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This week on the podcast Mikki speaks to Dr. Michelle Woolhouse, a multifaceted physician whose work blends the best of western medical training with the insights of integrative and complementary therapies. Michelle is a general practitioner with qualifications in psychotherapy, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, and integrative medicine. She’s also the co-founder of Vively, a platform designed to empower people to take control of their metabolic health through cutting-edge tools like continuous glucose monitoring (CGM).
They unpack the journey that brought Michelle to focus on whole-person health. From her early days as a western-trained doctor to the experiences that shaped her understanding of holistic care, Michelle shares powerful insights about how metabolic health underpins not only physical wellness but also mental health, longevity, and quality of life.
They discuss the importance of recognising early warning signs of poor metabolic health—long before traditional markers like HbA1c flag a problem. Michelle also explores how lifestyle factors such as stress, sleep, and diet intersect with metabolic health and how her work with Vively is reshaping how people engage with their health through personalised insights and actionable data.
If you’ve ever wondered how technology can bridge the gap between prevention and treatment, or how we might transform mainstream healthcare to prioritise proactive care over reactive care, this episode is for you.
Dr. Michelle Woolhouse, an experienced holistic doctor, who integrates the realms of psychotherapy, neuroscience, and integrative functional medicine to guide you on your path to optimal well-being. As the author of "The Wonder Within" and a highly sort after keynote speaker, Dr. Woolhouse offers a transformative approach to healthcare.
Dr. Michelle's specialty differs from the typical medical encounter or standard coaching session, as she dedicates extensive time to each individual, uncovering root cause insights into your unique health journey. Her practice recognises the interconnectedness of mind, body, environment and personal beliefs, guiding
you towards holistic wellness and personal empowerment.
Drawing on her expertise in psycho-neuro-immunology, nutrition and functional testing, Dr. Woolhouse navigates the intricate language of the brain and body to empower people to better health and outcomes. Through a compassionate approach she supports you in addressing underlying challenges and harnesses the power of mind-body medicine to facilitate personal and professional flourishing.
Vively app https://www.vively.com.au/
Creators & Guests
What is Mikkipedia?
Mikkipedia is an exploration in all things health, well being, fitness, food and nutrition. I sit down with scientists, doctors, professors, practitioners and people who have a wealth of experience and have a conversation that takes a deep dive into their area of expertise. I love translating science into a language that people understand, so while some of the conversations will be pretty in-depth, you will come away with some practical tips that can be instigated into your everyday life. I hope you enjoy the show!
00:03
Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia, and this week on the podcast, I speak to Dr. Michelle Woolhouse, a truly multifaceted physician whose work blends the best of Western medical training with the insights of integrative and complementary therapies. Michelle is a general practitioner with qualifications in psychotherapy, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, and integrative medicine. She's also the co-founder of Vively.
00:31
platform designed to empower people to take control of their metabolic health through cutting edge tools like continuous glucose monitoring or CGNs. In our conversation we unpacked the journey that brought Michelle to focus on whole person health from her early days as a Western trained doctor to the experiences that shaped her understanding of holistic care. Michelle shares powerful insights about how metabolic health underpins not only physical
00:59
longevity and quality of life. We'll discuss the importance of recognising early warning signs of poor metabolic health, long before traditional markers like HbA1c flag a problem. Michelle also explores how lifestyle factors such as stress, sleep and diet intersect with metabolic health and how her work with Vively is reshaping how people engage with their health through personalised insights and actionable data. So if you've wondered how technology can bridge the gap between prevention and treatment,
01:29
or how we might transform mainstream healthcare to prioritise proactive care rather than reactive care, this episode is for you. So for those of you unfamiliar with Michelle, she is an experienced holistic doctor who integrates the realms of psychotherapy, neuroscience and integrative functional medicine to guide you on your path to optimal wellbeing. She's the author of The Wonder Within and a highly sought after keynote speaker.
01:57
she offers a transformative approach to healthcare. Dr. Michelle's specialty differs from other typical medical encounters as she dedicates extensive time to each individual, uncovering root cause insights into your unique health journey. Her practice recognizes the interconnectedness of mind, body, environment, and personal beliefs, guiding you towards holistic wellness and personal empowerment, which as you guys know, are areas that I'm super passionate about.
02:27
So drawing on her expertise in psyc nutrition and functional testing, Dr. Wohlhaus navigates the intricate language of the brain and body to empower people to better health and outcomes. Through a compassionate approach, she supports you in addressing underlying challenges and harnesses the power of mind-body medicine to facilitate personal and professional flourishing. So that really gives you a great overview of
02:54
where Michelle's practice lies and what she's passionate about doing. So I've put links to both where you can find Michelle and also the Vively app, which is what we spend a lot of time discussing in today's podcast, in the show notes. Before we crack on into the interview though, I would like to remind you that the best way to support this podcast is to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform. That increases the visibility of Micopedia.
03:22
and amongst literally thousands of other podcasts out there. So more people get to hear from the experts that I have on the show like Michelle. All right team, enjoy the conversation. Michelle, thank you so much for joining me today on my podcast. I was super excited actually to start getting the adverts for, is it Vively? Have I got that right? Yes, in my feed because...
03:49
I'm a big fan of continuous glucose monitors. I know a number of listeners are super familiar with levels in the states and sapiens, although I'm not actually sure where the sapiens are still going. I haven't heard a bit from them, but the whole idea of linking your glucose level to other aspects of health. To see an Australian and a product we can use here in New Zealand was super exciting. So I'm...
04:17
I'm stoked to have this opportunity to chat to you. Yeah, great. Michelle, can we kick off a little bit with your background? You're a Western trained doctor, but you've got all of these other qualifications that really broaden your focus on health. And I think I'm always interested to understand better, I guess, someone's how someone sort of finds himself in your situation, I guess. Yeah, sure. So.
04:44
Well, I went to medical school at the ripe old age of 17. I guess towards the end of that six or seven year journey, I was really strung out, probably like lots of medical students. I would say I'm the shell of my former self and just found the whole journey really difficult. Those years in medical school residency, like so after you finished medical school, were just incredibly strained.
05:15
not really very much debriefing or support emotionally and found myself quite broken working in the hospital system and ended up going and joining a retreat. It was under the guise of singing fine to a natural voice, but in fact, it was a lot of meditation. In fact, I just had a really profound experience where my stress levels were just incredibly
05:44
You know, often sometimes you feel stressed, but you kind of normalize that stress, you know, really remember what it feels to be incredibly relaxed. And so I just had the most amazing experience and that opened my journey to meditation and mind-body medicine. And then I went to another conference called the Holistic Health Conference where they were talking about, you know, medical hypnosis, mind-body medicine.
06:14
psychotherapy, but also who was there was a man called Professor Ian Brighthope and spoke about the power of nutritional medicine. And it was something I had never heard about before, the power of nutrients, the power of taking away certain inflammatory foods, the true impact of some of people's lifestyle
06:43
their nutrient levels within their body and how that influenced disease. From there, I went on and did a post-grad in nutritional medicine and in my own body medicine and the rest is history really. So then a couple of years ago, the Australian Lifestyle Medicine Association became a part
07:06
I guess a little bit more active, like it was started a long time ago, but it became more active and I got involved with that college as well as the Australian Osteo-relation Integrated Medical Society and the College of Nutrition and Environmental Medicine. And so I've really dedicated my career to holistic medicine and looking at that whole person care and really understanding the physiological, psychological.
07:33
neurological impacts of illness, both from internally to external and external to internal. Yeah, that's super interesting Michelle. I feel like Australia has a real foundation of doctors like you who are practicing in their, like just different places, just from my understanding of going to AMA conferences and ACNHM conferences, which is brilliant really.
08:03
got a similar sort of group of people, although, you know, littered around, I think we do. And I'm really interested actually, like with what you said about your stress levels, because how you described, you know, that you didn't understand your stress until it was almost reduced. And I feel like this is something which a lot of people aren't even aware of. And I know when I speak to my clients about stress, I almost feel like I'm asking the wrong person and I actually need to ask.
08:31
their significant other or their best friend or something, because they'll have a much better read on it. Because so much of, I think, our health is normalized now, because we don't, because for a lot of people, I wonder that they must be so far removed from true health that they've just normalized the level of that sort of suboptimal health, which of course, metabolic health plays a lot into, but it's not just that, it's all those other areas that you're interested in.
09:01
Well, I think to be fair is that that's our nervous system. It is an adaptable system. It loves automation. We save a lot of energy through automation processes. Our brain uses and our nervous system uses 25% of our daily energy requirements. This is how brain health is really connected to metabolic health as well. Because it uses it's such an energy
09:31
anything it can automate and normalize and adapt to it will. And so we become very stress adaptive. And so we go about our daily work and there's stresses and we adapt to it and we accommodate until we reach a point where we can no longer adapt and accommodate and then often people will collapse. And so what part of the gradient are you trying to, you know, you don't want to get people to collapse and fall over and burn out or have an anxiety panic attack.
09:59
You want to try and get them before that happens. But this understanding of kind of this hidden or normalization of stress is really a powerful concept that people can take on board. And it's not until you actually feel that incredible deep rest, and there's been multiple times in my life from, you know, I now run retreats myself, but you're going on retreat and, you know, spending eight days, 10 days, 14 days, whatever it is.
10:27
you know, in meditation, you know, in touch with nature, you really have a very visceral impact of like, wow, I feel incredibly chilled. You know, that sort of laughter, the lightness, you know, that sense of the problems don't that you are really attached to just don't seem to have that same energy and.
10:53
Yeah, you're coping skills and processing skills emotionally and mentally and spiritually just are heightened. And so it's that opposing kind of feeling of like, wow, I feel so amazing now. Gee, I must have felt so stressed in my ordinary life. And I mean, it is a kind of a yo-yo impact too, you know, because I do have to come back to my...
11:18
ordinary life or I choose to come back to my ordinary life, where my loved ones are and my life is. And so it's that learning to take that middle road between being an aesthetic monk, lying on the grass and looking at the clouds and being a contributing member of the community. How do you manage and wax and weave your way through those different parts of our being?
11:48
Do you feel like people who you've, you know, either patients of yours or others who have sort of joined you along the way with these, do you feel like you, that that's an easy navigation eventually? Like, cause I imagine people listening to this might be going, oh, I could never imagine ever taking that time out of my real life but then coming back and being different in it. Like, is that an easy thing to navigate? Look at.
12:16
It's such a good question. I think everybody comes to these conclusions and wisdom. It's always like an internal wisdom that we all have access to. Some of the people that are the wisest members of our community, we kind of look to them and go, wow, they're so wise. But really, we all have our own internal wisdom and everybody has, I guess, their own compass to which to navigate.
12:43
There's a thing called you've got to be ready. You have to be ready for a certain level of change and the suffering has to kind of almost be enough. I mean, we don't use the word suffering so much in our Western kind of world, which is more of a Buddhist term, but that level of pain and anguish or agitation or irritation or mood disruption or even fatigue, some people express their...
13:11
express their ill health or their stresses through body, whether it's migraines or your atrial bowel or even back pain, those kinds of things. How bound does it have to be for somebody to make a change? For some people, they can be, I guess like me, in their early 20s. And for others, it might be 40 or 50 or even up to 70 years of age. I get some patients that are
13:41
I had some patients that are like, I mean, I give them my gold stars. They just do everything really well in terms of that internal reflection point. Other people were like, no, I can't. The idea of change is almost terrifying for them. Every patient that you see, I mean, yourself as a practitioner, it's different. You have to meet a person where they're at.
14:10
And if they're not ready for that, sometimes just that gentle coaching through, or they might need a different practitioner, you know, to set them off in a different kind of pathway. But the other aspect of your questioning was also that sort of, you know, taking that week out, you know, of your schedule. And that's a very traditional opportunity that has been, you know, part of, you know, even from, you know, we talked about months before.
14:39
even in monasteries to sabbaticals to this idea of finding a space in your life for pure rest and in this Western world, we don't have that concept that feels like a waste of time or really unproductive or impossible. And so sometimes just changing that mindset around that impossibility.
15:07
is really important and a lot of people will say, oh, it's just indulgent. They'll actually minimize it through that. That's the people that can afford the luxury of having a week off. In fact, it's often very hard work, that week off digging deep, really transforming the plasticity of the brain. It's a lot of effort, but the rewards are tremendous.
15:36
This is a bit of a tangent really from what our discussion is, but I am interested in your thoughts around this. Like for people who really feel like it's impossible for the week, that they don't have that amount of time, do you feel there is value in some daily practice of something small as a almost transition? I'm not sure, like to be at a point where they're like, okay, now I can do it. Like, do you deal with people in that sort of...
16:03
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'll sometimes give people as little as three minutes of meditation a day, you know, put the timer on. We sometimes use some beautiful either music that they like or just some relaxation meditation music, so accessible now on platforms like Spotify. And, you know, put the timer on three minutes, that's it, you know, focus on their breath, focus on their out-breath, focus on body awareness. There's so many different
16:33
tactile ways in which people can kind of access that present moment awareness. But I'm a great believer in not, you know, to try and set somebody the task of doing a 20 minute meditation is really difficult in this day and age. I'm much more of a believer of like a three minute everyday opportunity for people to start off. The other way to think about it for some people is to try one day retreat or a weekend.
16:59
just so that they don't have to, you know, if they're working five days a week, they can take that time out and they're not losing out on holidays or those kinds of things. But there is something really profound in being around minds that are more quiet and being attuned to nature. And so you get, I guess, a more deeper experience of what it feels like to go into a relaxation stage.
17:29
particularly for those that have almost forgotten how to relax because the body is so sort of tense and we tend to, you know, if your body is tense the day before, it's going to be tense tomorrow and you know, unless you do something different, that's the sort of tendency that kind of happens on repeat. Like the body just burns and we teach ourselves all the time on how we
17:55
want to be in this world. And so in order to change it, sometimes doing something, not dramatic, but challenging, you know, challenging the normality of your day to day life has profound effects. Like we've run some weekend retreats and you know, even after the 48 hours, like you know, people are smiling and connecting and you know, that relief that you kind of
18:24
I mean, I don't know about you, Miki, but you know, it's just, the tension is disconnecting and it's just disconnecting for the self and disconnecting to other people and irritated. And yes, I can sometimes fall away. So, so nicely. Oh no, I love that Michelle. And I, you know, and I, I've often thought that with, with meditation, it's people, sometimes the people who need it most almost fail quote unquote, because they can't do it perfectly. You know, like, Oh my, but my.
18:54
thoughts got into my mind and I can't even do it, you know? The expectation that they're not going to think for 20 minutes. It's like, wow, if you tracked my brain, there's absolutely no way I'm not thinking for, you know, and these, I mean, I do a very small daily practice and particularly with, you know, I've got teenagers in my house and their schedule is always different and I find it really difficult to kind of, you know, find my space.
19:24
Um, so I'm quite gentle on myself and, and then this morning I was amazing. Like I actually extended my practice for another five minutes. So I did eight minutes, but most days I'm like, okay, three minutes is enough. Oh, that's so good. Today was today, Mickey, maybe it was because of our meeting, but yeah, today I had a particularly good brain. That's awesome, Michelle. And I should probably ask your nutritional inputs to see whether you take any like ketones or mushrooms or something to get that like.
19:53
fire, get your sort of mind clear actually, do you? Yeah. So, look, I fluctuate at the moment. I'm not taking very much. I am perimenopausal. So I'm playing around with progesterone and estrogen and some menopausal herbs. But yeah, so and I really, I tell you what I do do in terms of my own supplementation is I really prioritize sleep. So I often
20:21
haven't, we've run out and I haven't taken magnesium and then I take some sleeping herbs and that can be from anywhere from Ginkgo biloba to Valerian to lemon balm and lavender and those kinds of things. So I tend to kind of mix it around because it feels like my brain gets used to something and then I'll, you know, Wathania, you know, one time, et cetera. And I've been prioritizing my sleep for such a long time now that I've been
20:51
Because I have a busy job, I have a busy life, I can get myself stressed, I have a lot of responsibility, I have family, I was running a business, etc. And so if I can prioritize my sleep, then my energy levels throughout the day is really important and I'm not perfect about my nutrition, but it's pretty good. And my exercise is pretty much a daily exercise.
21:20
They're my foundations. Yeah, that's really nice. And, you know, as I, what I, in my experience, I feel like people can almost get away, as again, I'm using quotations, with nutrition not being perfect if they've got these other things in place. And, you know, like you, I found progesterone to be an absolute game changer when it comes to sleep. But I really liked what you just said about how you rotate, and I'm not sure whether it's a,
21:50
you know, every five days or it sounds actually more like you're a little bit, um, like once a month, like I just changed the products around kind of, um, in a rotational kind of scenes often cause I get given the mouse. However, but what I would say is that I found when I was in a perfectionist state of any of my lifestyle medicine interventions that
22:19
out of kilter. And I think that that is, you know, in reflection is actually about the socialization, you know, as well. And, but now I guess, you know, I'm in a new phase being I'm 52 now in a new phase of having to redesign my lifestyle medicine because, you know, my, my metabolism and my physiology is changing. And that's been a challenge, you know.
22:48
as an individual kind of thinking, I don't want to change. I touched really good kind of patterns that was all working for me. Now I have to review and change the way that I do my exercise and change the, my, just my patterns and my nutrition. And so I guess, you know, I've been doing that for a couple of years now and feel a little bit, you know, more into the transition than I was at the start. But, you know, for any of your women around that age, like, you know, just want to acknowledge that it's confronting.
23:18
you know, when your body starts to change and your ability to utilize energy starts to change and sleep patterns start to change. And it does require a reinvention of sorts. Yeah. And, and, you know, I often speak about how I have, I've got many different types of clients, but you know, there is, in terms of women, I've got women who feel like they've struggled with their weight all of their lives and they've always thought about it. It's been sort of, you know, at the forefront of, of most of
23:48
the things that they do is geared towards trying to shift it around diet and exercise. And that's how their lens of health has been through that, I guess. But then I've got other women who haven't really ever had to think about it and have never really had to change their food or think about exercise from a weight perspective. But then they've sort of had, as you've just talked about, like things change as they've gotten into perimenopause and it's almost thrown them a little bit because...
24:17
they now, they have to think differently about what they do and they've never thought about it, which they've found a real challenge. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Hey Michelle, even though like none of this was around, you know, I really want to chat to you about, about Vively and talk about metabolic health. It's all interrelated, you know, isn't it? Like all of this stuff. Well, I think this is the thing, I mean, you know, even the way medicine is taught, it's siloed. You know, cardiovascular, you learn about cardiovascular disease and then you learn about...
24:46
the endocrine system and then you learn about the neurological system. I guess the benefit that I've been educated through all my life is this lens of wholeness. We come from a scientific educational background. The Western medicine prides itself on some sort of scientific template. What science does is it breaks things down and it reduces things down to smaller parts so that it can be kind of analyzed.
25:15
But the fact of the matter is that we're whole. You know, we're part of an ecosystem and even, you know, we are part of the world. So we are individuals in our own, you know, rights, but we also interconnected to our environment. And so it's this building back up and really looking through the lens of the whole, which is so important, which is what Vivaldi has been designed to teach people.
25:41
about the importance of all of the different criteria of health and how they interconnect. Metabolic health is such an interesting intersection because it does affect every single organ. It's like metabolism is how we utilize energy in the body. That impacts the bones and the muscles and the nervous system and the digestive system and the detoxification system.
26:06
and every organ is involved. It has its own metabolism, it has its own detoxification, it has its own ability to support the whole. And when we bring in, I guess, the human side of things like the stress management element, you know, the requirement of sleep from a physiological perspective, the understanding of how we nourish the system and the role of the nutrients.
26:35
and the impact of our movement. So how we move through the world becomes the, I guess, the medicine that has the strongest relationship to metabolism. So metabolic health now is kind of being seen as an intersection that allows you to look after your long-term health, your longevity, your brain health, even thinking about preventing dementia or improving cognition, mood.
27:04
mentality, connection, social health, et cetera, is all fundamental. And so a long time ago, you know, there was some research into tattoo diabetes and depression and it's such a strong link. But in general practice, we don't link it. You know, so the way that medicine is practiced is very different to the science of medicine and to even the education of medicine.
27:34
in my opinion, fundamentally flawed because we break things up into diagnostic moments in time and don't put it back together to understand the importance of health in someone's life and their life in their health. And that's what we've tried to do with Vivalie is bring in this incredibly holistic, whole person opportunity, you know, for people to kind of go, oh my God, I get it.
28:02
Because a lot of us, all of us, we grew up, when you're 15, 16, or got a 16 year old, she thinks her health is completely invincible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way she's thinking about her cognitive health in her seventies. And nor should she. But if she were to, that would be an advantage. But the sooner we understand.
28:31
the holistic nature and how everything that we do interacts with health and our life force. I think vitality is such an important thing. We don't talk about life force enough. Sometimes you can have somebody, I know, I've taken blood tests from people and you swear they're going to be abnormal and they're completely normal, but I can have two people with really normal blood tests.
28:59
and one who is vitally well and the other one that isn't, you know, what is that? I mean, it's immeasurable in Western medicine, but I think it's something that we could all think about. Yeah. Yeah, completely. And what was it that got you on the path thinking more about metabolic health? Was it your own personal sort of changes as you were mentioning with the transition into perimenopause? No, not really. Yeah, I guess I got invited to be the founding medical director of VIVALY.
29:29
And we were at that stage kind of really, I guess, nutting out the problem, you know, in which to kind of be solved. And, you know, at that stage, I had some 20, 25 years of, I guess, experience in lifestyle medicine, this intersection between, you know, how lifestyle medicine really is whole person care, essentially, and how we can bring that into a product to help people.
29:57
really disrupt their health. So they're not reliant upon having to go to the doctor. And often people would complain about going to the doctor and they might be told they've got pre-diabetes. And the only response they get is, well, you need to lose some weight and that's it. And they might try and lose some weight and then it doesn't work or they yo-yo or they get confused or they over exercise or they've got a sore ankle. There's just not enough of that individual personalized kind of care.
30:27
that requires you to almost really look at so many different aspects of a person's choices and how they navigate their life so that you can really befriend that opportunity and really understand. And it takes a long time, you know. So 15-minute medicine is not long enough to really navigate that path. And I think
30:54
When people can really understand the critical elements and have almost that experience, like we were talking about that experience of, wow, this can really work. You can never take that experience away from them. And whether they become, you know, optimally healthy instantly is most unlikely, but whether it sets them on the right.
31:22
path. So in a year, in two years, in three years, five years, they can really transform the way that they really respect themselves, their body, understand how to nourish themselves, understand what works for them through their changing transitioning time. Like women transition more frequently than men and men often have to, you know, and that's unfortunate for men in some ways because those transitions.
31:51
processes can be great opportunities to learn. So can you talk to us about what Vively is? Because people will be going, what is this thing that they're talking about that they haven't yet mentioned? Yeah, so Vively is a data-driven app. And so it brings together the data from continuous glucose monitoring. So just so your listeners know, continuous glucose monitor is a little device that's
32:21
and it measures your continuous glucose. It's the interstitial glucose tissues, but it matches what is going on in the bloodstream. When you use something like that, you can actually see the interface, glucose being the interface, with what happens through what exercise you do, the timing of your food, the amount of carbohydrates, how carbohydrate sensitive you are, the impact of good sleep
32:51
poor sleep, stress, the impact of late meals and overnight, you know, wakings, et cetera. There's a lot of different nuances that you can measure. But Vively also interacts with a whole lot of other data wearable. So the Aurarwing, Whoop, Garmin, Apple. And so you can measure your sleep.
33:15
your heart rate variability, all of the other variables that kind of you can get from a whole raft of different wearables. And the Vively app allows you to take photos of your food and log in your exercise or if you've got a Garmin watch, it will log it for you. And so you can get this really comprehensive almost diary of your two week lifestyle as and then what happens to your metabolic health.
33:44
glucose being the one kind of aspect to that. And so once often people when they first use it, they might actually get quite confused. And that's a good thing. But confusion is a great stage of learning. Like in order to learn something new, you often require a bit of confusion. So we often set people up with the expectation of like the first time you wear a CGM is not the time to kind of understand everything about metabolic health. There's a lot to know and a lot to know about your personal.
34:12
kind of aspects too. So we set people challenges, you know, to go out and have their favourite dessert or, you know, if they're doing time restricted eating or any fasting, you should try that and see what happens to their, by glucose levels, to have their favourite meal, to go and have sushi, to, you know, start their day with a high protein breakfast the next day, start it not with a high protein breakfast and have a look at the differences. And then the beautiful thing is that people can then
34:41
uh, kind of go, wow, I get really tired when my sugar levels are high, right? Really high when my sugar, tired when my sugar levels are really low. And so then they can start to kind of match, you know, their energy levels or their fatigue levels or their mood levels with this physiological dynamic, uh, metric. And so previously, you know, you might understand too is like
35:09
When I was young and I'd eat like a, you know, I don't know, just a standard kind of ham cheese tomato toastie or something for lunch and be really tired by two or three o'clock and be wanting a coffee. I didn't match that with my lunch. I just thought, Oh God, you know, it's like three o'clock in the afternoon, like fatigue, like you know, everybody else sort of around me.
35:35
But then you realize when you do have like, you know, some protein and some, you know, maybe a lower carb option, et cetera, lots of, you know, fiber and green vegetables, maybe some nuts and seeds, et cetera, you're not getting that dip at two or three o'clock. And so, you know, your blood glucose levels are nice and sustained. You don't feel like you have to reach for the chocolate bar at three o'clock, you know, in the coffee. So then you're not wired by the end of the day, et cetera. So those fluctuations of blood glucose.
36:04
levels can match to things like mood, food choices, fatigue levels, etc. And so it can be a profound way of actually understanding how you dance through your metabolic life. Yeah. Do you know, like there's, like I'm a big fan of CGMs and I really see value in them for all of the reasons that you're describing. I think they can do such a good job at helping people understand.
36:29
not just about the food that they eat, but as you said, lots of other things and how it impacts on how they feel and that they've got control over it. But there's so much pushback from doctors as to why healthy people need something like a CGM and it's almost, I don't know if orthorexia is the right term, but it's not actually, I think it might only relate to food, but you know, they get so obsessed with this one measurement. And that's what they sort of like zone.
36:58
zone in on and care about night. Part of me wonders, Michelle, listening to you talk about it, is it just that the way that our medical system is sort of set up is to help people who are sick and not help healthy people stay healthy? And is that where the disconnect is? I'm not sure. Look, I think there's multiple different disconnects. Well, medicine is now an illness care system rather than a healthcare system. It's never really been a healthcare system.
37:28
days of Hippocrates, it was a healthcare system. The father of Western medicine talked a lot about the optimization of health, but we don't tend to do that so much. And this fragmented, as we mentioned before, I'm sure it's similar in New Zealand because it is in the UK, like consultations are getting shorter and shorter. And that's a problem because this kind of lifestyle medicine requires a
37:56
completely different approach because the pressures outside, which we previously didn't have them 60, 70 years ago, we didn't have as many pressures. We didn't have work pressure. We didn't have processed food pressure. We didn't have light pollution, noise pollution, the speed. We didn't have like knowledge overload. All of these kinds of things that we didn't have as much of.
38:25
is actually required for this modern world. Now Western medicine moves really slow because and that's a good thing in many ways. Like often you see in I guess in modern day times people jump on something really quickly and then all of a sudden it's like oh my god we didn't kind of foresee that side effect and then you know you're backtracking and thinking oh gosh I wish I'd never done that before.
38:50
The conservative element of Western medicine is actually really a good thing for most people, but it is incredibly slow in which to develop new techniques. Now, I guess the way VIVALY has been designed is for a wellness product and not a health product. So it's not a diagnosis and that's really important to understand. I've had some very healthy looking people put VIVALY on and recognize they're pre-diabetic.
39:19
And I've had some seemingly very, um, uh, people that I would suspect has significant metabolic issues and have ACGM actually look reasonably normal. And so, um, and that's been very surprising. And I think there's lots of different nuances, you know, that go into that. But.
39:46
What's actually happening in the research is there's a lot of research on using CGM for behaviour change. And that's been actually really significant. So in the type two diabetic community, the use of a CGM is associated with very high levels of positive behaviour change in 80 to 90% of people that use a CGM for type two diabetes. So that's huge.
40:14
The average change at 80 to 90% is unbelievable should be on the front page of every newspaper, like freakily good. So then I guess, you know, the optimization to try and pick up those people that are in pre-diabetes, you know, or have impaired glucose tolerance. So what we do know absolutely categorically is that hyper-insulinemia, so insulin levels
40:42
issues with insulin, whether you're making too much, whether you're resistant to it, or the cells are not listening well enough, whether there's a circadian mismatch of insulin resistance and then of course there's other associated hormones like ghrelin and leptin that can be associated with that. The changes that occur in the hormonal levels occur about 10 to 15 years before you see changes in your glucose levels.
41:09
And so what's happening is we're not picking up pre-diabetes at all really. And we're not really being proactive in teaching people what to do about it. And of course you can also have metabolic syndrome. Again, in metabolic syndrome, when people are being diagnosed, they might be prescribed statin, something for their lippers, they might be prescribed something for their blood pressure and they might be encouraged to lose weight.
41:40
but you know, and they might have fatty liver, but they're really not getting told exactly how to reverse those physiological glucose changes and how to regulate and improve their insulin sensitivity. And we know that behaviour change has huge implications on supporting insulin sensitivity. So things like exercise, resistance training, fasting for some people, so not for everyone, but fasting for some people.
42:09
but also just attending to people's sleep, to attending to people's stress levels, but attending to people's nutrition levels. So we know things like vitamin D significantly impact insulin sensitivity, magnesium, chromium, zinc, B group vitamins, berberine, cinnamon, et cetera. All of these lovely things that we've been building to their lifestyle.
42:37
that will help them not get to type 2 diabetes because type 2 diabetes is an end stage disease and it's so much harder to reverse than pre-diabetes and metabolic syndrome. So you know like this is the thing about Western medicine is that you can't really measure prevention because oh we don't know that person was not going to go on and get type 2 diabetes and how do we know that you really prevented cardiovascular disease?
43:06
events, et cetera. It's tricky in that area because what's happening in West Madison is we've used the gold standard, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, which is really measuring one thing against another. We might measure a drug against not taking a drug. We might measure a drug against a nutrient. We might measure a drug against another drug. It's still up to drugs, really. That's the perfect.
43:35
But you take a holistic intervention that looks at sleep, stress, nutrients, lifestyle, etc. You have to have a wellness mentality to bring that all together and think, you know what, I want to use some personalized data to find out what works for me. Yeah. Yeah, now 100%. And a couple of things which I really liked.
44:03
framed Michelle was that nutrition is important. So, you know, people think about CGMs and think it is just carbohydrate intake. And of course that is, you know, that's a huge piece of a puzzle, but with regards to the having a nutrient replete diet, which is actually really difficult to do when you're just eating food alone, for sure. But just the element, you know, I think...
44:28
that sort of flies in the face of some of the backlash against their genes that people are only ever thinking about carbohydrate and that's not true because of, you know, you've just mentioned it. The other interesting thing is just the doctors and this is probably because of the system is that they're not, I'm not sure how trained they are or how much they care if someone's HbA1c isn't above 41. You know, like I feel like some of these cutoffs of...
44:56
what we deem to be healthy are quite arbitrary and sort of too far down the line for a lot of the health in general. I see a lot of clients and their HbA1c's are like 39 and 40 and not a word has been said and their vitamin D is 55 for example. Things that are just low normal, high normal, but because they're normal, they're not flagged as being an issue.
45:24
Yeah, there's lots of ways to kind of answer that. I mean, we're not really taught how to pick up kind of trends. Like even for example, with cholesterol levels, you can have cholesterol at four and then five years later it might be 4.9 and then five years later it's 5.5. So, you know, looking at trends can be really important. Same with, you know, glomerular filtration rate. Like it might go from 90 then down to 80 then down to 70.
45:53
it's dropping but no one kind of looks to doing it because it's not really flagged as disease worthy. It's not creating a symptomatology in someone's body. And because people are not symptomatic of it, they're often low motivation and they don't really have enough education around proper prevention of it. I don't think it's because doctors don't care. I think doctors as a whole
46:22
are really generously caring people. I think the system lets us down in terms of the amount of money that is in the system for people to truly understand. I think the way it's been set up, there hasn't been a full change to our system since medicine was a lot simpler. Back in the 50s and 40s, you would go to a doctor, A, you couldn't afford to go to the doctor for most people.
46:52
But if you did go to the doctor, you know, it would be an injury or it might be measles or it might be, you know, an ammonia or something like that, which was really diagnostically orientated. And so that's how medicine is kind of taught is to diagnose. But now and back in the 40s and 50s, we didn't have this chronic disease epidemic that is just growing, growing, growing. Like it might have been slightly tilting.
47:21
in the wrong direction, but not enough for people to go far out. This is really alarming. Looking at the way the body has changed over that time, you go even to the third world countries, you can see their body habitus has changed dramatically in 10, 20, 30 years. You're witnessing it in front of their eyes. You look at our
47:47
society and the dramatic changes in even adolescent health now, you know, compared to 20 years ago. So this trajectory wasn't illuminated and now our health has kind of almost gotten away from us as a community here. And we're scrambling to kind of get it back. And that's difficult to do in medicine
48:17
thing. It requires new ways in which to gather research and information. But what we have lost I think in the last 10 or 20 years is a bit of common sense. We're relying too much on – we're only relying upon the scientific data and not enough on that therapeutic relationship and understanding where people are at, that educational piece, that human piece, the social piece that …
48:44
is so profound in supporting people with big lifestyle changes that are required to really transform their health. Yeah, for sure. And you cannot get that in just a visit to that 15 minutes of the doctor. No, no, absolutely not. So there has to be a different, I mean, you know, I've been saying this for a while, is the system is letting people down, but it's also letting doctors down, you know, and
49:12
because doctors and nurses are struggling as well. The burnout rates for doctors and nurses are enormous and patients are suffering as well. There's this fundamental shift and I'm actually going up to Sydney tomorrow night to a conference to be on a panel about the future of medicine and taking this basic understanding of health outside the office and into the hands of
49:41
you know, the people because, you know, when you're talking about prevention, you couldn't ask for a safer intervention. You know, it's not really dangerous to say, Hey, you know what, have a little bit more green veggies. Maybe you think about increasing your fiber, you know, like make sure you're having a, you know, a couple of hours of really good exercise outside, you know, get some fresh air, et cetera. It's not dangerous as an intervention.
50:10
I think doctors sometimes collectively, sometimes sweat the small stuff in terms of those, you know, oh, you know, the ferritin is 33, you shouldn't give them iron because the ferritin is normal, even though the reference range is 30 to 300. Yeah, no, totally. And I think a bit of the pushback from CGMs is that people had this one...
50:36
data point and they're not quite sure what to do with it. And this is why apps like Vively are so great because it allows them the educational piece of understanding what it is that they're seeing, but also giving them interventions that don't just revolve around up your carbohydrate, lower your carbohydrate, you know, like that one thing. Absolutely correct. And also in the Vively app too, we have two different food measurements as well. So we have a glucose score.
51:06
so the metabolic score of the food, but we also have a food score. So if the food is really high quality, we'll actually, you know, really, um, celebrate that for, for the, for people too. The other thing is from a health practitioner's perspective, it's such a fabulous intervention to use on your patients because you get to know so much more about what's happening in that person's life.
51:33
outside of the office. I mean, we all know as practitioners, when somebody comes to us, they're going to underreport, you know, about the foods that they eat. You don't really understand even if you're doing a diet history when they're eating, you know, if they're eating kind of dinner at 8 or 39 o'clock and then going to bed, you know, shortly after. You don't know what time they're eating breakfast. You don't know if they're having alcohol at six o'clock and
52:02
you know, or then again drinking, you know, throughout the night, you, you, you sort of going, oh yeah, I drink two, three times a week. You don't, you don't get all of those nuances, you know, yet some people that are, you know, exercising, maybe over exercising, they might be exercising three times a day in that desperate need to kind of control their body weight. You really get this incredible sense and patients do too. You know, we've had a lot of patients, a group of patients that have used Vively.
52:30
the over 60s that are actually recognising how disordered their eating is. You were speaking a little bit about orthorexia before and there's a new burgeoning group of people that are just getting a bit confused about all of these dietary advice that you see on social media and they're using it and they're overusing it. It's not particular to their body type, their lifestyle habits, etc. They might be too stressed.
53:00
They might be too mentally stressed or their sleep is so poor, but then they're flogging themselves in the gym to the point where they're, that's actually causing increased stress on their body. I mean, you would have seen all this, Mickey, you know, multiple different times. So it's about really auditing, you know, the system in a beautiful way, using glucose as one element of it, but also understanding the
53:29
physiological, subtle changes that do occur. And yeah, it's an education tool. And what we've designed around Vivaldi is just a whole lot of resources that we're now in the midst of developing some AI support around that so that they can pull out a lot of the resources that are particularly relevant to that person at that particular time.
53:56
So that's another way of just enhancing the educational experience for people. I've often found that the first time somebody uses a CGM, they might get some great use out of it, or they may not. But it's often the second time that they use one. Once they've kind of become familiar with what they're looking at, they've done a little bit more education around it, they've played around with their diet and lifestyle, their sleep or their stresses.
54:26
And then they want to go and do it again. And they want to have a look and witness some of those changes. Because the thing about reversing say like a pre-diabetic or a metabolic syndrome, for example, is that A, first you've got to know whether it's there. And B, it takes a while, you know, to decrease a fatty liver. It takes a while to build up really good muscle tone or reduce down psychopenia, it takes a while to build up the reserves that we store within our bones.
54:56
It takes a lot to de-stress a system so it's not just in this chronic kind of stress cycle. And so you want to use these as a long-term viewpoint. I'll often, I haven't said this for a while, but I'll often say to people, it takes about two years to really turn the health around. We still, everyone's selling an eight-week program to a week program and then we all, everyone's like, how long does it take to change?
55:24
six weeks, 12 weeks, you know, habit busting, et cetera. But really, to really reverse a problematic metabolic, I guess, inflexibility, I think it is probably likely to take a couple of years. Yeah. And because of course, what's, I mean, it took years and years to develop and it's the behaviors and the habits and those are the things that need to be unraveled.
55:53
because they're the things which really impact it. And I like Michelle that you've mentioned, you know, fatty liver, blood pressure, dyslipidemia, all is being sort of involved in this as well, because I feel like people don't, you know, people think blood pressure, and they're like, oh, my salt intake's too high. You know, and hey, it might well be if you've got high blood pressure, but that might not be the thing driving the issue. And fatty liver, you know, there's a, you know, a host of things that are sort of impacted there, but certainly,
56:23
Excess carbohydrate and high blood sugar definitely can play a role for sure, right? Yeah, and the gut biome plays a role as well. That certainly impacts liver detoxification as well. But again, when we talk about gut biome, everyone kind of goes to probiotics, but really it's about reducing down sugar levels, reducing down unhelpful chemicals that are in processed
56:52
fibre and diversity of food is probably one of the most profound interventions that we've got. I mean, probiotics have got some great interests, but again, they're almost become like a medicine in the way that you go to the shelf and we forget about how much power we have in our choices of what we don't put in that system compared to what we do put into that system. Of course, back to my favourite old friend is every time you stress the system out.
57:22
the cellular messaging through the neural tissue is altered because the body feels that they're in danger and they're going to be in protection mode. Protection mode means inflammation. Inflammation then breeds adiposity, breeds mitochondrial dysfunction and breeds insulin resistance. Understanding the basics is just so important and so often, again,
57:52
doctors that are siloed, all of us have been siloed into this education system of like, I want to know what's the root cause. I want to know, like, I want to, what is it? Is it, is it food or is it exercise? It's like, why can't it be both? And totally, totally. You know, this multimodal kind of approach, like doctors are sort of going, okay, I want to know, is it food or exercise? And patients are like, is it food or exercise? It's like, it's both guys. Like,
58:21
It's food, exercise, stress and sleep. You can get those right, and adding nature and really good hydration. And you can have a profound influence on your own health and the health of your family. Absolutely. And the fact that information is so available and you were speaking of your patients who are just so confused and trying everything out because like...
58:46
all of the answers are on the internet. You've just got to figure out which one works for you. And this is why the Vively app and things like the Vively app are so an important way to actually to become our own best investigator. Because as you say, the system is broken. Our health is not, despite all of the money or lack of money actually poured into health and like worldwide, things are only getting worse. And so when people
59:15
do sort of take back control, I suppose, and says what something like Vibly is enabling us to do, then that's, it's almost like grass roots stuff really, isn't it? Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, you look at the health budget, most of the money goes to intensive care, you know, and top range pharmaceutical interventions when people are at that pointy end of, of ill health. Now, I'm not saying that we take that away from that, but the amount of money that goes into prevention is very, very, very little.
59:42
And in fact, prevention is not going to be discovered in a medication. So our pharmaceutical friends are not going to be investing in prevention. They don't want us to prevent illness. They want us to live a long time with low grade illness so they can use their medications, you know, to make money. And that's a business. So, you know, we understand that we don't have to have rocket science with that. And so, you know, taking back our healths in
01:00:09
our understanding is such an important thing that we can all do to find out what works for me. Like where am I at? And I think that it's changing. You know, we often get really fearful to look inside and find the truth. Like we, we all walk around in a little bit of denial. That's not going to happen to me. And you know, I've got good genes and et cetera. So it does often take, you know, going back to what we, how we started that
01:00:38
readiness for change. But the beautiful thing about the Vively app is it works at every level of the behavior change cycle. So pre-contemplation, contemplation, action, maintenance, you know, if you fall off the bandwagon, it can help you get back on again. So it becomes almost like a health ally and taking it out of the hands of the medical system, which is this
01:01:08
disease management idea and kind of going, you know, like we actually live in a fairly sick society. Like that's, that's the biggest issue is we have is we, our celebratory foods are our disease causing foods. Yeah, totally. And so, um, you know, and often when we celebrate, we skip sleep and, but, you know, I mean, that's, that's room for a whole other conversation.
01:01:36
No, for sure. Michelle, I want to be mindful of our time, obviously, but I just have just a couple of other questions. Did you notice anything particularly about your, like, what were big learnings for you when you slept a CDM on? Like I know I had a couple, did you have any? Yeah, I did. So my sugars, sometimes my sugars went really low. That was a really curious thing for me. And so.
01:02:05
I, so what we do know is there's a metric called glucose variability. When your glucose levels go high and they go low. My glucose levels didn't go high so much, but they did actually drop down to be low. Now in my family history, I don't have much in the way of type two diabetes and metabolic syndrome. I have more cardiovascular disease. And so what I needed to look out for is those dips and obviously, and I felt those dips sometimes, but sometimes I.
01:02:35
I didn't. And again, for me, I thought, okay, well, mine was probably more about antioxidant protection and mitochondrial dysfunction. That's a little bit of advanced knowledge, you know, that I could ascertain from that. But that was a really great win for me. The second thing that I noticed is there was a time probably about six to nine months ago that again, in that perimenopausal cycle is that I really
01:03:02
noticed that I was putting on weight really quickly and which was such a change. I was kind of one of those people that didn't really have to think about food very much. I had a really healthy diet, but I didn't really have to consider on the weekend I could do whatever I kind of wanted and nothing really would budget. And then it all sort of started to change, but I also had teenagers in my house, teenage girls. So I didn't want to
01:03:32
make a fuss or anything like that. So I was exercising a lot. And so I was probably doing, I don't know, HIIT training three or four times a week, walking probably 45 to 60 minutes a day. And then maybe it was even five times a week that I was kind of going to the gym. And my sugars were reflected in those HIIT workouts and those kinds of things. But I actually noticed that my sugar levels would stay higher.
01:04:02
when I did the exercise rather than lower, which is not what the research kind of suggests. And what I did was I had to reduce down my exercise. I realized I was over exercising. It was putting a pressure and a stress on my body that was actually making me lay down fat more. Oh, interesting. I know. Really interesting. So I had to reduce back my exercise. And so then I just did weight training and walking.
01:04:29
So just weights and walking, so not as much hitch and my weight stays to stabilize. Yeah. Any zone two training for you? Well, I don't measure my zones, but I guess my, my walking is, is probably my, gets me to the zone two. So it's very brisk and I live in a hilly kind of area and I get to the stage where I'm almost like at Met, I would call it Met five, six, kind of, hey where I'm.
01:04:59
I can't really talk and sometimes catch my breath and that's it. That'd be my zone too. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. Do you know it's almost impossible for me to do that when I walk like I when I walk it's absolute leisure walking like I'm and maybe it's because I'm a runner and you know because of running and like I feel like any other movement I do and I'm a bit like you I like I really enjoy movement and I find it really great actually for my nervous system and the rest of it. But I feel like.
01:05:27
benefits for walking from the less at the brisk end and more at the relaxing sort of end. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Super interesting. People have a lot to learn. I think people have so much that they can learn and take on board with this. So how do we, because when I contacted you about an interview, you mentioned that it was going to be available in New Zealand. Obviously it's available in Australia. Can you just- It's available in New Zealand. Is it now? Amazing.
01:05:56
That is great. We'll put links in the show notes, obviously, to that. And I also, I mean, you're very generous with your information, Michelle, and there are so many podcasts and YouTube things and education out there. What is the best way that people can find more from you and your work and things like that? So, well, I have my own website. So, privately, as you'll link to, the program is
01:06:24
written by myself and the rest of the members of the clinical team. That's great access. I also have a book called The Wonder Within, which is on stress management, anxiety and burnout. If people want to learn a little bit more, it's even probably more deeply holistic in terms of brain science, cardiovascular science. It's the science of psyc
01:06:55
Um, and I also have a podcast. Um, so I'm one of the hosts on a podcast from Australia called FX Medicine. And so I've got a whole range of different podcasts on, you know, from metabolic health to fasting to, um, psychoneuromiology to self-compassion to a whole range of different topics. So, yeah, that is, you are a wealth of information. That's right. Um, and I, I love it so much. Um, Michelle, thank you so much. I feel like I could talk for hours on this actually, because
01:07:24
And it's funny, listeners won't see this because we are not video as well as audio, but I don't know if I asked any of these questions on this sheet of paper, because I just went with where we are, well, we're the conversation. The organic conversation. Yeah, which I love, actually. It was amazing. So thank you so much, Michelle. I think people get a lot from this. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Miki.
01:07:59
Alrighty, hopefully you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you. It was, I could have talked to Michelle for hours. She's such a wealth of information and we have a lot of really shared interests. So if you're interested in understanding more about the Vibely app, absolutely check out the link in the show notes to that. And of course, more information about Michelle and where you can pick up her podcast and also the books that she has written too.
01:08:24
Next week on the podcast I talk to my friend Jen Kirsch all about strength for women over 50. Until then though you can catch me over on Instagram, threads and Twitter @mikkiwilliden, Facebook at mikkiwillidenNutrition or head to my website mikkiwilliden.com and book a one-on-one call with me. Alright guys you have the best week see you later.