Christian Healthy Lifestyle 

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 0:00
I always tell my patients to get curious around why your body is doing anything, right? Like if it's telling you if you have an ache or a pain or if you're tired that day or if your eyes are puffy, just start asking those questions start wondering, why is my body responding like this? Your body slowly talks to it whispers, then it talks, then it raises his voice and then it screams really loudly. And for most of us, we wait till it's screaming at us to do anything when it started whispering five years ago, right like you had signs.

David Sandstrom 0:32
Welcome to the Natural Health Matters podcast where it's all about maximizing your health potential, so that you can look and feel your best at any age. I'm your host, David Sandstrom, Naturopathic Doctor and Biblical Health Coach, and this is episode number 83.

David Sandstrom 0:50
Today we have in the show Dr. Shannyn Pearce. Dr. Shannyn is a Doctor of Chiropractic, Integrative Health Coach, and nationally known speaker and educator. She has a passion for women's hormones, thyroid and autoimmune issues. After being diagnosed with fibromyalgia at a young age, she began her lifelong quest to find non medical answers to common health issues. Dr. Shannyn, Welcome to Natural Health Matters.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 1:15
Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. It's it's gonna be a good conversation.

David Sandstrom 1:19
Yeah, I think so to really be looking forward to this conversation. So today, especially over the last couple of years, most of us are experiencing a great deal of stress. And I really think that burnout is a real issue for a lot of people. So I want to talk about that today. But before we get into that, let's talk about you just for a little bit. Let's get to know Dr. Shannyn and a little bit more, give us a 35,000 foot view of what you do.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 1:41
Yes, so my passion in life specifically, I have a heart to really change women's health care, because I've had just an up and down story of my own health journey, right learning all the things that work and don't work. And along that journey, I really realized there's a lot of women who feel the same way. It's just so rarely discussed or so rarely properly managed, right? Even if it is discussed, that I always say I believe we will change health care if we make enough healthy women who make healthy babies who make healthy babies, like that's how we change the world. But it's just not happening, right. So even through my own experience, I was already a doctor when I had my big break down, break burnout. And I'm sure we'll get into more of those details. So I would have considered myself a very educated person. And I still ended up having a major health crisis. So now my passion is to teach women how to properly take care of their bodies in their health, both physically and emotionally. So they can avoid burnout, but also create a life, they love to wake up feeling vibrant, to be happy and confident in their body to be able to play with their kids without being exhausted, to really just feel good and know the proper way to take care of their health.

David Sandstrom 2:54
Excellent. Well, you know, you mentioned a health crisis. And I found that to be true. When I had my health coaching practice. Almost everyone would come to me had some kind of health crisis going on. And people that have gotten into the field of natural and holistic integrative medicine, whatever you want to call it, generally have a health crisis story their own. So tell us a little bit about yours. Yes.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 3:14
So I wish I could tell you I had like one breakdown, I learned my lesson. That's just never the way that goes right. I'm a hard learner. And I think a lot of people have the same thing. So I was actually diagnosed with fibromyalgia after a head injury when I was eight years old, and struggled with chronic pain most of my life. And my first experience when I knew there had to be a better way. I went to a neurologist when I was about 10, severe migraines, chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, like very physically struggling. And this doctor at the time looked at me and said, I think it's fibromyalgia and to a 10 year old kid in real pain. He said, that means it's all in your head. And you're going to have to learn how to manage these symptoms for all their years old and I look back and I just tell myself daily, I thank God that I knew better because if I would have let those words be true for me, right, if I would have took that for face value and just decided the rest of my life was going to suck and I was going to get really good at pain management. I can't imagine where I would be right now. Right? Thankfully stimulated my mom at the time to get me my first chiropractic adjustment. That was my first introduction to holistic health care, right? We were not holistic people. We were very medical people. By the age of 10. I was on 10 different prescription medication. I've done it the medical way and got worse, not better. Got my first adjustment, my headaches went away. That was the first time because I was 10 years old. I've been telling everyone I was gonna be a chiropractor. So like in class, he always asked that everyone's be a lawyer. Everyone's a chiropractor since I was 10 years old, never changed. But then again, I wish that was the end of the story right and then everything gets better. But having a passion and you probably know this with your health coaching business, sometimes can come at a level of burnout to write. Do you know what I mean? Like just having that passion and wanting to do everything want to do it so quickly. I think I overdid it. And they ended up having a major physical health crisis after the birth of my first child, I was having more fibromyalgia symptoms, I was having migraine headaches, I was feeling awful. And that's actually the first time I started getting into more functional medicine and learning about in depth testing. And I went all in and it took a couple of years, and I really fixed my physical health. Wish that was the end of my story, right. So I found this thing. I loved it. I knew it could help people. I wanted to help people. So I went all in 100 miles an hour helping people through functional medicine, I got pregnant with my second child. About a year after she was born, I started having very emotional burnout, I was exhausted. Because same thing, I loved it. I loved what I was doing. I felt I was helping people. So I went back to it full time. And I couldn't figure out why I couldn't handle my emotions. I was crying for no reason. Things that I thought used to be really fun. Like getting on calls with people doing interviews like this going out with friends just stopped being appealing altogether. I didn't feel like doing anything. And that was really my first personal experience with emotional burnout. Yeah, and that's when I realized, Oh, crap, there's two big pieces to this that I don't think people understand. And just because you heal from it once, doesn't necessarily mean you're better. We have to know how to properly balance our physical and our emotional health. So we don't find ourselves back in those situations. So it took me many tries to get to where I am today.

David Sandstrom 6:31
Excellent. So it sounds like I mean, there's a lot of details to fill in there. Right? But how are you feeling today? Do you feel like you're in victory today?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 6:39
Absolutely. 100% of the tools and know how to properly take care of myself, I know what to do if things start to deviate. And that's true preventative medicine, right? It's not that things don't happen if that you know how to take care of yourself.

David Sandstrom 6:51
Right. The reason why we're having this conversation right now Natural Nation is so that you can avoid the crisis, right, you can implement some of the principles that Dr. Shannyn is going to be talking about and not have the crisis, we prefer that everybody just enjoy vibrant health, without having to go through that trial. So burnout is more than just something that CEOs of major corporations experienced burnout is something that almost everyone at some level have is has experienced some point in their lives. You know, and as you said, it can be mental emotional burnout, or it can be physical burnout, and it could be a lot of factors. So talk to us about, about how you figure out so when someone comes to you, if they're experiencing burnout, what are the signs and symptoms and that kind of thing.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 7:38
Major signs and symptoms start with a deep amount of fatigue that doesn't seem to be alleviated through sleep, right? Sleep disturbance is a big one. Brain fog even all sudden, you feel like too much stimulus. It's hard to multitask. You know, the kids asking you for one more drink of water is enough to make your brain want to explode. Those are big drivers of nervous system burnout. Uncontrollable emotions feel like I could cry for no reason or nothing's wrong. But I feel impending doom or things that you used to love not feeling exciting anymore. Those are all your first signs of burnout. And typically, even by the time you feel those, you're probably pretty far into the physical imbalances that have created those symptoms. But those are the main things I'll hear people say that they're noticing when they're identifying is burnout.

David Sandstrom 8:25
So what do you do? Do you run some lab tests? Or what do you do with that person? Yes,

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 8:28
lab lab tests are my love language. My favorite thing to do, the better your testing is, the better decisions you can make, because physical and emotional stress are going to make physiological imbalances. So specifically, there's going to be some pressure on the adrenal glands, there's probably some disturbance in the microbiome because the gut is hugely affected by stress and inflammation, tracking hormone balances for men and women. For women, it's normally lower progesterone and stress or men, it'll tank your testosterone. So making sure we're seeing for each individual, how is your body adapted to these stressors, because it's not going to be the same for everybody. So if we can find out those levels, we can find out your patterns, then we can make a game plan to properly support yourself. And I believe that's how I've been able to stay healthy as long as I have now I know my patterns. I know what tests to run before it becomes these major health crisis is again, right crises. But you've got to know your patterns and your testing. So I do think that's a huge part of it. And then on the physical or emotional side. You've got to look at your priorities, like how over scheduled are you what things can you start to alleviate, to make some room and really implementing a good daily process for mindset and self care is huge.

David Sandstrom 9:50
Well, that was a lot. So not that person listening to this program has to become a practitioner, but so that they can have a more educated conversation with them. practitioner who might not be quite as functional as you are, what kind of tests should they ask for? And you're looking at hormones. But what what types of tests are most revealing?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 10:09
Yeah, so my two favorite functional labs to start with. One is a comprehensive stool sample, right? There's lots of companies that do them. I prefer Doctors Data or Genova. Those are the two that we use often. And then for hormone and adrenal mapping, the Dutch test is a dried urine sample that maps your hormones and your adrenals over 24 hours. It shows you inflammatory markers, it shows you neurotransmitters, it is my favorite snapshot for stress and burnout of really what's going on with the body

David Sandstrom 10:37
is that a saliva test?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 10:38
That one's urine, super easy, goes right to your house, send it off, we get the results back in a couple of weeks. The great thing with all of these tests is we can send them anywhere, right? I work with people virtually all over the world. And then we get the results back and through virtual healthcare, we can review those together.

David Sandstrom 10:53
Excellent, really good. So if you determine if someone is experiencing burnout with low levels of like, as you said progesterone and women, testosterone in men and and other things, gut dysfunction. Where do you go from there with that person?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 11:04
Yeah. So once you do your testing, right, I think that's always the first step for everybody. But then you can individualize plan. Now, I'm a big fan of having a system and going a little bit more minimal, so that you can actually retrain the body to balance itself. I think the number one complaint I hear from someone who has gotten more holistic or functional, is I went to this doctor, they drew a bunch of labs. And they put me on 15 supplements, right that I was taking multiple times a day, and I didn't really feel that much better, I felt I was doing a lot to get really minimal results, right? I hear that so often. Yeah. So what we've created that I do and work my clients through, is a process that's based on the hierarchy of how your body heals. So instead of to kind of throw things at you, when a body is already in burnout, and probably can't assimilate most of the information anyways, you go after the most important things first, and allow your body to remember how to heal because it can, I didn't know if you believe this, your body can heal, we know that, we've got to give it the right things at the right time. So just an example of that is typically most people, if there's an immune system trigger, or massive amounts of inflammation, those are the places you have to start. Because those are the things that will block your body from healing in the first place. Even before we can try and balance hormones, right? If you have a chronic bacterial infection, or an Epstein Barr infection, or a yeast overgrowth, that has to be managed first, before we can expect your hormones to build back up. Right, right. Yeah, a lot of people get very frustrated with results in the natural world, because I don't think that people follow the actual hierarchy of how our bodies and our nervous systems heal. And that's where you keep hitting these plateaus, we do it differently, we go slower, more intentional, and everything based on the person's physiology, their lifestyle, their emotional traumas, and really make that individualized plan is the most important thing.

David Sandstrom 12:55
Excellent. Well, you know, you brought up a really good point that a lot of practitioners just throw a bunch of supplements at somebody. And you know, it's kind of the shotgun approach. And I call that allopathic nutrition. Yeah, that's exactly it, we can, we can be targeting symptoms, and instead of prescribing somebody, some pills, where we're giving them a nutritional supplement of some sort. And hopefully, you know, just, if you give them enough, hopefully, something's gonna hit the bullseye. Not a great approach, very expensive, very time consuming, and not all that effective. So I think what you're talking about here is a far better approach to, to getting to know that person, right, and then chopping down the trees that will make the most the most bang for the buck at first, right? And then we can start, you know, fine tuning things down the road.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 13:42
And it is amazing when you go after the first thing first, how many other things fall into place, right? There's so many times where you don't even have to necessarily go back and fully address the hormone imbalance itself, or the fatigue you used to have or the vitamin deficiency that used to be there. Because once your immune system is better, your gut is well functioning and the inflammation is gone, your body starts to balance those things on its own. So being a little bit more patient on the front end, always works better in the long term.

David Sandstrom 14:13
Yeah, for sure. You know, I call that vitalism. And that is the concept that the body knows how to heal, we don't have to teach ourselves how to do their jobs, they know how to function, our jobs as practitioners and as individuals. Or health enthuisists is to get the obstacles out of the way and let these magnificent biochemical machines that God created do what they already know how to do and that is to thrive. And it sounds like you've experienced that quite a bit in your office

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 14:41
spreading That's exactly it is we really can heal and too many medications and too many supplements can actually slow down that process not even speeded up. So I think there's been a huge misconception as far as both traditional medicine and holistic medicine goes on that side of things. Your body doesn't need that much I just need to know interference.

David Sandstrom 15:02
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I mean, there's a lot we, we know a lot about the body, right? We know a lot about anatomy, physiology, but there's a lot we don't understand just yet. Right? So we've got to lean on that God given wisdom, let the body do its thing. And getting the officers out of the way is the way to go. So Dr. Shannyn, I know a lot of people when they go to their regular family practice doctor, they might run a standard blood panel, and they suspect that they have thyroid issues, or they suspect they have adrenal weakness due to fatigue going on. But the doctor takes a look at the bloodwork and he says, Well, everything looks normal, it must be all in your head, which is what you got when you were 10 years old, right? Speak to that for a minute about how we can't really rely on bloodwork exclusively, which is a big mistake, a lot of doctors make.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 15:46
Such a huge mistake. So blood work in general, is very limited, right? Number one, it's only a one point snapshot during the day, your adrenals, your hormones, and your thyroid hormone are all pulsatile, and they have different rhythms. So just getting a one point snapshot, you're missing a ton of information. But in addition to that, even what they run when you think you got a good a comprehensive panel, I cannot tell you how many times when it comes to me and says, Well, my doctor just ran a bunch of bloodwork, they said everything looked okay. And I said go ahead and send it over to me. And that bunch of blood work ends up being very few values that actually give you any type of answer, right what they're looking at as end stage numbers, you have to be a pretty sick individual before that standard panel is out of range, but you're not getting any whys, you're getting a whole lot of what what's out of range, but you still have no idea why especially one of my favorite topics to talk about is thyroid. Because in the traditional model, they're testing TSH, which actually isn't even a thyroid hormone, right? It's a brain hormone that speaks to the thyroid based on what's going on in the environment of your body. But it doesn't actually tell you thyroid function and most people who are on a thyroid medication, the only indication for them to be on that was TSH, which is so flawed, or the T four and T four is only one of your several thyroid hormones. So looking at just the thyroid, you have no idea if you actually have a thyroid problem or not. Right, you might you just might not have a TSH problem. And then how connected the thyroid is to the adrenal glands. It's still not well understood in the medical community. They'll say adrenal fatigue isn't a real thing. We see it all the time. In fact, on the Synthroid website, right, the thyroid medication most often prescribed, it says on their website, the number one indication contraindication, meaning you shouldn't be on a thyroid medication is if you have adrenal insufficiency. So when somebody comes why right medication, the first question I always ask them is, did your doctor check your adrenals before prescribing your medication? And if the answer's no, you're in big trouble because that is the number one reason to not be on a medication. If your adrenals are already not working properly. And they just said insufficiency, not failure, not fatigue, just insufficient adrenal function affects your thyroid that much that you probably shouldn't even be on the medication yet that's never tested. Like that blows my mind. No wonder these women, you've probably seen this before, too. I always say you go to the doctor, right or you're not feeling good. Tell me if you've seen this before. The woman who has hair loss, she's always cold. She's gaining weight, and she's moody. She Googled her symptoms. And Dr. Google tells her it's her thyroid, right? Right. It goes to the doctor and she says, Doctor, I think it's a thyroid problem. So one of two things happen. They run her labs and they say, oh, yeah, your TSH is off. It is your thyroid, here's your prescription, Let's retest in 90 days and see how you're doing. So she goes home, and she starts a prescription. And nothing changes her hair is still falling out. Now she's not losing weight, she still feels terrible. She doesn't feel any better. She's thinking, Oh, it must be that the medication is not working. But she goes back to the doctor. They run her post labs and they say, Guess what, your TSH is normal and medication is doing exactly its job, you're great. Oh, you must be stressed. Or maybe if you would just lose a little weight, you feel better. And this woman has sent on her way to be on a medication for life when it made her feel any better. But her numbers are normal. Right? Like that's a very frustrating situation. Sure. Or you think it's your thyroid, you go to the doctor, they run your labs, and it's like, nope, your labs are normal. It's not your thyroid, and then you get the same junk. Maybe you're stressed, maybe you should lose weight, maybe you should exercise more. And you're sent on your way when they really only looked at a tiny fragment of the puzzle and you're missing so many root cause answers that you need to regain your health.

David Sandstrom 19:49
Yeah, yeah, that's really profound. You know, a couple things. Couple points I want to make here and that is when it comes to bloodwork. People sending stuff into the lab are already sick people But for the most part, right, the in the lab takes those samples and says we have, we're going to have 90% of those samples are going to be considered normal, and 10% are going to be outside of that normal. And the doctors are looking for disease states, not necessarily lack of function. Right? So when the doctor says everything looks normal, that doesn't mean a whole lot at all. You've got to probe a little deeper than that, right?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 20:27
Yeah. Nobody loved that point is like, Well, do you want to be normal based on everyone else's junk, right? Like, if you look around the average person, that's not the health I want for myself yet, that's who you're being stacked up against. So having the courage to say, I still don't feel well, or I don't think that this is my optimal and wanting to dive deeper, which, you know, unfortunately, it does typically mean, you're going to have to go and find your own help. Here's what I often run into. And I want to kind of clear this up for some people is all get asked all the time, what labs, can I ask my doctor to run? Or how can I get these covered by insurance? And I know, that's what everyone wants, right? I wish that was the way it goes. But the truth is for the in depth testing that you need, because everything in the insurance medical model is based on medical necessity, right, you're only covered if it's medically necessary. If you don't have an active diagnosis, code disease or reason, they're probably not going to get covered, right, which is why so many people don't have access to really good holistic health care, because there is that barrier. But if you're looking for answers, if you're the person who is just so sick of not feeling good of always getting, you know, told no or feeling that they're not being listened to, there are a tons of practitioners out there, especially with virtual healthcare. Now, you no longer just have to go to the doctor in your town, you can work with people anywhere in the world access to these things. But unfortunately, it's probably not going to come from your primary care anymore. They are there for emergencies, right? They are there for medications, prescription surgeries, antibiotics, if you want anything outside of that, you're probably going to have to find a different doctor,

David Sandstrom 22:12
right? And there's a pretty good chance that is going to be a cash, cash practice, right? But here's the thing, if you want different results, you're going to have to do things differently. Right? So what the what the insurance model does is it takes the responsibility for your health care and puts it over to the insurance company, and the doctor gets paid by the insurance company on your behalf. You know, why not take that responsibility on ourselves and say, No, I'm the one who's responsible for my health, I'm going to pay my doctor directly, because he's the one that's working with me, working as with through the insurance company is just a roundabout way. And when doctors have to comply with all the insurance requirements. There's some rather severe restrictions on what they can do. Right, those insurance companies tell them how to operate. And that's a pretty severe limitation. And something that if someone's dealing with, you know, a chronic issue that they know there's something wrong in the doc, doctors can't figure it out. You're going to have to come up with a different way of doing business.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 23:10
Yeah. Now that's exactly it. Because if you keep doing what they call standard of care, you're also going to get standard of health. And right now in North America and several other places in the world, that standard of health is pretty sad,

David Sandstrom 23:23
Right? Not real good. Yeah. So talk to us a little bit more about how the thyroid and the adrenals, the hypothalamus all that work together to bring us the energy and the vitality and the you know, everything that we want with as far as our health and wellness goals.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 23:37
Yes. So let's start with thyroid because that's the one that almost everyone thinks it's their thyroid, right. And most women, especially ones that I meet with issues, it is one of the most commonly prescribed medications of all of them right now is the thyroid medication. But your thyroid is a responder it is not the doer, it's a responder. So by the time your thyroid levels are off, it's because you have other imbalances in your body that your thyroid has responded to. So just a brief science lesson what happens is we have our TSH, which is thyroid stimulating hormone, your brain releases that to talk to the thyroid. The thyroid primarily makes your T four hormone that's your storage hormone, which most of your Synthroid, generic Synthroid Levothyroxine. In those are T four types of medication, which that alone is faulty because that's a storage hormone. And then from that point, that T four gets delivered through the bloodstream to different areas in your body, where it has to be converted to T three, which is your active thyroid hormone that does all the magic, right? That gives you the energy that makes you feel great that turns on your metabolism. But that means those areas that convert T four to T three have to be working properly for you to get those benefits and the main areas that gets converted is in the gut, which so many people have microbiome dysfunction, gut issues, digestive issues, leaky gut type symptoms, so you're probably not converting it very well there. The adrenal glands, which we just talked about, we're all stressed out, we all have these issues, we all have either too high or too low cortisol because of our standard life and the speed at which we run. So you're probably not converting a lot of it there. Your liver is another one, or bombarded by toxins, our food or environment or air or water, so you're probably not getting really great conversion there. So all of these women on a T four medication, you can't convert it to T three anyways, is why you're on the medication, your levels look good, but you still feel terrible, because it's not just about giving you one teeny, tiny hormone, it's about the way your body can metabolize and convert that into the active hormone exellent and your body takes that active hormone and says, Oh, okay, we either have enough or too little T three, and then it talks back up to the brain, right where it tells the brain again to either release more TSH or less TSH, and then we go back through that loop again. So if you've only ever really investigated TSH, and you're only help is by taking a T four, look how many pieces of that puzzle you're missing that have to click together for you to actually feel vibrant, to be healthier, truly, regardless of what those numbers look like. It's all about function. And so many people are missing that function.

David Sandstrom 26:25
Yeah, well, you're one of the things I often say in this podcast is that a medically trained doctor a doctor of allapathy MDs, they treat the illness that as the person whereas a holistic practitioner a naturopath and as I am or a functional practitioners you are we treat the person that has the illness, and it's a completely different approach. It's it's like night and day, you know, allopathic medicine, great for emergencies, as you said, but we deal with chronic health challenges, it's going to take a little more detective work and it's going to take a little a little more time to just, you know, just drive through mentality of Hey, Doc, I want you to see the doc for five minutes walk out a prescription and and pop some pills. A pill for every ill. So this so to speak, is just not gonna just not gonna make it any more, is it?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 27:09
No, it really doesn't. And you know what else is starting to be talked about a little bit more that I actually added it into my practice several years ago, because I found it was a big missing piece for people in general. And their healing journey is how much your nervous system your emotions, trauma, and those types of things will play into your body's physical ability to heal. And that is something that is never addressed in the allopathic world either. But even if you have the best testing, if you're taking all the greatest supplements, if you're cleaning up your food, if your nervous system is in chaos, if there are emotions you haven't dealt with, if there are traumas from the past that are making abnormal communication from your brain to your body, that could be your next block to your biggest breakthrough. So I've started doing just as much as we do the lab testing and the the kind of bouncing on that side, teaching people how to do somatic work for their nervous system, how to balance their brain, how to get better rewiring and firing of your neurons, because that is our nervous system controls everything right? It controls your immune system, it controls your endocrine system, the nervous system is key. And that is almost never properly addressed with people even in most holistic and functional medicine practices, that's still a piece of the puzzle that I believe is really lacking, and why people don't get the breakthrough they're looking for.

David Sandstrom 28:34
Well, you know, we could obviously do a whole episode on this this topic alone. But can you hit a couple of the highlights of what it takes to retrain some of the thought life that that comes along with our the stress that we create ourselves in our minds?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 28:49
Yeah, so one of the simplest things you can do is start rewiring your patterns, right? First, you have to identify them. So we call them your triggers, what things trigger you into an emotion, right? And if you took a day and really watched it, you're gonna start to be able to identify some of these things, right? Is that when you feel overwhelmed? Or do you feel embarrassed? Or do you feel like you were wrong or you know, for everybody, there's going to be different ones of these things. But what I encourage people to do is take a weekend notice when you start to feel agitated when you start to feel overwhelmed brain foggy when the emotions start to go all over the place. Can you start identifying what types of situations created that right? And then how do we replace that with a healthier habit? So I love it's called somatic work where you actually physically get your body to calm down it's the fastest way you can retrain your nervous system. And some examples of that is like emotional freedom technique, which is the tapping if you've ever done that the tapping doing useful like yeah, I love I love it. creative visualization, breathwork, somatic breathwork, anything that you can do to get a physical response from your body when you are feeling triggered is how you retrain it to not have that same response. So for example, if you notice when somebody corrects you, and you get embarrassed, you start to get anxious. While at that next time that that happens, being able to sit down and take yourself through a tapping practice, or do some breath work, to calm your nervous system response, you're going to have less of those activations as you move forward. That is so powerful. And it's time and repetition, right? Doing it once doesn't change your brain. But doing it repeatedly, you get that neuroplasticity, you will get new firing in the brain and things that used to really disorient you won't affect you so much anymore. So yeah, repetition is huge,

David Sandstrom 30:42
really good stuff. You know, I always say, it's difficult to be physically relaxed and emotionally stressed at the same time, right? So we have this interconnectedness. So if we can relax our bodies, the thought life will tend to follow and the same as true in the other direction. If we can calm down those anxious thoughts, then the body will start to come in line with that more rest and digest parasympathetic side of the nervous system. So yeah, good stuff. Really, really, really good stuff. So you teach that to your clients?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 31:10
Yes, yeah, we do a lot of brain balancing a lot of somatic work. That's just as much of the work as the the actual lab testing and protocols.

David Sandstrom 31:18
Do you have a favorite supplement company that you use? Or do you have your own line of supplements? What do you what do you do?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 31:24
I'm actually yes, in the process of doing our own line, which is going to be my empowered woman series, the things I really believe most women need to protect their adrenals, their brain health, those types of things. So that is going to come out in the next couple of months. But I use a lot, I probably have four or five different companies. Each one I feel like does a really good job of a certain area of support. So I have one company that I really like as far as infections and immune system work. Another one that I use more for inflammatory stuff, I have another company I really like for their hormone balance. So I'm the picker and chooser based on what things I'm looking for. So we have several different companies that we use.

David Sandstrom 32:04
Yeah, I am, too. It's hard to settle in on one one manufacturer because there's a lot of good stuff out there. But lots to choose from. So I know there's a lot of rebuilding going on when we go to sleep. So could you talk to the audience a little bit about what happens to our hormones and neurotransmitters during sleep?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 32:24
Yeah, so your nervous system is actually one of the few systems that does speed up and repair it at night, right? Most things calm down and rest. But your nervous system is doing the work. It's processing and integrating the day, the emotions, the things to allow you to move that through, and then wake up the next day regenerated. Now, especially when it comes to adrenal health and thyroid health. Most of that balance, people who have odd sleep patterns are night owls, most of that balance really does happen in the hours that you're getting sleep before midnight, which when I tell that to people like oh, man, it's so hard to get several hours before midnight, but hormonally and for your adrenals that's very important. There are also different times I always tell people that if you wake up a lot at night, try and track if you wake up at the same times, because that can give you a really good indication what part of your body what organ system might be off based on what times you wake up. For example, if you are waking up more of that midnight 1am We could be looking at some more adrenal dysfunction. Between two and 3am. We're looking at more liver. If you're waking up feeling groggy, like five or six, you're probably not getting the awakening response from your cortisol, there's some really valuable information you can get based on when your sleep is interrupted. Because at different phases of your sleep, different organ systems are activating to heal imbalance so you can get a lot of information from someone's sleep patterns.

David Sandstrom 33:44
Yeah, absolutely. So our bodies are constantly talking to us. But we got to learn their language. We got to learn how to listen to what they're telling us.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 33:51
Yeah, you know, I always tell my perfect point, I always tell my patients to get curious around why your body is doing anything, right? Like if it's telling you if you have an ache or a pain or if you're tired that day, or if your eyes are puffy, just start asking those questions start wondering why is my body responding like this? And if we would get good at asking those questions, I really think we will come to a lot of great conclusions for our own personal health before it turns into that big, you know, blow up, right? Like your body slowly talks to it whispers then it talks, then it raises its voice and then it screams really loudly. And for most of us we wait till it's screaming at us to do anything when it started whispering five years ago, right? Like you had signs you just didn't listen.

David Sandstrom 34:38
weren't listening very well or didn't care. Yeah, so what speaking of that it's a great lead in what is some of the low hanging fruit that people can look at some of the easy stuff that they can implement to try to avoid burnout in the first place. Yeah,

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 34:53
So simple, but really, I think makes a big change. Remove some of the toxic loading inflammation from your food, right? That's something anybody can do that doesn't cost a whole lot of money. With the biggest ones being gluten, I really believe most gluten, especially in North America is full of toxins. Most soy products, especially if they're non fermented in America are full of toxins. And most cows dairy, if you're not getting really good raw milk, like those are the three things that most people should eliminate from their nutrition just to take the physical stressor off of their body. As far as food goes, you don't have to go crazy and follow a really strict nutrition plan, you don't have to go crazy cut out all carbs necessarily, that might not be right for you. But cut out the toxic food groups, right, the things that we know are inflammatory to our body. That's a great free start for everybody. And then implementing a good mindset routine daily. So I actually gave you a link to one of my favorite things, I've created my morning routine PDF, where I walk you through the five things I do in 10 minutes or less every day to bounce my brain to get really good adrenal support so that I can protect myself from a burnout. So I've actually created that document and gave it to you to offer to your listeners as well. But implementing that daily is so helpful to just keep your nervous system calm.

David Sandstrom 36:13
How long does it take you to go through the morning routine?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 36:15
If you just do those five steps? I kept it really simple. It's 10 to 15 minutes?

David Sandstrom 36:19
Yeah, that sounds great. Great way to start

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 36:23
and doable, right? I think that's compliance is it has to be doable. Start with the things you can do.

David Sandstrom 36:31
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I tell people start off with baby steps and make your goals so small, that success is absolutely guaranteed, right. And then you can build up, start stepping up a little bit. But as you build momentum, that's the way to go. You don't want to start off, you know, running a 24 mile marathon, that's not going to work. We know that doesn't work at a physical level. But it also the same thing applies at a mental emotional level, when we're developing our confidence. And we're developing new neural pathways to approach a different way of doing things. We've got to start off small so that we don't fail. We don't, you know, fall on our faces over and over, we're gonna get discouraged, we're gonna give up. So it's gotta be doable.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 37:10
And have grace with yourself. So many people in burnout, high achievers, entrepreneurs, health professionals, parents, like people who have passion for what they do in life, are very hard on themselves, and they feel like you're not being perfect, you're not making progress. And that really isn't true. And there are a lot of plants out there that make it feel that way, right? If you don't do this perfectly, or if you're not in this level, or this range of things. And that can feel crushing to somebody who doesn't know where to start. Don't feel like you have to be that strict on yourself. make progress, not perfection. And if you fall off, you get right back on. And I always I call it the refractory period, right? It's not that we don't mess up, fall off, make a mistake. It's that what used to be maybe years of your life, right that you were off track turns to months, turns to weeks, turns to days, turns to hours, right? You have that one item and you immediately say, You know what, okay, it happened but my next meal, I'm going to do the right thing or that tomorrow, I'm gonna wake up and do some healthy movement, shorten the refractory period, and that alone will create you better health but I think that grace and just being being as supportive to yourself as you would be to somebody else, right? Have you ever heard that? Like, how why would the things I say to myself, I would never say to you, right, like, that just wouldn't be something that would come out of my mouth. But why don't we treat ourselves like that self compassion is a huge healing tool.

David Sandstrom 38:32
Yeah, I that's great stuff. That's a really gold there. So one last question Dr. Shannyn, if someone could only take away one thing for we talked about today, we talked about a lot. What do you want them to take away?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 38:46
I really believe I my soapbox to stand on is that people are struggling with their health. Because of a lack of investigation. I do believe that really good functional testing. Knowing your Pathways, knowing your patterns, knowing how to properly support your physiology is true preventative health care. I my mission in life is to make it more accessible to more people. But if you are struggling with something, if you know something's not right in your body, if you're bordering on burnout, or you might be fully there, you have got to know what your physiology is doing and be able to support that as best as possible.

David Sandstrom 39:22
Excellent. That's really good. All right. If people want to get ahold you they want to work with you. What's the best way to get a hold of you?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 39:28
Yeah, so the PDF I gave you guys there's also all my contact information on there. There's also a link if you want to schedule we offer free transformation calls. So a free 30 minute call to go through health history give you next steps and recommendations. Feel free to schedule a call or I do a lot of my content on TikTok and Instagram, tons of free teaching lots of content health related topics, so follow me on social media.

David Sandstrom 39:51
What's your social media handle?

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 39:53
It's Dr. Shannon DC, DRSHANNYNDC on both Tiktok and Instagram

David Sandstrom 40:00
Excellent. And I'm sure your phone phone contact email and all that website is on the PDF. Yes, yeah. And I'll be sure to put that in the show notes. We'll talk to Shannon, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you giving us your time.

Dr. Shannyn Pearce 40:12
Thank you. So glad to be here.

David Sandstrom 40:15
For more, go to the show notes page at davidsandstrom.com/83. There you can find links to all the resources that were mentioned, as well as a full downloadable transcript. And I always put some kind of a content upgrade to help you go deeper with that episode. That's it for now. I'll talk with you next week. Be blessed