Explore the Synergies Between Modern Medicine and Ancient Healing with Dr. Stephen Cabral

00:00Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask for you to do is if you could leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else. Now, I want to say that I've run thousands of these labs.

00:30This is one of the best estrogen to progesterone ratios that I've ever seen. Not just saying, like, obviously we're on the show right now. No way. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today's guest, I'm very excited to be on the podcast, is Dr. Stephen Cabral, a renowned board-certified doctor of naturopathy, founder of Ecolife and the Integrative Health Practitioner Institute. He was diagnosed with a serious illness at age 17 and finding no hope in traditional treatments.

01:01Dr. Cabral turned to a blend of Atrient's Ayurvedic methods and modern naturopathic and functional medicine. So this journey not only led to his recovery, but also shaped his approach to wellness and what he preaches today. And now leading a successful online practice with over 250,000 client appointments. He specializes in functional medicine and personalized wellness plans, tackling a range of complex health issues. And today I'm very excited for him to be here. I'm going to pick his brain on a functional medicine, his book, The Rain Barrel Effect.

01:34And he is also going to read my at-home stress, mood, and metabolism results. And if you guys are interested in taking this test at home, you can do so by going to StephenCabral.com forward slash macros. That link will be in the description below. But welcome, Dr. Cabral. I'm super excited for you to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Awesome. So I just want to like dive right into it. I want your take. Can you explain what like functional medicine is first and foremost, and then how it differs from traditional medicine?

02:10For sure. So functional medicine, or maybe what we like to call it more as integrative health, is a divergence from conventional medicine, but not in the way that we actually know about the human body and science. So a lot of people think like, oh, well, either go with conventional medicine if you want to follow a science, or you go over to integrative health or functional medicine maybe, if you want to follow something else, not really based on science. But it's actually not that way. So, you know, with your nursing background and with medical school, whatever you're studying, the first couple of years, you just take all of the same courses, toxicology, kinesiology, anatomy, physiology, oncology.

02:51I always call it all of your ologies. It's the study of all the different parts of your body. So, okay, we take that, but then conventional medicine for the next couple of years studies pharmaceuticals, and they study the disease pathology and how pharmaceuticals can actually intervene to essentially mask or block all of those symptoms. And as a doctor of naturopathy, what we do is we then move on to say, instead of using drugs the last two years, instead of using drugs, what if we used herbs? What if we use diet? What if we use exercise?

03:21What if we use nutritional supplements? What if we use all these other modalities we have that we wouldn't do if we had pharmaceuticals to use? And so that's the major difference is that we look at the human body and health. We understand the body in the same way. We go about fixing it in two different ways. In my opinion, conventional medicine is needed for acute-based care and emergency medicine. So I know your background, you worked in emergency, right? Like you need that. You know, if I lose a finger or I'm having a heart attack, I need emergency care, not naturopathic medicine.

03:53Like that's just the truth. Now, ideally, I get that person a year later or a few months later, right? And so what I'm working on is never having that heart attack in the first place. An injury, I can't help, right? Like we all get injured and that's what we need, emergency care. But honestly, everything is being treated right now as chronic-based conditions with masking it for symptoms when all of them have an underlying root cause and can be fixed. And if all you do is continue to take the pharmaceutical, you'll always have the disease.

04:23You're just masking the outward symptoms. With naturopathic medicine or integrative health, you don't use pharmaceuticals. You don't mask the symptoms. You get the underlying root causes where a healthy person can't be sick. Okay. So to dive a little bit deeper on that, thank you for the answer. I love it. Why do you think functional medicine is not more widely practiced in hospital settings? Like outside of the ER, right? When you go to the floor, why isn't more of that this, what you're saying here, taught and practiced outside of the ER in other departments?

05:01Yeah. So the ER will always have to be conventional medicine. And so like that's an acute circumstance. If it's lifesaving, we have the best doctors and nurses in the world and a lot of them in the United States. And I'm very happy to have that, that we have emergency medicine. We need that. We also need like all the advanced testing. So I'm not saying we don't like there's a time and place for both conventional medicine and integrative health or functional medicine. There really is. Why aren't more people doing functional medicine? Well, it's not taught in medical school.

05:32And the reason it's not taught is that medical school is driven by insurance. And insurance says we need to get the most amount of patients in in a day with a very simple formula of run blood work. If it's high, out of range, give X, Y, or Z pharmaceutical. If that pharmaceutical does not do what it's supposed to, use the next pharmaceutical. That's the entire system. And I find this so hard to believe because we have some of the most brilliant people in the world in the medical industry as medical doctors, general practitioners, specialists, and nurses.

06:09And they are like robots running labs and giving out pharmaceuticals, giving out drugs. Like they're using all their brilliance for that. That's why they're going to be replaced by AI really quickly because there's no real art to that whatsoever. It's come in with A and leave with B. Where functional medicine is, oh, you have high cholesterol, you have high blood pressure, you have low thyroid. All right, let's just say you have low thyroid. I bet there's one out of five women have functionally low thyroid.

06:40So their TSH might be, let's say, instead of being a 0.5 to a 2, they might be a 2.5 or 3. And their endocrinologist or their doctor says, everything looks good, no problem. And you might say, but I'm dealing with thinning hair, dry skin, cold hands and feet, low mood, low libido, brain fog, all symptoms of low thyroid. Yet conventional medicine says you're fine until you move out of a 5.0 range. Instead of it being 0.5 to 2.5 or 2, they're from 0.5 all the way up to 5.

07:12And so even if you're out of range, they just give you essentially levothyroxine or some type of medication. But the truth is, you might have high levels of cortisol. There's about 12 different reasons why women may have low thyroid. Might be high cortisol, might be low vitamin D, might be high levels of aluminum or mercury or arsenic or cadmium, might be low selenium, zinc, iodine, B6. So what we do in functional medicine or integrative health is we actually look for what are the reasons why a woman or a man might have low thyroid instead of just giving them the pharmaceutical.

07:45But that is not covered by health insurance. It takes a little bit extra time. And it takes me getting to know you a little bit better. It's a much deeper relationship between patient or wellness client and practitioner rather than just, hey, how's it going? Here's your blood work. It's conventional medicine is very transactional. There's no real relationship. Yeah, I love it. Spot on. And especially to the point with like addressing the symptoms rather than the root cause and just like one pharmaceutical after the next pharmaceutical. However, it's now and I'm interested to hear your take on this.

08:20And I think you mentioned in your book, too, as well, you know, the future of functional medicine. Like how does the rain barrel affect? Let's transition in talking about your book. But how does that contribute to this vision? Like where do you see functional medicine going? So it's funny. I wrote that book, which is still as viable today as it was a few years back. But it's even it's progressing even faster. So with machine learning and artificial intelligence, we're going to be able to use that for good, not for evil.

08:50And so right now, functional medicine has the ability to use precision based health, meaning that besides your blood work is great. You should run your blood work every six months if possible, if not once a year, every 12, every 12 months. But it doesn't cover everything. It doesn't look at gut health. It's not looking at heavy metals. It's not looking at cortisol throughout the day. It's not looking at food sensitivities. It's very rarely looking at omega three to omega sixes. It's not looking at inflammation. So there's a lot that you're missing. So what conventional medicine doesn't tell you is that you're missing all of the things to look for the underlying root causes.

09:24So what we now have the ability to do is ship a lab to anyone in 27 countries around the world for you to take that lab right at home with a urine sample, hair sample or blood spot from the finger. So not a blood draw because nobody likes to have their blood drawn or with a missing saliva. And then you ship that back to the lab. You get your results. The results are sent to you an easy to understand plan. You get a coaching call along with that and a personalized plan.

09:55That's real integrative health and functional medicine. That means you're not getting a plan where your sister or brother had, your parents had, your friends had, your gym buddy had. You're getting one that's built for you. That's your nutrition, everything that you need. So that's what you can get right now. Now with machine learning and artificial intelligence, well, we are one of the largest, if not the largest at-home lab provider in the world with Equal Life. And we have well over a half a million labs. And we use a HIPAA compliant, totally anonymized system.

10:27So when we get it into our system, it just looks like ones and zeros. So it's just data. That's it. Like not attached to anybody. But we can actually see all the precursors ahead of time to what leads to autoimmune issues, what leads to poor longevity factors down the road. So we're going to be able to do predictive analytics as to what may come in your future if we don't rebalance X, Y, and Z. And we'll be able to tell people 10, 20 years out before it's even a worry.

10:58So I find that to be dramatic. I mean, amazing. And you can only do that with a supercomputer that can run. For example, one of our labs, the Candida Metabolic and Vitamins Test, has 77 biomarkers. All right. Well, like I don't want to do the math here, but what's 77 biomarkers times 100,000 labs that we have of that? That's a lot of data, right? A lot of numbers that it's able to crunch within seconds. So I'm excited for that and what it means for all of us. Yeah, that's incredible. I'm excited for that, too, as well. There's so much to this that the future is just seeming so bright for, one, the personalization of how nitty gritty you can get with a client that you work with.

11:36But also, too, getting down to the root, like getting down to what is the actual, like, cause going on and how can it be addressed and fixed through eating right, moving your body, you know, not just taking medicine to fix the problem going on. So love it. In your book, too, as well, you address the impact of stress and lifestyle on health. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, how do you address it in the book, the impact of stress and lifestyle? Yeah. Yeah. So for the first half of the book, The Rain Barrel Effect, the first half is how we get sick and why.

12:12Because it's important to know why you got sick in the first place or even just why you feel lower energy, lower me, lower mood, lower ambition, lower drive, lower libido, all the lowers, right? Like, why do you feel that way? Because it doesn't happen just because of age. Because so I got sick at 17 years old. It took to 27 to get well. And it's because I didn't have the information that we have today. Okay. But now I'm in my mid 40s. I have way more energy and feel way better than I did today, even as a teenager before I got sick. So why is that? Well, as a teenager, I still had allergies, digestive issues, food sensitivities.

12:45I had, like, heavy metals. I had all these issues that I didn't know about. Okay. So we figure out what are those things that are keeping us from becoming well. And we can find those in an at-home lab test and, of course, as well. And the second half of the book is how to get well. That's the de-stress protocol we use in my practice. It's diet, exercise, stress reduction, tox removal, rest, and sleep protocols. It is emotional balance. It's scientifically backed supplement protocols. And it's a success mindset. So if we look at that stress, emotional balance, mindset, that's three out of the eight, are all dedicated to essentially reducing stress and balancing overall healthy emotion in our life.

13:23And it's because it's so important because you can weaken your immune system, throw off your stress, increase stress hormones like cortisol, lower progesterone, especially in women, lower testosterone for men if they get more stressed, and lower thyroid in both men and women just from stress alone. Plus, it can cause gut-based issues, slow digestion, which can lead to potentially SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth with ileocecal valve dysfunction, all these different things. And it all comes from stress.

13:54So when we look at that, there's actually a name for it called the neuro-endoimmune system or function. So the nervous system, that's stress based on the body, that's fight or flight, can cause a disruption in hormones, that's the endocrine system, endo, which then affects our immune system that can lead to autoimmune or other factors. So it's pretty profound. And again, conventional medicine will never talk about stress being implicated with real dis-ease in the body. Yeah.

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15:03Look, don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com forward slash apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com forward slash apply. All right. Let's get back to the show. Okay. So question for you. Based off of like the women that we serve, we have women that are like 45 to 65 years old inside of Warrior Babe. And we have a coaching team that has a roster of upwards of like 50 to 60 clients on their, on their, who they coach, how they coach.

15:39And one of the, like a lot of women come to us with hormonal problems, thyroid being off, stress, cortisol being high and elevated. And a lot of them are coming in not eating enough food. However, the big one too, as well is like, they want to be on low carb and, or they want to be intermittent fasting. And can you just talk a little bit about what's your take on that? How do you feel about that? Especially with women with those precursors that are going on. And then you throw them at this with their diet to follow.

16:13How is that going to help them? I agree. It's the problem is, is that we have to look at the body as a very finely tuned machine and organism that, especially in women, responds to stress in a very systematic fashion. So for example, let's say that a woman is experiencing a higher level of stress. Well, we know that in a woman's body, she will most likely begin to increase cortisol.

16:45She'll most likely begin to decrease progesterone because more of that will be shunted towards cortisol. And she'll end up with something called estrogen dominance. Now that'll never be seen on regular blood work because it's about the ratio. So they'll still be within okay ratios of estrogen and progesterone, but they'll have all the symptoms of high estrogen and low progesterone. So it will look like increased water retention, lower mood, overwhelm, anxiety, adult-based acne, oilier skin and hair, the colder hands and feet.

17:17We'll start to see that. And we also may start to see disrupted sleep and lower thyroid over time. Lower thyroid will be the creeping up of the TSH, the thinning of the hair, the drier skin, the lower mood, the brain fog, even weaker digestion. And so what we want to be able to do is understand that everything is a stress. So lack of sleep, that's a stressor. So like we're trying to work more and more output, less sleep. Okay, that's a stressor. We're trying to fast more than ever. That's a stressor.

17:47We're trying to do cold plunges and saunas. Okay, that's a stressor. We're trying to do hard workouts, HIIT, Metcon, boot camps, et cetera. That's a stressor. And now we're taking down our diets as well. Our calories were becoming hypocaloric. Now the body's like, oh, and you're not giving me enough food. And now it's a greater stressor. So how can we be surprised when women's hormones become dysfunctional and they end up with fertility issues or even PCOS, et cetera? Well, the stress load is too great. And the body is responding exactly with what it knows to do.

18:19So then how can food help that? How can eating right help that? Yes, I'm sorry if I missed that the first time. So the eating right tells the body that even though we have a decent amount, we have a lot of stress, we have the fuel to be able to combat it. Right? And so if you tell me, yeah, okay, I'm getting enough calories, but I'm missing a whole macro group. I'm missing all my carbs. Okay? Well, the body knows that in fight or flight, it needs glucose. There's this misnomer that it's fine using ketones.

18:52It's not. Like that is not it at all. And I would actually say being in a long-term keto-based diet for women is very detrimental. I don't think women's bodies were meant, neither were men's as well. But women's are far more fine-tuned. The reason is, is that they need to carry on life. Not just their life, but be able to reproduce the human species as well. And so if they're at a point where they believe that if their body believes it's starving at all, it won't get pregnant. That's just, that's what we've seen that in our practice for many, many years now.

19:23So being able to find out the right, now I'm not saying everybody needs 150 carbs a day, but finding out the right amount of carbs to proteins to fat, keeping that balanced and being well nourished, not just macros, but also with micros, which I'm happy to talk about, is really how we keep a person's body safe. Amazing. You're becoming my best friend, Dr. Kural. I love the fact that you're on this podcast right now, sharing this insight, because it's nice. For me, I totally preach all the things that you're saying. Macronutrients, follow a balanced diet. We want to heal from the inside out.

19:54Rather, it doesn't really, like aesthetics are beautiful. Great. We all get in this to want to see a better image of our body. However, how you're functioning on the inside is what's going to create the longevity for your life, the muscle that you build, the longevity, the organ of longevity that Dr. Gabriel Lyons says. So it's like, I love that you're saying all this stuff because it's like I can say it, but like having somebody else share this insight is just beautiful, too, as well. So, okay, let's, I want to pick your, I know we're going to dive into my lab results and I'm very excited and nervous to hear what these are to be said, the outcome of them.

20:28But you did mention a little bit earlier how there's different types of hormone testing available, such as urine, saliva, blood tests. How do they differ and which is better for accurate results? That's a great question as well. So I still love blood work. So it's really not that I don't. I use the blood work to look at more complete blood count, which looks at your red blood cells, white blood cells, et cetera, cholesterol, lipid panels. So good cholesterol, bad cholesterol. I'm using that in air quotes just for today's show.

20:59And we look at all the like major functions of the body because you want to make sure that there isn't actually a disease state, right? So that's very important. But then when we look at functional medicine lab testing, so at-home lab testing, we have to understand is that you still, regardless of what some labs say, you can't use a hair mineral analysis. You can't use that minerals and metals test to find parasites. Like no matter what, that data is not accurate. So even the natural health field, we need to be realistic about what's actually possible. So in your hair, we're going to look for minerals and we're going to look for heavy metals.

21:33Because we know that for decades now, they've been using clinical-based research for, believe it or not, in pregnancy to look for heavy metal excretion through the hair, very safe way to look for it. Or they use this for FBI testing, drug testing, so much more. Because we know that the hair is a protein that catches what's excreted by the body. So we look for specifically minerals and heavy metals. For saliva, it is one of the very best ways, if not the best way to look at free levels of hormones. So not what's bound up within the blood, but actually free levels of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and cortisol.

22:10It's one of the best ways to also test cortisol throughout the day. Unless you're going to go in to get your blood drawn four times in one day, you can't measure your cortisol curve throughout the day. Cortisol should be high in the morning between 6 and 8 a.m. And then start to lower through the day goes on. And you actually want to know, probably the most important time to know your cortisol is before bed. And we're going to review yours today as well. Most important number, even more important in the morning. And then looking at thyroid, okay, thyroid is best tested with the blood. So we can actually use capillary blood. And that's the difference. You can't use capillary blood quite yet for a lot of other blood like CBC or complete blood count.

22:46But you can use it for thyroid hormone. Very accurate. We use, again, FDA-rated facilities. These are CLIA-certified labs, all third-party tested. So it's at the highest level possible. And then for gut testing, you want to use either the urine or stool testing. To look for fungus, mold, candida, bacteria, parasites, and H. pylori, which is a bacteria as well. Beautiful. Thank you for explaining that. I was very intrigued to know the difference of that. Because when you go to a doctor, they just test your blood. That's just one marker at that said given time and day.

23:17Whereas saliva, like you were sharing, it depends on the, as you go throughout the day, the results that show up, especially for cortisol. Blood is also the last place for anything to go wrong. I think that's important to know too. So blood's a homeostatic fluid. If your body's low in calcium, it just pulls more calcium from your bones or from your, like whatever it needs from the food. If your body's low on anything, it usually will rob it from other areas in order to maintain a level consistency. So that's why it's not the best first place to go. That's why it diagnoses disease.

23:49That's why things can also be found five, 10 years earlier with at-home labs that don't look necessarily for the disease state, but the underlying mechanisms of that. Interesting. Okay. Can you give us an overview on what you're going to be reading with this at-home lab? What it entails? Like what the specific aspects of the stress, the mood, the metabolism, like what does it examine? And then we can get into, into these results here. Yeah. So we are going over the first part of basically, we're looking at the estrogen progesterone, estrogen progesterone ratio, which I'd love to explain that a little bit more.

24:27That goes back to the estrogen dominance. Believe it or not, in our practice, we see like eight out of 10 women with some level of estrogen dominance. And now it could be because they're coming into our practice with already in the balance. There's no doubt about that. But it's probably the biggest thing that isn't being talked about or those symptoms that I just spoke about with the lower mood, lower energy, disrupted sleep, oily your skin or adult-based acne, potentially thinning of the skin and bloating around the last seven to 10 days of their menstrual cycle.

24:58So that's essentially the symptoms of estrogen dominance and a lot of what might be referred to as PMS or something like that. So really important factor there. We look at DHEA and testosterone. These are for both men and women. So this is, you know, men and women look at these numbers specifically because men and women have different levels, but that doesn't mean they don't have all some of these. And then we look at cortisol. Your morning AM sample from when you wake up is cortisol is that energy and stress-based hormone. Then we look at it at noon, around dinnertime, and then before bed.

25:30And so that's what we're going to look at on your lab here today. We do also offer the lab that I know that we're going to offer to your community that tests thyroid, the TSH. So usually it goes over free T3, free T4, TSH, TPO antibodies. And then it looks at vitamin D and it looks at your insulin and hemoglobin A1C for blood sugar. So those are all usually part of the overall test. That's the second half. I actually, I would love to be able to upgrade your lab to that. So what I'm going to do is make sure you get all of those numbers, but I can explain it here today.

26:03And we're going to go through all of your hormones and stress hormones for right now. Okay. Amazing. Well, the floor is yours to reading these results, Dr. Cabral. All right. So this is really straightforward. They come in. Obviously, all of this is completely private. I want to mention that as well. So essentially, I operated two locations in Boston, Massachusetts, two wellness centers. And we did this every single year with 20,000 people. We had typically 20,000 appointments a year.

26:35So we're over 250,000 people. And we said, a lot of people want to get access to this. How can we bring it globally? So that's what we did. So I hired a medical doctor, a medical director in all 50 states. We have them overseas as well. And so none of this, I'm all sharing this with you because everything is kept private. People are always worried about privacy. And I agree. I think you should worry about that. This is not shared with your medical doctor. It's not shared with your insurance. It's not shared with anybody else. So Equal Life gets the information, the lab running your results, and you.

27:06That's it. It's like a triangle of only those specific things. Okay. So how it comes in then is a graph. And the graph isn't even like that hard to read. It basically shows like red out of range, yellow, not optimal, and then green optimal. And then we start to look at the overall health of the individual and the ratios. So for you, I'd love to take you top to bottom if that works from estrogen all the way down to cortisol. Yeah. All right. Perfect. So we'll go over the first couple. So I don't know.

27:37This actually matters. For women, you want to run the lab. If you do have a menstrual cycle around day 19, 20, or 21, did you run that at like the peak of your luteal phase? Yes, I did. I marked it on my calendar. Perfect. Now that's going to give you the most accurate reading. So if you're ever feeling any of those symptoms that I spoke about before, your symptoms should be greatest probably during that period of time. And then what we're going to do is we're going to look at, well, what did your estrogen to progesterone ratios look like? Now, usually, I do a lot of these readings.

28:09Again, we run hundreds of thousands of labs. Your estradiol should be between a 0.5 and a 1.2 during this phase, the luteal phase. And your progesterone should be between a, they say 75 to 270, but really you want it above a 150. Yours was a 179. So you have a 0.9 for estradiol and a 179 for progesterone with a progesterone to estrogen ratio of 199. And you want it above a 100. Now, I want to say that I've run thousands of these labs.

28:43This is one of the best estrogen to progesterone ratios I've ever seen. Not just saying that, but obviously we're on a show right now. No way. Yeah. Why? Your hormones, we're going to get to the rest of your hormones, but besides DHEA, which we're going to talk about, all of your hormones are very balanced. And it could be because you're getting adequate sleep, the right food, the right exercise, your body. And now I wish I had your thyroid. I'm a little upset I don't, but we're going to get that. Your body right now, from what I can see, we're going to get to the, there's one marker

29:17off. So I want to talk about that. But your hormones are very dialed in. And so obviously that's kudos to you for doing a lot of the right things in life. There's no doubt about that. It has to be. Amazing. I sleep like a baby. I, my HRV is like 145 to 150, max 200. And my heart rate gets down to like 35 to 40. When I sleep, I sleep like that. There's a lot of jealous people out there right now, including my dad. That is it. Those are incredible numbers. Thank you. Even when I was six years old, I have no doubt my HRV was not 140.

29:47There's no doubt about that. Good for you. Thank you. All right. So now that we know your estrogen and progesterone are dialed in, and again, most women's won't be. So I just, you're not the average case study here. Your testosterone, we want between a 16 and a 40, and yours is a 29. So I think that that's excellent. You know, the higher we go above 40, the more territory we get into in terms of PCOS or higher androgenic based effects. So yours is natural, perfectly healthy at 29. And then your DHGA, though, is a 1.6.

30:20So we want that between a 6 and an 18. So obviously 1.6 is very low. Now we have to look at this as part of the overall cumulative part of the test. And we can say, okay, was it 1.6 because DHGA is basically a pro-hormone or precursor to testosterone, to estrogen, to balancing cortisol and progesterone. Now, this snapshot in time, DHGA may have just lent itself to the others. Dihydroepiandosterone is DHGA.

30:52And it could be. It's kind of like when you are trying to fill up, let's say that you have got a jug of water and you've got six glasses that you want to fill up. Well, the jug of water is like pregnenolone or DHGA. And DHGA pours itself out for the other hormones. And so at that moment, you may not have just refilled. That's literally possible. So your hormone cascade goes from cholesterol down to pregnenolone, down to DHGA. And DHGA essentially balances testosterone and estrogen below it and to the other side,

31:25progesterone and cortisol. So I don't know that I have a big issue with this because if there was an issue really downstream, you would see low testosterone or you would have seen low progesterone or maybe and or estrogen. And I don't see that. So I don't see it as an issue. And therefore, I wouldn't supplement with it. But I would also put a little pin in it and have you rerun this in four to six months. Okay. All right. Now, your cortisol in the morning should be between six and nine.

31:57And yours is a 6.4. So I would ask you, it's not bad. Nothing wrong with that ratio, that number, but it's on the low end. So do you wake up a little groggy, a little sleepy? Or do you feel pretty much ready to go without caffeine? No. Yeah. A little groggy, a little sleepy. And I need the caffeine to wake me up. Okay. And that's just that probably little bit of cortisol in the morning, which you'd feel a much more, you'd feel much more awake if it was a seven and a half, like a 7.5 or an eight. Yeah. Not necessarily pinned to the top nine or 10 or even greater, but just a little bit

32:29more. And we use a product called Adrenal Energy Support, just like it says. It has rhodiola, eleuthero, licorice root, a lot of great herbs. Now, you don't need to use this, but it is actually something to just know, like, oh, I might need a little bit of a boost. But I'm going to share with you why. Again, I wouldn't even start there yet. Your lunchtime cortisol should be between a one and a two, and it's a 1.9. So it's great. Your dinnertime cortisol should be between basically a 0.6 and let's say a 1.6 and you're

33:03a 1.3. So good, but starting to come up a little bit at night, which, you know, we don't necessarily want. And then before bed, it's a 0.9. Now, it should be a 0.5 or less. And that actually matters. So again, when I listen to it, so functional medicine, integrative health is different than conventional medicine. If you were out of range, we would just give you Ambien or Lunesta or a sleeping pill, right? But that's what we want to do. So I would listen to you. I'd listen to your story and say, oh, amazing HRV, amazing drop in heart rates.

33:36Great. Probably get great deep sleep and REM sleep if you're tracking those. Do you get about an hour and a half of deep and about two hours of REM? Sometimes I can get three hours of deep. Usually I'm more deep than I am REM. Okay. So do you get two hours of REM though? Give or take. Yeah. Usually I would have to look back at my aura, but yeah, usually an hour and a half to two to two maybe. Okay. Sorry. Well, two hours is okay. So basically think of it this way. Deep sleep is to repair the body and REM sleep is to repair the mind.

34:09So, and deep sleep is usually the first half of the night and REM sleep the second half of the night. But of course they do drop it in different levels. It's just what we typically see in practice. So usually when someone has above a 0.5, they have wakes throughout the night, not enough deep sleep, not enough drop in body temperature, all of those things. So usually we would recommend something called the sleep help support protocol. We would do journaling before bed or meditation or resonance breathing or something to calm that fight or flight to move them into the parasympathetic nervous system.

34:42So for you, I would say is even though it shows 0.9, which is accurate, you still switch that off very quickly when you get into bed. Now, what that might mean is that you've got a lot on your mind up until bedtime, but then your body's really good at shutting off. Most people's bodies are not good and minds at shutting off. Yours just seems to be very good. And the reason I make that assumption is because at dinnertime, your cortisol is starting to come up a little bit. And at bedtime, it's definitely up. So am I right? I mean, again, I don't need to be right, but is it a factor that you might have a lot of

35:16to-dos and things to get done before getting to bed? Yes, 100%. Oh, yeah. That list doesn't stop. I have tons of it, but somehow, yeah, I don't worry about it or stress about it when I fall asleep. Yeah. And that's great to see. I mean, that really is. So usually then my recommendation would be something called the 3-2-1 bedtime routine. And it's basically three hours before bed, no eating. So we turn up the digestion, not turn it off, but we allow the food to become digestion. Two hours before bed, no more water.

35:47So we don't wake up during the night and have to urinate. And one hour before bed, no more blue light, no more screens. And we try to just relax more. So if you are watching TV, you just put on blue light blocking glasses that you start to shift more to that parasympathetic. And if people can't make it happen one hour before bed, 30 minutes before bed, again, journaling, meditation, resonance, breathing, reading a good book, not maybe like a fiction-based book to just kind of put their mind more into slumber mode.

36:17You're already doing great. So I don't necessarily know that I need to make the recommendations of some magnesium before bed. We use full-spectrum magnesium or calming magnesium. We use a product called Sleep Help Support. We use Adrenal Soothe to kind of calm cortisol levels. But with you, again, I would look to say, can we do something lifestyle-wise as well as the 3-2-1 bedtime formula in order to be able to help you get into better range? Okay. Amazing. That's awesome. These are good to read. Is that the last one?

36:48Yeah. Cortisol was the last one. Yeah. So that was the last one. So then usually the add-ons that we add are free T4, free T3, TSH, and TPO antibodies. And so when you go to your conventional medicine doctor, they usually run TSH. But TSH just means thyroid-stimulating hormone. It actually does not tell you in any way, shape, or form how much thyroid you're producing. And that's why it's a huge issue, in my opinion, with endocrinology is that if you're not running

37:20free T4 or free T3, how do you know how much thyroid hormone you're actually producing? And so what we see in our practice is sometimes people are higher on TSH and they look good on T4, but they're not making enough T3, which is why the body keeps calling for more thyroid hormone. And free T3 is actually 70% of all usable thyroid in the body. And thyroid actually helps you to boost metabolism, metabolic rate, improve circulation. It helps all of the homeostatic thermostat regulators in the body.

37:54So really important. It also works with what's called leptin and ghrelin to make you feel satiated and to tap into more body fat rather than store body fat. We know that if you're lower in thyroid, you start to gain more weight around the waist and the hips, especially if cortisol is elevated in the evening. So it'd be the only thing I kind of mentioned for you as well. If you see yourself retaining a little bit more water, it can also be from the elevated cortisol a little bit later in the day. Now, remember, retaining water is not the same as body fat.

38:24And it's really important. And I know that you, I'm sure you teach this as well, but like that is stress-based water retention or estrogen dominance or even low thyroid. And it's important to denote that because sometimes women and men are trying to like really deplete themselves too much and they'll never lose the inflammatory water weight. And so you don't lose that until you actually decrease the inflammation imbalance for hormones. So the lab shows thyroid. It shows all that. It shows vitamin D. That's crucial anytime in the year.

38:55And then it shows your insulin levels, which is important for fat burning. If you have high insulin and high hemoglobin A1C, well, you're not going to be tapping into body fat as well and be able to transform the body. Yeah. I love that you just added that. That's so important to distinguish between all of those different, like, especially when women step on the scale, right? And they see an influx of either the number going up, but yet it could be related to this water retention, something internally going that's different that needs more addressing. And so I'd love that you add that plug. So all great stuff here.

39:28How often, I know you recommended like reading, redoing this every four months. How often should one take this test and monitor for stress, mood, and metabolism? So let's say that you were the average individual and you came in and you had a couple of things imbalanced. You had maybe low DHEA, but you also had low testosterone and low progesterone. We see that quite often. And so I would say, okay, we're going to put you on a 12 to 16 week protocol. It's the whole diet, exercise, stress reduction, tox removal, rest, science-backed supplements,

40:01all that good stuff. And then we're going to retest after being on this for 12 weeks. And so what it allows us to do then is to say, oh, okay, we've got you back in range. Perfect. Now let's wean down on some of those nutritional supplements so that we can hit back to a baseline. Or we retest in 12 weeks and we say, oh, everything looks good except that DHEA that's still not rebounding. That's interesting. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to wean down on these and actually then bump up this a little bit. And so what we can do is we can continue to custom tailor a person's protocol based on

40:35their unique needs as to where they're at. So most people run these labs twice a year. So like if you're just kind of looking for generalities every six months, it's a great time to be able to run them and get because remember, our bodies aren't static, right? Our needs change based on a non-static environment that we live in. So if your exercise changes, your stress changes, your sleep changes, your diet changes, well, then the way that you support your body may need to change as well. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for reading those and letting me know that awesome information.

41:07I appreciate it. I'm excited to test that 3, 2, 1. I'm going to definitely give it a go, see if I can help the cortisol at night. And guys, if you guys are listening to this and you're interested on this, definitely go to stephencabral.com forward slash macros and check out this test. Dr. Cabral, I appreciate you being here so much on this podcast today and your insight and your knowledge. Thank you so much. It was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on. Real quick. The only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident.

41:39And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask for you to do is if you could leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else. Thank you.

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