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Gut Check Project
Trailer
Bonus
Episode 47
Season 1
Functional Nutrition with Gabrielle Grandell
Welcome, everybody, KBMD health family and gut check project fans. We are back now with episode number 37. And we have an incredible guest. This is Gabrielle Grandell. She's gonna be joining us here in two minutes. But of course, this is the gut check project with your host, Dr. Ken Brown. Can you want to introduce Gabrielle for us?
Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited about this. We were introduced through a mutual friend Gabrielle Grandell. She is currently practicing at living well Dallas, a certified health coach certified in functional med as well. And she calls herself an integrative dietitian. Why am I so excited about this because I would love to be sending her people like all day long. This is so cool. And my goal is that she has enough fun that she's a recurring guest slash co co host, because I think she's gonna really elevate all of our games and fill in a lot of gaps that that I need some education on because even though I got a degree in gastroenterology, we do about this much nutrition and I'm learning about it a ton. So thank you so much for joining Gabrielle.
Hi, everybody. Glad to be here. Thank you guys for having me on. Looking forward to chatting today.
Definitely. So Gabrielle, you are at living well Dallas, correct?
That is correct.
So tell us a little bit about what it is you do at living well Dallas because I have a feeling that with your experience, something that Ken and I've talked about is how we see there is a stark difference between our allopathic ideas behind nutrition and the approaches to nutrition. But really, there's this whole other world that's really started to gain steam, even though it's been around for a few decades. And that's the functional medicine approach to nutrition and how to help out with patients who have some some pretty hairy questions. So kind of tell us a little bit about living well Dallas and what you do there.
Yeah, thank you. So living well Dallas is the first Functional Medicine Center in Dallas. Oops, I hit some thing here on my screen.
It's okay. We all, sometimes we always do things.
So it's the first Functional Medicine Center in Dallas. And so functional medicine, right is is about thinking about the medicine sort of why. Why are things happening? Why? Why are these symptoms talking to us? And not just what is going on? But why is it happening and what can we do about it? And so functional medicine is, that's, you know, there's lots of different providers in the center that offer help and treating the whole person because it might be different, different things that they're dealing with, that they need support in. But where I come in is helping people with showing them how nutrition and what they're eating, their lifestyle, their environment, how all of that is helping or hurting them. And so most of the time, what's going on with these folks, whether it be digestive concerns, or headaches or hormonal issues or blood sugar dysregulation, we see all different kinds of people. But the different symptoms that they're experiencing, are usually as a result of what they're putting in their body and what they're putting around them, right, which is nutrition and lifestyle and you know environment. So I help people we have when they when people come in, they fill out a good deal of paperwork, which gives us a really good understanding of their history, kind of their goals, their readiness, we have a readiness assessment, which is really nice to try to gauge where people are coming from in terms of if they're ready to change their diet or their exercise or their sleep patterns or whatnot. We have them fill those things out. That gives me a good understanding of how they came to us and what they're ready to do what their diet history is like. Again, their environment, relationships, things like that purpose. And so we have them fill those things out. And then I'm going to go through that with them in their first visit. And we're going to talk about all the different ways that their body is speaking to them. What has worked before, what hasn't. One of the main differences, I think, between allopathic and functional for what I do is the amount of time that I'm spending with people. So before I was at the center, one of my other positions was at the hospital doing Clinical Nutrition and seeing, you know, 25 to 30 people in a short period of time, all over the hospital,
Which so you were in a major hospital
BUMC at Baylor University Medical Center. Yeah, in Dallas, which
So, I love this. So you went and the reason why is Eric's heard me complain about this. And I've talked to my patients about this. Whenever I do hospital work, I am just absolutely shocked at how many bad things we do to patients. Like, let's not let them sleep, let's check their blood glucose at 2am. And no results. Let's do vitals just so that we can check a box. And then somebody that's in the cardiac rehab unit, they're eating their cardiac diet, which consists of pancakes, syrup, you know.
But, it's low fat!
Oh, it's just as long as it's low fat. Yeah, exactly. So that's awesome. I did not know that you did that. This is this is fantastic. Okay, keep going. I didn't mean to interrupt, but that is that that shift of being a nutritionist in a hospital system to doing what you're doing is you cannot get more polar opposite.
And Gabrielle before you have to go too deep on on why I completely feel like the association for what Ken's looking for for his patients. And then what it is that you provide the audience may or may not realize that allopathic medicine itself is just traditional medicine as we view it today. And even though the word itself means scientifically based, I think that what has really appealed to Ken and me and others, like, like all three of us is that functional medicine has not forgotten the ideas behind applying new science to improve upon old methods. And the intake that you're talking about, traditionally, 15 years ago, there wasn't always a nutritionist who was experienced that took the time to one on one walk a patient through what's affecting them generally. I'm sorry, specifically, they were more general in approach.
Very yeah, nothing was was individualized. And you know, I think that I don't think there should be really a monopoly on who can provide health information and who can help people right...their their husband but hopefully that changes as time goes on. So yeah, so doing the doing the intake paperwork and taking the time is very different than at the hospital where we'd see 25 or 30 people and we'd, you know, it's almost, you know, no disrespect, because I know that there's a lot of dietitians and there's a lot of people in the hospital that are making a difference and, you know, really helping out but it's almost like glorified lunch ladies, like we don't we're talking about calorie counting, we're talking about, you know, tube feed all this stuff is important, but what about the quality? You know, there, there's not enough emphasis on quality of food and again, an individualized approach. And so, so I think that's number one. One of the main differences is just the amount of time so it's like 90 minutes for a first visit. And then after that, which sounds like a lot, but really once you get the people talking and you know you are understanding what's going on And then you start talking about their, their goals and things. Time goes by really quick. I often, you know, struggle with keeping it to that time.
You have...sorry, Eric really quick, just one of the best quotes I've heard in a long time. What I do is I find out what the symptoms are talking to my patients about you said the symptoms talk to us. Way different from my perspective, where you have a symptom, I treat it, it's saying something and we're ignoring what they're saying many times.
Exactly. Yeah. And you know, if our hormones I'll just use as an example are talking to us as ladies around our cycle. It's not is the answer to take birth control pills, you know, and suppress that, or try to figure out what else maybe we can do to get things in balance in our in our lives, you know, and there's a lot of examples like that, I think,
Well, I was going to say that there's also in addition to the client base focus, I would say that even in addition approach that a functional medicine or a functionally trained nutritionist is already approaching certain patient subsets differently than they did traditionally. Ken, the one I'm thinking about specifically how you talked about all of the most recent data that we know about what can make a heart disease patient, or someone more susceptible, and how the type of diet has changed over time how we care for them. Yet when we go into a hospital setting, or specifically what you saw, most recently, you you can't believe what there's sending somebody who's status post CABG, and it's all of the things that we wouldn't be feeding them anyway. It's it's in essence, a an inflammatory diet, and I was kind of curious Gabrielle do you find your training generally prepares you to handle either a neurology patient or a cardiology patient, different than the allopathic training?
I think, right, I think over time what I've been learning, you know, because I've been blessed to really work alongside some pretty intelligent mentors. And you know, I've been blessed to go to conferences and learn from a lot of a lot of people. I think that what I was taught I've had to expand it quite a bit, you know, and sort of unlearn some of the things that I was was taught right. I mean, biochemistry is the same and things but but we I never realized how much influence big Ag and big food and pharma has on the dietetics industry,
You know you're right there because the reality is that as as an allopathic physician, it seems like when I talk to my colleagues, unless in my field unless a drug rep shows up and hands them a detailed piece, there is no literature on that. But then when you go look at it, and you realize there's so much literature on this and then when we look back, my son and I were talking about About how we have our diets have changed, like over time as we evolved, and we have developed these different problems based on different food changes based on different things. And then you could see it track over hundreds of years of what's going on. I was just listening to a podcast on on breathwork and breathing and that kind of thing and about how so many of us have, you know, poor ability to breathe, and it's because of our anatomy is changed because of the food that we did. It just gets really complex. But the one thing that we have control over is what we put in our mouths. And, you know, we're telling people from at least in my perspective, when I see people I don't do this big intake thing like you do, but it is pretty funny every once in awhile walk into when we used to be able to see patients in the office and somebody will have a McDonald's cup right there. I'm like, yep, there's the problem. Don't even know who you are, what you're here for. I don't care. That's the problem right there.
It's contributing for sure. Yeah,
How in the world you go from the hospital and say I'm gonna make a complete change here and be a holistic or basically an integrative dietitian.
Yeah. So it just wasn't as rewarding as I had anticipated it being you know, I felt it was, it was I was making a difference, which is part of why I chose to get into nutrition in the first place. I was making a difference with some of these people, but to your point, they their families, and you know, they bring back McDonald's and fast food to these people and the diabetes, you know, people they'd be in there the next month, and then the next month, and it's just anyway, so it became less where I felt like I was really making a difference and that anyone was really listening to anything about nutrition and it was such an emphasis on surgery and such an emphasis on medication and my role was very seemed more like data entry almost. And so I just wasn't making the difference with the clients because I didn't have enough time to help them out and really talk through them. And, you know, we get trumped by those other things in the hospital. And so it was a good experience. But I just started looking into just started reading and started looking found functional medicine and thought this is really interesting. This is really, they're really getting to the root of what's happening, which often is there's people's diets, you know, there's these other factors of course, but this is really cool. And so back when Craigslist was kind of a thing. I recently got on Craigslist and was looking for a job you know, I had a job I was fine, but I thought I want to see if there's anything else out there. And I came across a position in a small boutique functional medicine office working with the MD obgyn, who had her private practice. And the idea was always that I was going to do nutrition consulting, but I kind of started off doing more office kind of running her office and helping explain things to clients and stuff. And then she ended up taking off into a bigger center and I started growing more skills and was able to take these consults on and learned, you know, by shadowing and stuff, I learned a lot of how to interpret tests and you know, help people with, with how to, to make those changes that they needed to make.
That's awesome. Just to let you know, I just got on Craigslist right now and there's no jobs for functional...
That was totally a godsend thing. Like, I didn't even look very long. I think I was one of the only people she interviewed like it was meant to be. It was meant to be but it's funny how I found it.
You also have some, some experience with functional lab testing as well. How did you how did you make that leap to do that now not all functional dieticians do that.
Yeah. So it really you know, it's just as again a blessing of kind of shadowing these doctors and these, you know, people that have been doing this for a long time, they really taught me a lot of what I know about interpretation. I didn't learn it in school, or any of the certifications, you know, that I've done, except for one that's kind of more recent. So I just started shadowing in on appointments, and listening and learning and taking notes and studying and understanding, you know, that these are the actual ranges that we want to look for from a preventative standpoint, and why and how conventional ranges are based on sick population of folks and for the most part, and that there's a lot more that we can look at, versus just some blood tests. I think blood tests are valuable. You know, and urine tests can be valuable, but there's so much more that we can explore and understand through looking at the function of the body, you know, because the body works really hard to keep keep the blood clean, and you so looking at urine and looking at its stool test and looking at saliva to lesser extent really opens up a lot of a lot of areas and helps it be that much more individualized and focused. So that's the other really great thing is that with functional medicine we're always so with functional medicine, we we get to make it personalized and by asking all these questions, and diving deeper into their life and what's going on, helps us determine what direction we want to go.
Okay, so I have a patient and I'm treating them for this is whatever I'm treating the for anything, ulcerative colitis. I say you know what your I don't think that your diets on point I think your whatever so I send them to you what would be some typical labs that you're talking about that you would want to look at that, that me using the do ologies of quest lab or lab core, you know, the two largest ones that have the standard ranges, you're saying that you can dive deep Just give me an example of the, the elevated care that you can do from at least a lab perspective.
Yeah, so like, if it was a digestive patient, you know, and they hadn't had any stool tests done anytime soon. I always like to look and see what they've got what they had done, right. So we don't rerun something that we don't, you know, is not necessary or helpful. But I would want to look at a stool test and beyond what most stool tests show, which are just some of the pathogenic bacteria or some of the pathogenic parasites or something maybe pretty limited, you know, and with a stool test, we can actually look and see who's all living in there, right, because we know how much the microbes play a role. So it's bacteria fungus viruses, worms, parasites, all those things plus digestive function. So looking at, you know, bile acids, pancreatic elastase looking to see how those organs are functioning, and then and then also inflammation and different markers from the immune system, I think is really helpful to put it all together and then use nutrition and supplements and lifestyle like mindful eating and, and whatnot, you know, to help them to eradicate those things. So like a colonoscopy or endoscopy or biopsies can be helpful, obviously, you know that and for structural findings and different things like that. But with a stool test, we can most often figure out Where's that? What's that is the source of the inflammation, you know, a lot of times so what, how can I help kind of coach people through understanding that they can have all these things going on without even having gut symptoms your person but you in your recommendation, you know, obviously would, but there are several people that I see that that I, I do stool tests with because what we know about the connection with immunity and neurotransmitters and you know, just overall health and in vitality metabolism, so that would be one might be, I might want to look at nutrient and vitamin levels through blood and urine. So, there's a really cool test from Genova called a Nutri eval. I don't know if you guys have heard of that before. But it looks at vitamin and mineral levels. It looks at a snapshot about neurotransmitters so some of the organic acid metabolites. It looks at heavy metals in whole blood. So that's kind of cool, you know, to show people cool i guess is a relative word. I got a lot of mercury.
Any chance that you've been eating paint? Bad news? Good news. I figured it I found it.
Hey, I've got a question for you Gabrielle when in utilizing these functional medicine tests because I think that we all know that they are on they're on the the early stage of really figuring out and they're learning each month on what new parameter matters most and then and we've all three of us seen where they thought the emphasis would be here and sometimes they dial it back only to find out that it's actually in this direction. Have you seen or ballpark? I guess I know you've seen it, but can you ballpark about how many people do you have an initial study on that after good guidance, good counseling and obviously adherence or compliance to what you lay out for them...how many how many or what what percentage roughly come back and then in six months or 12 months have shown an improvement a desired a desired improvement in those tests?
And then before you get to that, also, if you can figure out what happened to Eric there, we had that Pettit mal seizure where he slowed way down and then sped way up. You could fix that also.
Is that is that not something that y'all wanted?
We're both staring at you in slow way down and then.
Yeah, yeah, I dialed all of that in.
So I don't know. You know, I wish that we had something a little more concrete, you know, to offer. No one's doing any real research on any of that in our office. But I would say I don't ever have anybody not get better. It's just to what degree did they get better and how fast so yes, I like to kind of set the stage of depending on what's going on. Most people are not going to fully eradicate the situation, you know, sooner than six months. But they're going to start feeling better within a couple weeks if they really start changing their diet,
You could say an improvement in those at least correlates you're seeing correlation between improvement in quality of life happiness. And I would assume that certain symptoms would always include the general anxiety, sleeplessness, etc. as those things begin to improve, even though this is somewhat relatively new science, you're seeing a correlation to improving the quality of life, as well as an improvement in these these essays or these deaths.
Right, more so what I'm kind of measuring is this Yeah, the conversation that we're having what they're telling me is going well and you know, what their mood is, but I also have a symptoms questionnaire that people fill out that rates different body systems and different symptoms within those body systems. So like, there might be mind or emotion or digestive or skin or whatever. And so then they put a number out next to the side of it, and I'm always looking when they come in for the next visit. Did those symptoms go down? Right, did they get better? That's always the goal. And then if there's an outlier that didn't get better, right, like their sleep still stinks or something, then we're going to talk about that, you know. But so yeah, I think everybody is always getting better. Just some people need more therapies or more intense, you know, surgery or medications or something that absolutely happens, you know, but, but more often than not, the folks that are coming to see me are people that have actually seen a lot of other people with no to no avail. Because no one was really looking so much at their nutrition and lifestyle, because that's really where the money. You know, that's really where the money is, for most people. When they can change those things and get ahold of them. Things get better. Did I answer your question?
No, totally. I mean, because I think that it's such a relatively new approach and a new science in Canada. I've had some pretty extensive discussions on even something as, I say simple but people talk about all the time. It's fecal testing, and what out of all of the different things and there's various different labs that come and pitch his clinic on the services that they can provide. When it gets down to it, there are certain elements that people feel very, very dialed into on what those results may mean and a lot of the others, I think you were very honest, it's it's new, it's it's how are we collecting this data to make certain that we're heading in the right direction? Ultimately, a patient who doesn't feel well once they begin to feel well, you're at least solving some of the issues if they're sleeping better than you're solving insomnia, if they have decreased anxiety, then we're at least solving their anxious issues. So it makes sense to me that if we're starting to find correlating trends, then we're there we're at least beginning to crack the code on a lot of this functional medicine testing there, frankly, 15 years ago just did not exist.
Let me ask you that question from a from a clinical standpoint, so what I get away I get a lot of second opinions and a lot of people have actually found me through a functional medicine route, where they went allopathic. And then they went through a bunch of functional medicine style. Like all practitioners, there's good bad, there's things and then they end up spending quite a bit of money. And then they'll show up and they'll have five different stool studies from different places, Genova vibrant, wherever, and they'll just hand this big packet to me and go, what's this? And I remember listening to some different practitioners talking about stuff like this, they're like, look, we can analyze the stool, how we manipulate it is kind of or how we get it better is sort of the hard part. Being able to get a genomic sequence is the easy part. The hard part is what you're going to have to do with that. So what would you typically do? And I said, I was turned on to it. You know, we developed Atrantil for bloating and stuff like that. And I remember I was asked to give an IFM talk, the local Dallas IFM group and Betty Murray was there and a bunch of the other functional medicine doctors were there. And somebody had mentioned that they checked stool studies. And then what they wanted to see afterwards they checked it after treating with Atrantil which has the polyphenols, like in your little Facebook post great. And they, they said that it increased the microbial diversity. So from a integrative dietitian, what would you do with those stool studies? Because I'm flat out, I look at my patients, and I go, I don't really know what to do with this. So how would you and it's almost always the same thing, dysbiosis gluten intolerance, candida overgrowth, and then you have a disproportionate growth of these different bacteria. You know, we have 100 trillion bacteria there. So it's always it's always hard for me to look at somebody that's spending $800 on each one of these stool tests, and go I don't know what to do with it...yet. We're learning first step is being able to, to look at it. Second step is figure out how to manipulate it. So how would what would you do with those stool studies and this is less of an interview question, more of an advice.
And I think it's really great to that you're just you have mentioned that we don't know everything that we're always learning, but everything is always growing. You know, I think that that's a real sign of intelligence. And something that functional medicine kind of prides on is is evidence based and just continuing to grow that one size doesn't fit all, right. And so yeah, I think that there's some of the similarities that would happen across the board from different stool tests, no matter what it was, and you mentioned several of them. So, depending on what we find, you know, we might, I'm going to use supplements and food and lifestyle. So let's say, you know, again, if it's an overgrowth situation of bacteria, and if they're having gas and bloating and distension type symptoms, then I may offer the low FODMAP, you know, food plan, which you guys are probably familiar with, just you know, looking at particular starches and fibers that helped to starve out those bacteria and try and work with them on that. If they...
How long would you let somebody be on a low FODMAP diet?
That's a good question. I really don't try and do it very long. I really try to do it at least for a month. But I don't do it much longer than that, depending on their situation. Now, if they're not somebody that's compliant with taking some of my antimicrobial supplementation or gut repair supplements, or they're not doing you know, a lot of other things then I might keep them on it longer because they're probably still having the symptoms. And I think at least we're starving out those bacteria. But where I'm trying to meet people where they are because another thing to always think about when you when you're giving food plans, or diet protocols around stuff is people's ability to make that food, write their resources, their flavor preferences, their schedules, etc, etc, right and so I can show them this FODMAP plan and say this is, you know what, why this will work and here's the foods and you know when to eat those foods, but then I'm going to take that time to really break down how they can make that happen. And that also determines the timeframe of how long and whether we make any exceptions or not, you know?
So this gets into your so that you're the integrative dietitian, but then you have to put on your hat.
The coaching hat, yeah.
Then you have to do that, because you have to change habits here.
That's right.
You got to educate and then get them to believe in it. And
Yep, educate them and tell them the why and then figure out what their why is and then help them do the things you know. And so, like I like to say it's biology to behavior change. So, you know, depending on what we find.
Do you own all these cool quotes that you're throwing out there. Like have you trademarked them? I'm about ready to make some t-shirts.
I haven't. We can all use them. We can all share them. You make a T shirt now that you can you can have it that'd be cool. So, as long as you let me wear one. So what else would I do supplement wise? It depends, you know, because it depends on what we're dealing with. But it's Yeah, it's it's helping them to, to take ownership around what they found here and how it got created and then try to help them see that it doesn't. changes can happen without all happening at once. They can happen as the people are ready. So it's all on their on their timeline. And I can give advice and I tell them, I'm never going to steer them in the wrong direction. But they're in charge. Right. And I think that's where the coaching, the functional medicine specific kind of coaching comes in. And why I decided to, you know, to do those certifications and then become national board certified because I really believe that functional medicine, just health coaching in general, but specifically functional medicine is going to be really where the life change happens for a lot of these people, because skill sets like your skill set would be more utilized in doing the actual procedures, explaining to them about the results, you know, and but then they need, they need help doing the protocol to address the results. And so so that's why I think coaching is so vital because it's going to really allow for practitioners to partner with coaches to be able to help the client with their success and their their health because a lot of people just don't have the time or, you know, that really, a lot of times it's the time to take with with people to really invest in that as much as you might be interested in it. You know, you're you're busy doing this and you're doing this and then. So partnering with a coach is can be really helpful to help hold that space for the client.
Yeah, I think that's amazing. And I I'm under utilizing health coaches right now in my practice, and part of it is just because the, the demand, that's the, you know, it's a high volume, I get very, you know, second third opinions where we're trying to go through some different stuff. And so as a, as a coach, what I, what I at least tell my patients is that I try and take some of the burden off of them, because what you have is somebody that feels guilty about how they're eating fast food, and they're driving home and they're, they're tired, and I try to explain to them that sometimes it's not you. It's the fact that you've cultured these microbiome that are sending signals to your brain to do a follow up on that. So what I want to know as a health coach are one of the terms that I are one of the things I try and do with my patients is create friction on the bad habit. Meaning let's find a way to make it more difficult for these kind of things to happen. That's kind of how we got people to quit smoking. We just tax the snot out of it and people stopped. So creating some friction. Do you ever have you found little techniques to help your clients overcome? Because it's that first hurdle, that sugar crash the way that I mean, I, I truly believe that a lot of those people, they intellectually want it. But it's it. That's how they grew up. That's where they're at. It's I mean, we can talk about different cities. I was just in a small town in East Texas and my son and I were trying to eat healthy and that was not possible. Just period.
Right? Yeah.
What are some of your tricks as a coach? Some of your secrets that you win?
Um, I think my secret is being mindful and intentional and really trying to be there and present with them to hear what it is that they need. Because everybody is truly different. I really don't even like if we use the sugar craving, you know example. There's probably about 10 different reasons I could come up with right now that people have for why they have sugar cravings. So I think it's taking the time, I think one of the tricks I have is taking the time with them, to build that rapport, to help them understand that they can trust me, that I'm authentic, that we can be honest with each other. That, that I'm going to give them informed consent. So I'm going to tell them pros and cons about things. But I want to understand more about like you said, they intellectually might know that they don't want to eat this, you know, cookie, but then they keep finding themselves coming back to the cookie. Well talking through their day and what else surrounded that and kind of helping them to let me in a little bit to the scenario helps me figure out where I can guide them where I can coach them. It might not be you know, while I think it's helpful to share with them that maybe their yeast overgrowth is contributing to their sugar craving, I want to also spend time talking to them about how what we're doing is helping to get rid of that that threat. And what other scenarios can we do in our life that that also could contribute to sugar cravings? How can we kind of be proactive about not putting ourselves in that situation? So it's kind of similar, where we create a friction, we make it hard for them to do that, that habit, sometimes I go that route, but some people need other types of encouragement or there might be, you know, it might be that really, the reason why they go to that cookie is because they had an argument with their spouse that they have almost every night. You know, and so what needs to be addressed over there? Or is it that they didn't eat all day long, you know, and maybe that's why or whatever, you know, there's various different things. So I don't know if that's the kind of a long answer to your question about what are my like specific tricks because everybody I just try to kind of feel them out. And I probably have a couple of one liners as you can tell, you know, that I throw in and mix those in. But I just want them to know that I'm there for them. And that help is really a cool thing where it doesn't happen in a black and white all in or nothing kind of scenario. It's all every step you take helps you get there, right and figuring out why you're doing it and then coming playing back into that motivation can keep them on track along with education.
It seems to me like that such a such a key part in so many things on changing one's daily habits into better habits is just simply recognizing what puts you where you are. And you hit the nail on the head. We've we've talked about certain different things, maybe not necessarily in terms of just health coaching, but I completely agree with you Gabrielle, if you can identify what is triggering you to do something that you already don't want to do, then obviously, that's not the way to deal with the thing that you don't want to do. So it's, it's more or less, can you improve a different part of your life...it sounds to me, can you improve a different part of your life or change your routine that's going to allow you to not necessarily feel the need to, to break the trends, is that kind of right?
Yeah, I think and I think we all need partners. I think we all need help and coaches and support and guidance. You know, I don't think any of us have anything all figured out 100%. So, the coaching can come in and help you shed light on on things that you may not take the time, or have the ability to break it down and see it that way. You know, see it from a different angle,
Eric's pretty close though about having everything figures out.
Well, that's pretty obvious. So we can all learn a lot from from Eric. I myself. I don't have it all figured out.
That's a ridiculous claim. But thanks for playing along with Ken. That makes me feel really well.
I mean, are you kidding? I said in the very beginning, I'm learning how to breathe. I haven't even mastered that and I've been doing that for almost 50 years, so.
Okay, so I've got something I've got something that Gabrielle shared in our intake Ken and I'm just curious if you can name any of her so we've heard the way that she scientifically thinks through a few things, etc. Ken and I, whenever we scope together we have different days different playlists, we try to listen to pretty much everything. Can you just out of thin air pick one of her top five bands, she's listed five on here I believe no actually she listed six. She doesn't follow rules very well, but she listed six and none of them didn't debut before the year 2000. So all of these looks like they were in in in the 90s. And all of them are are bands I listen to can you name one of them Ken.
Yeah so this this should be pretty easy because everybody I've ever met that serves Craigslist loves Metallica.
So close but no not even there not even not there.
See? She threw me off with the Craigslist thing.
Yeah. I know.
Her first band listed and I love this because we were just...last week is rage against the machine.
Oh, that's awesome.
Cake is definitely
Cake is a good one. Yeah, Metallica is a good one too.
Eric and I are big I basically well we basically always have music going at all times. And so it's a it's just part of our existence. It helps the patients patients come in. If you're a patient listening to this, you know that there's always some music and then it's funny. Because I've had patients for so long that they'll come in and be like hey, you had like whatever hardcore rap playing last time and now you've got some some funky soul going on and I'm like yeah I evolve
Yeah right like we should
Yeah but check this out, her span is large really because even though these are somewhat related to actually they hit a lot of stuff it's it's Rage Against the Machine she listed Soundgarden which of course is that great Seattle sound then you have sublime, which is a huge...
Are you kidding me? I don't like the Santeria buddy
And she gets into some quest love and she she put on here the roots, then the fugees and no doubt so I
Holy cow if I just actually would. I was trying to be funny about the Craigslist, but I probably would have said those
We're all in good company here. Absolutely. And there's a lot out there. So you know it's just I was saying trying to think bands specifically right I feel like there's not.
This is perfect this is inside these are to me these are not throwaway band names This is they you didn't you didn't go with in the last 20 years you were with people who typically write their own stuff. Lots of bass, heavy, very talented bands. So no, I'm into it. I think that's awesome.
Cool, me too.
Well, Ken did you have anything...
I got I got I got one of the things I want to throw this at you Gabrielle what are the top three things you tell your coaches or that you tell your clients as a coach, non nutritional that you have them do to their lifestyle?
Mm hmm. Well, I talked about quality, quality of air quality of water quality relationships, quality of food. But I tell them to move, tell them to move their bodies find something that they like
I thought you said you need to move out of your house
You need to move. I tell them to move because it's toxic. And they gotta get out of there, I tell them to move their bodies go outside, get in the nature. If they can do one in the same with that, then that's really, that's really a sweet spot, to get some sleep, to know their worth.
That's awesome. It actually seems like it all augments on everything else that you're trying to teach them.
I hope so I hope that's the message just to empower them. That's really what I want to do is I want to empower them to know that their choices are super significant, to live a healthy, happy life that they're proud of and show up in the world the way they they want to. And hopefully I can help them you know, accomplish that.
You've said the word empower several different times. And I like the way that you're talking about this because you've talked about relationships a few times empowerment a few times, self worth. So I'm seeing a theme here that how many of your clients coming to you, and they do not feel good about themselves. So therefore, it's hard for them to treat themselves well.
Yeah, I would say a good percentage. And it doesn't always come out in the first visit. Sometimes I have to dig dig around and I find that but it's not just females, it's males too. And the younger the, unfortunately, some of the younger generation of kids. Yeah, some teenagers that I see.
Yeah, so that's that people like you are so important. And clinicians like you are so important, because what I'm seeing a ton of right now is I get people with irritable bowel, Fibromyalgia, fatigue, and they're on four different antidepressants. They're on anti anxiety and they're 22 years old. It's very hard for me to sit down, look at that and go over the side effects of your drugs alone are going to be the uphill battle of how we get you feeling better. So I think that more people are taking that approach is awesome. Were you going to say something Eric?
Yeah, actually, I think that's what I'm gonna build upon what she said what you just said. And when you you listed specific In fact, you listed four different things. But the last thing you said was know your worth. But the first three things were actionable. And knowing your worth is a hard thing to do, because now there's instructions on how to know your worth. And then when you ever you said young people in Ken said that your position is very important. I'm just curious if you're trying to coach someone who is young. One of the newest devices that is effective is the cell phone. And do you ever have to find yourself telling someone hey, possibly, if you're looking at your screentime registry per day, which is I think on iPhones, you can set it so that each week it tells you how many hours you've spent average each day on your phone if possibly driving down the pervasive or social networking thing might help them get over some of the driven anxiety or different things like that. Is that something that you ever have to coach someone on?
Totally yeah. And so not only from a comparison standpoint and constant stimulus standpoint, but also from a Wi Fi you know, radiation standpoint too. All of that stuff can be contributing to their to their mood. Yeah. So we talk about it from both angles.
Hold that thought, I'll be right back.
Hey, while he's stepping away, I was gonna say did you did you happen to see that there is a US representative or senator but here recently, they Just came out with a clip where they are introducing legislation to ban Tik tok, for instance, from being used on any governmental devices, especially for anybody in the Pentagon because it is an addictive app that is essentially recording keystrokes, everything so now they're they're cataloguing your passwords. They're cataloguing what you do all day. And it's it of course, it's it's preying upon your emotions, your anxiety, making you feel as if you have to use it over and over and over again.
Yeah, they say data is the new oil. Right? So we're everyone's looking to capture as much data and the more devices we have on us all the time, you know, the easier it is for them to do that.
So I'm late to the game with the whole EMF thing because Eric and I've been part of several, I don't know what do you call them entrepreneur groups, and there's a lot of functional doctors part of it. About Wi Fi EMF. I got myself a volt meter.
Oh yeah. What are you finding?
Well here's why I'm trying to do some earthing and some grounding. So I got a silver embedded sheet that I'm now doing it, I can, I can plug this with my volt meter and I will grab my phone and the volts just go up and you're like, ah! And then I was watching a video where some guy walks closer towards a power line and it just starts going up.
Off the chart.
Yeah. And I'm like, Oh, so I need objective data. So that's kind of my thing. Like if you say that you go EMF Oh, that's quackery. And then I go get something to prove or disprove it. And you're like, oh, man.
Oh, wait, there's something to that
Wait a minute. There's something to that now I start thinking about putting my phone in my pocket. I'm like, that's a little too close to the nether.
Right. Yeah.
It's it's funny because when I talk to my colleagues and stuff, and just it just, we're inundated with so much information and you're right, the phone is certainly one of them right now. But when you're talking about this stuff, it's like, if you vomited all that at once at somebody, then you almost discredit yourself. It's like they're all over because you do get a lot of people that that have this passion and when you have a lot of passion about something I do, I tend to vomit and talk about it all the time. I'll listen to a podcast Eric will hear me talk about we need to breathe everybody cover your right nostril, now your left nostril we're gonna. But your ability to develop the relationship with your clients is what's really going to make the difference and your ability to take the time to explain these things validates the actual field. So thank you for doing that. That's awesome.
Yeah, my pleasure. I really feel blessed to do it. And it's nice to, you know, see people's people that people to be able to step into, you know, what they want to be and what they're kind of called to be. Not that I'm, you know, my guru healer or something, but I think we all play a role in that and it feels really nice to to encourage people in that way.
Well Gabrielle I know that what if people go to livingwelldallas.com that's livingwelldallas.com they can find you as well as the clinic itself is there. What else can you tell everyone about how they would like to connect with a Integrative Health Coach like yourself?
Um so I'm on all the social media platforms as well under Gabrielle Randell and then I have a YouTube channel where I have some some videos on there some helpful tips and I plan on continuing to add to that and and yeah on the website you'll be able to see my information and then my email is Gabrielle@livingwelldallas.com.
So what I would really like to encourage this was more of a get to know you. Let's just showcase Gabrielle we've got this incredible person in our city. Hopefully we'll able to reconnect in the studio and be more in person. What I would like to see is anybody listening shoot some questions related to this and then maybe we bring her back and it's like a ask me anything episode. We get her kickin some knowledge and stuff like that.
Ama. Ama Gabrielle Grandell with ama on GCP. It sounds really good.
Yeah, I'd love to come back.
Well, that'd be awesome. That'll be easy, easy to do. We'll have all of your connectivity stuff listed in the show notes. Of course, in today's show be listening on the audio platform just go over to gutcheckproject.com. Look under Show Notes for this episode number 37, with Gabrielle grandell, and you can connect with her as well as shoot us a question and we can set up the AMA. Let's see here.
You had one of those Pettit mole seizures again, that's so funny.
It sounds It sounds so normal over here. And I guess over there, it doesn't at all, but I can tell whenever y'all are laughing halfway through me talking that something is happening.
Well, we kind of look at each other through the whole zoom. You know, like when you kind of get an idea of where you're looking on the screen. And so yeah, that is that is awesome. I love where you're coming from I we're speaking the same language, I have a lot to learn. So and that's kind of so i'm i'm excited every time we do something like this, we'll learn a little bit more.
Yeah, well I was excited to be here and talk with you guys. I wanted to mention that not only do I see people in my private practice, I also work with other practitioners that utilize me as their health coach. And so I have people in other parts of the country that that have health coaching as part of their program that people have purchased and then they have set amount of appointments with me. And so we do those over the phone or via video using the doxy website right now.
Thank you so much for coming on. This is is going to pretty much conclude episode number 37 This is Gabrielle Grandell. Thank you so much integrative health coach and living well Dallas and I say that correct, right livingwelldallas.com?
Uh huh that's right.
Livingwelldallas.com and we will more sooner rather than later have Gabrielle on for as Ken's already announced an AMA episode which who knows how long that's gonna go
Yeah we got to figure some stuff out go to kbmdhealth.com look at the information we have the products we have there, and then eventually we're going to get Gabrielle to give us some sort of coupon code for our for our listeners to get to ama or coaching or just just sweet vibes from her just put, just put it out there some self worth VA makes you feel better about yourself.
Oh, hey, last thing Ken you Ken you have to do the disclaimer
Oh, I keep forgetting to do that.
Doctors.
Gabrielle as it turns out, we're talking about a lot of medicine and things like that. But if you do have any unusual symptoms perhaps a weird rash, please do not use this show for the treatment of that we are not here to diagnose or treat. We are here to give some information and have some fun. Go see your doctor if that rash does not clear up. Anything else?
I agree.
That's our disclaimer.
That's a very official disclaimer. All right, folks, thank you. gut check project and KBMD health community. Gabrielle thank you once again, that's Episode 37. We'll have everything up with show notes if you'd like to connect with her and we will see y'all next time. Thank you.
All right Right on.
Thank you guys.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited about this. We were introduced through a mutual friend Gabrielle Grandell. She is currently practicing at living well Dallas, a certified health coach certified in functional med as well. And she calls herself an integrative dietitian. Why am I so excited about this because I would love to be sending her people like all day long. This is so cool. And my goal is that she has enough fun that she's a recurring guest slash co co host, because I think she's gonna really elevate all of our games and fill in a lot of gaps that that I need some education on because even though I got a degree in gastroenterology, we do about this much nutrition and I'm learning about it a ton. So thank you so much for joining Gabrielle.
Hi, everybody. Glad to be here. Thank you guys for having me on. Looking forward to chatting today.
Definitely. So Gabrielle, you are at living well Dallas, correct?
That is correct.
So tell us a little bit about what it is you do at living well Dallas because I have a feeling that with your experience, something that Ken and I've talked about is how we see there is a stark difference between our allopathic ideas behind nutrition and the approaches to nutrition. But really, there's this whole other world that's really started to gain steam, even though it's been around for a few decades. And that's the functional medicine approach to nutrition and how to help out with patients who have some some pretty hairy questions. So kind of tell us a little bit about living well Dallas and what you do there.
Yeah, thank you. So living well Dallas is the first Functional Medicine Center in Dallas. Oops, I hit some thing here on my screen.
It's okay. We all, sometimes we always do things.
So it's the first Functional Medicine Center in Dallas. And so functional medicine, right is is about thinking about the medicine sort of why. Why are things happening? Why? Why are these symptoms talking to us? And not just what is going on? But why is it happening and what can we do about it? And so functional medicine is, that's, you know, there's lots of different providers in the center that offer help and treating the whole person because it might be different, different things that they're dealing with, that they need support in. But where I come in is helping people with showing them how nutrition and what they're eating, their lifestyle, their environment, how all of that is helping or hurting them. And so most of the time, what's going on with these folks, whether it be digestive concerns, or headaches or hormonal issues or blood sugar dysregulation, we see all different kinds of people. But the different symptoms that they're experiencing, are usually as a result of what they're putting in their body and what they're putting around them, right, which is nutrition and lifestyle and you know environment. So I help people we have when they when people come in, they fill out a good deal of paperwork, which gives us a really good understanding of their history, kind of their goals, their readiness, we have a readiness assessment, which is really nice to try to gauge where people are coming from in terms of if they're ready to change their diet or their exercise or their sleep patterns or whatnot. We have them fill those things out. That gives me a good understanding of how they came to us and what they're ready to do what their diet history is like. Again, their environment, relationships, things like that purpose. And so we have them fill those things out. And then I'm going to go through that with them in their first visit. And we're going to talk about all the different ways that their body is speaking to them. What has worked before, what hasn't. One of the main differences, I think, between allopathic and functional for what I do is the amount of time that I'm spending with people. So before I was at the center, one of my other positions was at the hospital doing Clinical Nutrition and seeing, you know, 25 to 30 people in a short period of time, all over the hospital,
Which so you were in a major hospital
BUMC at Baylor University Medical Center. Yeah, in Dallas, which
So, I love this. So you went and the reason why is Eric's heard me complain about this. And I've talked to my patients about this. Whenever I do hospital work, I am just absolutely shocked at how many bad things we do to patients. Like, let's not let them sleep, let's check their blood glucose at 2am. And no results. Let's do vitals just so that we can check a box. And then somebody that's in the cardiac rehab unit, they're eating their cardiac diet, which consists of pancakes, syrup, you know.
But, it's low fat!
Oh, it's just as long as it's low fat. Yeah, exactly. So that's awesome. I did not know that you did that. This is this is fantastic. Okay, keep going. I didn't mean to interrupt, but that is that that shift of being a nutritionist in a hospital system to doing what you're doing is you cannot get more polar opposite.
And Gabrielle before you have to go too deep on on why I completely feel like the association for what Ken's looking for for his patients. And then what it is that you provide the audience may or may not realize that allopathic medicine itself is just traditional medicine as we view it today. And even though the word itself means scientifically based, I think that what has really appealed to Ken and me and others, like, like all three of us is that functional medicine has not forgotten the ideas behind applying new science to improve upon old methods. And the intake that you're talking about, traditionally, 15 years ago, there wasn't always a nutritionist who was experienced that took the time to one on one walk a patient through what's affecting them generally. I'm sorry, specifically, they were more general in approach.
Very yeah, nothing was was individualized. And you know, I think that I don't think there should be really a monopoly on who can provide health information and who can help people right...their their husband but hopefully that changes as time goes on. So yeah, so doing the doing the intake paperwork and taking the time is very different than at the hospital where we'd see 25 or 30 people and we'd, you know, it's almost, you know, no disrespect, because I know that there's a lot of dietitians and there's a lot of people in the hospital that are making a difference and, you know, really helping out but it's almost like glorified lunch ladies, like we don't we're talking about calorie counting, we're talking about, you know, tube feed all this stuff is important, but what about the quality? You know, there, there's not enough emphasis on quality of food and again, an individualized approach. And so, so I think that's number one. One of the main differences is just the amount of time so it's like 90 minutes for a first visit. And then after that, which sounds like a lot, but really once you get the people talking and you know you are understanding what's going on And then you start talking about their, their goals and things. Time goes by really quick. I often, you know, struggle with keeping it to that time.
You have...sorry, Eric really quick, just one of the best quotes I've heard in a long time. What I do is I find out what the symptoms are talking to my patients about you said the symptoms talk to us. Way different from my perspective, where you have a symptom, I treat it, it's saying something and we're ignoring what they're saying many times.
Exactly. Yeah. And you know, if our hormones I'll just use as an example are talking to us as ladies around our cycle. It's not is the answer to take birth control pills, you know, and suppress that, or try to figure out what else maybe we can do to get things in balance in our in our lives, you know, and there's a lot of examples like that, I think,
Well, I was going to say that there's also in addition to the client base focus, I would say that even in addition approach that a functional medicine or a functionally trained nutritionist is already approaching certain patient subsets differently than they did traditionally. Ken, the one I'm thinking about specifically how you talked about all of the most recent data that we know about what can make a heart disease patient, or someone more susceptible, and how the type of diet has changed over time how we care for them. Yet when we go into a hospital setting, or specifically what you saw, most recently, you you can't believe what there's sending somebody who's status post CABG, and it's all of the things that we wouldn't be feeding them anyway. It's it's in essence, a an inflammatory diet, and I was kind of curious Gabrielle do you find your training generally prepares you to handle either a neurology patient or a cardiology patient, different than the allopathic training?
I think, right, I think over time what I've been learning, you know, because I've been blessed to really work alongside some pretty intelligent mentors. And you know, I've been blessed to go to conferences and learn from a lot of a lot of people. I think that what I was taught I've had to expand it quite a bit, you know, and sort of unlearn some of the things that I was was taught right. I mean, biochemistry is the same and things but but we I never realized how much influence big Ag and big food and pharma has on the dietetics industry,
You know you're right there because the reality is that as as an allopathic physician, it seems like when I talk to my colleagues, unless in my field unless a drug rep shows up and hands them a detailed piece, there is no literature on that. But then when you go look at it, and you realize there's so much literature on this and then when we look back, my son and I were talking about About how we have our diets have changed, like over time as we evolved, and we have developed these different problems based on different food changes based on different things. And then you could see it track over hundreds of years of what's going on. I was just listening to a podcast on on breathwork and breathing and that kind of thing and about how so many of us have, you know, poor ability to breathe, and it's because of our anatomy is changed because of the food that we did. It just gets really complex. But the one thing that we have control over is what we put in our mouths. And, you know, we're telling people from at least in my perspective, when I see people I don't do this big intake thing like you do, but it is pretty funny every once in awhile walk into when we used to be able to see patients in the office and somebody will have a McDonald's cup right there. I'm like, yep, there's the problem. Don't even know who you are, what you're here for. I don't care. That's the problem right there.
It's contributing for sure. Yeah,
How in the world you go from the hospital and say I'm gonna make a complete change here and be a holistic or basically an integrative dietitian.
Yeah. So it just wasn't as rewarding as I had anticipated it being you know, I felt it was, it was I was making a difference, which is part of why I chose to get into nutrition in the first place. I was making a difference with some of these people, but to your point, they their families, and you know, they bring back McDonald's and fast food to these people and the diabetes, you know, people they'd be in there the next month, and then the next month, and it's just anyway, so it became less where I felt like I was really making a difference and that anyone was really listening to anything about nutrition and it was such an emphasis on surgery and such an emphasis on medication and my role was very seemed more like data entry almost. And so I just wasn't making the difference with the clients because I didn't have enough time to help them out and really talk through them. And, you know, we get trumped by those other things in the hospital. And so it was a good experience. But I just started looking into just started reading and started looking found functional medicine and thought this is really interesting. This is really, they're really getting to the root of what's happening, which often is there's people's diets, you know, there's these other factors of course, but this is really cool. And so back when Craigslist was kind of a thing. I recently got on Craigslist and was looking for a job you know, I had a job I was fine, but I thought I want to see if there's anything else out there. And I came across a position in a small boutique functional medicine office working with the MD obgyn, who had her private practice. And the idea was always that I was going to do nutrition consulting, but I kind of started off doing more office kind of running her office and helping explain things to clients and stuff. And then she ended up taking off into a bigger center and I started growing more skills and was able to take these consults on and learned, you know, by shadowing and stuff, I learned a lot of how to interpret tests and you know, help people with, with how to, to make those changes that they needed to make.
That's awesome. Just to let you know, I just got on Craigslist right now and there's no jobs for functional...
That was totally a godsend thing. Like, I didn't even look very long. I think I was one of the only people she interviewed like it was meant to be. It was meant to be but it's funny how I found it.
You also have some, some experience with functional lab testing as well. How did you how did you make that leap to do that now not all functional dieticians do that.
Yeah. So it really you know, it's just as again a blessing of kind of shadowing these doctors and these, you know, people that have been doing this for a long time, they really taught me a lot of what I know about interpretation. I didn't learn it in school, or any of the certifications, you know, that I've done, except for one that's kind of more recent. So I just started shadowing in on appointments, and listening and learning and taking notes and studying and understanding, you know, that these are the actual ranges that we want to look for from a preventative standpoint, and why and how conventional ranges are based on sick population of folks and for the most part, and that there's a lot more that we can look at, versus just some blood tests. I think blood tests are valuable. You know, and urine tests can be valuable, but there's so much more that we can explore and understand through looking at the function of the body, you know, because the body works really hard to keep keep the blood clean, and you so looking at urine and looking at its stool test and looking at saliva to lesser extent really opens up a lot of a lot of areas and helps it be that much more individualized and focused. So that's the other really great thing is that with functional medicine we're always so with functional medicine, we we get to make it personalized and by asking all these questions, and diving deeper into their life and what's going on, helps us determine what direction we want to go.
Okay, so I have a patient and I'm treating them for this is whatever I'm treating the for anything, ulcerative colitis. I say you know what your I don't think that your diets on point I think your whatever so I send them to you what would be some typical labs that you're talking about that you would want to look at that, that me using the do ologies of quest lab or lab core, you know, the two largest ones that have the standard ranges, you're saying that you can dive deep Just give me an example of the, the elevated care that you can do from at least a lab perspective.
Yeah, so like, if it was a digestive patient, you know, and they hadn't had any stool tests done anytime soon. I always like to look and see what they've got what they had done, right. So we don't rerun something that we don't, you know, is not necessary or helpful. But I would want to look at a stool test and beyond what most stool tests show, which are just some of the pathogenic bacteria or some of the pathogenic parasites or something maybe pretty limited, you know, and with a stool test, we can actually look and see who's all living in there, right, because we know how much the microbes play a role. So it's bacteria fungus viruses, worms, parasites, all those things plus digestive function. So looking at, you know, bile acids, pancreatic elastase looking to see how those organs are functioning, and then and then also inflammation and different markers from the immune system, I think is really helpful to put it all together and then use nutrition and supplements and lifestyle like mindful eating and, and whatnot, you know, to help them to eradicate those things. So like a colonoscopy or endoscopy or biopsies can be helpful, obviously, you know that and for structural findings and different things like that. But with a stool test, we can most often figure out Where's that? What's that is the source of the inflammation, you know, a lot of times so what, how can I help kind of coach people through understanding that they can have all these things going on without even having gut symptoms your person but you in your recommendation, you know, obviously would, but there are several people that I see that that I, I do stool tests with because what we know about the connection with immunity and neurotransmitters and you know, just overall health and in vitality metabolism, so that would be one might be, I might want to look at nutrient and vitamin levels through blood and urine. So, there's a really cool test from Genova called a Nutri eval. I don't know if you guys have heard of that before. But it looks at vitamin and mineral levels. It looks at a snapshot about neurotransmitters so some of the organic acid metabolites. It looks at heavy metals in whole blood. So that's kind of cool, you know, to show people cool i guess is a relative word. I got a lot of mercury.
Any chance that you've been eating paint? Bad news? Good news. I figured it I found it.
Hey, I've got a question for you Gabrielle when in utilizing these functional medicine tests because I think that we all know that they are on they're on the the early stage of really figuring out and they're learning each month on what new parameter matters most and then and we've all three of us seen where they thought the emphasis would be here and sometimes they dial it back only to find out that it's actually in this direction. Have you seen or ballpark? I guess I know you've seen it, but can you ballpark about how many people do you have an initial study on that after good guidance, good counseling and obviously adherence or compliance to what you lay out for them...how many how many or what what percentage roughly come back and then in six months or 12 months have shown an improvement a desired a desired improvement in those tests?
And then before you get to that, also, if you can figure out what happened to Eric there, we had that Pettit mal seizure where he slowed way down and then sped way up. You could fix that also.
Is that is that not something that y'all wanted?
We're both staring at you in slow way down and then.
Yeah, yeah, I dialed all of that in.
So I don't know. You know, I wish that we had something a little more concrete, you know, to offer. No one's doing any real research on any of that in our office. But I would say I don't ever have anybody not get better. It's just to what degree did they get better and how fast so yes, I like to kind of set the stage of depending on what's going on. Most people are not going to fully eradicate the situation, you know, sooner than six months. But they're going to start feeling better within a couple weeks if they really start changing their diet,
You could say an improvement in those at least correlates you're seeing correlation between improvement in quality of life happiness. And I would assume that certain symptoms would always include the general anxiety, sleeplessness, etc. as those things begin to improve, even though this is somewhat relatively new science, you're seeing a correlation to improving the quality of life, as well as an improvement in these these essays or these deaths.
Right, more so what I'm kind of measuring is this Yeah, the conversation that we're having what they're telling me is going well and you know, what their mood is, but I also have a symptoms questionnaire that people fill out that rates different body systems and different symptoms within those body systems. So like, there might be mind or emotion or digestive or skin or whatever. And so then they put a number out next to the side of it, and I'm always looking when they come in for the next visit. Did those symptoms go down? Right, did they get better? That's always the goal. And then if there's an outlier that didn't get better, right, like their sleep still stinks or something, then we're going to talk about that, you know. But so yeah, I think everybody is always getting better. Just some people need more therapies or more intense, you know, surgery or medications or something that absolutely happens, you know, but, but more often than not, the folks that are coming to see me are people that have actually seen a lot of other people with no to no avail. Because no one was really looking so much at their nutrition and lifestyle, because that's really where the money. You know, that's really where the money is, for most people. When they can change those things and get ahold of them. Things get better. Did I answer your question?
No, totally. I mean, because I think that it's such a relatively new approach and a new science in Canada. I've had some pretty extensive discussions on even something as, I say simple but people talk about all the time. It's fecal testing, and what out of all of the different things and there's various different labs that come and pitch his clinic on the services that they can provide. When it gets down to it, there are certain elements that people feel very, very dialed into on what those results may mean and a lot of the others, I think you were very honest, it's it's new, it's it's how are we collecting this data to make certain that we're heading in the right direction? Ultimately, a patient who doesn't feel well once they begin to feel well, you're at least solving some of the issues if they're sleeping better than you're solving insomnia, if they have decreased anxiety, then we're at least solving their anxious issues. So it makes sense to me that if we're starting to find correlating trends, then we're there we're at least beginning to crack the code on a lot of this functional medicine testing there, frankly, 15 years ago just did not exist.
Let me ask you that question from a from a clinical standpoint, so what I get away I get a lot of second opinions and a lot of people have actually found me through a functional medicine route, where they went allopathic. And then they went through a bunch of functional medicine style. Like all practitioners, there's good bad, there's things and then they end up spending quite a bit of money. And then they'll show up and they'll have five different stool studies from different places, Genova vibrant, wherever, and they'll just hand this big packet to me and go, what's this? And I remember listening to some different practitioners talking about stuff like this, they're like, look, we can analyze the stool, how we manipulate it is kind of or how we get it better is sort of the hard part. Being able to get a genomic sequence is the easy part. The hard part is what you're going to have to do with that. So what would you typically do? And I said, I was turned on to it. You know, we developed Atrantil for bloating and stuff like that. And I remember I was asked to give an IFM talk, the local Dallas IFM group and Betty Murray was there and a bunch of the other functional medicine doctors were there. And somebody had mentioned that they checked stool studies. And then what they wanted to see afterwards they checked it after treating with Atrantil which has the polyphenols, like in your little Facebook post great. And they, they said that it increased the microbial diversity. So from a integrative dietitian, what would you do with those stool studies? Because I'm flat out, I look at my patients, and I go, I don't really know what to do with this. So how would you and it's almost always the same thing, dysbiosis gluten intolerance, candida overgrowth, and then you have a disproportionate growth of these different bacteria. You know, we have 100 trillion bacteria there. So it's always it's always hard for me to look at somebody that's spending $800 on each one of these stool tests, and go I don't know what to do with it...yet. We're learning first step is being able to, to look at it. Second step is figure out how to manipulate it. So how would what would you do with those stool studies and this is less of an interview question, more of an advice.
And I think it's really great to that you're just you have mentioned that we don't know everything that we're always learning, but everything is always growing. You know, I think that that's a real sign of intelligence. And something that functional medicine kind of prides on is is evidence based and just continuing to grow that one size doesn't fit all, right. And so yeah, I think that there's some of the similarities that would happen across the board from different stool tests, no matter what it was, and you mentioned several of them. So, depending on what we find, you know, we might, I'm going to use supplements and food and lifestyle. So let's say, you know, again, if it's an overgrowth situation of bacteria, and if they're having gas and bloating and distension type symptoms, then I may offer the low FODMAP, you know, food plan, which you guys are probably familiar with, just you know, looking at particular starches and fibers that helped to starve out those bacteria and try and work with them on that. If they...
How long would you let somebody be on a low FODMAP diet?
That's a good question. I really don't try and do it very long. I really try to do it at least for a month. But I don't do it much longer than that, depending on their situation. Now, if they're not somebody that's compliant with taking some of my antimicrobial supplementation or gut repair supplements, or they're not doing you know, a lot of other things then I might keep them on it longer because they're probably still having the symptoms. And I think at least we're starving out those bacteria. But where I'm trying to meet people where they are because another thing to always think about when you when you're giving food plans, or diet protocols around stuff is people's ability to make that food, write their resources, their flavor preferences, their schedules, etc, etc, right and so I can show them this FODMAP plan and say this is, you know what, why this will work and here's the foods and you know when to eat those foods, but then I'm going to take that time to really break down how they can make that happen. And that also determines the timeframe of how long and whether we make any exceptions or not, you know?
So this gets into your so that you're the integrative dietitian, but then you have to put on your hat.
The coaching hat, yeah.
Then you have to do that, because you have to change habits here.
That's right.
You got to educate and then get them to believe in it. And
Yep, educate them and tell them the why and then figure out what their why is and then help them do the things you know. And so, like I like to say it's biology to behavior change. So, you know, depending on what we find.
Do you own all these cool quotes that you're throwing out there. Like have you trademarked them? I'm about ready to make some t-shirts.
I haven't. We can all use them. We can all share them. You make a T shirt now that you can you can have it that'd be cool. So, as long as you let me wear one. So what else would I do supplement wise? It depends, you know, because it depends on what we're dealing with. But it's Yeah, it's it's helping them to, to take ownership around what they found here and how it got created and then try to help them see that it doesn't. changes can happen without all happening at once. They can happen as the people are ready. So it's all on their on their timeline. And I can give advice and I tell them, I'm never going to steer them in the wrong direction. But they're in charge. Right. And I think that's where the coaching, the functional medicine specific kind of coaching comes in. And why I decided to, you know, to do those certifications and then become national board certified because I really believe that functional medicine, just health coaching in general, but specifically functional medicine is going to be really where the life change happens for a lot of these people, because skill sets like your skill set would be more utilized in doing the actual procedures, explaining to them about the results, you know, and but then they need, they need help doing the protocol to address the results. And so so that's why I think coaching is so vital because it's going to really allow for practitioners to partner with coaches to be able to help the client with their success and their their health because a lot of people just don't have the time or, you know, that really, a lot of times it's the time to take with with people to really invest in that as much as you might be interested in it. You know, you're you're busy doing this and you're doing this and then. So partnering with a coach is can be really helpful to help hold that space for the client.
Yeah, I think that's amazing. And I I'm under utilizing health coaches right now in my practice, and part of it is just because the, the demand, that's the, you know, it's a high volume, I get very, you know, second third opinions where we're trying to go through some different stuff. And so as a, as a coach, what I, what I at least tell my patients is that I try and take some of the burden off of them, because what you have is somebody that feels guilty about how they're eating fast food, and they're driving home and they're, they're tired, and I try to explain to them that sometimes it's not you. It's the fact that you've cultured these microbiome that are sending signals to your brain to do a follow up on that. So what I want to know as a health coach are one of the terms that I are one of the things I try and do with my patients is create friction on the bad habit. Meaning let's find a way to make it more difficult for these kind of things to happen. That's kind of how we got people to quit smoking. We just tax the snot out of it and people stopped. So creating some friction. Do you ever have you found little techniques to help your clients overcome? Because it's that first hurdle, that sugar crash the way that I mean, I, I truly believe that a lot of those people, they intellectually want it. But it's it. That's how they grew up. That's where they're at. It's I mean, we can talk about different cities. I was just in a small town in East Texas and my son and I were trying to eat healthy and that was not possible. Just period.
Right? Yeah.
What are some of your tricks as a coach? Some of your secrets that you win?
Um, I think my secret is being mindful and intentional and really trying to be there and present with them to hear what it is that they need. Because everybody is truly different. I really don't even like if we use the sugar craving, you know example. There's probably about 10 different reasons I could come up with right now that people have for why they have sugar cravings. So I think it's taking the time, I think one of the tricks I have is taking the time with them, to build that rapport, to help them understand that they can trust me, that I'm authentic, that we can be honest with each other. That, that I'm going to give them informed consent. So I'm going to tell them pros and cons about things. But I want to understand more about like you said, they intellectually might know that they don't want to eat this, you know, cookie, but then they keep finding themselves coming back to the cookie. Well talking through their day and what else surrounded that and kind of helping them to let me in a little bit to the scenario helps me figure out where I can guide them where I can coach them. It might not be you know, while I think it's helpful to share with them that maybe their yeast overgrowth is contributing to their sugar craving, I want to also spend time talking to them about how what we're doing is helping to get rid of that that threat. And what other scenarios can we do in our life that that also could contribute to sugar cravings? How can we kind of be proactive about not putting ourselves in that situation? So it's kind of similar, where we create a friction, we make it hard for them to do that, that habit, sometimes I go that route, but some people need other types of encouragement or there might be, you know, it might be that really, the reason why they go to that cookie is because they had an argument with their spouse that they have almost every night. You know, and so what needs to be addressed over there? Or is it that they didn't eat all day long, you know, and maybe that's why or whatever, you know, there's various different things. So I don't know if that's the kind of a long answer to your question about what are my like specific tricks because everybody I just try to kind of feel them out. And I probably have a couple of one liners as you can tell, you know, that I throw in and mix those in. But I just want them to know that I'm there for them. And that help is really a cool thing where it doesn't happen in a black and white all in or nothing kind of scenario. It's all every step you take helps you get there, right and figuring out why you're doing it and then coming playing back into that motivation can keep them on track along with education.
It seems to me like that such a such a key part in so many things on changing one's daily habits into better habits is just simply recognizing what puts you where you are. And you hit the nail on the head. We've we've talked about certain different things, maybe not necessarily in terms of just health coaching, but I completely agree with you Gabrielle, if you can identify what is triggering you to do something that you already don't want to do, then obviously, that's not the way to deal with the thing that you don't want to do. So it's, it's more or less, can you improve a different part of your life...it sounds to me, can you improve a different part of your life or change your routine that's going to allow you to not necessarily feel the need to, to break the trends, is that kind of right?
Yeah, I think and I think we all need partners. I think we all need help and coaches and support and guidance. You know, I don't think any of us have anything all figured out 100%. So, the coaching can come in and help you shed light on on things that you may not take the time, or have the ability to break it down and see it that way. You know, see it from a different angle,
Eric's pretty close though about having everything figures out.
Well, that's pretty obvious. So we can all learn a lot from from Eric. I myself. I don't have it all figured out.
That's a ridiculous claim. But thanks for playing along with Ken. That makes me feel really well.
I mean, are you kidding? I said in the very beginning, I'm learning how to breathe. I haven't even mastered that and I've been doing that for almost 50 years, so.
Okay, so I've got something I've got something that Gabrielle shared in our intake Ken and I'm just curious if you can name any of her so we've heard the way that she scientifically thinks through a few things, etc. Ken and I, whenever we scope together we have different days different playlists, we try to listen to pretty much everything. Can you just out of thin air pick one of her top five bands, she's listed five on here I believe no actually she listed six. She doesn't follow rules very well, but she listed six and none of them didn't debut before the year 2000. So all of these looks like they were in in in the 90s. And all of them are are bands I listen to can you name one of them Ken.
Yeah so this this should be pretty easy because everybody I've ever met that serves Craigslist loves Metallica.
So close but no not even there not even not there.
See? She threw me off with the Craigslist thing.
Yeah. I know.
Her first band listed and I love this because we were just...last week is rage against the machine.
Oh, that's awesome.
Cake is definitely
Cake is a good one. Yeah, Metallica is a good one too.
Eric and I are big I basically well we basically always have music going at all times. And so it's a it's just part of our existence. It helps the patients patients come in. If you're a patient listening to this, you know that there's always some music and then it's funny. Because I've had patients for so long that they'll come in and be like hey, you had like whatever hardcore rap playing last time and now you've got some some funky soul going on and I'm like yeah I evolve
Yeah right like we should
Yeah but check this out, her span is large really because even though these are somewhat related to actually they hit a lot of stuff it's it's Rage Against the Machine she listed Soundgarden which of course is that great Seattle sound then you have sublime, which is a huge...
Are you kidding me? I don't like the Santeria buddy
And she gets into some quest love and she she put on here the roots, then the fugees and no doubt so I
Holy cow if I just actually would. I was trying to be funny about the Craigslist, but I probably would have said those
We're all in good company here. Absolutely. And there's a lot out there. So you know it's just I was saying trying to think bands specifically right I feel like there's not.
This is perfect this is inside these are to me these are not throwaway band names This is they you didn't you didn't go with in the last 20 years you were with people who typically write their own stuff. Lots of bass, heavy, very talented bands. So no, I'm into it. I think that's awesome.
Cool, me too.
Well, Ken did you have anything...
I got I got I got one of the things I want to throw this at you Gabrielle what are the top three things you tell your coaches or that you tell your clients as a coach, non nutritional that you have them do to their lifestyle?
Mm hmm. Well, I talked about quality, quality of air quality of water quality relationships, quality of food. But I tell them to move, tell them to move their bodies find something that they like
I thought you said you need to move out of your house
You need to move. I tell them to move because it's toxic. And they gotta get out of there, I tell them to move their bodies go outside, get in the nature. If they can do one in the same with that, then that's really, that's really a sweet spot, to get some sleep, to know their worth.
That's awesome. It actually seems like it all augments on everything else that you're trying to teach them.
I hope so I hope that's the message just to empower them. That's really what I want to do is I want to empower them to know that their choices are super significant, to live a healthy, happy life that they're proud of and show up in the world the way they they want to. And hopefully I can help them you know, accomplish that.
You've said the word empower several different times. And I like the way that you're talking about this because you've talked about relationships a few times empowerment a few times, self worth. So I'm seeing a theme here that how many of your clients coming to you, and they do not feel good about themselves. So therefore, it's hard for them to treat themselves well.
Yeah, I would say a good percentage. And it doesn't always come out in the first visit. Sometimes I have to dig dig around and I find that but it's not just females, it's males too. And the younger the, unfortunately, some of the younger generation of kids. Yeah, some teenagers that I see.
Yeah, so that's that people like you are so important. And clinicians like you are so important, because what I'm seeing a ton of right now is I get people with irritable bowel, Fibromyalgia, fatigue, and they're on four different antidepressants. They're on anti anxiety and they're 22 years old. It's very hard for me to sit down, look at that and go over the side effects of your drugs alone are going to be the uphill battle of how we get you feeling better. So I think that more people are taking that approach is awesome. Were you going to say something Eric?
Yeah, actually, I think that's what I'm gonna build upon what she said what you just said. And when you you listed specific In fact, you listed four different things. But the last thing you said was know your worth. But the first three things were actionable. And knowing your worth is a hard thing to do, because now there's instructions on how to know your worth. And then when you ever you said young people in Ken said that your position is very important. I'm just curious if you're trying to coach someone who is young. One of the newest devices that is effective is the cell phone. And do you ever have to find yourself telling someone hey, possibly, if you're looking at your screentime registry per day, which is I think on iPhones, you can set it so that each week it tells you how many hours you've spent average each day on your phone if possibly driving down the pervasive or social networking thing might help them get over some of the driven anxiety or different things like that. Is that something that you ever have to coach someone on?
Totally yeah. And so not only from a comparison standpoint and constant stimulus standpoint, but also from a Wi Fi you know, radiation standpoint too. All of that stuff can be contributing to their to their mood. Yeah. So we talk about it from both angles.
Hold that thought, I'll be right back.
Hey, while he's stepping away, I was gonna say did you did you happen to see that there is a US representative or senator but here recently, they Just came out with a clip where they are introducing legislation to ban Tik tok, for instance, from being used on any governmental devices, especially for anybody in the Pentagon because it is an addictive app that is essentially recording keystrokes, everything so now they're they're cataloguing your passwords. They're cataloguing what you do all day. And it's it of course, it's it's preying upon your emotions, your anxiety, making you feel as if you have to use it over and over and over again.
Yeah, they say data is the new oil. Right? So we're everyone's looking to capture as much data and the more devices we have on us all the time, you know, the easier it is for them to do that.
So I'm late to the game with the whole EMF thing because Eric and I've been part of several, I don't know what do you call them entrepreneur groups, and there's a lot of functional doctors part of it. About Wi Fi EMF. I got myself a volt meter.
Oh yeah. What are you finding?
Well here's why I'm trying to do some earthing and some grounding. So I got a silver embedded sheet that I'm now doing it, I can, I can plug this with my volt meter and I will grab my phone and the volts just go up and you're like, ah! And then I was watching a video where some guy walks closer towards a power line and it just starts going up.
Off the chart.
Yeah. And I'm like, Oh, so I need objective data. So that's kind of my thing. Like if you say that you go EMF Oh, that's quackery. And then I go get something to prove or disprove it. And you're like, oh, man.
Oh, wait, there's something to that
Wait a minute. There's something to that now I start thinking about putting my phone in my pocket. I'm like, that's a little too close to the nether.
Right. Yeah.
It's it's funny because when I talk to my colleagues and stuff, and just it just, we're inundated with so much information and you're right, the phone is certainly one of them right now. But when you're talking about this stuff, it's like, if you vomited all that at once at somebody, then you almost discredit yourself. It's like they're all over because you do get a lot of people that that have this passion and when you have a lot of passion about something I do, I tend to vomit and talk about it all the time. I'll listen to a podcast Eric will hear me talk about we need to breathe everybody cover your right nostril, now your left nostril we're gonna. But your ability to develop the relationship with your clients is what's really going to make the difference and your ability to take the time to explain these things validates the actual field. So thank you for doing that. That's awesome.
Yeah, my pleasure. I really feel blessed to do it. And it's nice to, you know, see people's people that people to be able to step into, you know, what they want to be and what they're kind of called to be. Not that I'm, you know, my guru healer or something, but I think we all play a role in that and it feels really nice to to encourage people in that way.
Well Gabrielle I know that what if people go to livingwelldallas.com that's livingwelldallas.com they can find you as well as the clinic itself is there. What else can you tell everyone about how they would like to connect with a Integrative Health Coach like yourself?
Um so I'm on all the social media platforms as well under Gabrielle Randell and then I have a YouTube channel where I have some some videos on there some helpful tips and I plan on continuing to add to that and and yeah on the website you'll be able to see my information and then my email is Gabrielle@livingwelldallas.com.
So what I would really like to encourage this was more of a get to know you. Let's just showcase Gabrielle we've got this incredible person in our city. Hopefully we'll able to reconnect in the studio and be more in person. What I would like to see is anybody listening shoot some questions related to this and then maybe we bring her back and it's like a ask me anything episode. We get her kickin some knowledge and stuff like that.
Ama. Ama Gabrielle Grandell with ama on GCP. It sounds really good.
Yeah, I'd love to come back.
Well, that'd be awesome. That'll be easy, easy to do. We'll have all of your connectivity stuff listed in the show notes. Of course, in today's show be listening on the audio platform just go over to gutcheckproject.com. Look under Show Notes for this episode number 37, with Gabrielle grandell, and you can connect with her as well as shoot us a question and we can set up the AMA. Let's see here.
You had one of those Pettit mole seizures again, that's so funny.
It sounds It sounds so normal over here. And I guess over there, it doesn't at all, but I can tell whenever y'all are laughing halfway through me talking that something is happening.
Well, we kind of look at each other through the whole zoom. You know, like when you kind of get an idea of where you're looking on the screen. And so yeah, that is that is awesome. I love where you're coming from I we're speaking the same language, I have a lot to learn. So and that's kind of so i'm i'm excited every time we do something like this, we'll learn a little bit more.
Yeah, well I was excited to be here and talk with you guys. I wanted to mention that not only do I see people in my private practice, I also work with other practitioners that utilize me as their health coach. And so I have people in other parts of the country that that have health coaching as part of their program that people have purchased and then they have set amount of appointments with me. And so we do those over the phone or via video using the doxy website right now.
Thank you so much for coming on. This is is going to pretty much conclude episode number 37 This is Gabrielle Grandell. Thank you so much integrative health coach and living well Dallas and I say that correct, right livingwelldallas.com?
Uh huh that's right.
Livingwelldallas.com and we will more sooner rather than later have Gabrielle on for as Ken's already announced an AMA episode which who knows how long that's gonna go
Yeah we got to figure some stuff out go to kbmdhealth.com look at the information we have the products we have there, and then eventually we're going to get Gabrielle to give us some sort of coupon code for our for our listeners to get to ama or coaching or just just sweet vibes from her just put, just put it out there some self worth VA makes you feel better about yourself.
Oh, hey, last thing Ken you Ken you have to do the disclaimer
Oh, I keep forgetting to do that.
Doctors.
Gabrielle as it turns out, we're talking about a lot of medicine and things like that. But if you do have any unusual symptoms perhaps a weird rash, please do not use this show for the treatment of that we are not here to diagnose or treat. We are here to give some information and have some fun. Go see your doctor if that rash does not clear up. Anything else?
I agree.
That's our disclaimer.
That's a very official disclaimer. All right, folks, thank you. gut check project and KBMD health community. Gabrielle thank you once again, that's Episode 37. We'll have everything up with show notes if you'd like to connect with her and we will see y'all next time. Thank you.
All right Right on.
Thank you guys.