Adapted from episode 116 of The Perfect Stool podcast with Lara Frendjian, Registered Holistic Nutritionist, and edited for readability.
Lindsey:
So let’s start with your story, because I know you went through a period of uncontrollable bloating and weight gain in your 40s that you dealt with sort of indirectly. I think this is an approach that I don’t often consider for my clients. So let’s hear about that.
Lara Frendjian:
Okay, sure. So I was a practicing nutritionist. Nutrition is my second career, I started off in finance and accounting; I was a comptroller for many years. And nutrition was just a passion of mine. So I started to practice, I was practicing for a number of years, I was feeling great energy, everything was working really, really well. Until I started to approach my 40s. And things just suddenly seemed to shift. And it felt like a little bit overnight. But if I think back, I know that there were signs that things were starting to shift. So you know, my cycles were changing. For instance, after my second daughter, who I had in my early 30s, my periods were just closer together. And then they suddenly became really close together and a little bit erratic. But I didn’t think much of it because it was just sporadically that it would happen. It’d be like 26 days, and then I would miss a period. And I’d be like, “Oh, I wonder what happened?” And then it would continue. So I didn’t think much of it. And this happened for a number of years. And then suddenly, everything shifted, meaning I started to not feel like myself anymore. I started to notice that I was putting on weight, especially in my midsection. I noticed that my energy was lower than it used to be, like I feel like I need a nap. Now I would push through it. But I felt like I needed a nap. And I hadn’t felt like that since my kids were little and I was up with them all night. And what got me the most is that my mental health was not good. I was feeling anxious and irritable and just wanted to cry and didn’t know why. And of course I was bloated and everything was uncomfortable. My clothes didn’t fit me the way they would. And I developed eczema. I’ve never had eczema before and all of this just felt like overnight, which of course it wasn’t. Now if I think back, there was something that tipped me off. But I went to my doctor, I explained what was happening. She checked some of my labs, and she said everything is okay. It’s perimenopause. If you want, you can go on the birth control pill, there’s really nothing else that I can do for you. And that was the first that I really thought about perimenopause. Because I was a nutritionist that was helping just generally people, I was focused on gut health, actually. And all of this was happening to me. And internally, I felt like a fraud, because here I was helping other people and my body felt like it was falling apart. And that’s when everything shifted. And I shifted my focus. And I started to study other things and learn other things. And I realized that I was doing some wrong things that were impacting my body in a negative way. And I needed to do things a little bit differently now that I was in this phase of life. And here I am, fast forward a number of years. And yeah, all of that has gone, behind me. And now my health isn’t perfect. I know my hormones are still shifting, but I don’t have any of the symptoms that I was experiencing before, even though things are still changing. So we are going to go through changes. It’s just we can thrive through the changes or really struggle through the changes. And I want to get people on the other side of thriving versus the struggling.
Lindsey:
Yeah. And how what turned it around for you?
Lara Frendjian:
Okay, well, so I understood first what was happening in my body. So I recognized that there were hormonal shifts that were happening, and that I needed to address them. And the crux of it for me was stress, lifestyle stressors. I had traveled to Cambodia with a colleague and we had done work there. And when I came back, and I thought I picked up a bug or something there. And we were so cautious and careful. Now, in retrospect, I realized that it was not a bug. It was just the travel; the things that I experienced there were extremely stressful. And I know me and I realized back then that it was stressful, but I didn’t realize the implications that it would have on my body. Because my body was already under stress with all the hormone shifts that it was starting to go through or that I had been going through for a number of years. But that kind of just tripped things up. So that’s one, I recognized the importance of stress management, because we can’t get rid of stress. I recognize the importance of nutrients. So I was supplementing with some of the generic things that we think of, like, zinc let’s say for example to boost your immune system and vitamin C in the form of ascorbic acid. And what I didn’t realize is that these were causing other nutritional imbalances. So what I learned was, it’s very detrimental to just supplement with just generic stuff that you hear. So what I learned was that there’s a real connection between minerals, and hormones, and understanding what is happening to your body is really important and supplementing with the things that your body needs is really important. So I studied these things, I delved into it, I studied, I researched, I came under other people and learned from them. And I learned how to read the hair tissue tests and blood work in terms of understanding your nutrient status and things like that. And then I’ve moved away from fully plant based. So I was eating a plant-forward diet, which I still do, but I integrated animal proteins, and I integrated animal fats back into my diet, because my body needed it, and everything shifted. So those were the three main things that I did.
Lindsey:
I do find that a lot of clients who were vegan or vegetarian will eventually realize their body’s not getting as much protein as they need on that system, or even more specifically, people who are on vegan or vegetarian diets, or who end up with some type of a methane SIBO or IMO presentation. And that diet is just not working for them, because they’re eating the things that are feeding them. They are fueling that growth.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, it’s really important to listen to the . . . like if I were to go back, it’s important to listen to the whispers that the body gives you before it starts yelling, because they are there. I just was choosing not to hear them out.
Lindsey:
Yeah. It’s very easy to underdo protein, because we sort of been told, oh, animal protein is bad for you. I don’t object to people having a vegetarian diet if they can somehow pull it off. But you probably are going to need some protein powders, because you’re just going to have to eat so many carbohydrates to get the protein you need. Then what do you think of as a minimum amount of protein?
Lara Frendjian:
Right now I’ve moved towards higher at the end of protein. So I’d say 25% minimum. Thirty-five percent is where I’d like to see it.
Lindsey:
Of calories?
Lara Frendjian:
Of calories. Yeah.
Lindsey:
So how do you start working with clients who have got health issues like bloating?
Lara Frendjian:
So the first thing is I do an intake; I understand what’s happening to their hormones. So I understand if they have histamine issues, if they have cortisol issues, if they’ve gotten any diagnosed diseases related to their gut. So I approach it from a different angle. Where I used to attack the gut, specifically, I approach it from an overall, and only if we need to address the gut directly do I go there. Because the women that I’m working with aren’t necessarily coming to me because they have Crohn’s or colitis or SIBO. They’re just not feeling well. And it’s just that they’re tired or they’re gaining weight. A lot of the things that I described that I was experiencing, those are the women that I’m seeing. Usually nine out of 10 times when we address all the other stuff, we reduce the stress, we work on the minerals, we replenish the nutrients, we balanced the iron, etc., reduce the histamine load, estrogens. Once that happens, usually nine out of 10 times I’m able to help them with it. And where I can’t, that’s when we go deeper into the gut health. So I ask them to run panels/bloodwork through their doctor. I do run a hair tissue test through the services that I provide. They send it into hair tissue analysis, and then that, in addition to their lifestyle intake, gives me a really good picture of what’s happening. If we need to, we do the Dutch hormone test. But because I’ve worked with so many, based on their symptoms, I’m able to decipher what’s happening with their hormones. And only if the situation is really stubborn and we can’t deal with it do we do the Dutch hormone tests, just to save them money really is why I put off some of the lab work. So when you had bloating and then when your clients do who are not coming specifically about gut, but bloating is part of the picture, is this more bloating associated with their cycle or is this bloating like every time they eat? Every time they eat. Yeah.
Lindsey:
And that resolves from a hormonal perspective then?
Lara Frendjian:
Yes, yeah. It’s often related to cortisol, right? Stress causes an impact on your gut bacteria. But so do our shifting hormones, especially in our early 40s. Up until menopause, what’s happening is estrogen is declining. But progesterone is declining even faster. What happens is we have this estrogen dominance picture, so we have more estrogen in relationship to progesterone. And this estrogen dominant person will have more histamines in their body, their histamine load; they won’t be able to clear the histamines. So there’s a real correlation between histamines and estrogen. And once we’re able to increase their progesterone in terms of the ratio, that histamine generally goes away. And once we’re able to balance the cortisol levels and bring them down, their histamine load will go down, and they won’t have those reactions that they used to.
Lindsey:
And so are you starting from addressing cortisol imbalances when you’re dealing with estrogen?
Lara Frendjian:
Yes, that’s where we’re starting. So we work on it hand in hand. So I take them through this process of understanding what is happening to their body from a hormonal perspective, reducing their stress load. It’s multifaceted. Okay so when I say reducing their stress load, I’m talking about eating the right food. Ninety percent of the women that are coming to me, they’re like, I eat healthy, most of them are undereating. Most of them have a predominantly carbohydrate rich diet. So just shifting that around and having a balanced meal and eating enough, well, their cortisol levels come down, their energy levels go up, and they feel better. And they’re able to move more; it’s just this snowball effect of these shifts. And I was going to say tiny shifts, but for most of us, they are quite big shifts because just to wrap your head around . . . you know, I’ll talk about carbohydrates. Everybody thinks of bread, right? Bread and grains. No. All our fruits and vegetables, all of them are carbohydrates, and understanding the differences in the carbohydrates, and s ome of them are low, etc. Yeah, just doing that, the nutritional stuff, adding a little bit of movement, getting sunshine, getting access to red light, breathing, having a healthier mindset, right? I get a lot of chronic dieters who are in or out, 100% in their dieting, or they’re not at all. So just shifting these mindsets reduces our stress load. So what I do is multifaceted, and I have a program that I run them through. But everyone’s starting point is a little bit different. And everyone’s focus could be a little bit different, because someone can have a really healthy mindset and they’re not dieters. It’s just where I was, the body just did what it did, because of some things that happened in their life. So my starting point would be different than your starting point, because I have different issues than you.
Lindsey:
Yeah, of course. Everyone’s so unique. Yeah, I always find it funny when people say I’ve got a healthy diet. And mind you, I don’t see a lot of people like this because by the time they found me, they’ve done everything diet wise a human being can do, they’ve gone through the paleo, they’ve gone through the keto, some of them have gotten to carnivore; whatever they can do to reduce their gut symptoms. But that being said, occasionally you do happen upon a person who’s like “I’ve got a healthy diet”, but they’ve really had no interaction with functional medicine; they found my podcast because they were looking for gut problems. And you’re like, “Okay, what’s your diet?” Bagel for breakfast, then I have a sandwich for lunch. And maybe I have a meat and veg and grain for dinner of some sort. And then whatever they may add on to that, snack-wise. And you’re like, “yeah, that’s not actually healthy diet.” That’s a healthy diet compared to going to McDonald’s every day, but that’s far from healthy.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah, yeah, it’s true.
Lindsey:
But what I should just ask is: ‘What do you do for grains and carbohydrates?’. Like that’s the big question because that’s always where the crux of the problem was. And then of course when you pull those out, it’s now fill it back in with the stuff you’re supposed to be eating, the protein and the fruits and vegetables and the healthier grains and such that has some nutrients, nutrient-dense foods right? That’s the key.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah. And then there are nutrients. Like one of the things I do is I get them to track their meals. And I’m not just looking at their proteins and carbs and their macros, I’m looking at their micronutrients. So suddenly, their potassium levels like skyrocket when they start to replace their bread with this sweet potato or squash or something, their nutrients just skyrocket.
Lindsey:
Yeah, everybody I test is low on potassium, everybody.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah, I know. It’s quite exciting when it happens. Yeah, it’s really hard to get the level of potassium that you need, unless you’re eating the rainbow and eating a range of foods and reducing your grain, your pasta and your bagel and your sandwich.
Lindsey:
Yeah, I think the only person I had who tested high in potassium was somebody who was using one of those potassium salts that you use when you’re on a keto diet. That was the way. Are the folks that you’re seeing also having issues with their moods or their emotions and things like that as they head into perimenopause?
Lara Frendjian:
Absolutely, yeah. That’s one of the things because a lot of us can handle, let’s say, the weight gain, right? We can deal with it. And we find our old thing that we used to do; we find our thing. I find that the issue that gets most of my clients is the mood changes, the depression, the anxiety, the irritability, the place where I was, where I felt like I was losing my mind. Like, I went to my doctor, and I’m like, I don’t know what’s happening to my brain. I just feel crazy. Like I just didn’t know how else to describe it. I just was losing my mind. And nobody else knew, right? I wasn’t even talking about it to my family. But internally, I felt like if someone put another to-do on my desk, my reaction would be like to just burst out into tears. I had nothing left. And I don’t know, like if a deadline moved up, it would be like the end of the world. It was really strange. So yes, absolutely.
Lindsey:
Yeah. That’s funny. I never went through any of that in perimenopause. And perimenopause was like a non-thing for me. I just went straight to menopause. And then it was just hot flashes that were insufferable. So I ended up, I started with hormone creams to see if that would be enough for me and to help with hot flashes. But ultimately, I had to go for the estrogen patch. And for the progesterone pills, which I believe are all bioidentical. I hope I’m doing it the right way, so my doctor said. So I’m curious, do you use creams at all? Or do you get at estrogen and progesterone indirectly?
Lara Frendjian:
I don’t start off there. So I’ll start off with progesterone-boosting foods and estrogen-balancing foods. So we’re we’re focusing on things that are going to help clients’ liver and help the body clear estrogens better, like lemon, ginger, turmeric, rosemary, beets, beet greens, carrots, raw carrots. So these are all clearing foods. Flax seeds I do like to include because they do have some researched benefits to helping with estrogen levels. Whether they’re high or low, they do help them. And then progesterone-boosting foods, like all your potassium-, magnesium-rich foods. And of course, some supplementation. Everybody needs magnesium in their diet either through food, topically, depending on your gut status, and/or supplemental magnesium. So this is where I start and it looks a little bit different for everybody and some people will need other nutrients but that’s where I start. Ultimately with some, myself included, I do progesterone cream over the counter, or a bioidentical, very small dose, supplemental progesterone cream, which is extracted from wild yam. There’s one company that I love and I do use theirs. And I find it’s very low dose. So yes, progesterone creams and progesterone drops, they’re very low dose, especially when you look at the prescription and generally that truly does it. If their blood work is still coming back wonky or their symptoms are still existing, then they work with their doctor because I can’t prescribe, I’m a holistic nutritionist. So then they work with their doctor in order to get bioidentical progesterone or estrogen. Ninety percent of them don’t have to go there. Once their lifestyle and diet is dealt with. And then that’s not something we have to deal with. But some of them still do. Some people still do and that’s okay. As long as they’re bioidentical and you’ve got both the estrogen and progesterone together, because that’s where we are in our research right now, is that when the two are together, then it’s safer.
Lindsey:
Yeah, safer because you don’t want the lining of the uterus getting too thick. And so what kind of interventions do you use for unbalanced cortisol and DHEA?
Lara Frendjian:
So the lifestyle will help. Potassium, sodium, magnesium are your friends for cortisol, balancing your cortisol, and lifestyles shifts for the ones that we can’t, or are having a hard time or they’re having these reactions, these cortisol spikes. So we will do some saliva testing through the Dutch hormone test. And for some of them are spiking, cortisol spikes, and then it spikes further and that’s not supposed to happen. It’s supposed to come down through the day. So often changing our lifestyle will help. It’s like looking at what is your morning look like? What are you doing? Are you having coffee on an empty stomach? Are doing a HIIT workout first thing in the morning?
Lindsey:
High Intensity Interval Training?
Lara Frendjian:
Exactly. Thank you. Are you staying up late at night watching TV or scrolling on your phone and you’ve got this blue light infiltration in your life? Truly I find these lifestyle interventions, they it sounds like oh whatever, I’m not stressed. They have a profound impact on our lives. They have a profound impact on how we sleep, how we feel, how our digestion functions. The way that we live today is the most abnormal way of living, in the walls with heat and without sunlight, without stepping outside. We can go on for days now. A lot of us work from home; many of us don’t, but I work from home, my husband still works from home since the pandemic and this is our life. So we don’t necessarily have to step outdoors. But we need access to air and natural light and all of that. So it’s really being aware of your day and shifting things around. And it sounds very simple. It’s very hard to do. But once we do it, I find cortisol, DHEA – they all behave and we don’t need to do anything further. I do work with the adrenals and adrenal tonics and maybe some herbs that we introduced to the body, but bang for your buck, the best place to start is to look at your lifestyle. And just think back to if this was 150 years ago: What would I be doing? What would my day look like? We’d wake up with the chickens. We’d go outside, we’d feed our animals, we’d collect some eggs, we were forced to move first of all, and to go outdoors. It was just part of our lives. And we didn’t think about it and our lifestyle was very different.
Lindsey:
Yeah, so you recommend getting out in the sunlight first thing in the morning or doing some HIIT training?
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah, don’t look at your phone. First thing, for the first hour of every day.
Lindsey:
But isn’t that the same kind of blue light that wakes you up?
Lara Frendjian:
No, what should be waking us up is red light. So the sunrise is red light. So getting access if you can to that.
Lindsey:
I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen the sunrise.
Lara Frendjian:
Well and now we have red light machines that we can turn on to mimic that.
Lindsey:
I used to have a sunrise clock and it didn’t have a red light but it slowly got light because I couldn’t bear waking up before the sun rose. I felt it was so unnatural.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah, it isn’t natural. And I don’t necessarily do that. I just don’t turn on my phone in the morning. It’s not on for the first hour, and I step outdoors. As soon as I wake up, I turn on my red light machine, it’s my best friend. It’s in my bedroom, I turn it on at night, as we’re getting ready for bed. It’s mimics basically sunrise and sunset.
Lindsey:
And is it a special thing? Or can you just buy a red bulb?
Lara Frendjian:
I think there are different wavelengths. And so there are companies, it’s still cheap, it’s $30, you could go by a red bulb and stick it in, turn it on in the morning, turn it on at night, before bed, and they’ve done some sleep studies and it improves the quality of your sleep. So I actually always start with the night before. So what are you doing before you go to sleep, because if we can improve the quality of our sleep, we improve all of our hormones, and a lot of women are coming to me for weight loss. If you improve the quality of your sleep, you will improve your metabolic rate. They’ve researched this, your detox pathways are clear at night. And there’s cancer-fighting cells that are scavenging during your sleep. So if you’re not getting good quality sleep, you’re really setting yourself up for things down the road, which you don’t want. We start at night. So don’t scroll on your phone, put the red light on, read, do some deep breathing, meditate, pray, whatever you do to calm down your nervous system, don’t have your TV in your room. Just keep your room cooler. And put the covers on. There’s research that starting with sleep is a really important piece. And then how are you starting your morning? If we could just get those two right, things function better during the day. Our mental health is better.
Lindsey:
I have a lot of folks who tell me, and I am a bit familiar with this myself, that they have trouble with waking up, maybe not so much in the middle of the night, but that’s also a situation, but waking up maybe just a little bit too early and not being able to get back to sleep. What do you recommend for people in that situation who’ve already done all the sleep hygiene things?
Lara Frendjian:
Looking during the day to make sure that they’re getting enough sodium, potassium, magnesium. Okay, that’s really important because if you’re waking up and you can’t fall back asleep, it doesn’t matter when, right? Three, between three and five I think in Chinese medicine is the liver hour when the liver is most active. And from a hormonal perspective, cortisol is just spiking when it shouldn’t or spiking a little bit too early. So is that what you normally see, when people are waking up between three and five?
Lindsey:
Yeah, I would say so.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah. So cortisol is spiking too early. And what you want to do is make sure that you’re doing the other stuff, right, that lifestyle stuff that we talked about: changing your morning. The morning dictates what happens to cortisol later on in the day. What happens to cortisol and melatonin later on in the day. If you fixed up your night and you’re still waking up in a panic, going on your phone, checking your email, getting access to this nice blue light first thing in the morning, which is not nice, right? If the morning is messed up, that will impact you. Okay, so let’s say we clean up the morning. We’ve got a nice relaxed morning, we’re doing our thing, we’ve got a rhythm, you go outside, you’re walking or some breathing and red light and all of that. So it’s a nice calm morning, and a nice calm evening, then we look to see what’s happening during the day. Is your stress crazy during the day? Do you have any coping mechanisms, stopping, breathing, etc.? And then we look at the nutrients. Are you getting enough of the minerals that I just talked about? That usually does it, so if it doesn’t, then progesterone cream would definitely help. Because it could be progesterone and cortisol. And when progesterone is low, you feel a lot of the anxiety that we talked about before. And it’s really stressful on the body when progesterone is really low. So cortisol naturally spikes. And if that’s not helpful, then putting in maybe a magnesium bath, foot soaks, taurine. Taurine is a mineral that helps with relaxation, and it also helps with magnesium absorption. We have to be careful with it because some people are really reactive if their other minerals are out of balance. Basically magnesium moves way quickly and the taurine causes more heart palpitations and anxiety. So if you’re going to experiment with taurine, I would start with a little tiny amount. And I would try it in the morning to see if your body reacts well to it. If it does, then you can test it out at night.
Lindsey:
That’s good to know. And since you do the hair tissue mineral analysis, do you find that a lot of people are low on sodium?
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah, definitely, sodium and potassium are usually low. Magnesium, it’s a toss up, a toss up between being really low or they’re leechers, meaning it’s through the roof high. Calcium, magnesium is really high. And that means they’re just not . . . magnesium is supposed to be inside the cell, intracellular, and it’s just leaching outside. So we have to do other things in order to help the body absorb the calcium and the magnesium. But yeah, so to answer questions, yes, usually nine out of 10 times sodium and potassium are both really low.
Lindsey:
And why would somebody not be absorbing magnesium?
Lara Frendjian:
Usually potassium. So all of our minerals work hand in hand. So if potassium is low, then their magnesium absorption rates are going to go down. And because of the deficiencies in our food, not only magnesium, but potassium, boron. Boron is a cofactor for magnesium absorption and taurine is a cofactor for magnesium absorption. So all of these things really work together, hand in hand. And then we see like nail breakage, nails not growing, osteoporosis, hair not growing and breaking and things like that.
Lindsey:
Okay, you brought up a topic that I’ve been struggling with for forever. My nails are terrible. I shouldn’t even admit this because this is like the one problem I can’t solve. I’ve solved every problem, but this one and I have tried every nutrient that I could possibly imagine to try and get them, well actually I haven’t really ever tried that hard on potassium. What do you think could be at the root of this? It’s not iron.My TSH is totally normal. But I do have Hashimoto’s but never had to medicate for it. Tried collagen, tried biotin, multivitamins, they just break and they’ve got lines, and they’re terrible.
Lara Frendjian:
So what I normally see helping with that is enough magnesium in the body. So enough magnesium supplementation.
Lindsey:
Taking 340 mg a day.
Lara Frendjian:
Okay, of what form?
Lindsey:
Glycinate.
Lara Frendjian:
Glycinate. Good. Next would be boron. So you would need some boron. And then finally taurine and possibly some vitamin K, have you done a hair tissue test?
Lindsey:
I did.
Lara Frendjian:
You did? Okay, how was your calcium?
Lindsey:
It was high.
Lara Frendjian:
It was – like through the roof high or?
Lindsey:
It was – I’ll open it up, and I’ll tell you. Might as well. Calcium: I was at 1190 on a reference interval of 300 to 1200.
Lara Frendjian:
1190. Okay, so you were just at the high end. So you weren’t through the roof, right? Like it wasn’t off the charts. Okay. That’s still too high. Right?
Lindsey:
Yeah. I cut back on the supplementation. Since I didn’t eat dairy, I was supplementing several times a day, so I dropped to once a day more or less.
Lara Frendjian:
You were supplementing. Okay. Okay. Unless I see calcium shell like through the roof high. . . Have you done it again? Have you repeated it?
Lindsey:
No, I haven’t.
Lara Frendjian:
Okay. So I’m very careful. I hardly ever recommend calcium supplementation, because I do know that once we balance the other nutrients, calcium behaves just fine. So vitamin K?
Lindsey:
I take K.
Lara Frendjian:
You do?
Lindsey:
I take K regularly. Boron was actually was sort of on the low-ish end of the scale, it was .25-1.5 and I was .38
Lara Frendjian:
Okay. Yeah.
Lindsey:
Magnesium was right in the middle of the range. Potassium was sort of on the low end, 8-75 and I was 20. Yeah, I was hoping that this was going to be the something was going to help me with my nails. So this whole thing and nothing really came out other than that my iodine was high and my iron was low, but this isn’t a good way to measure iron, right?
Lara Frendjian:
No, for sure.
Lindsey:
Hair tissue mineral analysis is not the ideal way to measure iron.
Lara Frendjian:
Neither is it for the other things, so I don’t rely very heavily on it for anything outside of the four electrolytes: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. So those show up really well on the hair tissue test. Everything outside of the heavy metal, I’m not really looking at it. I’m just looking at it as, okay, is everything high? Or is everything really low? And generally, everything is low. So what I would focus on for you is making sure that you have the boron, maybe upping the magnesium and trying another form of magnesium. I know that it’s good to have different forms through supplementation.
Lindsey:
Like a threonate or a malate
Lara Frendjian:
I like malate and I like taurate. So those are the two that I like.
Lindsey:
I guess that would get you some taurine.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah, some extra taurine. And then so I would start there. And then see if that’s enough taurine. I’m surprised. I wonder which K – yeah, we could talk offline. I could give you the vitamin K that I like.
Lindsey:
I’ve done the K2mk7 for a while and now mk4 is really the one I try and get.
Lara Frendjian:
Okay. So, okay, I’ll share a company that I like.
Lindsey:
You can share it online. I mention brands.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah Lifeblud. I love Lifeblud products. They have got great products. My mom has osteoporosis. She’s extremely tiny. We are just very small-framed women in my family. And so osteoporosis is prevalent. We were doing the magnesium, we were doing the boron and then I finally put her K, and we’ve done vitamin K from other brands before and nothing helped. She is on some calcium supplements, very low dose. But I put her on the Lifeblud vitamin K, the drops, 10 drops, they’ve got two different forms. Her nails used to split. So they would just grow to a certain length and then just split down the middle in two; they no longer split. Every time she comes over she shows me her nails that are now growing. She’s in her 70s.
Lindsey:
So how many micrograms is that at 10 drops?
Lara Frendjian:
I don’t know. I’m not sure. I just follow the dosage that he recommends, which is 10 drops. And she’s actually not even taking it every day. I think she keeps forgetting but she at least three to four times a week she’s doing 10 drops. And she’s seeing the benefits. And with the boron though it did help the lines diminish on her nails and she’d show me you could see through her nails. But they would still split. Once we introduced the K, they no longer split.
Lindsey:
And is this boron doses like you would get in a multivitamin? Or is this like extra-physiological doses?
Lara Frendjian:
Three milligrams, you can start with three milligrams. Yeah.
Lindsey:
Yeah. Okay. I’ll try that. I’m like, if I could just solve the nails, everything would be. . . That’s probably an exaggeration. There’s always those tiny little things we just can’t quite fix in our health, even as we manage to help others.
Lara Frendjian:
No, I know. For sure. You know what, and we’re human. Right? These are human bodies that are imperfect. It’s okay. I say that. Because sometimes as practitioners, we feel this, we have expectations of our bodies to be perfect. And they’re not. But they are getting better and better and better. And that’s versus the opposite – 90% of the population is getting worse and worse and worse. 99%, right? As we age, we should expect things to get worse. That’s what the world tells us. But you’re not, right? You’re improving your health. And kudos to you. Yeah, Hashimoto’s . . .
Lindsey:
Yeah. So I think people find us because we’ve had the kinds of things that they are feeling or experiencing and they want to find somebody who’s experienced what they’ve experienced. Because it’s not just about how can we fix your problems, but how can we empathize with your problems as well.
Lara Frendjian:
Yeah, for sure, yeah, absolutely. It makes us better practitioners.
Lindsey:
Yeah. Okay, any final thoughts about your work with clients and all that and then tell us how people can find you?
Lara Frendjian:
Sure, I guess final thoughts is, I guess if you’re listening to this, you know, that you don’t give up on your health. And you don’t want to throw in the towel. I just want to encourage people that there is hope. I find the body is like holding its breath, giving you all these signals for help. And it’s like holding its breath just waiting for you to give it what it needs. And then once you do, it starts to thrive, and I work with women in their 40s. And a lot of people feel like as things shift and are getting worse and we’re told that, oh, we’re just going to grow old and it’s downhill from here. It’s really not. I’m 47. And I feel better than I did even in my 20s. I can honestly say that I have more energy and more vitality, I have a more positive mindset. So there’s just hope. And it just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of guidance from the right people. And it’s trusting that your body can heal, and trusting the practitioner that you’re working with, that they can guide you down the right path.
Lindsey:
Okay, and where can people find you and your work? Do you work with people one on one?
Lara Frendjian:
So I work with people in a one-on-one setting. I have also courses that they can go through on their own. So different ranges of products, depending on where your budget is, and where your time is. They can reach me on my website, nutritionherway.com, as well as on Instagram and Facebook. And I do offer free weekly trainings on where to get started every Thursday, from 1-2 p.m. Eastern Time and it’s just to help you get started on your health wherever you are on your journey.
If you are struggling with bloating, gas, burping, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, soft stool, acid reflux, IBS, IBD, SIBO, candida overgrowth, fatigue or migraines and want to get to the bottom of it, that’s what I help my clients with. You’re welcome to set up a free, 30-minute breakthrough session with me. We’ll talk about what you’ve been going through and I’ll tell you about my 3- and 5- appointment health coaching programs in which I recommend lab tests, educate you on what the results mean and the protocols used by doctors to fix the problems revealed. Or if you’re ready to jump in right away or can just afford one appointment at a time, you can set up an 1-hour consultation with me.
