Adapted from episode 173 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Elizabeth Aylor, FDN-P and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.
Lindsey: So let’s talk about low-fat diets to start. How can they impact women’s health and digestion?
Elizabeth Aylor: Wow. Okay, so I see so many women nowadays, we go towards these keto and carnivore diets, and fats have such an important role in our body, even when it comes to making hormones.
And when fats get too low too, we have to look at all of our vitamins and minerals in the body. So fat-soluble vitamins are vitamins D, K. We need the healthy fats to absorb them. So when our fats get too low, not only does it impact our body’s ability to absorb our fat-soluble vitamins, but it could take a big toll on your health too in terms of your hunger and satiety.
One thing a lot of women go towards now is we want to have that body composition change, and we look at these low-fat or even low-carb diets, but when it looks at creating that perfect balanced meal, fats actually slow down digestion too. So when we’re dealing with cravings and low energy throughout the day, when we create this meal that has balanced carbs, fat, and protein, it’s going to stabilize your blood sugar.
It’s going to keep you fuller longer. Then you’re going to absorb all those fat-soluble vitamins at that meal, and it’s going to make you feel – just not getting the cravings in between the meals, and really keep you full until that next meal. So talk about feeling satisfied, talk about more energy, blood sugar stability, and then overall, of course, impacting our hormones, which is huge for women over 30.
Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, and vitamins E and A, also fat-soluble … so very important too.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah. Absolutely.
Lindsey: Yeah. So do you find that people on the opposite, the, high-fat diets like keto and carnivore also are having issues?
Elizabeth Aylor: It really comes down to… So one thing that I’m really big on is our gut health, and I find that a lot of women too that are coming to me are struggling with different gut issues, and maybe we even had something like our gallbladder removed.
So maybe you turn towards these higher fat diets, but is our body actually making enough bile to break down the fats in that? So a lot of people may be struggling with weak digestive function, low HCL, low bile production, and maybe you feel nauseous after a meal or the food’s sitting heavy in the stomach.
So I really look at it more on that gut health perspective because everybody’s body is different. If you have no gallbladder and you don’t have the right pancreatic enzymes and you’re not breaking down the bile, keto and these high fat diets may work for one individual while it may make another individual start struggling with either running to the bathroom or having constipation or feeling super heavy or nauseous after those meals as well, which is why our gut health is the key thing when it comes to really figuring out the right, I don’t like to say diet, but the right nutrition protocol for you and your body.
Lindsey: Yeah. I tried keto for a month maybe, and by the end of it, I started having pains in the gallbladder area. It was definitely not for me.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah. Carnivore sometimes made me run to the bathroom. Okay, too much fat is happening right now.
Lindsey: Yeah. No, if I eat pork belly or something that fatty I will feel so nauseous and so gross. Now I just avoid it. It’s too much for my system.
Yeah. So when people stay on long-term elimination diets, how does that impact their metabolism, thyroid, and weight?
Elizabeth Aylor: Okay. So I … Can I bring a gut health perspective to this too?
Lindsey: Yeah, of course.
Elizabeth Aylor: Ah, I love it. So I myself dealt with a lot of chronic digestive issues.
I had parasites, H. pylori, I had SIBO, I had mast cell activation, mold toxicity, you name it. So I’ve tried every diet out there, and one thing I see with a lot of women struggling with gut issues is we go towards these low FODMAP diets or these keto, these carnivore diets, more of the ultimate elimination diet.
And what happens is when you’re cutting out FODMAPs, the fermentable carbohydrates, your symptoms get less because we have our gut microbiome, and that bacteria ferments on those carbohydrates. So when you’re cutting all the vegetables out of your diet or these fermentable carbohydrates, your symptoms become less, but you’re not getting to the root cause of what is actually going on in the gut.
So you do these elimination diets. You have less symptoms. You think you’re better, and then what happens is as soon as you add those vegetables back in or those fermentable carbohydrates, the FODMAPs, your symptoms come back because you didn’t get to the root cause. And I find a lot of clients that come to me, they get so restricted with their diet where they’re down to just a handful of ingredients because they’re so reactive.
And they’re able to expand their diet by healing the gut and getting to the root cause and correcting the insufficiencies of why we’re having them. So when I look at these ultimate elimination diets and cutting out all these specific foods, in order for our gut to have the diversity, the good population of all the good and bad bacteria, we need a variety of foods in.
We should be able to break these down, but when we have those insufficiencies or the imbalance of good and bad bacteria, maybe due to antibiotics or, our different food system – you name it. There’s so many ways for it to be happening. That’s when we start cutting foods out and having a hard time adding them back in.
And, that can create a lot of food fear and everything. And one other thing is coming back to more of these ultimate elimination diets and things like the carnivore diet is when we’re cutting all these carbohydrates out of our diet, carbohydrates, if we look at our cortisol, which is our stress hormone, you need carbohydrates to help balance out that cortisol too, and for our thyroid function, which runs our metabolism.
So one thing I did notice for myself, because I’m a big person on running all my lab work as well as running my clients’ lab work, is when they’re doing these long-term low carb to no carb diets, their thyroid function starts to actually get low thyroid issues. And then that runs your metabolism, and that’s when we start getting the stalled fat loss, the brain fog, the low energy.
So it’s not just about looking at the gut microbiome. It’s also looking at it how is this impacting your body and your hormones because women, we’re different than men. Our hormones are completely different. And what works for one person or for men, it may not work for you.
Lindsey: Yeah. So how do you take someone who only tolerates a few foods and get them back to a more expanded diet?
And I ask this obviously as somebody who sees a lot of people in this situation, and I can think of one client, for example, who we’ve done a lot of gut healing work, but she still can’t tolerate oxalates or histamines because she’s had got interstitial cystitis or any sugar because of what are like candida and vaginal symptoms.
And so it’s not just digestive issues at this point. It’s like external issues. And then I’ve another one who can only eat a very limited diet, and he barely can try any supplements, even the ones that are most indicated based on his test results because he has… It triggers really painful gut episodes and puts him out of commission for sometimes months at a time when he tries a new thing, and yeah, it’s just, it’s hard to… There are some really tricky cases like that I’ve found.
Elizabeth Aylor: Absolutely. I was one of them. I lived off of white rice and chicken for over a decade, and I’ve had people even coming to me down to cottage cheese as being their only food source for, let’s just say, a good year. So I see the struggle there. I take this as an individual perspective.
For someone that, like me, that I had the histamine issue, so my nose was running, I had the eczema, my eyes would water. On top of that, I had all the gas, the bloating. I couldn’t do probiotics, any vegetables. Things would irritate. So when I initially hop on a discovery call with my clients, I ask them so many questions in terms of histamines, our bowel movements, our hormones, and I specifically will run specific tests to figure out what the root cause is.
For example, if someone over here has mast cell activation, they’re not tolerating a lot of foods, where are we living? Is there a possible mold that we have going on? Were we a C-section and were we on multiple courses of antibiotics, and do we blow up before we even drink water in the morning and we just have that six-months-pregnant belly and we can’t go to the bathroom?
Are we burping with a metallic taste in the mouth? That could be H. pylori, so maybe I’ll run a GI map stool test for that individual. So I really look at the whole lifestyle and the specific symptoms that they are going through in terms of constipation, histamine issues, hormone imbalances, antibiotic use, our stools, you name it.
But I never actually treat the test. I actually treat the individual because we know our body, and those tests are just a secondary tool. So I will never just go into a kill protocol with my clients. I look at it a little bit differently, and I think it’s because I went through so much with my health and tried everything that I start with the nervous system.
That plays a huge role, our mind-gut connection. So I look at the environment we’re eating in. Are we eating in a rushed state? Do we have a lot of anxiety around food? Are we a busy mom grabbing on the go? That’s one thing we need to address, the nervous system, ’cause if that’s not fixed, that’s going to impact our body having reactions to food and all of that.
The second key aspect is looking at those insufficiencies. So if an individual is having… They feel like their food’s sitting in their stomach, we can’t go to the bathroom, or they’re feeling nauseous after a meal, adding in maybe specific bitters to help boost stomach acid so we’re getting better breakdown of our food, doing different remedies to start getting our bowels to have that peristalsis, the contraction, to start moving ’cause if you’re not going to the bathroom and it ain’t feeling complete, then that is going to back us up.
Your food is going to ferment, and we’re going to feel even worse. And then I even look at it in a food perspective. So if someone comes to me on two or three ingredients, I’m not here saying, “Okay, let’s expand this diet. Just go to a low FODMAP diet and try it.” I teach them what to eat, when to eat.
Depending on, if we have gastritis and things going on, I am specifically setting up their meals with the right amount of fiber, with the right, gosh, vegetables in there, things that are not going to irritate their gut, and then we’re checking in every single week, and we have an in-between messenger so if they do have an issue, I’m there and I could change what’s going on.
So it’s a very slow step of increasing the food, and I do different things to help teach them how to know if they’re having a reaction to a food, how long it takes- How to slowly expand the diet because you can’t just go add in a, a big volume because you may react, especially since it takes three to four days to have that reaction to a food.
And then the last component, that’s when I really look at the tests, see what’s going on after we got you pooping, the stress down, we got the bloating down. We’re not having fear of food because we’re less reactive. That’s when I would look at, hey, we have this going on, and how can we slowly address it so that you’re not having all of these die-off reactions and feeling horrible and just in a bad place.
And then I bring in probiotics and restore because if we do these things in the wrong way and we’re adding in probiotics when the person’s not going to the bathroom and has overgrowths going on, then that person is going to feel so reactive and not… I feel like they have a lot harder time expanding their diet, and that comes from me having so much fear around food, and I even did…
You know the GAPS protocol? I’m a GAPS practitioner, so I’ve done that extreme where I was making meat stock and living off of eight to 12 cups of meat stock and fermented foods and having histamine reactions and feeling worse on a protocol that’s supposed to heal your gut. So it’s really about that individual.
Lindsey: Yeah. And you mentioned your history involves mold and MCAS. Can you explain a little bit about what that is and then about your story about mold and how you help people with mycotoxins?
Elizabeth Aylor: Absolutely. So when I was a little girl, I had eczema, rosacea from my head to my toe.
I went to every dermatologist. They just put me on steroids, and I didn’t know what to do. Gut health wasn’t a thing back then, and I grew up living in Miami. And I think that my mold started as a little girl, but it was something I didn’t figure out until I got into my 30s. When I ended up in college going through all of these gut issues with the SIBO, the parasites, extreme amounts of H.
pylori, that’s when I started realizing that any time I would have the sauerkraut, the bone broth, all of these fermented foods or high histamine foods, even avocados are another one of them, I would start getting the eczema back all over my head to where I couldn’t stop itching all over my face again. I didn’t know what was causing it.
And other ways that would show is runny nose, signs that you would think are allergies, your eyes watering everywhere, more bloating, higher anxiety. And when I did my gut healing protocol and ended up healing myself, getting rid of the H. pylori and all that, my symptoms went away. But what happened was a few years later, I moved back to Miami from LA, and I got in this nice apartment, but I didn’t know that I was actually getting chronic mold toxicity in this apartment.
So kid you not, within one month I went from perfect digestion, so much energy, feeling amazing, to getting chronic depression. Every food would cause me bloating, nose watering, eyes watering. As soon as I walked into that apartment, I got so deeply depressed that I ended up going to a doctor and they put me on Xanax.
That did not last. I got off of that within a week ’cause I’m like, “I’m not going this route. That’s not it.” I started testing my thyroid. My thyroid started making complete reverse T3, which is the metabolite, up into the 90s, and I figured that out because the doctors weren’t running the right tests.
So I went from big expansion diet, going to the bathroom, gut healed, feeling amazing, to can’t go to the bathroom, chronic anxiety, nose running, eyes, eating down to my white rice and chicken again. And that’s when I went back to school and I became an FDN practitioner*. And I lived in that apartment for two years.
I did not even know really about mold. And once I went through that whole big certification and everything, I tested myself. I had the highest amounts of mold toxicity through my entire body. I have an MTHFR gene mutation, so I have a very hard time detoxing. Another thing is I never sweat. I sweat now, but I never would sweat prior, and I see this as a big thing with my mold clients.
And I ended up healing, detoxing myself. It took a long time to do it from not just the environment, getting me out of the environment. I even got to a place where I felt like I had rheumatoid arthritis throughout my entire body. And I say these signs because I see a lot of women come to me. They don’t know a lot about mold, but they’re like, “I have RA. I have all these issues. I’m having histamine issues going on. I don’t know if it’s my food. I’m doing the bone broths.” And it really takes getting to the root cause and figuring that out.
And one big thing I do want to bring up too, because I figured out my dad actually had mold toxicity, black mold through his whole body. He’s in the construction industry, and his health got so bad that they’re putting him on prednisone and it’s wrecking his immune system, and they didn’t even know what was going on with him. So I figured that out, and I just see so many women that don’t understand why they’re having all these health issues even though they’re eating the cleanest diet.
But one thing I wanted to say is when it comes to testing for mold toxicity, I like to run two tests for my clients. Number one is I always do a mycotoxin test. I love doing it through urine so I can see what the different levels we have of mold in the body are, if they are present. But the second thing is I love doing an OAT test, because you could be living in mold or we could be colonized by mold. I got out of the mold, but I was actually colonized by mold. So I think a lot of my issues with all the histamine issues and the mast cell came from being a little girl living in Florida possibly already being in mold toxicity. And then when I got into the water-damaged building it just brought everything back and heightened it to the next level.
Lindsey: And what markers are you looking at to determine if someone’s colonized? Are you thinking the arabinose markers or just the fungal markers in general or…
Elizabeth Aylor: I I look at the fungal markers, but I also like to look… Sometimes I bring in a full GI Map stool test there, too, to see if we have candida going on.
Because, with mold there’s always things like biofilms, and if we have a lot of dysbiosis in the gut and we have the mold going on, when we break through and start going off of that dysbiosis, that could actually peel, I call it like peeling the onion, peeling the layers, and release more mold.
You could look, get your testing done again after doing a kill protocol. Say you had strep and candida and all of that, and your numbers could be even higher because now we’re opening up the biofilms and bringing out those extra layers as well.
Lindsey: So you’re primarily looking at the OAT to see if there’s candida and gut involvement as well?
Elizabeth Aylor: Yes. I do a GI Map stool test typically when I also do the mold test, too.
Lindsey: Okay. So I’ve been… Yeah I’ve become a reluctant mold practitioner because it, now that I started testing it, I find that 80% of the people actually have it. Now, there’s people who are more and less sensitive, of course.
So I’ve noticed that there are practitioners who very much believe that you have to take antifungals to get rid of it, and then there’s practitioners who believe that binders are sufficient. I’m curious where you fall on that spectrum?
Elizabeth Aylor: Yes. Number one, always coming back to it, I work on first getting our lymphatic system open, getting us sweating again, getting our bowels moving, getting our body able to not be reactive to food.
That is my number one first, before we go into anything. And then I also love to see if we have that MTHFR gene mutation, because that impacts our body’s ability to even detox. When it comes to that, depending on what type of mold we have and how reactive we are, I go into the binders. Sometimes I will start off with something very simple like a charcoal, but that doesn’t get all the different types of mold, but sometimes people can’t do the clays and all of that to begin with.
So I start very low dose on the binder and liver support. I never do one without the other. I’ll never throw liver support ’cause things can start coming. We’ve got to have the binder in there. And then depending again on how sensitive they are, that’s when I go more towards the antifungals.
I don’t typically go the medication route in terms of like the very hardcore medications out there. I haven’t had a client that extreme to where we had to do that. But I love also looking at the dysbiosis because when we do have a lot of gut dysbiosis going on, if we have the binder on, we got the liver support coming in, then when we’re actually going after those specific gut infections that we have, those are also going to be working on, the mold spores as well, as long as we have the right binders going in and making sure that we aren’t living in that environment as well, because you could be over here killing everything, but if you’re still living in it . . .
Lindsey: Yeah
Elizabeth Aylor: . . . then you’re going to keep . . .
Lindsey: The bucket’s getting filled up.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yes.
Lindsey: As you’re pulling it out.
Elizabeth Aylor: You’re going to keep re-poisoning yourself with it.
Lindsey: Yeah. It’s “don’t waste your money”. So what do you, natural products-wise, what do you use as antifungals for mold?
Elizabeth Aylor: It really just depends on the client and what they have with the gut dysbiosis.
I love going more towards… So again, I will go towards, is it GI Assist [I think she meant GI Detox*], the one that has the, gosh, slipping my mind right now. The charcoal in there, it has all the clays. That’s the one that I use for a binder. I love using glutathione*. Sometimes I will even do glutathione injections for my client, just because they’re strong, they go right into the body.
And then I do a mix of things. So sometimes I’ll go more towards things like Biocidin,* the more very strong herbs if we have a lot of gut dysbiosis going, because it actually breaks down the biofilms as well. If someone’s very sensitive, then I may end up just doing single herbs one at a time, low dose, because they’re that sensitive.
But I really love things like Biocidin and stuff just because we get to the biofilms and we start breaking open that layer that’s encasing everything, and then all the bad stuff starts coming out, and then we bind to it, and then we can remove.
Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been using Biocidin a lot with mold. I’m curious how long you think it typically takes people when they finally make it to the full dosing on the Biocidin, like how long do you notice it takes before you see people with a clean retest?
Elizabeth Aylor: Gosh I titrate my clients very slow. I will literally start off, I’m like- Yeah … “Okay, we’re doing two drops today. Three drops.”
Lindsey: Oh yeah. No, assuming they’ve done the whole titration. But once they get to the full recommended dosing, how long does it take?
Elizabeth Aylor: I’ve had some clients where it has taken six to eight months to get rid of the mold, and I’m talking about one of my clients that had breast implant illness. She still had an area in her house that had a little bit of mold in there, and we were doing- … everything to get to it. And at maximum, I had a client take up to a year. I was the person that took up to a year to get there and have clear tests.
Lindsey: Okay. And at what point do you think it’s worth retesting? How long after somebody’s doing the work?
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah. I typically don’t retest a client if they’re still feeling the symptoms. I’m like, if we’re going in the right direction, but we’re still having the symptoms, it’s not time yet. But I do also look at, how we are feeling, because we don’t just want to keep killing everything in our body and keep . . . ‘cause these herbs are very strong.
Lindsey: That’s the dilemma, right?
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah, so it’s kind of okay, we titrate you in. We see how you’re feeling. We make sure that we are supporting, maybe with a spore-based probiotic, because that will also start binding to a mold, or a Saccharomyces boulardii. Make sure the elimination’s good.
We’re able to get more food in. But if we get to a point where we’re starting to feel like the opposite, we’re starting to feel fatigue, things are going the opposite direction, I may pull back dosage or even take time off, and maybe even shift around the herbs. And then I never retest until around at least six to eight weeks off of a protocol, because even if we have gut dysbiosis, I want to make sure that if things are coming back, they’re coming back, we’re retesting, we don’t get a false test as well.
Lindsey: Even for mycotoxins, you think it takes six to eight weeks off the products?
Elizabeth Aylor: I always do that because I rerun a GI Map stool test. Because every time I have a client that has mold, they have a lot of gut dysbiosis happening at the same time.
Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, no, I wish this wasn’t the job, but unfortunately it’s turned into the job because so many people have it, and I just ran my own mycotoxin test and I had three of them.
One of them was described as “can cause increased inflammation and excess mucus.” And I’m like, “That’s my life since I was 15 years old.” I’ve literally had a runny nose since I was 15 years old, and I have no allergies. So I’m so excited to do a mycotoxin protocol on myself and finally get rid of this stuff.
Elizabeth Aylor: It is, and I really love this company. I think it’s called EC3. They have a laundry detergent that you could wash your clothes with that actually gets rid of all the mold spores on it. They have candles that you could burn in the house, too. They have cleaning sprays, too. Everything is super clean, but it gets rid of the mold spores if you are…
So I have some clients that travel a lot. They’re in Texas, they’re over here, and I’m like, “Okay, if we don’t have our air filter for a week, let’s make sure we’ve got our laundry detergent with us,” or if they work in construction, “Let’s get the clothes off and let’s wash it to make sure we’re not bringing those mold spores into the house as well.”
Lindsey: Yeah. No, I think my current house is good. But I’ve lived in some serious… I lived in Costa Rica for a year and a half, and mold actually grew on my clothing that I didn’t wear. That’s how damp and gross it was there.
Elizabeth Aylor: Oh my gosh. I’m surprised you only had three types.
Lindsey: I’ve done rounds of Biocidin, and I’ve done a lot of gut stuff, so I’m sure along the way some of it got. . . you know, and binders too, so it’s the remainder of what’s left.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah, that’s the fun thing about being in this industry, is everything that we learn, we’re able to better ourselves and then also help our clients from everything we go through.
Lindsey: Yeah. I honestly didn’t think I would come up with it, but I have to be realistic. I did live in a house where the basement flooded constantly before I moved here.
Elizabeth Aylor: So yeah. Gosh.
Lindsey: Okay. New topic. How do gut infections like H. pylori, SIBO, or parasites affect body composition?
Elizabeth Aylor: Oh, tremendously. Okay, so I want to come back a second to H. pylori. So H. pylori is a gram-negative bacteria, and this actually lowers your stomach acid. It’s very easily spread. If typically you have it, your husband could have it, ’cause it could be spread through saliva. But when we think about body composition, you hear eat your protein, hit your carbs, hit your fat. It’s one thing to eat the food, it’s another thing to be breaking down and absorbing your food.
Even things like SIBO. SIBO overgrows if we also have low HCl, low stomach acid going on. HCl, our stomach acid, kills off bad bacteria in the gut, but it also breaks down your protein into all of those little amino acids that you need for breaking down your protein to build muscle, for all your neurotransmitters in the brain. So if we have these gut infections going on, you could be eating the cleanest diet out here, but maybe you’re not fully breaking down your food.
Then that’s going to impact your body in terms of not just energy, fatigue, your hair, all of that, but absorbing your nutrients and breaking down your protein to build lean muscle. So I even have so many clients, they come to me because I’m more in that fitness industry, but I have a whole gut perspective of how I work with my clients, and they’re like, “I’ve done the macros. I worked with my clients, but I’m six months pregnant by the end of the day. I feel so bloated, and I just don’t know what to do.” And I have clients literally go from 900 calories to 1,700 calories, losing 25-plus pounds, getting all their energy back, restoring their entire gut by just getting to the root cause and restoring our HCl, our stomach acid, whatever the insufficiencies are, even things like the SIBO.
That plays a huge role. And even just throwing this out there, when we have these gut infections, parasites, SIBO, your gut/brain have such a big connection. So if you feel constantly bloated, you’re eating a clean diet, your pants hurt you ’cause you have so much distension, you don’t know what to eat, you have so much anxiety going on about this, that is going to impact your cortisol in your body.
You’re going to feel more inflamed. It’s going to throw off your hormones. It’s like another stressor going on in the body, and that could even, if we have the dysbiosis, talk about cravings, overeating. So it comes down to a bunch of different things: our ability to break down our food and utilize it, everything from stress, anxiety, and our cortisol.
You could be eating the cleanest diet, but because you have these things going on, it could really be wreaking havoc on your health and your ability to reach your goals in terms of body recomposition, building muscle, losing fat.
Lindsey: Yeah, of course, because if you have cortisol spikes, I’ve recently discovered, your blood sugar of course immediately gets shot upwards from the cortisol release which, yeah, I had a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor on for two weeks, and it was so interesting to see because I always test my blood sugar, and it always tested like 99, 102, that kind of thing. And I’m like, if I had a blood sugar problem, number one, my insulin would be high, which it’s not. It’s perfect. My A1C would be high, which it’s not.
So I’m like, why is my fasting blood sugar always high? Now I know because I’m constantly releasing cortisol. So as soon as my blood sugar drops into the 70s, my body just shoots it up, and then I wake up, my heart palpating, wondering what in the world is going on in the middle of the night that’s made me so nervous.
So this whole experiment got me really attuned to the whole cortisol thing. So one sort of related question then is how do you stabilize your blood sugar enough so you don’t end up having these cortisol releases in the middle of the night? I am eating dinner at 7:00, 7:30, 6:30, whatever. It’s a complete dinner.
It’s well-balanced, that kind of thing. But that doesn’t seem to be good enough. It’s still, my blood sugar’s dropping to sometimes even under 60 at night.
Elizabeth Aylor: Okay. I typically have my clients, if they’re waking up peeing in the middle of the night, like 30 minutes before bed I throw in another meal, even if it’s just a snack with a good amount of protein, some healthy fats and carbs in there.
That helps a lot when it comes to them, but I also make sure we’re getting the right amount of food throughout the day. But I love running a Dutch test because it shows us so much in terms of even estrogen if we’re… Like on mine, for example, when I had all the gut infections, my body was making excess cortisol, but it had very low cortisol clearance, and that’s why I really love the Dutch test ’cause it was able to show me where that missing link was.
And then even utilizing tools, if someone can’t do nightshades, they would not use an ashwagandha, but using different adaptogenic herbs to help on that side with lowering the cortisol. But that meal has been my go-to with so many clients, helping them to sleep through the night. And I even love doing magnesium foot soaks and things to help calm that nervous system right before bed.
Lindsey: What are some good examples of little meals before bed? ‘Cause a protein bar does the job, but boy, I didn’t want to eat that protein bar.
Elizabeth Aylor: Oh, yeah. You’re going to laugh. My favorite meal is literally a can of sardines with avocado on top of it, and I know that sounds crazy. My clients are like, “No, Elizabeth.” I have a client who literally, she goes, “I love having an apple with a couple tablespoons of almond butter.” That’s protein, carbs. Simple. I have some clients that will make a parfait with coconut yogurt, maybe some hemp seeds in there, some berries in there, a little bit of a beef protein powder in there so we get a little bit more protein in there if you want something on that sweeter side.
But I like to aim for at least, 20, 25 grams of protein, a good 10, 15 grams of fat, and at least maybe 15, 20 grams of carbs. It doesn’t need to be a huge meal, especially if you just ate dinner. And one other thing that I felt it truly impacted . . . because I would have horrible HRV. My HRV was like in the 40s.
It’s in the 100s now. And one thing was eating a lot earlier. So I’ll eat my bigger dinner a lot earlier, 4:35, and then throw in that small snack before bed meal, and that’s another thing we could throw in there. And that helped me immediately. Within two weeks I noticed my HRV started trending in the right direction just by shifting that.
Lindsey: Okay. Can you talk a little bit about eosinophilic esophagitis, what it is and its symptoms, and how to heal from it?
Elizabeth Aylor: Absolutely. So EOE, intense swallowing pain we think of it, and we go to the doctor, and a lot of the times, like I had a client with this, and it was so bad she had to drink alcohol every night just to get through her pain.
And what they were doing is they were actually just doing injections right into her throat. She started losing her voice, and they would also try to put her on things like acid blockers and everything. And when you have that EOE, there’s a lot of other things going on. She had gastritis, so inflammation in the gut going on, very low stomach acid.
So when we have things like that, I looked at the insufficiencies as well as the diet, so more of a GERD diet we call it, nothing that’s going to cause acid. But also since she had so much inflammation, we had to calm the inflammation while bringing her stomach acid up slowly. So I didn’t go straight into things like HCl because HCl with someone with gastritis or even a lot of EOE, even though we can have low stomach acid, it could actually flare things up more.
This is why you never follow anybody else’s protocol on social media, because they’re not your body and you can make things a lot worse. You need to work with somebody. But we utilize things like bitters. Those were a big one. Slowly titrating them up, and then also adding in more meat stocks and aloe and DGLs and things to calm the gastritis going on.
She was able to get off of all the throat injections. All of her pain went away within two weeks, and she has been completely pain-free for six months now. We did a whole gut restoration. But I even see a lot of people that have acid reflux, ’cause I know that’s a very common one for a lot of women too, or the intense swallowing pain and all of that, is you go to the doctor and they put you on acid blockers, which actually lower your stomach acid even more, when a lot of the times we have low stomach acid to begin with, and that’s what’s causing a lot of these issues going on.
Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, I know people… I was on PPIs for 10 years. And I have pretty low kidney function. It’s in the 60s, my eGFR, and I’m pretty sure that’s because of that. So definitely not something you should be on long-term, ’cause PPIs, two weeks if that, maybe at the most but that’s it.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah.
Lindsey: Yeah. So is there a way that women should train to better support their hormones versus men?
Elizabeth Aylor: Yes. So I’m going to make this specific for my women 30 plus, because we’re different in our 30s and 40s going into perimenopause than when we are in our 20s. And the big thing that I always look for is longevity.
When we stop the strength training, we are stopping putting that demand on our bones, our ligaments. We want to be able to keep that demand so that when we’re in our 60s, 70s, and 80s, we can squat, we can lift, we don’t get osteoporosis. So I always say with our busy schedule, ’cause a lot of women are busy, focus on three days a week.
Three days a week is going to allow us a weightlifting or something of resistance that you like to do, like Pilates Reformer. Find the one thing you love and that you can be consistent with, and focus on progressive overload. I love doing full body workouts. I make them for all my clients too. Even doing them from home is a great way to support it, and they don’t need to be these big hour, two-hour long sessions.
My clients train 45 minutes maximum. When it comes to cardio, it could be a different, another stressor on the individual, since a lot of women that I see that are coming to me, and you as well, we have the hormone issues, the thyroid issues, the gut issues. We’re running around. We’re stressed out about life.
If our nervous system’s all out of whack, and then you’re over here throwing in Mr. StairMaster and intense HIIT sessions, it’s going to bump up your cortisol. You’re probably going to feel more bloated and not recovered from your workout, and it’s not going to be as effective. So, as we’re getting older, I say shifting more of that focus on, yes, keep the cardio in, but not as intense, and really shift that focus toward the strength training, the longer rest periods so that we’re able to maintain our muscle and build through perimenopause.
Since once we hit mid-40s, for around 10 to 15 years, when we’re having these hormone shifts in perimenopause, we’re losing muscle at a rate of 40 to 50% faster. So that’s why I don’t do diet extremes, because if you’re cutting your calories low, if you’re not eating enough, if you take out the strength training, you’re going to have more muscle loss during that time, and your metabolism is going to slow down, and then you’re going to end up with, I call it skinny fat.
Not the body composition that you want, but if you go to the next level extreme and you’re eating very low calories and pushing the cardio, then that’s going to impact the cortisol, that stress hormone. You’re going to feel more inflamed. You’re going to feel stuck, low energy, not recovered from your workouts, not getting that muscle pump anymore, like almost like your muscles aren’t visible.
And men are completely different with their hormones. When it comes down to it, men could do all the intermittent fasting. I laugh because my clients say, “My husband and son, they fast and they got skinnier, and it just kept me from getting fat.” She was in her 50s, and she eats more food now, and she dropped 25 pounds and she’s in her skinny pants
Lindsey: Yeah. So what do you think about intermittent fasting for women?
Elizabeth Aylor: I do not do it with my clients. If we have a lot of gut issues going on, maybe I’ll do something like 12 hours maximum. But our cortisol, that stress hormone, it’s actually highest in the morning. So by getting that meal in with protein and balanced meal first thing in the morning, it’s going to stabilize your cortisol.
And what’s going to happen is you’re not going to end up crashing midday, you’re not going to end up with cravings at the end of the night and feeling like you’re going ravenous over all the food and that you failed with your diet. When we support our hormones with having that meal first thing in the morning, you’re going to have better digestion, you’re going to have better blood sugar, you’re going to have less cravings, less brain fog, more energy, and it’s going to overall support your hormones. So I don’t do any fasting extremes with my clients.
Lindsey: Yeah. Could you outline a base routine of weightlifting for someone, like a woman in their 40s to 60s?
Elizabeth Aylor: Yes. So I say start off at home. All you need is bands, dumbbells or one of those big exercise balls, ’cause you could utilize that for everything.
And really stick to those compound movements. So if you, say for example, start off with three days of a full body split, we want to make sure we’re hitting a squat movement or a lunge movement. You could do something like a deadlift or an RDL, a shoulder press.
Lindsey: What’s an RDL?
Elizabeth Aylor: So it’s like a stiff leg deadlift, so your legs are stiff and then you’re keeping the dumbbells really close to your legs.
So I really focus on a quad dominant movement, a hamstring dominant movement, a shoulder exercise, a back exercise, and a chest exercise. And then you could throw in a core movement at the end of it, like a plank, and you could just circuit through those five exercises. An example would be, like, you can do squat.
You can do a stability ball hamstring curl. That’s another really good one. You could lay down on your stability ball and do a chest press. Then you can stand up. We could do a shoulder press or an Arnold press, and then do a bent over row. And you could circuit through all of those, and then finish off with a plank, and that’s going to hit your full body.
When you’re just sticking to isolated exercises like bicep curl, tricep extension, you’re not getting as much bang for the buck because you’re working one muscle, as opposed to when you are doing a multi-joint movement, something like a shoulder press. You’re hitting your biceps and your triceps as you’re going up and you’re coming down, and you’re hitting your shoulders, and if you’re standing, you’re getting your core engaged.
So you’re hitting so many things at once. I call it more bang for the buck. It’s more of an effective workout.
Lindsey: What did you say? There was an Arnold press, was it?
Elizabeth Aylor: An Arnold press. So it’s your hands are in front, and then you bring them up and around. So it’s hitting all three heads of your shoulders: your front, your laterals, and your rear delts just in one movement.
Lindsey: Oh, okay.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah. And you could even, if you’re new to this, you could even grab water bottles in your house. Keeping it so simple because that could be a good weight for you. And then you progress. Maybe you grab a five-pound weight. Slowing down the movement if you don’t want to buy heavier weights. When you slow down a movement, it has more time under tension, so you’re going to stimulate muscle hypertrophy by slowing down the tempo.
Lindsey: Yeah. I listen to Huberman Lab, and it seems like every other week he has on a different expert talking about how one should build muscle. And it’s laughable to me because literally one expert will be like, “Low number of reps to failure.” The next one will be like, “No, they should be longer sets …”
It seems like literally everybody has… So I’m curious, what’s your how many reps to failure, how many sets, et cetera? What do you think is the best for everybody?
Elizabeth Aylor: It’s really different based off the individual because if we have things like shoulder injuries or hip injuries or knee pain, I customize all of that to my clients.
If they can’t go heavy load, then we’re going to do isometrics and, if we have SI joint, we’re going to work on TVA to strengthen that. So I really bring that functional and more of also a PT-type approach to it when it comes to building the body. But we need something we can be consistent with too, because if you’re not going to be consistent with the program, it’s not going to be effective.
But if you’re doing a circuit, if we’re going from zero to three days a week. If we can get four or five rounds of that circuit, sticking anywhere from 10 to 12 reps with the last two to three reps being challenging with proper form, that’s a really good start point for women, but not these 30-second rest periods.
You want to give yourself, 60, 90-second rests so that you’re able to lift the same weight going into your next exercise. If you cannot do that, you’re not giving yourself enough time to recover from that exercise. That’s a big thing. I call it cardio strength training.
Lindsey: Yeah. 10 to 12 reps, how many sets?
Elizabeth Aylor: Four to five sets, but it also depends on the style of training. If someone’s training five times a week and doing single muscle groups, but I’m talking to a baseline of the women just starting out right now for doing a circuit of those exercises that I mentioned. If we can get in even four to six rounds of that, you could build up to that with a good, you know . . .
Lindsey: Oh, so are you saying she does one exercise with one muscle, then moves to the next one, and then you’re coming back around again, so you’re starting over… I see.
Elizabeth Aylor: So you can do it as a circuit. Okay. If you’re short on time, that’s a great way to do it.
Lindsey: Okay. Yeah, ’cause the practicalities when you’re in a gym, I go to a gym, you’ve got to get on your machine and then do your sets and then get off it. You can’t be switching around to another machine or you’d be spending, an hour and a half getting on the machine.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah.
Lindsey: Yeah.
Elizabeth Aylor: If you’re going more toward bodybuilding you’ve got to look at the amount of exercises and the total volume over the week. So that’s why it’s so different depending on the individual, but I normally go toward four sets, but I train women sometimes into the power with five reps up into around 12 reps for hypertrophy.
So we get strength, power, and hypertrophy, but we need the baseline first, and we need to build up. You can’t just go super heavy ’cause then you’re going to get injured.
Lindsey: Since we normally talk about gut health on this show, I’m not sure that people know what hypertrophy means. You want to define that for folks?
Elizabeth Aylor: Yes. Muscle hypertrophy, think about it as the muscle growing. So if we’re wanting to build more muscle size, that’s the hypertrophy. Strength is you’re getting stronger. Hypertrophy is the muscle is growing in size.
And different ways of doing that instead of just increasing weight if you have injuries and everything is, slowing down the tempo. And that longer time that muscle is under tension stimulates the muscle growth.
Lindsey: Yeah, I do find that I start to get limited as I get to higher weights. I start to get some tennis elbow on one side or the other. And so it stops me from moving to higher weights. I kind of have to pause at a certain point on a number of different exercises, so that’s a good idea to slow it down.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah. And also making sure you’re stretching and all of that because you know when we’re gripping that heavier weight, all of the gripping is going to create more tightness all in that forearm and everything.
So if we’re not stretching all of that out, that’s going to pull on the elbow. I have a lot of clients that do pickleball, and they got the tennis elbow going on.
Lindsey: Oh, yeah, I played tennis 30 years ago, and basically cannot touch a racket for anything other than Ping Pong ’cause I will get immediate tennis elbow. But it’s been the left one. It’s been the other one more recently.
So I did notice, and I assume this is probably your experience too but just to confirm it, that when I started lifting weights it definitely helped with body composition where I wasn’t expecting it. My belly went down as a result of lifting weights even though I wasn’t doing sit-ups and stuff because I had back issues and I couldn’t mess with that area.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah. I always say cardio, we’re burning calories in the moment, but with the strength training, we’re building muscle and improving our metabolism, so you’re burning more calories overall.
So if we want to burn fat when we’re sleeping, we want to have more muscle, and as we’re getting older, like I said, muscle starts to go down as we age. So everything that we can do to prioritize our gut health, our nutrition with getting the protein in, and even prioritizing the strength training, that’s going to boost your metabolism, and that’s going to give you that body composition change that we’re looking for.
Lindsey: Yeah. I had a friend who told me, “I started lifting weights. I lost 15 pounds,” and I know it’s been many years that she has not done such a thing, so I was like, yeah, that’s proof of concept there for me ’cause, I noticed it, but there were other things happening at the same time that all this happened, so I…
But, I assumed that was what it was because of course you’re going to be burning more. With even more muscles, you’re burning more fat while you’re just sitting there.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah. I eat 3,000 calories a day and people are like, “You must do cardio all the time.” I’m like, “No.” It’s like this is… I just have a lot. I’ve been building muscle for over a decade. Yeah. More than that.
Lindsey: It’s very gratifying to go and do the… I do the InBody at the gym, and I’ve done it three times now and see the muscle percentage going up each time. It’s just a good feeling, and to feel strong to… that’s really, at the end of the day, to like . . .
I have to lift a suitcase and stick it in an overhead bin, and I’m not going to look like some frail old lady who needs the man next to her to help her.
Elizabeth Aylor: No. It’s empowering.
Lindsey: Yeah, it is. It is. I actually enjoy weightlifting. I know a lot of women don’t and they can’t be sold on it, but for me, it’s been fun.
Elizabeth Aylor: We do.
Lindsey: Yeah. So any final thoughts before we head out? And also tell people where they can find you.
Elizabeth Aylor: Absolutely. If you guys are struggling with any gut issues, I have so much free information out there. You can just type in Elizabeth Aylor Fitness on Instagram and YouTube are my two big accounts.
Go to my YouTube though, ’cause I have so much on gut health and hormones. And then I know we’re going to drop in the show notes, I have some freebies of a master class and a meal prep guide, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you ever need help. This is my passion, to heal people, just as it is your passion to heal people that are going through this time with the chronic gut issues and hormone imbalances, and we’re dismissed by doctors.
And you’re not broken, and you’re not crazy. There is a reason why you’re feeling that way, and you can heal your body, but you got to get the right person to help you, the right plan, and you’ve got to believe that you can heal too. The mindset is a huge one.
Lindsey: Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much.
Elizabeth Aylor: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Lindsey: It’s been my pleasure.
Lindsey:
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.
*Product and dispensary links are affiliate links for which I’ll receive a commission. Thanks for your support of the podcast by using these links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.