Ep. 176-Dr. Wendy Trubo's Guide to a Healthier, Stress-Free Existence

Embark on a journey to uncover the subtle yet profound ways stress shapes our existence with Dr. Wendy Trubo, a guiding light in the world of integrative and functional medicine. This conversation is a deep dive into the hidden corners of well-being, where the ripples of our daily lives, from the thoughts we entertain to the meals we enjoy, impact our body's intricate systems. Grasp a newfound appreciation for the complex dance between genetics, epigenetics, and the environment, as Dr. Trubo masterfully illustrates with case studies like celiac disease – demonstrating how each thread weaves into our unique health tapestry.

We eased out the symbiotic relationship between our gut, stress, and overall health – what I like to call the 'holy triad'. Dr. Trubo and I dissect the vital connections our microbiome has with every bite of food, every stressful moment, and even the air we breathe. You'll learn why a quiet meal might just be your digestive system's best friend and why detoxing your life extends beyond what's on your plate. It's not all about probiotics and green smoothies; it's about the air you breathe, the company you keep, and the boundaries you set.

This episode isn't just about understanding the problems; it's about proactive steps towards a positive existence. We tackle the tough stuff – from setting healthy boundaries in all walks of life to navigating the nuanced world of parenting in an age where technology rules the roost. Dr. Trubo's insights on maintaining balance and accountability with our children will resonate with parents striving to blend love with logic. And because your environment matters as much as your mindset, we delve into the less talked-about world of toxicity and its stealthy impact on our health, offering up a guide to a cleaner, more mindful way of living that might just change everything. 

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Jason Wasser Therapist/Coach
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The Family Room Wellness Associates
Certified Neuro Emotional Technique Practitioner 
🎧Host:You Winning Life Podcast
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the you Winning Life podcast your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode will be interviewing exceptional people giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology and entrepreneurship so you, too, can be winning life. Now here's your host licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner and certified entrepreneur coach, jason Wasser.

Speaker 2: 0:37

All right, everybody, welcome back to another awesome episode of you Winning Life and, as you know, we have Dr Wendy Trebo who is hanging out with us. Not only is she an MD, but she is a specialist in integrative and functional medicine. She's a certified practitioner and specializes in functional medicine gynecology. So, as we talked about in the intro, you're going to hear that we're going to go all over into a bunch of different things, including environmental stuff as well as toxins. But right off the bat number one, I want to just get into the idea of stress and the stress that we're facing all over in the world and how that affects us and how that actually affects our health. So, as you said before, the 10,000 foot view. Let's start off with the 10,000 foot view of that.

Speaker 3: 1:23

Thanks for having me on, jason Sure. So I think you want to think. The first thing that's important to recognize is that stress is everywhere and it's in anything, so it can be. What are you thinking? What kind of thoughts are you having that are having a negative impact on your health because they occur as stressful? I'll give you an example in a moment.

Speaker 3: 1:47

Or they could be something like the people around you, or the fact that, if you're like me, you're overbooked and you're running around from place to place and so you don't have the downtime you need. Or it could be some behaviors that you're engaging in and I'm always very careful to say you're not a bad person, you're a great person and you might have behaviors that aren't working for you well and they're creating stress in the system. So there's a lot of different ways you can get to that and really anything can be a stressor. So the food you're eating could be a stressor if it's not in your best interest. So I'm very quick to say, okay, that's a stressor, that's a stressor, that's a stressor. And people are like boy, that's not a stressor. I'm like that's a stressor. You don't feel good when it occurs. It creates a state of angst. That's a stressor. So it's a pretty broad, broad definition.

Speaker 2: 2:35

So when people are talking now about like trauma right, and I know this way and I kind of differentiate this as a therapist where you have two kinds of types of trauma your nervous system doesn't always distinguish between something that's really massive and something that's small. There's still gonna be some type of biofeedback and biochemistry response that's going on. But is there a perspective from your insights as far as, like capital T traumas and lowercase T traumas and how that affects us and what goes through the system and how you would look at that as one, as a medical doctor, but also when it comes to the integrative health side of it.

Speaker 3: 3:12

I'm gonna tiptoe here, right.

Speaker 2: 3:13

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:15

I'm not a trauma expert, but what I would say is that once the trauma mechanism or system or motor gets activated, it doesn't really matter if it's a bigger little T if you've activated the system. So it's like that saying you can't walk a mile into anyone else's shoes. So what you experience as a little T, I experience as a big T. And so I would start there and say, okay, your experience is what's important. Now what we think of your experience. So don't let anybody tell you, oh, who cares, that's not a big deal. No, to you it's a big deal. So you're experiencing it. It's still setting off your adrenal dysfunction and you're shutting down the liver and you're shutting down your detox. So it has the same impact, whether it's big or little. Maybe if you experience it as a little T, even if it's a big T, it might have lesser of an impact on your adrenal, liver and gut access, but it's still having an impact.

Speaker 2: 4:13

Yeah, the way I think about it is and this is kind of setting up for that next little segment, especially as it relates back to your book is the microbiome right? And when we're talking about treatment or solving some medical related, health related stuff, this one size fits all approach Right again, coming from the psychology world, it was. You know, you sit and you just talk and then the sessions up versus what are the different approaches we can take to solve this? What are the different theories, methodologies, different lenses we can take on and off? My understanding and feel free to, you know, take this where you wanna go with this is that the linear approach to solving stress, the linear approach to solving how our body handles that.

Speaker 2: 4:58

And what I'm including, like what you just said, is the idea of stress is what are you being exposed to? Whether it's environmental stuff, whether it's food, whether it's, you know, bacterial, viral, you know all these different things. It's not a one size fits all journey, especially when it comes to healing. So two people can be exposed to the same toxin and have very different responses and one can have a response and one cannot have a response. So I was wondering if you can talk a little bit more of what that means and what that looks like. Those misunderstandings of that approach right when it comes to this, one size fits all. And how does you know toxins and stress go hand in hand and affecting people differently? And jump off.

Speaker 3: 5:40

There's a lot to unpack there, jason, that sounds like a really good question yeah, I know?

Speaker 3: 5:42

right, like you know, can you just discuss that? But that's one of those massive questions, okay, so let's sort of take a step back. You're born and you have your genetics. That is your book of life. You get it from both your parents. You can have mutations, you can have an enhancement, whatever right, this is what you're born with. And then, alongside your DNA, is your epigenetics. Those are the methylation factors that will cause your DNA to either express, turn on, be active or go dormant.

Speaker 3: 6:14

So, for example, so I'm not gonna be able to say to you okay, this happened, and then this happened and then this caused that epigenetic change. But what I will say is that when you think about and this is near and dear to my heart, because I have celiac, I'm the president of National Celiac Association and a much greater percentage of people have celiac that and don't know it. But an even greater number of people are gluten sensitive and don't realize it. So my goal is okay, how do we prevent people from getting celiac Cause? Nobody should be as restricted as I am around gluten in terms of eating out. So, okay, 40% of the population has the, the gene for celiac, but only 1% of the population has celiac approximately. That's epigenetics. So the fact that you have that gene but it hasn't been expressed or it hasn't turned on, versus where I have that gene and it has been turned on and I have that autoimmune disease as a result. That's the impact of the epigenetics, and the epigenetics are the stressors that occur to your ancestors. And really cool, jason, really cool.

Speaker 3: 7:16

I remember driving home from being in Western Mass. I live in Massachusetts, we're driving from Western Mass and this report comes on on NPR about this these epigeneticsists in Sweden pretty sure it was Sweden and they looked back. There was a very small town in Sweden and they kept very, very meticulous records on their people who lived in the town. And what they found was when they looked back, excuse me, was that if your grandfather okay, so we're talking two generations down back if your grandfather had a feast when you, when he was going through puberty it's more the grandfathers than the grandmother in this case then his offspring were significantly more likely to have diabetes, heart disease and died on average six years earlier than the general population. Then they looked at the opposite and said, okay, well, what happens if your ancestor went through a famine? And they found that if your grandfather went through a famine as he was going through puberty. His offspring were significantly more likely to live 25 years longer than the general population and significantly less likely to have diabetes, heart disease or die early. So we have a 31 year spread in the lifespan based on something that's totally out of your control.

Speaker 3: 8:38

Okay, and so that's the impact of epigenetics. Now I've forgotten, hold on. You asked me something and I was like that's a lot to unpack, but, but I went off on the epigenetics because some of this is out of our control and some of it's in our control. All stress is not bad. Too much stress is bad, right. So so the thing that causes your genes to express or not express can impact how you respond to a stressor in your lifetime or a toxin in your lifetime. So, okay, you've got your genetics. Then you've got your.

Speaker 3: 9:10

How you were born? Were you born via a vaginal birth or were you born via cesarean delivery? Because those give you very different microbiomes. You get nothing. If you're born by a C-section, you got a you. Basically you leave the monkeys in charge of the zoo, because at that point what you get is just what you get. You don't. There's no rhyme or reason, or you get what your mom had as you come through her vaginal canal good or bad, right Right. So there's your early life where you brushed her bottle fed. That alters your microbiome.

Speaker 3: 9:40

Then what kind of childhood did you have? Did you have parents who were available emotionally? Did you have parents who were distant? Did you move around a lot? Did you feel connected? Did you have the bigger little T traumas that stayed with you and impacted your risk of developing a disease? Were you sick as a kid? I was sick all the time. I had a strep, throat, ear infections, had pneumonia. When I was a six month old, I was sick a lot as a baby and got antibiotics, because I'm a child, that's 70. So we did antibiotics all the time, right.

Speaker 3: 10:10

So all these things start to pile on and then and then it comes into what are the choices you're making? Are you so? So I use myself as an example because I made all the wrong decisions. Right. I went to med school when I should not have gone to med school because I'm strong like a mouse, I'm not strong like a bull. I can't take a lot of, you know, insults and stress, but I went to med school. That was stressful and then I went to OB-GYN because you know, I had to do the hardest thing. So my, my desire to be productive and my innate constitution huge mismatch, right? So the choices you make make a difference.

Speaker 3: 10:45

And then, within that, what are you eating? What are you choosing to eat? Are you choosing to sleep, not sleep? Do you drink alcohol? Do you eat sugar? All of these choices it's not a moral discussion. Okay, you can drink alcohol all the time. You're not a bad human. You just might not be a healthy human, right? So? So all of these things start to pile on. And now you have yourself. And when you start to look at, how do we untangle the impact of some bigger little tea trauma? You have to take all of that other thing into effect, into, into the causality of how you feel. Yeah, it's a lot to unpack, right, right?

Speaker 2: 11:23

The way I streamlined it with my clients through the world of neuromotional technique is it was Dr Walker came up with the homerun formula and you put whatever issue we're dealing with right At that moment on the pitcher's mound and we run the bases. Is there an emotional stressor that's connected to it? Which would be first base? Second base would be toxicities. Is there toxicities that you've been exposed to that we need to help remove from your body right In any way should you live on this earth, right, right, whatever it is, yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:52

We're sitting here in front of technology and EMFs, right, so those type of things, as I'm doing, zoom all day right. And then third base would be nutritional deficiencies. And then home plate is structural and and, and you know, coming out from that world, he found that, you know, when you do an adjustment it wouldn't heal over, and then, but it should, right, the body should have this innate healing when you get rid of the thing. But then you found out, okay, well, maybe there is an emotional stressor. We knew the toxin thing already. The chiropractic is very built on that, right, they knew that there was toxic loads and you know the other thing in the nutritional commitments. But did they never thought about the emotional side of things? And that's where NET started getting form formulated.

Speaker 2: 12:27

So now, when I'm working with clients, it's not just like someone called me yesterday based exactly what you're saying. This person has anxiety, they're having panic attacks and, great, what's their diet like? Oh, he drinks a lot and has a lot of sugar. Are they willing to stop doing that, because I can help you, but it's going to come back or it's not going to get as good as you need it to good. Well, I don't think they'll stop doing that. Well then, I'm not going to take them on as a client.

Speaker 2: 12:53

I think people need to realize and, as you're listening to this, listeners, right, there's those different layers of while you're listening to this, during a time of stress in the world, there's things that we have control over. There's also things, like you said, from multiple generations, and I even heard a study that said with mice six generations back that they were exposed to a toxin I'm not sure if this is a famous study or not that they were exposed to a toxin that might have killed the generation that drank it, that were exposed to the poison. They looked at the poison, they died, but the mice that were the next generation that saw it and that had children up to six generations later, when that poison was put in front of the mice from the six generations later and they did a blood draw from those mice, it still had a biochemical response to that. So we're talking about epigenetics in that regards, right. So stress is massive.

Speaker 2: 13:49

So we're talking about microbiome. Just give, if you can give, a quick understanding of what the microbiome is, just so the listeners know what that means. And two, when you're talking about stress loads, because I know right, the name of your book is Dirty Girl and how to ditch the toxins. Look great and feel freaking amazing. Let's just pivot into that a little bit. But I think understanding a little bit of what the microbiome is really doing and responsible for and what that means will help everybody understand that.

Speaker 3: 14:22

And I think to do that, we should talk about what I'll consider. I call it the holy triad. Okay, didn't call it the holy trinity because I didn't want to. It's not religious, sorry, it's already taken. No, it took my term. So the holy triad. So, and it matters because I healthy.

Speaker 3: 14:41

So the microbiome is the term that we're using to discuss the bacteria and the balance of bacteria, parasites, yeast, whatever you have in your gut, that's your microbiome, micro, small biome. I don't know what biome stands for actually. So that's your microbiome, that's what's in your gut. However, what happens there is directly dependent on what are you eating excuse me, keep hitting my mic, sorry about that directly to directly linked to what are you eating, how are you born, how do you live, what's the stress level you have, and then what toxins are you're exposed to.

Speaker 3: 15:15

Because what's happening upstream why I call it the holy triad is you have the adrenal glands or these like walnut, pecan sized glands on top of your kidneys and your back and they are responsible for your fight, flight or freeze response. They're responsible for maintaining your blood pressure. They're responsible for when you're in menopause, if you're female, for producing your estradiol and your testosterone, and so if your adrenals. And your adrenals are amazing organs but relatively dumb, right. So they're not necessarily.

Speaker 3: 15:47

This is why I said to you, the big T in the little T don't really matter, because your adrenals are either on or off. If they're on, you're putting out cortisol. If they're off, they're not. So if you have a stressor, you may create higher levels of cortisol, but you're going to put out cortisol. And when you put out cortisol, if it's in high enough amounts, that signals the liver, which is the third stool, or third part of the holy triad, to either do detox and be healthy or put out stores of sugar, because you have to run from a lion that's about to eat you. We're super primitive. We have not evolved past that. Fight, flight or flight response or freeze. We haven't evolved past that. Even though we're thousands of years past that, we're still in that pattern.

Speaker 2: 16:39

So we have not kept up A reptilian brain, right?

Speaker 3: 16:42

So even though you're like, oh, it's just my stupid boss, oh, it's just, you know, when I was driving there were a lot of crazy people on the road today and I was like, oh, people are out of their minds today, but my adrenals don't know that it's just some idiot in a car next to me. They just know that I feel stressed. Right, and the gut matters, but also what's happening in the adrenals and the liver matters, because if your adrenals say to your liver, oh guys, you know, a lion's coming, it also says to the gut let's not focus on detox right now, let's focus on survival. And in survival we don't digest. We do get sugar from the liver so that we can run quickly.

Speaker 3: 17:22

We have cortisol coursing through our bodies and so the food that you just ate in a meal and now you're stressed about for some other reason is sitting there rotting in your gut. Then the bacteria that digest you when you die are like oh, school, we're psyched, we're ready to go, because they're waiting, they're anaerobic, they're waiting for when there's no activity and they kick in. So then you go. Why am I so glad? Gassy imploded, right. And that's because you've thrown off the balance of gut, just by having a stressful thought or having a stressful experience.

Speaker 2: 17:55

So people should not be going on CNN or Fox News while they're eating, whether it's on their laptop or on their TV. No, no, you're not looking at that. Is that what you're saying? Is that what I'm picking up here?

Speaker 3: 18:06

But I mean, here's the thing Gee said so many of us are suffering from a lack of connection. So the last thing you want to do when you're eating is be in front of a screen. What you want to do is be in front of a human and have a conversation, if possible. So you sort of compounded it in doubly right. Not only are you not. Mealtimes are a time of connection, an opportunity for connection. Now, you're not a bad person If you do.

Speaker 3: 18:28

Again, this is not a moral conversation, this is a what's works for your body conversation. So if you sit in front of the screen, you're more likely to overeat, you're more likely to put cortisol out, you're more likely to shut down your detox. If you sit with a human, well, as long as they're not a toxic human and you sit down with them and they started on you, that's not any better, right? You're better off being alone than with someone who's toxic for you. And I was laughing when you said you wouldn't take someone on if they weren't willing to alter their behavior.

Speaker 3: 18:58

Basically, and because I would say about twice a year, I get someone who I say to them I can't help you because you're for me. I can't help someone if they're in a toxic relationship that is, either their marriage, or they're a significant other, or they're in a job that is absolutely toxic, because it's so much more powerful than any of the supplements I can give or any of the lifestyle. Like you can't. You can't polish a pig, right. So like, or you can try, but it's not going to be effective, right.

Speaker 2: 19:30

So it was a reverse from here. It's like would you be willing, would this person be willing to see a functional medicine practitioner? Because again, it's that hand in hand for me of I have the stuff that I can get into within my scope of practice and here's the stuff that I can kind of lean into a little bit that's technically within my scope of practice or not outside of my scope of practice, and then there's the stuff that's not my scope of practice but I know will work. But those things have to go hand in hand. So it does become a clear line One is a business professional but two as, like, just the values, the core values of the people that I want to work with. Also right In that regard let's talk about like I don't want to be blamed for you're not getting anywhere. Now on the eighth practitioner you worked with, Right, no, I've said to people.

Speaker 3: 20:08

look, I can count on one hand the number of times I've said this this year. But until you leave your and fill in the blank your toxic job, marriage, relationship, whatever that is, that's more powerful than any intervention. Is a functional medicine, doctor, I can bring. So that's going to override the supplements, the acupuncture, the hyperbaric oxygen, the IVs. That's so much more powerful. We can't go anywhere. It's just the roadblock. And I say that maybe twice a year it's not that often, right, Because most people can go oh right, I need to get out of there and they will, but some people are stuck or feel like they're stuck and that becomes the roadblock.

Speaker 2: 20:44

Are there any tips or tricks? Just from your perspective right, not psychology, but you're a medical professional and you are dealing with pervasive a lot of times pervasive toxins Are there just some mindset tips and tricks that you do give when people are helping navigate these toxic situations, these toxic whether it's people or environments? I mean, I know the environment's gonna be a totally different set of standards, but just helping them from you know the lifestyle overall and or people. Is there any insights on that?

Speaker 3: 21:17

Yeah, totally. I'm a huge fan of I think it was a Verizon statement make progress every day. It's like the silliest little thing. But I'm a huge fan of Rome wasn't built overnight. You're not going to be perfect overnight. This is actually not even about perfection. This is about improvement. And so when you stand at the base of the mountain and you look up, you go, oh wow, that looks really insurmountable, but you just need to start climbing and don't worry about how far you need to go, because it's going to evolve as you go.

Speaker 3: 21:49

So my first thing that I talked to people about is this is not a perfection mindset. This is not a I'm going to be finished with this mindset. This is how can I make an improvement? So when we're looking at, I have a couple of patients and it's not like I fire people generally. I only fire you for your jerk, right? If you're a jerk and you mean to my staff, then you can't see me, you can't be mean to my staff, so I'll fire people for that. But otherwise I'm like okay, look, you can pay me and I'm not going to be able to help you, but you can keep paying me and I'll keep coaching you until you have a breakthrough right, and that'll come when it comes. So what I usually say to people is okay, you're stuck in this job or you're stuck in this marriage. How do we make the best of a terrible situation? What is a boundary we can set? Can you discuss with your boss or your colleague, or whatever it is, that you're going to set some boundaries, so you're not going to work at six in the morning and you're not going to work at 10 o'clock at night? Instead of working 14 hours, maybe work 10 or even 13. Go, make some improvement. You don't have to go from 14 hours to eight. Go from 14 to 13. Get used to it. Make sure you tell people what you're up to. Then go to 12. Make consistent, chip away at it. Make consistent improvement so that when you look back or after six months, you go oh yeah, six months ago I was working 14 hours a day and every month I decreased it by an hour, and now I'm working eight hours a day. So I'm looking for what are ways that we can set some boundaries that will work for you, that will be maybe not like jumping into a cold plunge, but will just be consistent and measured so that at the end of it, you look back and you go, oh, I made an improvement.

Speaker 3: 23:24

I owe a huge fan of labeling behaviors, not people. In fact, we don't call each other names in our family, like you're Lezy or you're stupid. No, that was a dumb thing to do, but that's a behavior as opposed to. You're not intrinsically dumb, but I have teenagers and they have terrible frontal cortex control. So what I'm always saying to them is you know what? Just don't make a really unsafe choice that will cause you not to be around, because if you just can live to like 25 to 30, you're going to outgrow this behavior. Just don't make any permanent choices here. So you know, like one of my kids got a tattoo and I was like, okay, well, let's see if you're still happy with that in 50 years, right, or even 10 years, but it's not my body, it's not my problem, right? So I'm just working with people to make consistent improvement.

Speaker 3: 24:13

Label behaviors, not personalities. And then don't take stuff personally. That's not yours. Don't pick it up, right? If there's trash on the ground, unless you're going to throw it in the trash, do not pick it up and carry it around with you, meaning someone around you is like nasty and grumpy and blah, blah blah. You either don't spend time with them or reframe it Like oh, it sounds like you know someone who was complaining. I was like it sounds like you have a request, what's your request? And they're like I do have a request. I was like great, what's your request? Because I can't help your complaint, but I can help you with your request. So try to hear the request and the complaining so that you can hear behind. You know there's always a request, they just don't know how to see it.

Speaker 2: 24:53

Well, so, yeah, I love those examples and especially the mentor request thing. I remember had a client years ago and everything in their life was just chaos and they were just like this, like artsy, hippie-ish, you know, just wanted to like be a piece and listen to music. And I'm like, well, tell me about the people in your life. Well, this one has this going on, and this one has this going on, and my neighbor has this one going on. And I'm like, okay, well, how did how did those things become your problem? Well, you know this one time right, and they're telling all the stories and I'm like I took a big gamble with this client. It was a new client. I knew that. They were like what I was about to say was like clean enough for me to get away with their personality.

Speaker 2: 25:32

I'm like can you take your, can you take your finger and put it under your nose? And they're like, okay, and they do that in my office. And I'm like does this there? You go Like, does it smell like crap? Like what do you mean? I'm like, well, you're sticking your finger in everybody's butt and now your life smells like shit. And she rolled off my couch onto my floor, cracking up hysterically oh my God, oh my God, I'm sticking my finger in everybody's butts. I'm like I didn't know you're a gastroenterologist and you're not getting paid to do that and you're not wearing your glove and right, and that metaphor started changing the boundary. I was also like, oh crap, am I going to lose my license? But it was the right person so. But that changed the paradigm of like I'm willingly doing this and I'm willingly setting myself up for these type of things, but yet I'm blaming everything else around me.

Speaker 3: 26:27

But you just brought up a really good point, jason, that I'd like to highlight, please, which is people are driven by something and that's always a future. Even if they haven't articulated it, we're always living into a future. Why should I exercise? I want to feel good now and in 10 years. Why do you take care of yourself? I don't want to be a burden on my children. Why are you working so hard? I want to retire.

Speaker 3: 26:48

Well, there's always something in the future we're living forward into, and most people aren't really clear what their future is, and so, even just working with them, what I do is I'm like okay, well, why are you doing that? Like, what future are you living into? If we go back to that toxic relationship, the toxic job, the toxic marriage, what are you getting by staying in a relationship that's not working for you? And maybe we need to look at the future that you are living for to see if we can alter that future so that your present alters. Right, and getting the future clear makes such a big difference for people, because then they go oh well, this is a good system. With that, I'm out, right.

Speaker 2: 27:30

So the rules of engagement that people create. I had someone that I saw at one of my conferences and we're working. You know, one of the beautiful things about the NET community is when we have a workshop, we then do breakout groups and we work on something for like 30 minutes and swap back and forth and then we go back into the next thing that they teach us. And I was talking to someone and they were telling me about their relationship and I'm like, have you guys seen like couples counselor before? No, like tell me more, right, I'm just curious and give me some examples of how they would consistently treat you, not the one offs. And I'm like kind of kind of sounds a little bit like emotional abuse.

Speaker 2: 28:05

And let me pull up the chart of you know the emotional abuse. You know, with verbal and emotional abuse looks like from you know the wheel of the wheel of abuse. And let me tell me if any of these things are happening. And A person said, oh my God, yeah, these things are happening. I'm like, well, have you ever put a name to these things? Versus like I'm being treated like crap or I don't like how I'm being treated, and I'm like, well, what would it be like if you started you know, if this person's not going to go to therapy with you, what would it be like to just start identifying that which is I'm being abused? No doesn't mean you have to be a victim. It means that you can start taking, you know, but you have to re, re, re, re, calibrate your framework of what's going on versus like I'm in a stressful relationship.

Speaker 3: 28:44

Yeah, and I'm. I'm even thinking like, okay that you're ex, you're on the receiving end of abuse. Not that you're being right, you're being this, isn't that you're you're not right.

Speaker 3: 28:59

You're experiencing something and and I have four kids and and a husband and we have a whole bunch of businesses, and so we're always on the go. But my favorite thing to say and I'll give this to all the listeners my favorite thing to say in response to something that I think is cockamamie or isn't going to work is that doesn't work for me, just like that. I'm never nasty. I'm like no, that doesn't work for me. No, we're not going to stay up until 1130. That doesn't work for me. Yeah, no, we're not going to eat sugar for dinner. That doesn't work for me. No, we're not going to whatever. Fill in the blank, because I have four kids. They come up with all kinds of wacko stuff, and then I have a husband who you know that white chromosome, Jason, is like well, so the five, the five kids, yeah, four and a half and he's an adult.

Speaker 3: 29:42

but yeah, I would come on like what? No, no, that doesn't work for me. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:46

No, well, that boundary standard, right that phrase, and I've shared that with, with, with people. When I learned that a bunch of years ago for myself, it's actually I got it from parenting with love and logic. I don't know if you've ever seen those books, right, so that's one of the like. I'll let you know what works for me. That's like one of the great. That's like to have a list of like one-liners that you can say to a kid, but they also have four couples as well. I'm like, oh, that's so great. I'll let you know which is exactly what you're saying. I'll let you know what works for me is really such a powerful and people are afraid to do that Because one, we don't want to hurt anybody. Two, we don't want to offend anybody. Three, it's the unconscious belief that we're responsible for someone else's feelings and well-being when we're not.

Speaker 3: 30:25

Don't be a dick. My 14-year-old son. I'm kind of this free-range parent. I'm like don't get lost or stolen and do your work and we're going to be fine. I'm not a helicopter parent at all.

Speaker 2: 30:37

Here's an air tag. Go on, I'll see you later yeah.

Speaker 3: 30:39

Just do your thing. So my first two kids did very well with that parenting approach. My first two kids, they did their work. One's you know, one in college, the next one is applying to college. I'm like do you need help? They're like no, I'm good. Okay, I get to my third kid, and my third kid is not doing well with this parenting approach because my third kid is a boy who is now addicted to Minecraft. And so we were like wait, not only I really don't care how much Minecraft you play, as long as you sleep, eat, move your body and do your damn homework.

Speaker 2: 31:10

A shower once in a while.

Speaker 3: 31:12

Yeah, he drives that that's not something I have to argue with him about. He's like oh, I'm like, okay, have at it Go show, Okay good.

Speaker 3: 31:18

He's fine. But it was so interesting because we, after we figured out you're not doing your work, you're just not, you're totally thrown off by this Minecraft thing we put in controls that we never had to do with our other kids. So first we started with a screen time, blew through right, right, right through that, and then we ultimately landed on a software that allows us to literally turn on or off access to every specific thing a website, an app, screen time, we can shut the computer down. It's, it's fantastic, but it's like a tyrant, right, we're going to do what we say.

Speaker 3: 31:53

So he said to me you're dominating me, you're making me do this and I'm a victim. I'm like hold on, I get that. You don't like this control. I don't blame you, I wouldn't like it either, but we instituted this in reaction to your behavior, right? So we? We weren't just like let's torture our 14 year old boy and restrict his Minecraft. No, our 14 year old stopped doing his work and stopped being a functioning member of our family, and so we instituted these controls. These controls were caused by you.

Speaker 3: 32:23

We did not cause them, you caused them and he. He still believes and maintains that he's a victim, and I'm like so I'll keep you posted on that.

Speaker 2: 32:29

But he's yeah, well, it's like what can he do right now? I would turn it on him If I'm like so how do we get your parents off your back? What do you need to be doing? What do you need to take accountability and ownership over so your, so mom and dad don't have to spend their time thinking about you in that way anymore?

Speaker 3: 32:46

Yeah, I actually offered him a tutor like a month and a half goes. No, I'm good, I'm good. So two nights ago I sent him. Look, I love you to pieces. I really value our relationship and my role as your parent. The way I see my role is I am your guru. I'm the person you should go to with questions. I'm your cheerleader. I am not your time guardian.

Speaker 3: 33:07

And are you doing your work. That's not my role. So I said you're getting a tutor and that tutor is going to do your work with you, because I can't even do your math. You're doing college level math in high school. That's not my thing. So I said you're going to get a tutor and when you are mastering it you can get rid of your tutor, and if the tutor doesn't work, we're going to keep the tutor and then we're going to add on a therapist. So how this goes is totally up to you. And he was like the only thing he got from that was like how long do I have to have the tutor for? And I said as long as it takes for you to do your work, do an impeccable job and be amazing.

Speaker 3: 33:38

And then I said I really don't care. If you have a half hour to an hour of Minecraft a day, I don't care, but right now you're not doing your work. So, yeah, so we'll see. I mean, it's a work in progress, yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:46

Well, that's why I love that love and logic theory. Well, you can play as much Minecraft as you want and you have to do all these things. Which ones do you want to do first? But if you don't accomplish all those things, then there will be a consequence paradigm. Right, and I love that.

Speaker 2: 33:59

Or no reward, or no reward, right, right, there's no reward, which is right, that's the but, but it's oh well. You chose further for there to be no reward, child, because you made the decisions for the reward not to exist by you not doing what you said you're going to do. So I love that. That, that that setting up of personal accountability and consequence. I just want to tie back into that last story of that person who I saw recently, who I had that conversation with, Cause again this woman this is the no, no, no, the one with the, with the abuse, right, and and again going into, like stress and toxins, like not realize.

Speaker 2: 34:30

Oh, it's okay if I have my pumpkin spice latte once a week, maybe I don't know but we also like what's the sugar content and what's the right, and all the food chemicals and all the other stuff that, like you know, and the plastic leaching in all of our cups and all those which you know. Read the book, right, I need to get into that right now, but read her book. So, but the idea. But then I saw this person again and it was six to eight months later. They got divorced and I was blown away. I'm like, wow, that's like. But it was like just this like mind shifting thing of like what you said, of like, if you don't realize that, like you have all these things going on over here, but yet you don't even realize this because we're just programmed right, society like you talk about, and the functional medicine world, like we're predisposed to purchasing things and buying things. And now, it's right, we're not in the middle of flu season. What do we? What you and I know, it's not flu season, it's sugar season.

Speaker 2: 35:26

It's always sugar season, it's always well, even more.

Speaker 3: 35:28

I said sugar is the devil. I'm waiting for the meme to come. Sugar is the devil, sugar is the devil. That's your next book, right? Sugar is the devil. It's terrible, so it's. But it's always sugar season, right? Because we get through that. And then we're like oh, it's Valentine's Day, oh it's Memorial Day, oh it's 4th of July, so it just never ends. Yeah, it's not stopped.

Speaker 2: 35:47

I know we have to be mindful with time, but I know that you have a offer for our listeners, so why don't you just share that with us? And also? It's also where they can come and find you.

Speaker 3: 35:55

Yes it is. So I am on all the socials at WendyTruboMD, and then we have a gift for the listeners If you're not sure you want to read the book, or if we have a quiz to figure out how toxic you are, which is a little bit. We haven't talked about exactly toxicity as much as we've talked about just that small part of stress and emotions. But there's that whole world of toxicity, what you put in you, what you put on you, what's around you. So we have a quiz that you can help figure out. How toxic am I? How big of a deal is this? We have a non-toxic guide to healthy living so you can start leveling up. That has all the things right. I did all the mistakes so you don't have to. I know what you should use so that you can clean it up. And then it's chapter one of the book, so you can see do I like the style? Do I like how it reads? Can I communicate with this human? So that's all at drwendycom forward slash gift.

Speaker 2: 36:42

I love it and, just as a side note, with learning, toxicities and where we're talking about adrenals, but also another time, maybe in the future, we can talk about the thyroid and all this stuff that's going on Hashimoto's and everybody has thyroid stuff going on, and especially when it comes to women's health, which is right at your side of OBGYN, where with pregnancies and how many people are having miscarriages and how many things are going back to that and the toxic loads, and then Hashimoto's or thyroid, what's the antibodies, how going up after pregnancy and stuff like that. I have someone I know that had that. And then we're like working with a functional medicine person and they're like, well, we're checking out mold as the precursor to all these things going on. And guess what? Mold is one of those big things, especially with mental health, and that we don't even know what to look into.

Speaker 2: 37:34

So everybody, please, please, please, go check out the website at drwendycom, forward slash gift, check out her book Dirty Girl, the ditch, the toxins look great and feel freaking amazing. It's available everywhere and if you like more of this, obviously go. You know you've been on a bunch of other interviews. So please, if you want more of all the different topics she talks about, check out any of her other podcast interviews and just go right to her site. And Wendy, again, thank you so much and hopefully in the future we'll go into some of those other things. As you know, I always like more and more functional medicine stuff in front of my community.

Speaker 3: 38:07

Yeah, thank you, jason. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2: 38:09

I have so pressure.