15
Dr. Mary
Limit those and you'll reduce your toxic load on your body, do all these things, and then all of those complex metabolic cellular hormonal pathways just naturally rebalance themselves. Yeah.
00:33:23:17 - 00:33:39:08
Filly
I was interviewing Lizzie Williamson. She's just written a book. Yeah, Active Work day Advantage. And she used the term. No, it wasn't her term, but I'm like, that's great. Sitting is the new smart thing.
00:33:39:10 - 00:33:41:16
Dr. Mary
I like that munch movement.
00:33:41:17 - 00:33:42:12
Filly
Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:42:12 - 00:34:03:11
Dr. Mary
So we can trace literally inflammatory. Yeah. And it's it's not so much that movement is good for you, but it's more that no smoking is bad for you. So yeah, I actually talk a lot. Yeah. Just moving your body frequently can make an enormous difference to your internal biochemistry. Yeah.
00:34:03:13 - 00:34:27:03
Filly
Can I dig into the nutrition side of things? So say you guys teach more low carb way of eating. Do you feel like that applies to everybody, or is that kind of like a more healing for someone who is insulin resistance and really struggling with their metabolic health to kind of get them into a better function?
00:34:27:05 - 00:35:10:09
Dr. Mary
Exactly what you said. So we are all about real food. Real food first, because processed food has a multitude of bad effects on our body and our body systems, the more processed, the worse it is. So if you can sort of divorce yourself from this hideous scientific experiment that we have been playing on the human race for the last hundred years and and just avoid things that come in, you know, packets and boxes and instead a real food as close as possible to its natural state, then that is without a doubt one of the most powerful things you can do for your health and wellness.
00:35:10:11 - 00:35:45:05
Dr. Mary
And that is going to benefit everyone the next step and this is where this is, where a lot of a lot of our beautiful clients and patients are and are in this. Erin, this group of people who also have got weight loss goals and problems with their metabolic health, they've got problems with elevated insulin and insulin resistance and all the flow on effects of that, which include heart disease and dementia and high blood pressure and fatty liver and polycystic ovarian syndrome and even several cancers.
00:35:45:07 - 00:36:15:05
Dr. Mary
It's bad for us. That's for this group of people. Real food itself. It might not be enough, especially once insulin resistance has already settled in for this group of people, then it makes sense to eat less sugar and starches. So a lower carb version of real food so that still, you know, delicious eggs, bait fish, nuts, seafood, veggies and fruits.
00:36:15:10 - 00:36:40:05
Dr. Mary
But just lower carbohydrate versions of the veggies and the fruits. So less potatoes, sweet potato, less pumpkin, less sugary fruits, instead focusing on all the delicious real foods that are just lower in sugar and starch. Those two things are really powerful healing combinations for people with problems with insulin resistance and high insulin and high blood sugar and weight gain.
00:36:40:07 - 00:36:50:17
Dr. Mary
And it is a powerful modality. And then of course, there is the important sort of mindset skills to be able to make that work for you.
00:36:50:19 - 00:37:09:12
Filly
Yeah, yeah. I found for me when I was healing myself initially with food, I was hypoglycaemic a lot at the time and PCOS and all my body just loved it when I went into that lower wasn't definitely didn't go as low as keto, but just lower sugar, lower carbohydrate.
00:37:09:14 - 00:37:11:23
Dr. Mary
Now I still have to go. I can.
00:37:12:01 - 00:37:28:08
Filly
No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I did that as well, but it was unnecessary. But I feel like the more balanced my body has become, the more it's kind of just eat whole food. It's lovely. Anything and everything goes and everything works.
00:37:28:10 - 00:38:01:01
Dr. Mary
Yeah. Yes. See my kids, you know, my children are not insulin resistance and hopefully they never will be. If they stay largely on a real food diet, they may never get into that, that that state of high of high insulin resistance. Obviously they've got the jade score has been my kids now you know it's I'm I'm happy for them to eat fruit and potatoes and pulses and legumes and all of these great real foods that are great for them, but they aren't helpful for me, so they're just less helpful for me.
00:38:01:01 - 00:38:09:08
Dr. Mary
So I eat less of them, happy for them to eat more of them. And the overarching philosophy is real, just real food.
00:38:09:10 - 00:38:35:10
Filly
Yeah, I love that. That's so cool. Okay, you mentioned mindset, so I know that you do a lot of mindset which makes what you do quite different to a lot of like other weight loss kind of like programs and that sort of stuff. So can you talk a bit about mindset and you use a lot of hypnotherapy as well, which we are just all over the body mind connection and it just speeds up healing in the most beautiful way.
00:38:35:12 - 00:38:57:01
Dr. Mary
The dogs. I love hypnotherapy, but I can it's all mindset and this is based on our own journey as well. I came across, you know, a lower carb real food and it healed my metabolism and my gut pick pickles into remission. And I was like, Brilliant, this is fantastic. So and then I did fall into that, right? We just do it, you know, and you just do it.
00:38:57:01 - 00:39:24:13
Dr. Mary
And then I was this very early on. I wasn't even a GP early on in my career. And then I realised that when I sort of told people this information here, take this little sound bite from my brain, you're welcome. You know, you're fixed. Off you go. Look. Yeah, but I didn't work for them, you know? So you wait for me, you know, wife would come and slap me in the face and I'd be like, Hello, cookie dough ice cream.
00:39:24:19 - 00:39:53:05
Dr. Mary
And I'd be there eating the cookie dough ice cream on the floor of the bathroom. And what am I doing? This is so bad for me. But the sugary mush kept going in my mouth. And so once I discovered that just knowing what to do is important, powerful, but not enough. And it's what helps. And for us as well, for a lot of people, health and weight loss, both our health first, it's it's a personal development journey.
00:39:53:07 - 00:40:13:21
Dr. Mary
So instead what we need to do as well of not instead as well as is learn to understand the stories that my brain was telling me. The stories in my head, bring awareness to them, be able to accept them, acknowledge them, and find a way to work through them, not pass them, not around them, not ignore them, but work through them.
00:40:13:23 - 00:40:36:14
Dr. Mary
So except that I was feeling super stressed and resentful and and whatever else I was as a solo mom to a toddler eating ice cream on the bathroom floor. But accepting all of that, working through it and finding more helpful tools that wasn't ice cream on the bathroom floor was the final step that was so empowering and he could do it.
00:40:36:20 - 00:41:10:07
Dr. Mary
And also it has this beautiful flow in effect. It doesn't just help your relationship with food, it helps your relationship with your self and everything else. So hypnotherapy is really helpful. Hypnotherapy is a beautiful mindset. Intervention. See, my my business partner and I and my colleague at Real Life Medicine, we're both medical therapists, so hypnotherapy is a lovely intervention where you get your know, the beautiful person in front of you, a way to go at it like audio file hypnosis as well.
00:41:10:09 - 00:41:31:20
Dr. Mary
It gets them into a lovely relaxed state and in that lovely, relaxed state, the brain chemistry and the brain electricity changes to what's called a trance state. Sounds kind of scary, but trance is a normal and natural. We go in and out of trances all the time. You into flow state at work, you're in a trance. You love in a good book, you're in a trance.
00:41:31:22 - 00:41:54:00
Dr. Mary
You're just driving home from work and all of a sudden you're home and you can't remember how you got there. That's a trance. A daydream is a trance meditating is a trance. So we induce a trance state and in this lovely natural, normal trance state, your subconscious brain is much more receptive, positive suggestions. And this is where hypnotherapy comes in.
00:41:54:00 - 00:42:14:07
Dr. Mary
We can use that. That changed brain states natural and normal brain state to give people positive suggestions. It only works if people agree with sense. It's been backed up by science. You can't hypnotise someone to do something they don't want to do. Everybody who's clucking like a chicken on a stage with a stage hypnotist actually wants to clock on a stage.
00:42:14:07 - 00:42:28:07
Dr. Mary
It looks like a like a chicken on stage yet. And the genius of stage hypnotist is they can pick those people. Yeah, very pretty. Maybe. Yeah, that's exactly, exactly. I don't pick the people with the closed posture saying this is stupid. Yeah, I. Yeah.
00:42:28:09 - 00:42:31:02
Filly
Yeah. How embarrassing.
00:42:31:04 - 00:42:53:00
Dr. Mary
That's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that they can be this fear, you know, with hypnotherapy. Be like, you're going to make me look like a chicken, and I'm going to be so embarrassed. Absolutely not. You can only be hypnotised to do something or believe something that you already to do or want to believe in that translate those positive suggestions in bed really deeply.
00:42:53:02 - 00:43:03:18
Dr. Mary
And it's a powerful way to shift those unhelpful stories that I talked about. Powerful way to shift your mindset and a really powerful way to move forward quite quickly.
00:43:03:20 - 00:43:29:17
Filly
Yeah, and it's I love that you said someone has to want it or want to believe it because that's the big thing. And that's where sometimes modalities like hypnotherapy, other types of subconscious change work stuff doesn't work and then some. And then it creates this narrative of, that was just weird that, you know, that's just but the belief, not even the belief.
00:43:29:17 - 00:43:51:19
Filly
You don't even have to believe that it's going to work. Well, yeah, you kind of need to believe that it has to work as well. I think, And to want to have that change, otherwise unconscious mind and subconscious is going to resist that. Even if you have the golden egg in front of you, that can shift things in a magical way for you.
00:43:51:21 - 00:44:18:02
Dr. Mary
Yeah, and that's the win. Like the therapeutic relationship between you and, and, and your your practitioner is so important. So that kind of, that therapeutic hypnosis, it needs rapport. It does. And some people still don't want it, which is fine. But if you have to have the rapport and the trust or it won't work, but stage hypnotism is a bit different, that works on a on a real authority.
00:44:18:05 - 00:44:39:02
Dr. Mary
So only people who want to who are choosing to go up on that stage, they're submitting themselves to the authority of the stage hypnotist. And so that is sort of how they can quickly get quickly sort of agree to these hypnotic suggestions without the rapport for a stranger they've never met before. But personally, I don't work on authority.
00:44:39:02 - 00:44:46:20
Dr. Mary
That's not that's not how my relationship with my beautiful people is. It's it's ripple and entries. And without that, it's not going to work.
00:44:46:22 - 00:45:00:20
Filly
Yeah, well authority to is you all the rescue are you all the fixer? You're the expert and it takes away the client's power to actually create change in their own life. Sorry. Trust guidance.
00:45:00:22 - 00:45:04:17
Dr. Mary
Is beautiful. Only create space and people heal themselves.
00:45:04:17 - 00:45:29:16
Filly
Yeah. Yeah. And then that becomes really sustainable too. Otherwise they might end up in doing the same thing over and over again with the expert as a praise tool. If you can teach the person to become their own self healer, not only going to create long term change for them, but then the ripple effect in their family and people that they associated with is awesome.
00:45:29:19 - 00:45:43:01
Dr. Mary
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. When people can can heal themselves, then has a ripple effect throughout their whole lives. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Yeah.
00:45:43:03 - 00:46:02:18
Filly
Sorry. Good. my gosh. Is so many other questions that I would love to ask, but I am mindful of time and so we will wrap it up. Now, I know that you do have an awesome free guided hypnosis on nourishing your body. Well, that that you're happy for our listeners to access.
00:46:02:21 - 00:46:07:11
Dr. Mary
I am absolutely gorgeous people so we'll put the link in the show notes.
00:46:07:11 - 00:46:18:11
Filly
Yeah. That work for you? I absolutely do do that. Yes. And so also how can people reach out to you to find out more? What's the best way people can find you?
00:46:18:13 - 00:46:44:18
Dr. Mary
Yeah, so you can find us on Facebook and Instagram. We're at Real Life Medicine app and check out our website RL Medicine dot com. We have got lots of freebies on there. We've got e-books and resources. We've got a fabulous blog, lots of recipes, and you can learn more about what is happening in our community there. Arrow medicine dot com Awesome.
00:46:44:23 - 00:46:49:10
Filly
Also, you can search real life medicine in it. It goes straight to your website.
00:46:49:10 - 00:46:52:01
Dr. Mary
So we are global.
00:46:52:03 - 00:47:00:13
Filly
You are gave a level. I did that the other day I'm like is it a real life medicine dot com and it just opened up to idea and like so.
00:47:00:13 - 00:47:10:02
Dr. Mary
Clever we wanted real life medicine dotcom that someone had taken it a medicine on. But if you Google us real life medicine wait wait to come up.
00:47:10:04 - 00:47:38:00
Filly
Very good we thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and all the generosity generous things that you've shared today. It's been awesome. I know that a lot of people do like white. White issues is a big thing, and it's finding the right people that have the skills to really shift that for the person. And I think, as you said, creating this space and rapport is so important.
00:47:38:02 - 00:47:41:02
Filly
So I love the work that you guys are doing. Great.
00:47:41:02 - 00:47:57:21
Dr. Mary
Thank you. Likewise. Luck was beautiful human, I think, you know, in our corners of the world, we both do good work. Absolutely Rightly so. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.
00:47:57:23 - 00:48:08:01
Filly
Thank you so much for listening. We so appreciate you. If you'd like to give us extra smiles, drop us a review and spread the love. By sharing this episode.
00:48:08:02 - 00:48:26:09
Chris
You can also write your own state of burnout and the root cause Contribute is by taking out ending body burnout assessment on our website. And if you're interested in learning about our group one on one ending Body burn out programs, shoot us a DM via Instagram or Facebook. Have the best day ever.
