Kim (00:01.358)
Welcome to the podcast, Sarah. I am looking forward to picking your brain for myself and my listeners all about nutrition, hormone health, thyroid. We're going to talk a little bit about digestion, of course. That's always a hot topic here on my podcast. But welcome. I'm really glad you joined me. I'd love if you can start out by telling us a little bit about your journey to bringing you to be in this place of supporting women and
your business embodied wellness, like what brought you here? What's your story?
Sarah Collins (00:34.31)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be on the show and these are discussions that are really important for us to be having because unfortunately this is not common knowledge. Many women grow up and we go through years and years living in this female body but we don't really understand much about it and so bringing more education and awareness to females and how to support their body is very important which kind of leads me into how I got into this so I always knew that I wanted to help people.
I originally thought I wanted to be a lawyer and do family law and I did a semester of law school and realized that is not for me and at the time my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer and so I was getting into health for my own research and purposes and I always really enjoyed nutrition and I saw my mom go to top oncologists and then I remember her going to a naturopath and coming home and her energy coming home from seeing this naturopath was so profoundly
lifted and energized and she was like, wow, there's this that I can eat that's going to help me or these are things that I shouldn't be eating. And I remember sitting there thinking, I want to do that for people. I want to be the person where somebody comes with, you know, no education really on how to support them, their body, maybe going through something and be able to elicit this change and this, you know, re -inspire them to take care of their health and to focus on what they can control.
So after that, I started to really get into nutrition and I studied Chinese medicine, acupuncture. And then I just started to realize how at the time there was like female wellness this, female wellness that. And I remember sitting in clinic and nutrition school and thinking, if there's all this information and there's this rise of discussion and popularity, why are women getting more sick than ever? Why is pretty much every client who comes here a female dealing with hormone and digestive issues?
in our nutrition clinic and I was like, started to dive more into the research. I've always really loved science and I was like, yes, the rates of females being unwell continue to rise despite arguably there being more focus on female health than ever. So I'm somebody who always is like, okay, but why? So I'm like, why is this happening? And I really believe that a big part of this is lack of education. Obviously there's a lot of environmental factors, you know, arguably females were not really designed to be in.
Sarah Collins (02:56.034)
careers and also raising families in the way that we are. The stress load we're put under is not really well equipped to support our biology, but also females are not very equipped to support their biology because we aren't taught these things. And so one of my main passions is helping to teach women how do we support our body, helping them to find answers and feel re -inspired on their journey. So many women I deal with in my practice or come to me have been to doctors for 10 years, sometimes even more.
and are told everything's fine and they're like, but I don't feel fine. And so really my passion and what I hope to do with my company is to re -inspire women to take care of their health and to also show them how good you can feel as a female and to just really open up this discussion. And I know that's one of your big passions too about how much we just normalize feeling unwell as females and that doesn't have to be the case. So I hope through my work, I'm able to do that right now on a relatively small scale. I don't think changing.
you know, even working one -on -one with clients, you change somebody's life, but hopefully this message continues to grow and become well known and maybe even educate females at a younger age in school. Big harry y 'all, dash your skull.
Kim (04:05.481)
I love that. Yeah, yeah. There's so many things that I think, why aren't we teaching this to the kids and why aren't we planting these seeds earlier? And I think that's what I love so much about podcasts is we can plant seeds into people's brains for them to go down their own rabbit holes. And at least as you run came home thinking nobody ever told me this and now look at this and all of these opportunities all of a sudden opened up. And I often say when I'm talking to people, I'll say, well, you can do this and you can do this. And it sounds like.
Sarah Collins (04:13.951)
Mm -hmm.
Kim (04:32.874)
I'm giving them this big to -do list on top of the already big to -do list that they have, but I said, this is an opportunity list and you can choose which paths, like choose your own adventure, right? And choose which paths you want to go down. And yeah, so one thing, when I was looking at your bio, you have several different nutrition certifications and I was curious to know why so many, why not just one? And like, I realized more and more how complex nutrition is. So,
Sarah Collins (04:38.975)
Hmm.
Kim (05:02.601)
Can you just give a quick little snippet as to the different certifications you have and why you have multiples as opposed to just one?
Sarah Collins (05:09.95)
Yeah, truthfully, I believe in continued education. I think especially when you're working in, I would consider my role healthcare. We have to stay up to date with what's going on and what's current. I actually have not been 100 % happy with any of the certifications that I've done, but I don't think you really can be if you have the kind of brain who wants to learn more and you really have to put it into practice. So I started doing a diploma in nutrition, which is different than a certification.
That was arguably, I would say, the best thing if you're wanting to get into nutrition. Definitely go to school and do the three year or however long it is program as opposed to a certification. We learned so much different things. So that would give you registered holistic nutritionist. And then I thought, okay, I want to learn a little bit more about sports nutrition. I like, I'm athletic, you know, my friends are athletes. So I did a certification there. And then I wanted to get more into clinical practice. So after doing that for a few years, you help people as a holistic nutritionist.
here's what you should eat, here's some loose amounts. And I was like, man, I just feel like I'm not really able to help people in the way that I want to. There's a missing link. I can tell people what to eat, I can give them general information, but I can't help them in the way that I want to with hormones and digestive health. So what I was doing is I was seeing clients and I'd be like, I think you might have SIBO, why don't you go to a naturopath, get this test done, see what they say. And then I was like, there's gotta be a way that I could just.
help these people. So then I registered under what we call the Canadian Association of National Nutrition Practitioners and they go through your certifications and your knowledge and you can get certified to be a certified nutrition professional, which is CNP, and then NNCP, which is Natural Nutrition Clinical Nutritionist. So these are really just what allowed people, depending on their coverage, some people could work under insurance, but it also helped me to be regulated because a lot of nutritionists, especially if you're on social media,
who just say like, nutrition coach might actually not have any certifications at all. It's largely unregulated, but this holds us to higher standards and we have to do continuing education. And after that, I did my FDN certification. I would say this was really what helped me to elevate my practice because it allowed me to start ordering lab tests. So basically it was a year long program and I had a lot of extensive knowledge going into it. I would say.
Sarah Collins (07:32.954)
If you don't, it's probably gonna be a lot for you to understand, but it allowed me to start ordering labs. So now I can order hormone testing through saliva and urine for clients. I can do stool analysis. I can do mold testing, micro testing, all sorts of different tests for clients. And that was really what helped me to, I feel like help people on such a deep level where I'm like, hey, you know, we work on the foundations first. They don't just say everybody needs to spend, you know, a few hundred dollars on lab testing. I don't believe that.
We work on the foundations, lifestyle, nutrition, and then if there's still a gap, okay, this person's still having chronic digestive issues. Their hormones are still kind of off. I'm able to run these tests for people and to see here's exactly what's going on in your body. And here's how we can work through that. So I feel like that's really allowed me to work on a deeper level with people, because we can see the physiology side of things on top of their behaviors. And when you have those two things together, we work on the habits, we work on lifestyle practices.
but also we might need to correct some imbalances on your body. That's where I've seen that I've been able to take clients, you know, who have been told everything's fine, run functional labs, we see on paper, okay, everything is, like, everything is not fine, and then really help them to get to a place where they are symptom -free. It also is a really good adjunct to conventional medicine. When I say this, I want to preface by saying that I'm so grateful that we have conventional medicine, and you and I both are in Canada, we have free healthcare, you know.
When we understand how to use the medical system, it is good for what it's made to and intended to do. But I find that practicing in the way that I do really helps bridge the gap for where the conventional medicine doesn't do well, which is more chronic and lifestyle conditions and things that can't be measured on just standard blood work.
Kim (09:18.249)
Nailed it. Love that. So functional diagnostic nutritionist or nutrition, the FDN, as you were saying, the last certification gave you the capacity to use testing. And I want to start with the digestive piece. And you mentioned one being SIBO, which I'm hearing more and more. I remember I heard about it for the first time probably about 10 years ago. I was actually at a movement certification with Nutritious Movement with Katie Bowman and a gal who was there.
Sarah Collins (09:47.754)
I love her.
Kim (09:48.424)
Yeah, she's amazing. So a gal who was there, we were there for a week and this other gal who I was sharing, we were all rooming together and she was saying she had been diagnosed with SIBO and at that point I had never heard of that before and now it seems like I hear it all the time and it's one of those things like was it just because I heard it and now I just listen for it or is it more common? So what is like SIBO in particular but that's a digestive complaint so is that one of the more common digestive issues that you see in your clients?
And I guess what would be the top say three or four things that you see from a digestive perspective?
Sarah Collins (10:22.486)
Most of the time clients will come with symptom presentations and what will typically happen is top ones you hear I'm bloated all the time, I'm gassy and then constipation, diarrhea or a mix of both. Sometimes that can come with things that clients don't even realize are related to gut issues, skin issues, acne, eczema, psoriasis, heartburn, but top ones would be bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea or sometimes people will alternate between the two. Now at the time that I see somebody come to me in practice, a client or a patient,
Typically they've gone to their doctor, they've said, here's what I have, and then their doctor goes, well, you have IBS. IBS is a syndrome, which means that syndromes are given, the diagnosis based on symptoms. So in order to have IBS, that means that you have a regular bowel movement, and there's like a list of symptoms you have to have, and then they say, you have IBS. This is done without any testing. And so again, like knowing that if IBS is an umbrella category,
We have so many digestive disorders underneath that that cause IBS symptoms, but conventional medicine can only test for certain parasites through the stool and H. pylori test, which is not very sensitive. Like you have to be very, H. pylori has to be very abundant for it to come back on a life labs test. And then they can do like calprotectin or IBD markers and colonoscopies and endoscopies. So that doesn't really cover bacterial imbalances. That doesn't cover.
all the other parasites we could have that doesn't cover intestinal permeability and all of these other causes that could be driving the symptoms. So when I first started practicing, I was, SIBO was getting to become more popular. Now SIBO testing has been around for longer than about 10 years, but I will say over the past like decade or two, we've seen a rise in digestive disorders and SIBO did gain a lot of popularity. Now SIBO is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So as the name suggests,
you have too much bacteria in the small intestine, what happens there is that when you eat, your bacteria also eat and it produces gas and makes the person bloated, gassy, and then constipation, diarrhea, depending on what type of bacteria you have and what type of gas they produce. So for a while I was running SIBO tests and I was like, cool, we're finding answers, we're helping people, things are great. But then I started to realize that somebody could go through a SIBO protocol, you could get rid of the bacteria.
Sarah Collins (12:45.235)
and they still didn't have very good digestive health or clients had come to see me and been like, I've done six SIBO protocols, I've done antibiotics, this, that, the other thing, and it keeps coming back. And then I was like, okay, well, if the person may have bacterial overgrowth, but what about things like yeast, fungus? What about low levels of healthy bacteria? What about intestinal permeability? What about low digestive resources that's actually causing their SIBO?
So then I started to, after I did my FDN course, run and order stool tests. So the one that I use is GI Map. There's lots like doctors data. There's a few popular ones. But where we can see what the benefit of that is that, yes, we see, do you have too much bad bacteria, which is what SIBO would measure. Now I will say that a stool test is large intestine, SIBO test is small intestine. So there is a little bit of discrepancy, but almost always we see a correlation. So do you have too much bad bacteria?
Do you have not enough good bacteria? And this is why testing is so important because those two things, too much bad guys or not enough good guys, present the exact same in a symptom case. So I've also seen people be like, well, I thought I had SIBO, so we start taking all of these things to kill off bugs and I run a test and I'm like, you just made this a lot further back. So we could have too much bad guys, not enough good guys. We can also have too many good guys. We can have worms, we can have parasites in our stomach.
We can have H. pylori. Sometimes you'll see clients who have all of those. It's really fun. They love to see that. And then we can also have things like intestinal permeability where we want our gut to be intact and the lining of our intestines should be held together by tight junctions. And then due to inflammation, stress, you know, over exercise, we see these junctions start to come apart. So now you have things like pathogens, antigens, undigested food that should be in your stomach making its way into the bloodstream.
Well now this is a case of our immune system being overactive due to that. Person's gonna have a lot of food sensitivities. That's when we start to see systemic issues, so joint pain, fatigue, headaches, because what should be in your gut is now going into the bloodstream. There's something called lipopolysaccharides, which is an endotoxin. It can cross the blood -brain barrier. Not great. And we can also see on these stool tests how are other accessory organs functioning.
Sarah Collins (15:01.679)
So we have markers like stay adequate, is this person digesting fat properly? We have markers like beta glucuronidase, which is highly related to estrogen. So we can see correlations, we'll talk a little bit more about this later in the podcast, between our gut health and our hormone health. So really it just gave me a much wider scope to see outside of just like bacteria. And a lot of the time people get so caught up on like, kill the bugs, kill the bugs. You see this all the time on social media. Everybody needs to do a parasite cleanse. I'm like.
No, let's calm down for a second and realize like sure killing off bugs is important. You can't have a diet that's going to get rid of SIBO if you have it unless it's an elemental diet which is quite literally like you don't eat and you allow your body to just get rid of it. However, this being said, we also need to look at again like why is this person having the digestive issues? I'm not just going to take somebody who has even SIBO or
overgrowth of all these things and say, okay, just take all these herbs, kill it off and then be on your way. It's like we need to do a proper intake form with this person. When my gut was a mess, you're teaching 20, 30 hours inside of a sauna, you are over -exercising, you are not eating enough for your activity level. You're also in school, your body is so stressed out. And if I didn't deal with all of those things, I would have spent so much money on testing supplements, protocols, and just be running this rat race of getting worse, getting better, getting worse.
So, you know, these things are really important when someone has digestive complaints. We want to be able to use testing to see what's going on, but we can't only use testing. I always say we want to treat the person, not a piece of paper. Meaning, my first question I ask when ordering labs is, whose lab is this? You know, if we run your lab and my lab and we had the exact same hormone profile, well, that's going to mean different things. You know, we're different ages, we have different activity levels.
So we also need to look at the person and the habits and the lifestyle and nutrition they have that could be contributing. So again, digestive complaints, bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, pretty common. There's a lot of reasons why somebody might have those. I like to run stool tests to figure out why they have them. We do what we call a corrective phase, deal with what came up on the stool test, and also at the same time work on lifestyle habits, stress management, all the stuff that's gonna...
Sarah Collins (17:18.476)
not only help them to get better, but to stay better once they get better, which is really a missing key.
Kim (17:25.38)
You brought up a point about, you know, a lot of people were influenced by social media or we read something and we think, everybody should do a parasite cleanse and we should be doing a parasite cleanse every full moon and all these things that we see. And then there's another side of things like we need some parasites to a degree. We need some bad stuff in there. That's not the right term. But a lot of people will then be buying all these supplements, paying a lot of money for supplements. And then they complain about having to pay for the test.
because the tests are a little bit of money. And I think that if we calm down and did some math about how much we spend on these supplements that may not even be doing anything or may be actually contributing to making things worse and actually paid for the testing that would give us that piece of information that might be a better starting point, I think that would be really helpful. I didn't tell you I was gonna ask you this, but I just posted an Instagram reel.
Somebody else, a nutritionist or she's an antropath actually who I'd had on the podcast talked about the blue poo test for motility for transit time, sorry. And anyway, I make a brille about this and I talk about how you make these muffins and you eat the muffins and your poo turns blue. And so transit time is something that I want to ask you about, but there's also people in there saying, what about beets? And what I've learned in this process is not everybody's poo turns red from beets.
Sarah Collins (18:30.698)
Mm -hmm.
Kim (18:51.17)
like statistically it was only like 14 % from what I read. And then we were asking about sesame seeds and corn. And my thinking is corn and sesame seeds are maybe going to influence the digestion anyway and aren't necessarily good for the test. Cause everybody's getting all up in arms about using blue food dye, which I'm not saying we should be eating blue muffins every day, but as a test, do you, have you used the test before or are there other ways that you recommend or is it like,
Sarah Collins (19:13.64)
Yeah.
Kim (19:18.465)
with the corn and the sesame seed, is that the reason why it wouldn't be used for the test?
Sarah Collins (19:22.952)
I actually have seen a lot of success with doing the beet test. I think that you can dye your poo in lots of different ways. It's just like, you know, this person wants to use blue food dye, that can show up. You can also dye your poo green by taking things like chlorophyll, but again, you would have to take it in food because some people take it in water, it's gonna show differently. So there are different things you can use in order to test trends. At the time, I actually do see beets be pretty successful for people. I'm not a huge fan of blue food dye, but you can also do things like...
you know, blue, what is it, butterfly pea powder that turns things blue and purple. Like there are different ways to test transit time. I'm not a huge fan of things like corn and sesame seeds just because corn can be a common digestive trigger for people. So that can come up. And also we don't really want to be seeing that much undigested food come in the stool. So eating things with the intention of it coming out undigested is also like, okay, well now we're looking at is your digestion functioning well? Because why is corn?
Why are you getting kernels of coin coming out in your poop?
Kim (20:22.879)
Yeah, yeah. Isn't corn though always not really, I guess if you think, if I think if I've eaten corn before, yes, I can see the odd piece here and there, but it's not every single piece that I've eaten. So is it, but a lot of people say it's not supposed to be digested.
Sarah Collins (20:32.039)
Mm -hmm.
Sarah Collins (20:37.19)
I think people don't chew their food enough to be honest. I think if you really look at how much we're supposed to chew food, it's 30 to 40 times per bite. I don't know anybody who does that consistently except for elders. If you've ever had a dinner with your grandma.
Kim (20:49.951)
Yeah.
Kim (20:54.527)
What with talking about getting older, another complaint and another issue that can maybe interfere with digestion is low stomach acid and digestive enzymes. And a lot of people will say take digestive enzymes with hydrochloric acid. Is that again, is it one of those things where test first, test don't guess, or would most people benefit as they're getting older from digestive enzymes and HCL?
Sarah Collins (21:03.174)
Mm -hmm.
Sarah Collins (21:17.958)
Most people will, our stomach acid declines. To actually test your stomach acid is a very invasive procedure that needs to be done through a conventional medicine doctor. And it would be really hard to be like, I'd just like to know where my levels are at. You'll see commonly, I don't know if you're on TikTok or whatever, social media, people will use a baking soda assessment. I have used this in my practice, but I always like to say this is an assessment, not a test. And this is where people will get caught up is they'll be like, well, this is invalid testing. Okay, but it can give us clues.
My favorite way to test for somebody's stomach acid is you have them eat a large amount of protein, like sit down and have a big steak and take hydrochloric acid before. Do you feel better and do the same thing without taking it? Do you feel like it sits in your stomach? Arguably most people are going to do better with taking hydrochloric acid and also others like ox bile and pancreatic enzyme support as we age. Our stomach acid naturally declines. It can also decline from things due to stress.
So you could have low stomach acid before you age. I think the HCL test is a really good one. And also just biofeedback, like take HCL before you have a larger protein meal. Do you feel better? Awesome. Do you feel like symptoms of low stomach acid would be food kind of sits in your stomach for a long time after you eat. Some people will notice they have protein and digestion. So they'll get super gassy or bloated with having larger amounts of protein. That's a good clue.
We often see low ferritin and low B12 come back on blood work when people have low stomach acid, so you can start to correlate with some blood work. But if somebody takes HCL and they get heartburn, they either have too much stomach acid or they have a good amount. So really it's a pretty simple way to gauge where we're at. I don't think something like that necessarily needs the invasive procedure to see if you should take an HCL supplement, because our body is actually going to give us a lot of clues for that specific marker.
Kim (23:09.276)
Would apple cider vinegar be enough or is it best to have it in like a capsule or a supplement form?
Sarah Collins (23:15.746)
It depends on the person. Like some people say that it's okay. If somebody had digestive issues and symptoms, I wouldn't want them taking apple cider vinegar. I would rather them take an HCl supplement. They're not super expensive, but let's say it was maybe a protein that was easier to digest. Like for a lot of people, having eggs is easier to digest than a steak. So maybe they could feel okay with, you know, a little bit of apple cider vinegar. It's a little bit more of a mild support.
and then on the larger protein meals use HCL. So I think sometimes you get really caught up in black and white thinking when a lot of us are gonna do better when we start to really be intentional with, how do I feel? Okay, and start to understand like, why are we applying this? And if we can find a way for people to be like, okay, well, maybe at this meal, that's like Greek yogurt, I don't feel like it sits in my stomach, but larger animal protein, we understand that that needs more digestive resources to break down. So that could be a time where I will take HCL.
So I recommend to clients over the age of honestly like 30 to take HCL with larger protein meals. If they get a bit of heartburn with taking it, they probably don't need it, but I've maybe seen that in like 2 % of clients ever.
Kim (24:21.659)
Wow. When I think of the importance of pooping, there's the pelvic health component and there's also you just feel like literal shit when you don't shit every day. It feels good to poop. And also the elimination of toxins. And more and more I see the conversation of how many, including blue food, I, but how many toxins there are that we're exposed to.
Sarah Collins (24:35.393)
Feels good to poop. Yeah.
Kim (24:50.587)
And so and and then from a hormone perspective also we need to eliminate the the hormones that were that have been used or that we don't need per se and so can you talk about the link between the importance of digestion for optimal hormone. Equilibrium i don't want to use the word balance but health.
Sarah Collins (24:56.768)
Mm -hmm.
Sarah Collins (25:10.304)
Yeah, balance is kind of like, an interesting discussion to have when we say that. Okay, so let's talk on a very, very basic level. In order to actually make a hormone, we need we need things, our hormones aren't just going to appear out of thin air. So for example, like zinc levels are really important for progesterone and testosterone. To make estrogen, it's in a category of hormones that we call steroid hormones, we're going to need healthy fats and cholesterol in order to synthesize those.
Kim (25:13.468)
Ms. Nomer.
Sarah Collins (25:37.792)
In order to build thyroid hormone we need things like iodine and selenium. So on a very basic level if somebody is not properly digesting and absorbing their food and they're not getting nutrients that they need their hormone health is going to start to suffer because we don't have the raw materials that we need in order to produce hormones. That's like super super simple. Now also let's consider the impact and this could be a whole podcast in and of itself and I actually have one you should go check it out of stress on hormones.
So when we think of stress, you know, women say this all the time, well, I'm not stressed. I'm like, really, have you ever relaxed a day in your life? Like, have you had any downtime in the past 30 days? No, okay, we are a little bit stressed. So our body doesn't only perceive stress as the way we feel in our mind. Things like malnutrition, so not having enough nutrients, things like gut -based infections such as H. pylori or dysbiosis, your body perceives this as a stress.
Now once your body perceives stress, this happens in our brain, it's going to start to impact our hormone signaling and our hormone production. If my body feels like I'm stressed out, I'm full of viruses and infection, well I sure as heck don't want to bring a baby into that situation. So now we're going to have down regulation of things that impact ovulation. So we're going to see maybe like delayed ovulation due to stress. Again, nutrient deficiencies, gut -based infections can be considered stressors on the body.
Well, now we're also gonna see issues with our thyroid health because again, we don't have nutrients we need. When my body perceives it's under stress, it goes, well, we better save some of our energy because we don't wanna be spending this energy if we might need it later. So now I'm gonna see, you know, potentially elevations of reverse T3. My thyroid function might start to slow or I'm gonna start to see due to things like leaky gut. I mentioned the link to immunity.
Well now I have things that my body's reacting to, my immune system is freaking out because I have undigested food, pathogens, antigens, all in my bloodstream. Okay, well now we can see elevations of thyroid antibodies, Graves' disease, Hashimoto's. So we really need to take stress off of the body in order to impact our hormones and gut health can be a stressor on the body when we have infections and when we have other things going on. Now...
Sarah Collins (27:53.115)
Okay, so we have, these are a little bit more general, right? But we also have like direct links to digestive markers and hormones. And there's like a lot of these, we definitely couldn't cover them all. But to mention a few, I talked about beta -glucuronidase. What is that? So that's an enzyme. And when we want to get rid of estrogen, estrogen is a use it or lose it hormone. We don't want it staying around too long. We want enough, but not too much, like a Goldilocks amount. And in order for estrogen to leave our body, it has to actually go through a few different steps.
And when estrogen is first produced, it's in a form that actually cannot be excreted by our body. So let's say in order to get out of the body, we need to take estrogen and tie it up in a little present with a bow. What beta -glucaronidase does is it takes the estrogen that's tied up and ready to leave and it unties the bow and says, let's go back into circulation. So now we have estrogen that's trying to leave the body. It gets booted back into circulation in a more, I don't want to use the word toxic, let's say potent metabolite.
Okay, so that could be elevations of beta -gluco -ronidase, again, related to poor gut health, correlating with high estrogen and related symptoms, painful heavy periods, bloating, acne, the whole shebang. Now we can also see, like, let's talk about, we think of hormones and sex hormones, but let's also understand that things like insulin and, you know, our metabolic health, well, that's related to hormones as well. One really cool area of research that we're diving a bit more into is understanding the role of microbes in our gut health, in our metabolic health.
and there's a certain strain of gut bacteria that shows up on a GI map called acrimansia. And acrimansia, when it's in low levels, is very correlated with obesity, and it's also correlated with reduced insulin sensitivity and poor metabolic health. So now we're also seeing a link between our gut microbiome and our metabolic health. And when insulin is off and our blood sugar is imbalanced, well, now that's impacting our thyroid and that's impacting our stress levels and our progesterone production.
And we can also see this very indicated in things like PCOS. So now maybe we're making too much testosterone, hyperandrogenism, irregular cycles, missing periods. Again, part of that discussion is gut health. And then what you mentioned about constipation, well, let's go back to the discussion of estrogen. So estrogen, we want to use it or lose it. Well, if I have estrogen that's ready to leave the body sitting in my bowels and I'm not getting rid of it, it's going to start to get reabsorbed through the bowel walls and then go back into circulation again.
Sarah Collins (30:16.887)
So now again, we often see constipation come with higher levels of estrogen. So this connection is really intricate. And one thing that I don't want people to do when listening to this, because I've had this before, is like, I'll talk about, you know, acromansia and metabolic health. And they're like, well, maybe the reason I can't lose weight is because my acromansia is low. And it's like, when we talk about these connections and these discussions, it isn't like, that's the reason why I'm messed up, right? Like, that's the reason why my hormones are out of whack because I'm not pooping. It's like...
This is part of the discussion, but then again, why aren't you pooping? Is it because you're stressed and you don't have enough minerals and maybe you're over -exercising? Is it because your diet's not that great? So we always want to take this information when we're considering connections and links and understand that it's a part of a story, but we don't want to get so caught up in the details that we miss out on the whole picture, right? So these are just a few ways in which our digestion and hormone health is.
connected, there's like so many different little things you can look at, but really we're thinking of taking stress off the body, making sure we're having enough minerals and nutrients, and then some of those specific links between, you know, certain things that could show up on labs and the person's hormone symptoms.
Kim (31:13.974)
Mm -hmm.
Kim (31:26.934)
Mm hmm. I want to go to how we can nourish our bodies for minerals and nutrients as you're talking about. But before I go there, I want to circle back with the term leaky gut you were describing that and that is, you know, intestinal permeability and that it again, it's been talked about a lot more. How do we what it what are the steps involved in terms of healing a leaky gut? Is it?
more food? Is it more supplement? Is it all of the things that you've been talking about? I mean, it's with everything you're talking and sharing, it's kind of a chicken in the egg, you know, we have to start somewhere. Where do we start? And how would we improve leaky gut as a way to then start supporting the other systems and things?
Sarah Collins (32:05.556)
Mm -hmm.
Sarah Collins (32:15.156)
Well first say this, regardless of what you have going on, you could have leaky gut, you could have hypothyroidism, you could have low estrogen, you could be menopausal, here's what I call the foundation pack. And until we're doing the foundation pack, buying supplements, spending money on these little things is not gonna get you very far. So what are the foundations? We need to be properly sleeping. We wanna be going to bed and waking up around the same time every day. Ideally this is like,
the 10 to 6 mark, there actually is research to show there's a difference between sleeping 1am till 9am between sleeping 10 to 6. So we do want to make sure we're aligning our circadian rhythm. So that goes for sleeping, that also goes for light exposure. So making sure we're not sitting on blue light, which impacts melatonin production and can dysregulate our cortisol. We want to be exposing ourselves to sunlight in the morning and throughout the day.
So sleep and circadian rhythms, super important. We want to be getting, you know, women actually need more sleep than men. Ideally, this is actually like around the eight to nine hour mark. Seven to nine, okay, eight to nine better. We want to be eating well, which I'll talk about in the next question. We want to be moving our body, not too much, but not too little, this Goldilocks amount. So this is going to look different for everybody, but we do want to make sure we're getting regular, consistent exercise, a mix between strength training and cardio. Cardio could also be walking.
doesn't have to be physically exerting yourself is going to be great for most people and some mobility work and again what that looks like for somebody could be different but we do want to include some of those components. We also need to be managing our stress so like I mentioned you can't be going all the time and say I'm not stressed we need to have downtime we need to give ourselves some nervous system supporting activities. I really love for clients to you know include some intentional time for spending in a parasympathetic state.
That could be a few breaths before we eat, which we'll talk about. That could be 10 minutes of taking a bath, listening to some music you love. Anything that we can do to support that parasympathetic state. I think that's a better way to phrase it than stress management because not everybody is going to really feel how stressed out they are because that becomes their baseline. So intentional time in a parasympathetic state is how I like to say that to clients. And make sure you are doing things for your joy and happiness. So many women are missing that. It's like they're going, you know,
Sarah Collins (34:30.832)
God bless mothers, but they have kids, so they wake up. Get your kids ready for school. Take your kids to school. Work all day. Take your kids to the activity. Get them ready for the next day. And I'm like, where's your joy, girl? You're not doing anything in your entire week for you. And I understand this is difficult, but it's like, hey, okay, you might not feel like you have an hour to go. Can you have five or 10 minutes to do something that's just fun? It's like bounce on a trampoline, dance. Go on your kid's trampoline.
connect with your husband, you know, like there's so many things we can do to include little pockets of joy, but that's also missing and that is so important for your healing. So these are the foundations. So regardless of what you have going on, that's going to benefit quite literally every chronic health condition because that's called lifestyle medicine right there. And then we can get specific. Okay, so for leaky gut, I'm really looking at, is this person eating a diet that's contributing to intestinal inflammation and intestinal permeability?
Are they eating a lot of highly processed food? This is a controversial topic, but there's been some recent research coming out of Harvard that shows the way that gluten impacts the lining of our intestines and that almost everybody will get some degree of leaky gut from eating overly processed gluten. My, just using common knowledge, says that in the studies they were using processed wheat, there could be a difference between stone milled, unfortified. So I do want to say that it's a nuanced discussion.
However, if somebody was struggling with the symptoms, we would want to remove that food, see how you feel, and then once you're in a place where you feel good, maybe we add back in a little bit and it's every once in a while. We can also take a lot of nutrients to support the gut lining. So there's a lot of like supplements you can take like zinc carnosine, glutamine. We can also use food like bone broth. We can also use, just make sure we're getting a lot of amino acids for the gut lining. We want to be eating a low inflammatory diet. Polyphenols are really helpful as well.
and then we can start to look at again, like is the person under high stress? So leaky gut in athletes is actually extremely common. Almost all athletes who are physically exerting themselves to pretty much like their max capacity or past that are gonna develop leaky gut. So we actually see a lot of the research that shows high level athletes have leaky gut. So, okay, well, am I gonna ask a high level athlete like someone I trained jiu jitsu with who's a black belt to be like, well, you just need to stop working out.
Sarah Collins (36:53.485)
probably not gonna happen so this is the person where we're like given that you are pushing your body so much you need to take more time and rest and recovery and you might be the kind of person who like actually might need to be on a supplement for as long as you plan on pushing your body at this level of intensity but usually it's a mix so there are some supplements again like zinc carnosine is great, cursitin is really great, turmeric is decently studied, glutamine is like a really popular one.
bone broth, you can get immunoglobulins I really like, they're actually harder to get in Canada. Colostrum is another really popular one, like there are a lot of nutrients and don't listen to this and think you need all of them. Like maybe if you're somebody who has some of the symptoms, start with a food -based approach. Can I do bone broth daily? Can I maybe include, you know, glutamine in the morning because it's a relatively cheap one? And really try to think of the lifestyle stuff and food -based and then a supplement's like a nice addition if you feel like...
or you've tested and that is actually something that is at the top of your priority list when it comes to your healing.
Kim (37:54.355)
And with those from the supplement food, I would say is definitely that's a lifestyle, that's an everyday piece. But when we're talking about adding in supplements, some of the ones that you mentioned, would that be a therapeutic period, like a start and end? I don't even know how you would know, like, I don't have leaky gut anymore. But as you say, there's evidence that maybe everybody has an element of that with the food system that we currently eat in. So would these supplements be probably a good addition to our daily or is it more a...
therapeutic use only.
Sarah Collins (38:25.739)
I would use it for a therapeutic use for somebody and then you can test for leaky gut in people. Like a lot of clients will go based on symptoms. Obviously testing is better to see if it's improved, but you would do it for a period of time. I do this at the end of all of my gut protocols for clients. Usually they'll be on it for about six months and then we can see from there. We do always want to look at, I don't think research is everything. I think that, you know, people need to fund research and a lot of these things aren't necessarily being studied because there's not funding. Sometimes it's actually really hard to run.
Research, especially when we're looking at females, you know, we have to control a lot more variables than males. So I don't think research is everything, but we can look at when they are, you know, saying that glutamine is good for intestinal permeability in the trials, they were running how long are these people on it? What, how are they measuring this? Like we want to start to pull on some of that and also just client case for clients who has high levels of autoimmunity. And we think, okay, they also have gut -based issues while they might need to be on this for a little bit longer than the person who's like,
I kind of have some skin rashes every once in a while. I don't think that it's necessary for everybody to be on supplement supports for leaky gut, you know, indefinitely. I do think, you know, taking bone broth daily, sure, like everyone could benefit from that. But I also try to move away from people feeling like they're always a problem that needs to be fixed. And I think that's a popular mindset nowadays on social media is like,
We get so hyper obsessed with like everything needs to be optimized and there's always something I could be working on or fixing and it actually becomes really detrimental. And then it's like you start to hyper focus and again, this piece of stress on like a tiny little symptom like, my gosh, I got a pimple, I have leaky gut. Like, you know, and this is actually, you'll see this all the time. So it is important to also be like, okay, what is, what is like the main things I have going on right now? And like,
Is my lifestyle checked in or am I getting a pimple because I ate, you know, six pieces, six glasses of wine and a piece of chocolate cake on the weekend. Okay, I'm just going to go back to my habits, relax a little and then try not to be in this. Like it is a fine line because we do want to listen to our symptoms, but we don't want to be like hyper obsessing of like, my gosh, I ate gluten. I need to go on a leaky gut support for six months because yeah.
Kim (40:38.224)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. What is just before we move on to the next, but what is the test for leaky gut? How do you test for that?
Sarah Collins (40:45.671)
There's a couple different ways that they do it. A really popular one is you're going to drink a drink and it has different sugars in it and there's certain ones that shouldn't be able to pass through the lining of the intestine and then they're testing is that coming out elevated. So it's like the particles should be too big usually to pass through and they're seeing are they passing through when we see that elevated. Then that's one way. There's also a marker you can add on to something like a GI map called zonulin.
and zonulin will open the tight junctions in your intestine. So if somebody has elevated zonulin, then we also can know that they have leaky gut. So there's a couple different tests there.
Kim (41:20.493)
Would those be available through the conventional system or through people like you? Yeah. All the good stuff is never.
Sarah Collins (41:24.013)
I hope one day, I'll say this, I hope one day that conventional medicine runs some testing. You'll actually see a lot of doctors nowadays understanding SIBO. Well SIBO has been pretty popular for you know 20, 30 years, maybe even longer. But you're actually seeing doctors who will take a SIBO breath test and prescribe antibiotics now. So the stat is that it takes something I think 17 years from the time it becomes valid in the research to make it through the medical system. So I actually do have hope that
Doctors will start to run some of these tests. Now what I also will say is it's easy to poo poo on doctors and be like, well, whatever. But it's like, what could a doctor do if you have intestinal permeability? Not much. Doctors are not well -versed. They actually, legally, they can't really tell you to take supplements except for like a list that's underneath their insurance. So they couldn't tell you, hey, take curcidin. Hey, they can suggest it, but they couldn't like write you a prescription for it.
So it's also like, okay, what's the doctor gonna do with that information, right? Are they gonna sit down and do a whole lifestyle overhaul with you? Probably not. So we also need to be aware, like your doctor is really there to be like, are you sick? Can I give you something for this? So as much as we can say like, yeah, like I even am like, okay, well, doctors should run this. Like it should be covered for you to get this testing done. But it's like, well, doctors can't be an expert in.
everything that they know and then also all of this other stuff that they can't really help in the medical system. So I do think that healthcare should be done in teams of practitioners that all have their strengths.
Kim (42:55.629)
Hallelujah. Okay, thyroid, which is it all of these are really big topics. But they're kind of the three things, especially in the population that I now support for the most part, which is perimenopause, postmenopause, and going through my own, not even knowing the term perimenopause had never, I maybe heard the term hypothyroid, definitely hadn't heard of Hashimoto's. And so all of the information that was kind of culminating at that time as I was,
trying to figure out what the heck was happening to my body. I started to preach and I still do, I still find that a full thyroid panel, again, you will not get this through the conventional medicine system. A full thyroid panel, including the antibodies, I think is a good baseline. Even if you're not really struggling with any symptoms, I think it's good information to just start with and have a baseline. And then some hormone testing and then...
as you're talking about the digests and we can have some GI map testing, but maybe it's also the symptoms that people are dealing with. But I find that so often some of the gut symptoms or constipation can be tied back to the thyroid. And we've talked about the hormone piece. So very, I know it's kind of has to be high level here, but from a thyroid, how often is that something that you're testing that you're seeing as a contributor to the digestive or the hormone complaints that people may be having?
Sarah Collins (44:19.36)
I think your thyroid will impact your digestion. So your thyroid is going to impact gastric emptying. So how fast you're emptying things. Hypothyroidism will also present as like bloating and constipation. Hyperthyroidism will sometimes come as like diarrhea and loose stool. So we have basically like under stimulation and overstimulation. Now your thyroid is your master regulator. So if we even think about this, like very generally to have everything be hypo, low and slow, slow metabolism, slow digestive functioning.
tired, fatigued, feeling brain foggy, like really this feeling of weighed down. And then we have hyperthyroidism over like too much anxiety, shakiness, heart palpitations, over going to the bathroom a lot of times. So we can really think of this very generally as like master regulator, too slow, too fast, on a very, very basic level. Now there's a link between your thyroid and your sex hormones like so strong. I think that it's you almost,
always should have a thyroid panel done in with sex hormones because there is such a strong connection. Now if I see somebody who has let's say elevations of reverse T3 so thyroid basics we have our thyroid hormone in our thyroid gland it makes hormones main ones being T3 and T4. We also have reverse T3 which is a storage version of our active thyroid hormone which cannot really be used.
TSH which is what your doctor will typically test is from your brain not from your thyroid and it's talking to your thyroid to say hey buddy you should either make more or less of a hormone. How that works is we have this feedback loop so the idea is that in a well -functioning body if you have too much thyroid hormone in the blood your brain should produce lower levels of TSH which is signaling you don't really need to make much thyroid hormone we're good.
If you have too little, your TSH should be high saying, hey, let's go pump up the production. We need you to put in some work here. Now actually when we start to look at statistics, by the time somebody's TSH is clinically out of range, they've had thyroid issues for 10 years. So that's not, it's not good. And it's also, it's not even a thyroid hormone. It's in the brain. So you're assuming that all of these like discussion loops are working well in order to have that out of whack. I don't actually see.
Kim (46:32.966)
Yeah.
Sarah Collins (46:40.539)
high TSH correlated with thyroid issues that often. I see a lot of people with hypothyroidism, elevated antibodies, all of these issues and their TSH is doing just fine. So it really is not enough. So we have again, when we think about sex hormones, typically somebody who has lower thyroid, we're gonna start to see them have long and irregular cycles. They could also actually have short cycles and a lot of bleeding. So a big issue here is like issues with ovulation.
Again, when my body is perceiving stress, hypothyroidism is usually a reaction to some sort of stress in the body that could be infection, that could be under nutrition, that could be even the stress of perimenopause and the nervous system dysregulations. Well, now I'm going to start to see again, lower thyroid function, which is going to correlate and influence progesterone production, testosterone production, and my menstrual cycles. We're also going to see it actually start to influence again metabolism. So it does slow metabolism. I mentioned like,
the master regulator, but it also has an impact on things like beta cells in the pancreas, so how much insulin we're actually making. And we have an influence on like, or an active thyroid hormone that can act as antagonists and agonists for things like insulin production and insulin sensitivity. So we're going to see a big link there to our metabolic hormones. And we also will see it influence like both hyper and hypo, pretty much all sex hormones, sex hormone binding globulin, which makes
you know, things like testosterone available or unavailable to use, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. The research here is not as straight as in it's like not every single time someone has hyperthyroidism you'll see this with sex hormones. Not every single time somebody has hypothyroidism you see this. So again it's more a symptom picture. Like I've seen a client who has Graves' disease which is autoimmune hyperthyroid but she's actually seen a decline of her sex hormones because...
her main contributing factor is chronic stress. So the way her body is reacting is in this hyper state. She has elevated antibodies, but her thyroid is now over producing, but she actually has more symptoms of hypo. So the thyroid connection, you can flip flop between the two as well. Like it's so nuanced and even just understanding like the things that influence it, we know that there is a connection, but I've really seen it to be so case dependent on how exactly that looks.
Sarah Collins (48:55.446)
but it will influence pretty much all sex hormones. I think you can't really look at sex hormones without looking at the thyroid picture and it gives us a big clue again into just like stress levels in the body and how your body is reacting. If we can catch things like elevated antibodies before it impacts your thyroid hormone production, well this is somebody who probably won't need to be on medication. They can work on that, bring down antibodies.
but at the point where maybe the person's had thyroid issues and they haven't been able to get a test for seven, eight years, we see elevated antibodies, really low levels of thyroid hormone. Well, that actually could be destruction of the thyroid gland. And this type of person may actually need some medication because it's been going on for too long that now we've actually seen, again, like destruction of the literal structure of the thyroid gland. So, so important to get a thyroid panel done. I also think that when you're running something like blood work or hormone panels,
It's good to do them before you have symptoms. So I want to compare my hormone levels at 28 to where I'm at 38 because what, you know, conventional medicine or even functional medicine tells me is normal, might not be my normal. So I want to be able to look when I'm 38 starting perimenopause and be like, I'm fatigued. My thyroid right now is here. It's still normal. But before, when I felt great and energized and full of life, this was my thyroid marker.
So, so important to be running these things. It's hard to get in Canada. You can ask at a doctor appointment to patient pay. This is how I've always run mine. They'll tell you, we won't run this. I say, actually, I can pay for it. I would like you to write down these things for my thyroid. And they have to write it in their handwriting because in Canada specifically, if I go to LifeLabs and my doctor clicks the one that says T3, T4, if my TSH is within range, LifeLabs, which if you're in the States listening is the place that we get our blood drawn,
cancels it. So it has to be written by your doctor. It ends up being around like $200 to run a full thyroid panel. If you have insurance, you can submit that, get up to 80 % back. I don't, I just pay out of pocket, but I think it's very valuable. So there are ways to work around it and get it. You just, unfortunately, when you want something, have to know how to ask for it in the medical system.
Kim (51:07.683)
I didn't know that about the handwritten that that actually just happened to me. So typically I've always I consider my naturopath, my primary care person and the medical doctor is I will use them to get as much of the free testing as I can and then pay privately. But I typically you have to pay for the naturopath visit and then pay for the testing through them. But I had I have my my it's a fairly new medical doctor and he's he's fairly open minded.
Sarah Collins (51:15.122)
Mm -hmm.
Kim (51:36.707)
And he said, yeah, I can test all those. And he checked the box. He didn't handwrite. So I didn't know that point. That's really, really important information. Thank you for that tip. So then I went back to my naturopath and paid for the visit and now paying for the test there. But yeah, it's.
Sarah Collins (51:44.018)
Mm -hmm.
Sarah Collins (51:50.322)
Another thing that's important for asking for things, if you really feel like you have symptoms of something, and this is, again, I'm saying this not in a way where it's like, we're gonna do this against the doctors. It's like, if I felt like I had thyroid issues, because again, like you can see destruction of the thyroid gland if it's not caught early enough. And my doctor said I won't test you for that. I would always say, I would like you to write down that on June 20th, 2024, you refuse to run this test for me.
So that, let's say you go to a naturopath and it comes back, well, your doctor is held liable for refusing you treatment for something that you felt like you had. A doctor also cannot just run anything. I can't go in as an asymptomatic 28 -year -old and be like, under insurance, I would like you to run and just list off all these things because your doctor, under insurance, cannot do that if you have no symptoms. So we also need to understand both sides, right? Like...
Your doctor is running under other rules. It's not just like, well, they said they can't order labs for an asymptomatic person because otherwise, like if everybody's running labs will be, we won't have free healthcare in Canada. I think you should just be able to go in and ask for it. But again, this is just not the way the system works. However, you can ask a patient pay and have it written down. And if they refuse you, just make sure they make a note because your doctor also should be working for you. And it's not as easy as just find a new doctor here, but it is important that.
you do feel cared for in the medical space.
Kim (53:14.656)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think that's a really cool place to leave off with the note of learning how to advocate and gathering information. You have just shared like a master class, a huge wealth of information and it will be a starting point for some, it'll be an additional layer for others, but leaving it on the point of all of us, we need to take control, an agency over our own health and advocate and you've given us some really great tips on how to do that. So.
For people that would maybe like to work with you or learn more or listen to your podcast, where can we find you?
Sarah Collins (53:47.118)
So my main Instagram is saracollinswellness. My company is called Embodied Wellness Co. So I do have a website. I also have a podcast. I'm just starting season two. I took a little break because I was very in servicing and learning with my one -on -one clients. I do work with clients one -on -one, so I have a few different offerings. You can find all of the information on my website, which is embodiedwellnessco .com. Lots of videos for which program might be best for you. And I do a lot of education on Instagram as well, always.
Kim (54:15.965)
Yeah. Yeah. And if you're in our neck of the woods, we happen to live very close to one another. She's a great yoga instructor as well. I always appreciate your classes. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared. It's really been eye -opening, some amazing tips that you've shared. Super, super grateful. Thank you.
Sarah Collins (54:16.462)
post some free little tidbits.
Sarah Collins (54:24.234)
and do teach yoga as well.
Sarah Collins (54:35.114)
Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to chatting again.
