Adapted from episode 143 of The Perfect Stool podcast edited for readability Juanique Grover, founder and owner of Provo Health Clinic in Provo, Utah, host of the Gutsy Health Podcast and owner of Gutsy Health Academy.
Lindsey:
So one of the things we talked about in our pre-interview call was about how you came to be involved in functional medicine and found your own clinic in Provo, Utah. So, can you share about that for my listeners?
Juanique Grover:
I definitely can, just so listeners know I am not a doctor at all. I am actually a college dropout. And how I formed a clinic, it’s a long story, but I’ll try to shorten it. My history is I grew up in South Africa, and my mom, she was a practitioner of complementary medicine, which is like a homeopath, and we immigrated to the United States. So natural healing is in my blood, it’s in my bones, right? Like I watched my mom teach many students how to be practitioners of complementary medicine, and she was always using essential oils and herbs and supplements and whole foods and whatnot. So that was just a part of my life.
And so my story is, I got Grave’s disease with my first child, and the doctor was like, “you have to be on all these medications”. And I was like, “wait a second, give me like six months, and I’ll reverse this”. And I had one doctor laugh in my face. He was like, “that will never happen. You can never reverse Grave’s disease.” And I was still young and very naive. And I was like, “of course you can” right? Like, I’ve seen people heal from things all the time because of my mom’s history. So truly, in six months, I reversed my Grave’s and got back to normal again.
But a year after that, after my Grave’s healing story, my husband was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. He was 33 years old. I was pregnant with my second child. I was 20 weeks pregnant, 21 weeks pregnant, and for people that have had a diagnosis like that, especially at such a young age, it is such a shock to your body, your soul, your heart, your nervous system. You’re absolutely wrecked because you did not see this coming, and there were no symptoms other than he had a difficult time pooping. Turns out he had a giant tumor blocking his rectum, and so that’s why he had a difficult time pooping. But health-wise, he seemed fine, normal.
So we did the mainstream route, even with everything that we knew, we were so scared. He had four surgeries in a year. He did 40 rounds of radiation on the tumor. He had an ileostomy bag, so he had an ileostomy and an ileostomy reversal surgery. He did chemotherapy, but he only did six rounds, because it was creating severe neuropathy, and so he stopped halfway through. And after all of this work and all of this mainstream medicine, a year later, we find out that it’s not working, that his cancer is spreading to his lungs. And it was stage four all this time, because they were hoping it was only stage three, and the spots in his lungs were just nothing, but it turns out the spots started to grow. And so they’re like “so you get to do chemotherapy for the rest of your life. You don’t have a lot of time. Sign the papers, sign your life away.” And my husband was about to sign this paperwork when I was like, hold the phone. I was like, let’s go home and talk about this, like there are other options. And that’s when my brain turned on, and I was like, “let’s go,” like, “they’re giving you this horrible death sentence of chemo for the rest of your life until you die, that will, for sure, kill you, there are other options.”
And so we started to research other options. And as I’m diving in my research and literally days and hours of research, I’m looking at these clinics outside of the country, and I’m seeing what the common denominators are, and I’m seeing hyperbaric and research around hyperbaric keep popping up, hard shell hyperbaric, the real kind, not soft shell kind. And we’re looking at ozone therapies, and we’re looking at nutrition and herbs and supplements. And I was like, I think we need to buy you a hyperbaric chamber. And then he’s doing research, and he’s like, maybe we should buy this ozone sauna. And then we start doing supplements and CBD, and we’re buying all of these things. We’re like, why don’t we just create this tiny little clinic for other people with your diagnosis to utilize these therapies for a very affordable price? So that way we get to service the community, and we get to create a community. So we did. We had this little hole in the wall where we had our little hyperbaric chamber, and our ozone sauna, and one hyperbaric chamber turned into two. And then we started doing blood work. And we started doing – once you own a clinic, all the companies open up to you, right? They’re like, oh yeah, come to our training. Come to our seminar, come to this and I didn’t have any credentials, mind you, like my husband, he had a PhD in psychology, or he was finishing up his dissertation, he was six months away from finishing his dissertation to get his PhD. So they took him on his credentials and his master’s degree, and I just tagged along. So I was not self-taught, because I obviously went to all these trainings, but pretty much self-taught.
And so we created this incredible clinic, and my husband, I started a podcast with him, because he was such a genius, like Tristan Roni was probably one of the most brilliant people in every room that I entered. He was so intelligent, maybe borderline spectrum intelligent, like he just understood – he was a walking, talking encyclopedia. He was AI before AI was actually a thing. You could pick his brain about anything, and he had the answer for you. Like he was this beautiful human with this beautiful mind. And so we started this podcast where we’re learning all these cool things. People need to know it, right? So we just started a podcast to service people, and it grew. It became a top 10 podcast within six months. It was insane. And again, not a lot of people had podcasts back then.
Lindsey:
What was it called?
Juanique Grover:
The Gutsy Health Podcast, the one that you were on.
Lindsey:
It’s the same name, okay,
Juanique Grover:
Yeah, so it’s the Gutsy Health Podcast. And so, long story short, that’s how we started a clinic. Truly we fell into it, and it just grew and grew, and people just really resonated with the story of these people, me and my husband, fighting for autonomy over our bodies, like self-empowerment, healing on all levels. Unfortunately, Tristan didn’t live. He died, but he lived a lot longer than they were expecting, and he had quality, and that’s the thing, he had quality. And so we had this beautiful life together. We lived 10 lifetimes in the five years that he survived his cancer.
And so that’s how, I told you, it was a long story, and I’m sorry but, I just want people to realize, your limitation on how you can learn and grow and heal yourself doesn’t begin and end with your doctor, and it doesn’t begin and end with someone with credentials. You have everything at the tip of your fingers. You can access any course, any information to learn how to heal yourself, because hundreds, if not thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people have done it before you, and they’re not doctors, and they’re not MDs; they’re just people like you and me. So I love the story and the origin story of Provo Health, because really, anyone can do wonderful, miraculous things, right? Again, college dropout here, and yet I started, miraculously, one of the largest clinics in Utah, and it’s still going strong. And now we have a doctor on site. We have a nurse practitioner, five coaches, and it’s fun. It’s a fun journey.
Lindsey:
That’s amazing. And when you started the podcast Gutsy Health, were you talking about the gut, or was it just “gutsy” as in courageous?
Juanique Grover:
Gutsy as in courageous, although we did specialize in digestive health, so it was like a double entendre. Get gutsy about your health, and also, let’s talk about gut health, but we spoke about thyroid and hormones and cancer and treatment; we spoke about everything and anything, and we still do.
Lindsey:
Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing. So your Grave’s disease, how did you reverse that? And did you have gut issues along with that?
Juanique Grover:
So my Grave’s disease, what I did, I don’t think I had gut issues. I had nervous system dysregulation. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating a nutrient dense diet. And so really, when I learned that I had Grave’s disease, I read this book, I can’t remember the title, but it was all about hyperthyroidism and Grave’s disease, and so it was my Bible for six months. And I was like, cut out gluten, done. Cut out dairy, fine. Take these supplements, okay. So I really just decreased my inflammation. I prioritized rest and sleep and doing less. Because I was like this type A personality, and so I was like, oh, I can’t keep going.
What’s interesting is, when you have Grave’s, you actually don’t sleep. You have energy for days, your heart rate is like 120 to 148 beats per minute, and you feel like Superman, right? You’re like, I can do everything. So I was going 10,000 miles an hour, and I realized, oh, I can’t, because I’m actually getting weaker and sicker. So instead of it being like, this is my superpower, I was like, oh, this is going to kill me. So I forced myself to slow down. And then again, nourishing my body, trying to regulate my nervous system. Doing less is really what it took. And this is one thing that I don’t talk about a lot, but I one million percent believe that I was going to do it. And so I did, right? There were no messages given to me as a child of, oh, the body’s just designed to break down. From young I was taught the body heals itself. The body can do miraculous things when you give it the right food. And so that was my course, and that was my belief system. And I was like, let’s go, let’s just reverse this the way other people do. So I feel like that was a little bit of a superpower, right there. I was like, I didn’t get caught up in the naysayers that were like, oh, you will never do that. I one million percent believed I was going to reverse it.
Lindsey:
Yeah, that’s funny, because I have very similar story with Hashimoto’s. I thought the same thing, and I’m not sure why I had that thought, but I guess I’ve always thought that there was certainly power in nutrition, but I hadn’t been deep into the functional medicine community but had dabbled in like reading about FMT and those kind of things. I was thinking that it was going to be my salvation, but did not turn out to be my salvation in particular, but in any case, yeah, I also found a book and just healed myself.
Juanique Grover:
You’re like, yeah, here’s the path, let’s go. It’s funny because my nurse practitioner, when I came back, she’s like, oh, you’re fine. She’s like, you should write a book. I’m like, no, there’s books already written. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. They exist. Just go read them.
Lindsey:
Exactly. So I understand you’ve got a particular order of healing that you follow when working with people. Can you share about that and how you developed it?
Juanique Grover:
Yes, so after all these years of researching and podcasting really brilliant minds, it truly just hit me like overnight. It was like everything- you know how in your head, you just keep thinking about things, and it just, it was almost like presented to me after one night, maybe in a dream, I don’t know, but I started writing down this order of healing, not fully understanding all that it meant, and I wrote it down, and then I just started researching every little bit. And I was like, this all makes so much sense. And so ever since writing down this order of healing, I’ve created an entire course teaching people the order of healing, because I was realizing that people were getting lost in the details. And they’re like, well, I have hormones, and I have this and but I’m starting at my hormones. I’m like, no, no, there’s an upstream process. And if you start upstream, everything else becomes easier.
And so the order of healing, I feel like it was just given to me. And so what it is number one is mindset. The reason why mindset is number one is because if you are in sympathetic dominance, you’re stressed all the time, your brain is going to sabotage any kind of healing modality or supplement you ever try to put in your body, right? So, this is the person that has two steps forward, two steps back, two steps forward, two steps back. They’re jumping around from doctor to doctor to doctor, doing all the things right, and I put that in air quotes, right, like they’re doing everything right, but nothing is working for them, and they’re spending tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatments, and they’re still stuck, and that’s because you’re doing all the right things, but your brain is literally in a sympathetic dominant response, which is going to signal every single cell in your body to shut down and hibernate and be in this inflammatory state where it’s not producing ATP and your mitochondria are not working optimally, and that’s a problem long term, right? And so if you can, one, get your brain on board to signal every single cell in your body to be in a healing response, to not feel endangered, to not go into hibernation. Then when you do the treatments, when you do the supplements, when you do the cell care exercises, everything actually starts to work. And so it’s not two steps forward, two steps back, it’s two steps forward, two steps forward, two steps forward. But again, you have to get your mind on board for that.
Now, mindset is way more complex, because there’s limiting belief systems and their subconscious patterns. And so I want to share, can I share an example of mindset? I had a dad come in. He has young children, and his wife sent him in to come see me last week, and he’s a workaholic, and he’s always so stressed, and he’s always in fight or flight all the time, and he doesn’t sleep well. And I was looking at his blood work and he’s pre-diabetic, metabolic syndrome, even though he eats well and he has curbside appeal, he looks great on the outside, but his metabolism is slowing down, and his hormones are getting more messed up, and so on and so forth. And so I was talking to him about how he can eat better, and he’s like, yeah, I don’t know why I self-sabotage though, and I don’t know why I start going to the gym to take care of myself, but I always end up just working like a workaholic. And I was like, well, who was it, was it your mom or your dad that taught you that to love your family is to be a workaholic? And he was like, whoa. No one’s ever asked me that. And he took a second, and he was like, my dad was a workaholic, and that’s how he showed up in love for us, and I’m like, so that’s your work, right? It doesn’t matter what I tell you and how to live your life, that subconscious belief pattern is going to hijack everything that you try to do. So you have to work on that belief system that I work myself to the bone, because that’s how I love my family and so healing and mindset and turning the brain into a different machine to work for you sometimes takes looking back at your patterns and looking back at what beliefs were given to you that you are unconscious of, and re-patterning your brain to do the opposite.
And that can take months, if not years, because we’re creatures of habit, and we are in a habit of acting a certain way, because that’s what our parents did, or that’s what someone we looked up to did, or a spouse or a sibling. And so that’s why mindset is key in any healing journey, because it will sabotage any efforts you do if you do not get your mind and your nervous system on board with your healing. So mindset is number one. Did you want to add anything to that before we move on?
Lindsey:
I did want to throw in a few comments. That was amazing insight that it’s at the top of it, because I often will be working with people and we’re just knocking off the physical stuff. I’m like, okay, we’ve done so many rounds of antimicrobials. You’re now sleeping better, you’re exercising, like everything, your diet’s in place, etc., but you’re still not getting better. And I’m just like, I think it’s the fact that you’re under constant stress, and often it’s the nature of the person, like that is just the kind of personality they have. Then that’s when I start to say, okay, look at these other programs, or look at the Gupta program, or look at hypnotherapy, or look at Trauma Informed Counseling of some kind, because you may have some work to do there that I’m not going to be able to do with you.
Juanique Grover:
You’re 100% right. That’s why we do Neurofeedback at our clinic. We’re bringing in something called Gamma Core, which helps to tone your vagus nerve so people with gut issues, people with migraines, people with nervous system dysregulation, every time they come in for a treatment, they’re going to do Gamma Core to help relax their nervous system.
Lindsey:
Tell me about that, what is that?
Juanique Grover:
So Gamma Core, it’s an FDA-approved device that you just put it here on your neck by your vagus nerve, and it’s supposed to calm it down. So it works similarly but different to neurofeedback, whereas neurofeedback works on the brainwave activity in your brain to either calm down overactive responses in your brain or wake up underactive responses in your brain, to bring you back to parasympathetic states and calm and neutrality. Again, it’s all about working with the brain, working with the nervous system to be calm so that when you are embarking on your healing treatments and protocols, you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck, because now your nervous system is on board and your brain is on board.
The thing about our fast-paced system, and our American culture, is just it’s go, go, go. We glorify the people that are the workaholics and the high achievers, and we really don’t know that’s embedded in all of our nervous systems. I remember, because I was that person until I got seriously ill after my husband died, which I haven’t spoken about. But my illness forced me to slow down, and when I was slowing down, I judged myself so much because my value was based so much on productivity and showing up and creating courses and running myself ragged, even months after my husband died. And so, yeah, of course my body broke because I was under so much stress, and I still had this A-type personality, but there was so much judgment with having to slow down. And so a lot of people that are like, oh yeah, I’m not a stressed person, give me 30 minutes in a room with them, and I will figure it out. I’ll be like, oh, you 100% are. You’re just used to going 100 miles an hour, and you call 100 miles an hour baseline, right? And it’s actually not baseline. Our common culture of fast-pacedness is actually not healthy. There’s a reason why the entire nation is embarking on a mental health crisis right now.
I saw this Instagram post where someone was asking, if you are watching true crime investigations and Law and Order before bed to calm your nervous system, you need to ask yourself why violence is relaxing to you, and it’s so true, right? Like we watch politics and we watch the news and we get all riled up, but it’s creating violence in our mind, but our nervous system can’t tell the difference, right? So we’re watching intense movies and we’re listening to intense music and we’re listening to intense news, and we’re like, this is normal. This is fine. I’m fine. But yet our nervous systems are wrecked. That’s why we’re so sick. That’s why your gut is wrecked. That’s why you’re not healing, even after all the antimicrobials. Because we’re so used to the analogy of a frog in a pot of boiling water. Do you know that analogy? If you put a frog in boiling water, it’ll jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly turn up the heat, you’ll eventually boil them to death, because they just get used to the heat, and they don’t think, oh, this is bad for me. This is wrong for me. It just stays there until they’re boiled to death. And that’s us. We’re so used to this increase in violent news and violent media and violent TV shows that it’s just that we’re used to the hot, boiling water and it’s destroying us.
Lindsey:
I’ve never described myself as a type A personality, but I’ve always been a perfectionist, and it was only my health coaching course that really taught me about ‘don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’, and being able to do that, especially when you’re running a small business. If the newsletter slips by with a typo, who cares? The vast majority of people don’t even read the words on the newsletter, and only the crazy perfectionists like me will even notice.
Juanique Grover:
It’s wonderful that you can recognize that. And again, you don’t know what you don’t know and you can’t see what you can’t see. And so if someone has health issues and they’re like, I’m not stressed, they’re probably stressed and they can’t see it.
Lindsey:
Yeah. So what’s the next step in order healing?
Juanique Grover:
So, next is mitochondria. Everyone should know what the mitochondria is, but they don’t. It’s ignored. It’s like the middle child, the red-headed, middle child that gets ignored and it has to fend for itself. Mitochondria are the powerhouses in the cells that give the cells energy, like ATP. And what people don’t realize is that your mitochondria are actually, as powerful as they are, they’re actually extremely sensitive. So if you are exposed to heavy metals and chemicals and EMFs and radiation and parasites, you are going to have this wear and tear and damage on your mitochondria. But not only that, if you’re not eating a nutrient-dense diet, if you’re not eating antioxidants or getting your high doses of B vitamins that are methylated, your mitochondria cannot make ATP.
One other thing about mitochondria is that artificial lighting truly damages mitochondria, whereas red light and infrared helps to restore mitochondrial function and helps them to produce ATP, which is why red light therapy is such a hot topic right now. And the reason why you want functioning mitochondria, the reason why you want healthy mitochondria, is because if you want your body to heal, it’s going to take an enormous amount of energy to do that, and so you want mitochondria that are pumping out a ton of ATP so it can fuel your cells to replicate or replenish or heal whatever damage or inflammation is in your body. So pretend someone gives you a toy that requires batteries, but you didn’t put the batteries in. Now you have this toy that doesn’t do anything, and it’s useless, right? So you want to put the batteries in the toy so that the toy can do its job and make music or whatever it is the toy does.
So that’s the mitochondria. We want to make sure that our mitochondria are turned on, and they’re functioning, and we’re protecting them so that they are doing their job and they’re fueling your cells with tons and tons of energy. Healing can’t happen if you don’t have ATP. Cellular function doesn’t happen unless you have ATP. And the thing that provides the ATP is the mitochondria. People are like, what supplements should I take? And I’m like, hold on, let’s not jump to supplements. What about just waking up and going for a walk and watching the sunrise and then walking and watching the sunset? That can help boost your mitochondrial function. Switching off your Wi Fi at night, not plugging in your cell phone next to you, that can help with mitochondrial function. Stress damages mitochondrial function, again, telling us why mindset is number one, right? Because, again, if you are trying all these healing modalities, but you’re stressed out and you have high adrenaline and high cortisol, that’s going to damage your mitochondria. And guess what? You’re not going to make energy to heal your body. You’re not going to make energy to help with hormone production and synthesis. You’re not going to produce enough energy to help your liver detoxify all the toxins and heavy metals and gunk that your body’s trying to filter out. Right? So mitochondria is so important, and that’s why it’s number two, because you can’t do anything without energy. Period. It’s like trying to go on a shopping spree, but you have no money. Did you want to add anything to that?
Lindsey:
Only the question of, how are you determining that mitochondria aren’t working well? And what kinds of things are you testing for, to see if it’s toxins or mycotoxins, heavy metals, etc.
Juanique Grover:
So there are certain tests that are pretty expensive that you can do to see the efficiency of your mitochondria, but signs and symptoms of poor mitochondrial health is you have brain fog. You have a full night’s sleep, but you wake up and you’re exhausted, right? You have neurological issues and twitches and tremors and like just numbness and tingling. Those are signs of mitochondrial dysfunction. You’re wired, but tired all the time. I know it sounds a lot like adrenals, but a lot of this actually, it has to do with mitochondria. You don’t heal quickly or efficiently, so you get bruised, but it takes forever for that to heal. General fatigue. Brain fog is a huge determining factor of mitochondrial function. So brain fog, muscle weakness, neurological issues, problems detoxifying. So, you’re sensitive to chemicals and whatnot, and here’s why that is. So what’s really cool is, we think that our muscles have a huge amount of the mitochondria in our muscle cells, right? But your brain and your liver have almost the same amount of mitochondria in them as all of the muscles in your body.
So let’s say you have 120 pounds of muscle, right? And it has it houses about 30% of your mitochondria. Well, your five-pound brain has the exact same amount of mitochondria in it. Your seven-pound liver has the almost the exact same amount of mitochondria in it, because that’s how hard they are working. They’re working as hard as your muscles throughout your entire body, to keep you alive, to have you think, to have you process information, to help your liver detoxify chemicals and process all the vitamins and minerals and fats and everything that goes in your body. It has to be filtered through your liver, so your mind, your brain and your liver work an enormous amount. And that’s how we can see if your mitochondria isn’t working well, because you have all that brain fatigue and brain fog and you just can’t get out of bed. It feels like you’re moving through molasses because there’s not enough energy to power your brain on right? So it’s like a laggy computer. So if you feel like a laggy computer, chances are you probably have mitochondrial issues.
Lindsey:
Okay, cool. So what’s the next one?
Juanique Grover:
So next is gut, which is probably your favorite and my favorite, right? So the gut is the root system to the tree. If you look at a tree and you look at the roots, you can tell the health of a tree by looking at the roots. The roots are thick and robust. They absorb all the vitamins and minerals in the water that really services the rest of the tree. If you have a root system of a tree that is rotting and dying, the tree is going to follow suit and die as well. So your gut is the root system to the rest of your body. It absorbs all the vitamins and the nutrients that your cells and your tissues need in order to heal and repair themselves. Your gut absorbs all the amino acids and fatty acids and vitamins and minerals that it needs to help detox your liver to help synthesize hormones, sex hormones, adrenaline, cortisol, thyroid hormone. Your gut absorbs all of that from your food and fuels everything. If your root system is inflamed, if your root system is leaky, if your root system is not healthy and not optimal, you’re going to feel really, really sick.
But not only that, your gut, your root system, it houses 80% of your immune system. So if your gut is inflamed and it’s leaky and it’s not happy and it’s not absorbing, chances are it’s very inhospitable for your bacteria as well. And now not only do you have an absorption issue, but do you have an immune response issue. So it’s like a double whammy. So this is why the gut is right after mitochondria. One, we have to have robust mitochondria in the lining of your intestines for your intestines to heal and repair themselves. Because what I think is really interesting is your skin cells turn over every thirty days, but your gut lining turns over every two to three days. So that’s an enormous amount of energy and an enormous amount of protein and vitamins and minerals for that high tissue turnover. So that’s why you have to have your mitochondria on point to fuel that tissue turnover in your gut, right? If your mitochondria are not optimal, you’re not having that turnover in your tissue, which means it’s starting to get inflamed, and it’s starting to get leaky, and it’s starting to have problems, and now it’s inhospitable to your bacteria. So now you have your bacterial issues, your absorption issues, and you’re just not a happy, healthy body period. You’re not absorbing your nutrients.
Let’s say you work hard every month. You work forty hours a week, and you get paid at the end of the month. You’re supposed to get ten grand, but they only give you five and you’re like, what? I got cheated, I worked really hard for my ten grand, and you’re only giving me five grand. That’s a gut that isn’t working optimally. We’re eating all this high nutrient-dense food, but you’re not absorbing it. So how many people eat nutrient-dense foods? Maybe they have some gut issues. So they’re cooking or steaming their food to help break down the fiber, and they’re eating these high nutrient-dense foods, lots of collagen, lots of bone broth, and they’re still nutrient depleted, and their blood work still shows low proteins, low vitamins, low minerals, low everything, right? That’s a gut system that is just not turning on. It’s not working, and it’s so important if you want to have a healthy liver, healthy sex hormones, healthy adrenals, you have to make sure your gut is working for you and not against you, that your mitochondria are turned on so that they can help fuel that tissue turnover and that your brain isn’t sabotaging your gut, because when you’re in sympathetic dominance, when you’re stressed out, that directly signals your gallbladder, your stomach, your hormones.
So your stomach is supposed to produce an X amount of hydrochloric acid to help break down and emulsify your foods. But if you are stressed, you decrease hydrochloric acid content, which means you’re not breaking down your food. So you want your $10,000 but you’re only getting $5,000 and so we want to get you in a regulated state, in a parasympathetic state, so that your gut not only heals itself, but it releases all of its enzymes and its hydrochloric acid for you to optimize on food digestion and nutrient absorption. So that’s why gut is number three, do you want to add anything to that? Because you’re a gut pro.
Lindsey:
Well, I just want to add that I do a lot of testing on people about nutrient statuses, especially if I suspect there might be a nutrient deficiency. And inevitably, all of my clients have some nutrient deficiencies, be it iron or zinc or occasionally you even see copper, of course B vitamins, you see those, vitamin C, a whole slew, vitamin A, vitamin E, D. Everything. And, admittedly, I’d been supplementing my husband for a while on vitamins, but I tested all of his nutrients, and I was just like, unbelievably, you have virtually no nutrient deficiencies. I’m like, I guess that’s because your gut works well.
Juanique Grover:
His nervous system.
Lindsey:
Well, not his nervous system because his nervous system’s a mess, but his gut worked so he does have the nutrients on board. I’m like, I don’t know how, because he only eats two meals a day, and some of them aren’t too great. But I’m like, I guess if we have a functioning gut, it does the job.
Juanique Grover:
It does the job. If it’s functioning and it’s healthy, it will do its job and it will absorb.
Lindsey:
And if you don’t have a functioning gut, it doesn’t do its job. Like if you were taking acid blocking medication, you’re going to be protein deficient because you don’t have what it takes to break up our protein.
Juanique Grover:
100%, and I think PPIs (proton pump inhibitors) are the most prescribed medication in the United States. So as soon as you get a PPI, guess what, like you said, you’re not going to break down your protein. You’re going to be nutrient-depleted for eons, for decades. And what’s really scary is there are providers that don’t tell their patients that PPIs are a short-term drug. You shouldn’t take them for longer than two weeks. If they have you on a PPI for more than five years, they have to screen you for stomach cancer, because that’s the risk. You take away that hydrochloric acid, that means that you’re now nutrient depleted, and also hydrochloric acid depleted. I call it the bouncer to the nightclub. It keeps bad dudes out. So now you got rid of your bouncer, and now you have all these bad dudes entering your club, meaning you’ve got H Pylori, you’ve got bacteria, you’ve got staph, you’ve got everything growing in your body. You are basically a nest for bad bacteria to live off now, and not only that, but parasites too. So you’re a walking, talking buffet for bad things. Of course, you’re going to get sick. Of course, you’re going to be at a higher risk for diseases, right? Because you got rid of the thing that helps you absorb your nutrients and keeps bad things out. I think hydrochloric acid just gets a bad reputation, and it really is, like the most important. I call hydrochloric acid the holy grail to digestion. If that’s not optimal, you’ve got problems.
Lindsey:
Yeah, I’m on it, despite the fact that I would hope that I could have gotten off it by now, I’m still on it, because I’ll go off for a while and I’ll be like, yeah, unfortunately, my blood still shows me that I’m still deficient in it. Perhaps it is that top level I haven’t addressed. But anyways, what’s the next level after the gut?
Juanique Grover:
So after the gut is liver, and so your liver is not only important for detoxing everything, but it synthesizes all your vitamins, minerals, and it also biosynthesizes all of your hormones. So if your sex organs or your adrenals are making hormones, they get packaged properly in your liver, unless your liver is deficient. And as I mentioned before, how do we have an efficient liver? Well, we have to have efficient mitochondrial function, and we have to have efficient gut and absorption, right? So if your liver isn’t being powered properly, and if it’s not being fed properly by your gut, you’re going to have liver issues. You’re going to have a sluggish liver. You’re going to have toxin buildup, where you’re just reabsorbing all of your toxins and chemicals and everything, and then you’re not going to feel good.
For people that have liver stagnation, they’re often tired, they have brain fog, they’re sensitive to chemicals and perfumes, and they have skin outbreaks, like eczema, rosacea, etc., like all of these kinds of autoimmunity and skin issues. And again, it’s because it’s working in conjunction with an unhealthy gut, right? So it’s not just a liver dysfunction. It’s like a gut-liver dysfunction. So if you have sensitive skin, if you’re sensitive to chemicals, if you get headaches very easily, you probably have a liver stagnation issue, so you want to support your liver tremendously by eating the right diet and absorbing by having proper mitochondrial function. But for many people that are in a health crisis, they will oftentimes need to take binders and do sauna and maybe coffee enemas to just help get toxins out of their system, because someone that has a health crisis and has chronic health issues that’s been decades in the making, or years in the making, where they have, slowly, over years and years, had this toxin accumulation, and now their whole body is sick, and that’s why liver is number four is because you have to have a healthy liver to have healthy cells. You have to have a healthy liver to biosynthesize healthy sex hormones and all hormones period.
Lindsey:
And will you necessarily see elevated liver enzymes when this is happening, or could they look perfectly normal?
Juanique Grover:
I love this question, because everyone asks that. No, it’s actually very tricky. I will actually see high cholesterol numbers. Because if you see high liver numbers, that actually means that your liver is now damaged because of very extensive periods of inflammation and nutrient deficiency and problems. So if you see high liver enzymes, you have a lot of work to do, because now it’s really a problem. So beginning stages of liver stagnation and liver dysfunction are like weight gain, high cholesterol, achy joints and everything that I kind of mentioned, like skin issues, chemical sensitivities, brain fog, you name it, and let’s use this example.
Let’s say you have a house, you live in a house, right? And you have to pay your mortgage, and you pay for a cleaner to come and clean your house, and people live in it, but we take care of the house. There’s energy in the house, and it’s all taken care of, and it runs beautifully, right? Let’s say we stop paying our cleaning lady, and we stop paying the garbage person, and we stop taking care of the house. At first, we’re not going to see decay in the house. The house is going to look fine. We’re not going to see junk piled up in the backyard, because it’s piling up in the house. And on the outside, we’re not going to see the rats that are starting to live in the house, because it doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t happen over a few weeks or a few months, right? So the house is going to start smelling and it’s going to start having signs and symptoms of neglect, but we’re not going to see damage to the house. So the house has curbside appeal, but there’s dysfunction happening because there’s rats living in there, and it’s getting infested and it’s stinky and people are not happy. So there are small signs of neglect, but it’s not a physical sign of neglect. Now let’s say over years you neglect the house. Now we’re seeing that the roof is getting chipped, the windows are breaking, and people are not fixing it, the driveway is all cracked and there’s weeds, and it looks horrible on the outside now, but that’s because of years’ worth of neglect, not weeks or months.
And so liver enzymes are the years’ worth of neglect, that means your liver is literally deteriorating. And that didn’t happen overnight. That happened over a very long period of time of nutritional deficiencies and inflammation. Did that translate? Because I want people to understand that so many people are like, my doctor said my liver enzymes were fine. Why do I feel sick? I’m like, this is why you feel sick. Because even though your liver enzymes are normal, it doesn’t mean they’re optimal. So look at your cholesterol, look at your blood sugar, look at your homocysteine. Those are better indicators of problems in the body for me.
Lindsey:
And are there things you particularly like, supplements for the liver, or I guess you mentioned sauna and coffee enemas?
Juanique Grover:
Yes. So the liver requires an enormous amount of nutrients. If you need to detox, there are binders. I love Cell Core Biotoxin Binder* (access with Patient direct code: I0rdLMOm). Cell Core, it helps you get the gunk out. Functionality of the liver, you need high doses of methylated B vitamins*. You need an enormous amount of amino acids. So eat enough protein, drink enough collagen*. What really terrifies me and irks me is when people are doing a “liver cleanse”, and I put that in air quotes for people that can’t see, but they’re drinking fruit juices. And the problem with that is you’re, one, sugar is really hard on your liver, so you are creating more damage by drinking fruit juices. Yes, it’s from fruit, but there’s still fructose in there. And fructose is a very hard sugar to metabolize in the liver. One of the byproducts of fructose metabolism in the liver is something called JNK1, which is an extremely inflammatory molecule, but also aldehydes. So the more fruit juice that you’re putting in there without fiber, the more damage you’re creating in the liver. And so people go on these fruit juice cleanses, and they actually create more damage and more inflammation in the liver, when what the liver actually needs is lots of fiber, lots of protein, lots of antioxidants, lots of B vitamins.
So for people that are really sick, don’t do a liver cleanse. Your body probably can’t handle it right now. Just feed your body high nutrient-dense foods, lots of bone broth, collagen, take methylated B vitamins. Milk thistle* is very supportive of liver and liver detoxification. So there are herbs and supplements that are gentle, but still very supportive, but get the nutrients in. And then when you actually have energy and reserves where you’re feeling functional. That’s when you’re ready for a big detox. But these detoxes should include binders and fiber and protein and vitamins and minerals and antioxidants. If you try to detox without those things in place, you’re going to feel very, very sick, and I actually have a whole liver cleanse. It’s a three-week detox program where it utilizes a ton of supplements that help support the liver and detoxification, but if you do it wrong, you’re not going to feel good. And some people are in bed for days, if not weeks, because they try to detox their liver before they actually have the nutrition on board and the mitochondria on board.
Lindsey:
Yeah. I mean, at the base of it, you need to be able to make glutathione, and you need amino acids like cysteine and glutamine and glycine, which are going to come from protein foods.
Juanique Grover:
Exactly, all of those things. So, yes, I hope that answered your question.
Lindsey:
So yes, so fifth level.
Juanique Grover:
So fifth is adrenals. And adrenals, if you did everything upstream right, your adrenals should be right on board. So your adrenals are these glands that produce cortisol and aldosterone and adrenaline, and they signal every cell in your body to do something, to be in a stress response, or they can stimulate your immune system to be heightened or diminished. And so if we have mindset on board then your adrenals are not being overstimulated. If we have mitochondria on board, then your adrenals are not being deficient in energy production. If we have your gut on board, then your adrenals have the nutrition necessary to produce the right amount of hormones. And if the liver is on board, then the adrenals produce certain hormones that get biosynthesized in the liver properly.
This is what’s important about adrenals. So your adrenals make something called DHEA, and that’s a precursor to sex hormones. However, if you are in a stress response, your body is going to steal that DHEA from sex hormones and produce cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and the fight or flight hormone, and long term, cause inflammation throughout the body. So if you did all your work upstream and you took care of the first five parts of the order of healing, your adrenals are going to be fine, and you’re not going to have this overproduction of cortisol to an underproduction of sex hormones. It’s like a teeter totter. So if one is high, the other is low. So if your cortisol is high, your sex hormones are low. If your cortisol is low, your sex hormones aren’t necessarily high, that’s a different story for another time. But if you want to make sure that your cortisol stays normal and balanced, so that the next step in line, which is sex hormones, or hormones, those are being produced at a normal rate and not underproduced, which is what a lot of people experience.
And the one thing that I want people to understand about the adrenals is that there’s three stages of adrenal fatigue. The first stage, I want you to think of a Ferrari right, where it’s like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, A-type personality. You’re waking up early, you’re exercising hard, you’re taking caffeine, you’re getting your to do list done. You’re getting your second cup of caffeine in the afternoon. You’re picking up the kids, you’re getting reports done in the middle of the night. You’re sleeping very little, and you’re doing it all over again, right? So think of the Ferrari going 120 miles down the freeway. That’s stage one of adrenal fatigue.
Stage two, think of the mom minivan where it’s like, it can do the things, but it’s struggling a little bit. It’s not the Ferrari anymore. And so stage two looks like this. You’re getting up in the morning, and it’s really hard, and you have to drag yourself out of bed, but you have a cup of coffee, and now you can go and now you’re hitting lunchtime, and you’re getting that afternoon slump, especially after eating meals. So you’re going for another cup of coffee, and now you’re 600 milligrams of caffeine in, and you’re just barely getting out the door to get your kids and get your stuff done, and you’re feeling this like second wind in towards bedtime. So you’re tired all day long, but right before bed, you’re energized, and you’re like, let me work on projects now. And now, you work until like twelve, one or two in the morning, and then you do it all again, and you just have this slump throughout the day, and you’re relying on caffeine and stimulants to get you through. So think of again, the mom minivan just getting on with all this messiness in the minivan. But hey, it got you from A to B.
Stage three of adrenal fatigue is you get out of bed, and you can barely function. You can’t form words, or it’s hard. You drink caffeine, but it doesn’t do anything, if anything, it gives you a panic attack now, or it gives you anxiety. So you’re drinking caffeine, but it’s just no longer working because there’s no more energy in your reserves. Everything is in the toilet. You have to take a nap at around one or two in the afternoon, because that’s when you get your second slump. Caffeine isn’t working for you, so you have to sleep before you pick up the kids from school, and then by bedtime, you are dead to the world. You’re falling asleep at five o’clock, but you’re also wired, but tired, it’s restless sleeping, and then you’re just doing it all again the next day. When you’re in stage three, everything’s in the toilet. All reserves are empty. You are non-functioning now. You’re alive, but you can’t function. Nothing’s turned on. So be aware of whether you are in stage one, are you in stage two, or are you in stage three?
The further on in stages you are, the harder it is to reverse and heal. And so when it comes to adrenal fatigue, one, you have to get on top of that control center, which is the mindset, and it’s your stress response and it’s your nervous system dysregulation. Two, you have to feed your adrenals. Your adrenals require an enormous amount of vitamins and minerals, sodium, potassium, to be specific, and vitamin C. So there’s something called Adrenal Cocktail* that I put almost all my clients on that has the perfect ratios of sodium, potassium and vitamin C to it. Make sure every time you drink water, you’re drinking water with minerals in it. I love Just Ingredients. So make sure you’re getting that. Make sure you’re getting your B vitamins. And please don’t push yourself at the gym, you need rest, heal your adrenals is not the time to go to the gym. A lot of people will be like, I’m so tired, but I’m pushing myself at the gym, and I’m drinking my caffeine and I’m putting on more weight and I’m getting more tired, and I don’t know why. And I know why, it’s because your adrenals are tanked. You’re trying to force your body to do that, which you cannot do right now. And people are like, but if I don’t go to the gym, I’ll just keep putting on weight. And my answer is, you’ll put more weight on forcing your body at the gym. Right now, you can’t build muscle at all, period. You need to rest and heal and repair and live to fight for another day, right?
So rest your body, recover, regulate your nervous system. I promise you, the gym will still be there, but right now, you have to heal your adrenals and your nervous system, because you’ll be in bed for decades if you don’t do that. And we deal with all of those people at our clinic, we see the worst of worst. And these people have to take steroids to just to wake up their adrenals, to be functional, to show up to work. And trust me, that’s not a life that you want to live. So adrenals are number five.
Lindsey:
There are six levels?
Juanique Grover:
There’s seven, actually.
Lindsey:
Oh seven. Okay.
Juanique Grover:
So sex hormones are really simple. If you do everything upstream, sex hormones will work for you instead of against you, because your sex hormones, I call them the icing and the sprinkles on top of the cake, right? Everything else is the cake. The sex hormones just optimize everything. So think of it this way, your body, if you’re under stress, is not going to prioritize procreation and making babies. It’s going to prioritize survival. So when people are like, my sex hormones are in the tank, it’s like, yes, because you don’t have energy, you don’t have nutrients to build sex hormones to make you feel good. So here’s the kicker that nobody wants to hear. You can live and survive without any sex hormones. Do you feel good? Absolutely not. You feel like garbage. But you can survive, and you actually don’t need sex hormones to live. And so if your body is going to sacrifice something because you’re too stressed and you don’t have enough nutrition, guess what’s the first thing to go? The sprinkles and the icing. Your body is trying to preserve the cake. It’s trying to preserve your organs and your vital organs, right? The sex hormones are not vital.
Our sex hormones are vital to us because they make our hair lush. They make our skin look good, they give us energy, they give us sex drive. But we don’t need those things. We want them, but we actually don’t need them. So that’s the first thing that the body sacrifices, is all the sex hormones when you are not feeling good, when you’re overstressed and when you are undereating a nutrient-dense diet. So if you want to feel sexy and you want the good hair, and you want the good skin, and you want everything else, everyone’s like well, give me the stuff to support my hormones, and I’m like, you have to look upstream at everything else, because, again, you have to fix the cake, and then the sprinkles will come, I promise you. But if you have a broken cake, the sprinkles won’t be there. So fix everything upstream, and your body will just naturally regulate and balance your sex hormones. So that’s why sex hormones are dead last, even though everybody wants them to be first.
Lindsey:
Okay, are they number seven? Because I don’t think we heard number six.
Juanique Grover:
So sex hormones were number six and then number seven is brain function. So if you’ve fulfilled everything, your brain should be healthy. It should have good neurotransmitters, good blood flow, good oxygenation. If you do everything right, as we know, sex hormones, if you have proper progesterone and estrogen levels and testosterone, they actually preserve your brain function. So we don’t want high stress, we don’t want high cortisol, we don’t want too high adrenaline, because all of those diminish brain function and damage the brain. And so if you take care of your gut, if you take care of your mitochondria, as we learned before, if you take care of your liver and your adrenals and your sex hormones, all of those things combine together to make sure that you have a very young, healthy, anti-aged brain. Now, if you still have brain function, that’s probably a good time to go and get a brain scan to see if maybe there’s like, some benign tumor that may be be on your pituitary. But that’s again, everything prior helps your brain function properly, and so if it’s not, then we just say, okay, let’s look deeper. Get an MRI, get a brain scan, get a brain map to see what’s happening in your brain and how we can support it, because everything else should be supporting it optimally. And so that’s it. That’s the order of healing.
Lindsey:
Okay, that was amazing. We’re running out of time. And I guess maybe one other thing I’d love to ask about is just the neurofeedback that you use in your clinic, and what it’s about and what conditions it’s useful for.
Juanique Grover:
Yeah, so neurofeedback is really cool. So what it’s used for is anxiety, depression, ADHD, ADD and autism. So for kids are on the spectrum, it helps with their autism brain function. So teachers will remark, oh my gosh, he’s sitting down and he’s not having as many tantrums or meltdowns. So it really helps to just calm your nervous system and your brain that is over-firing. And so how it works is because your brain has certain waves like delta, gamma, beta, alpha, and so it retrains the waves to work optimally. For instance, everyone has intrusive thoughts. If you have a health problem, you’re like, oh, that’s cancer. I’m going to die. That’s the job of the brain to constantly analyze things, whether it’s correct or not. With a brain that is in hyperdrive and hyper-sympathetic dominance, when you have that intrusive thought come, then the brain latches onto it and you have this full-blown panic attack, right? Because that’s what the brain wave activity has been trained to do over time.
But with neurofeedback, it changes that brain wave activity. So when you have a thought or when you have a scenario come into your life, your brain responds to it completely differently, right? So you could have that intrusive thought come and you’d be like, oh, that’s interesting, and then it just passes and you’re not having this panic attack. Or for people, a lot of adults that have PTSD or depression or a hard time verbalizing their emotions, when they do neurofeedback, they’re like, huh, that’s easier to do, or, huh, I don’t feel so depressed anymore, or I don’t feel so anxious anymore, even though nothing in my life has changed. So we’re just changing brain patterns to not be so reactive or so underactive. And so that way you can live a very functional life with stress, but not having the stress affect you on a brain chemistry level. I don’t know if that was a good explanation of it.
Lindsey:
Yeah no, I mean, I’ve heard about different kinds of neurofeedback, and there are some in our town, but it wasn’t the kind that I’d heard about. Is yours the kind where somebody might be watching a movie, or playing a video game, and if they get the right kind of brain waves, then they’re rewarded by it keeping playing, and if they have the wrong kind of brain waves, it stops until they have the right kind of brain waves?
Juanique Grover:
So ours works with the screen dimming and getting lighter, so it rewards you with a brighter screen. So that’s how ours works. It goes in and out, so you’ll watch it like it, and we always want calming, like Disney shows, nothing that’s too energizing or intense, right? And so when they’re watching it, the screen will get dim, and so it’s trying to provoke the brain to think a little harder. And when the brain corrects, it brightens, and then it works on a different area. And so it does that. And our sessions are only 30 minutes, so a lot of people do one hour, but we’ve seen that an hour fatigues the brain a little too much, and so we do the 30 minutes.
Lindsey:
Okay, so I think we are out of time here. But can you tell people where they can find you and about your courses and that stuff?
Juanique Grover:
Yes. So my clinic is called Provo Health, and so you can find us at provohealth.com or on Instagram @Provohealth. If you want to become a self-healing advocate, let’s say you are having health struggles and you’re tired of depending on doctors, and you’re like, I want to be the expert. Now I have a bunch of free classes as well as paid classes at mygutsyhealth.com. We do an academy enrollment every year. In 2025, the enrollment is going to be for September. So look for us during the summer time for open enrollment to become a student of the Gutsy Academy, where you get access to our courses teaching you every step in the order of healing, the science behind the order of healing, the homework that you can do to improve those areas in your life, the protocols, the supplements, the lifestyle changes.
And then every week in the academy, all of our academy members have a Zoom call, so you come on and we help you integrate the information. It’s like coaching, where you’re like, I’ve tried this. What else could it be? What we have found is that one, community, being around people that are struggling or going through the same thing that you’re going through, is really nourishing. But not only that, you’re learning from each other’s experiences, and you’re seeing what works for them and what doesn’t. And when you can hear people verbalize what they are struggling with and what the solutions are, you learn from their cases. I call it, like you know how doctors have rounds or certain doctors have to shadow other doctors. We’re all kind of shadowing each other in our health issues. And so they get to learn from each other, and they get to hear, oh, this is how Juanique and Gina are asking them questions about their health, because they’re trying to figure this out, or they’re trying to figure out a, b and c.
And so what’s really cool is all of my coaches at Provo Health and my nurse practitioners, they all have to learn the order of healing and take the coursework in order to become coaches or nutritionists at Provo Health, because we utilize all these modalities and all of these skills and all of this science to help coach our patients and our clients at Provo Health. And so it’s basically teaching you how to become your own health coach, how to become your own nutritionist. And what’s really cool about the academy is I’ve had nutritionists and coaches do other courses that were like five to ten grand, and they’re like, it was missing stuff, and then they joined the Gutsy Academy, and they’re like, the Gutsy Academy was everything I was hoping to learn at this course. And they’re like, this is what I wanted to learn. This is how I wanted to learn, how to integrate the information. And now my knowledge is no longer lacking, because you guys have put it all together.
And so if you’re struggling in your health journey and you just feel so lost, the academy can really teach you how to become your own self-healing advocate so you no longer feel lost in your healing journey, so that you have clarity and you have direction and you have hope, because hope is truly one of the most important things when it comes to a healing journey.
Lindsey:
Well, I think that’s a great note to finish on. Thank you so much for sharing your incredible knowledge with us.
Juanique Grover:
Thank you, Lindsey. Thank you for having me on your podcast.
If you’re dealing with gut health issues of any type (diarrhea, constipation, bloating, SIBO, IMO, H2S SIBO/ISO, IBS, IBD, gastritis, GERD, H pylori, diverticulitis, candida, etc.) or have an autoimmune disease and need some help, I see individual clients to help them resolve their digestive issues or reverse autoimmune disease naturally, You’re welcome to set up a free, 30-minute breakthrough session to see if you’d like to work with me. I also have my own two products, Tributyrin-Max, which is particularly helpful for loose stool and diarrhea as it slows your motility and firms up your stool, and SBI powder, which is an all around gut pathogen binder, which is super safe and won’t harm beneficial bacteria, and is usually the first line of treatment I educate my clients about in order to avoid stronger antimicrobial herbs.
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