Bioidentical Hormones Vs. Antidepressants: The Truth About Anxiety & Depression In Menopause

Welcome to this summit episode. Hormones and mental Health overcoming anxiety, depression and ADHD in women. I am your host, summit doctor Kasey Smith and I have my co-host summit, doctor Sharon Stills with me today.

And so we're going to talk to you guys about, you know, the summit in general and anxiety, depression, some of the mental health aspects that come with menopause or changing hormones.

So Doctor Sharon Stills is a licensed, naturopathic medical doctor with over two decades of dedicated service in transforming women's health. And it has become a guiding light for perimenopause and menopausal women, empowering them to reinvent, explore and rediscover their vitality and zest for life.

Her pioneering red hot, sexy menopause program encapsulates her philosophy to reinvent your health, explore your spirit and discover your sexy. This unique approach has revolutionized the way women experience their transformative years, making her a sought after expert in the field.

The opening of Stills Health Clinic, her new 7000 square foot clinic in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona in late fall 2024 marks another milestone in her mission to provide unparalleled naturopathic care there.

Along with her son, Doctor Ben Stills, they will be providing unique diagnostic and therapeutic options, addressing all forms of chronic illness, including but not limited to, cancer, autoimmunity, Covid and, of course, menopause concerns.

This venture follows her previous success in founding and running one of the largest naturopathy clinics in the country. Doctor stills personal journey of overcoming her own serious health concerns or health challenges underscores her commitment to the wellness path she advocates for her patients.

Her life is a treat is a testament to the principles she teaches, from embracing a healthy paleo diet and a rigorous vitamin regimen, to prioritizing restorative sleep and physical movement through yoga, hiking and dancing.

Whether meditating in solitude, cheering for the New York Jets, baking paleo cookies, or exploring the world, collecting passport stamps with her family and adorable granddaughters, she embodies the red hot life she champions for others.

So thank you for joining me on this summit. So it's fun to hear your bio. And I'm like, oh, actually, we're not opening in late 2024. We're opening in spring of 2025, our new clinic.

So oh, I get you know, these things get delayed us. So many things do. And we actually change the name. It's called Lasting Wellness Center instead of still health clinics.

So okay, first the newsflash, I heard it. First and I'm super excited for you because it sounds awesome. Like I want to come check it out. I love Scottsdale, so I'm sure that will be amazing.

So you kind of got on this wellness journey because of yourself. Like so many good functional medicine providers. I think that a lot of times we're the best provider, for patients.

When we've gone through and had an experience like this ourselves. And so what I really wanted to focus on today is, you know, these mental health symptoms that women have.

And I want you to explain to people a couple of things. I think a lot of people feel like maybe they're not normal, right? Like this is not normal. What I'm going through.

And they feel almost like ashamed to talk about it or ashamed to ask questions about it. So I want to address that. I want to address also. Maybe we can start with this.

Why do you think it's so prevalent that women when hormones shift or change, whether it be, you know, when we're pregnant, postpartum, when we're perimenopausal, when we're going into menopause and we're going to really focus on menopause.

But why is it that women develop a lot of these symptoms, the anxiety, the depression, the lack of concentration, the insomnia, things like that? What is the trigger for this hormones?

Hormonal trauma? I mean, obviously there's other pieces and we can talk about them. But our hormones in my in my red deck of cards I created, I have a card about hormones and it just says hormones equals sanity.

And really, if your hormones are not balanced, it's really hard to feel good. It's hard to not be depressed. It's hard to have motivation. It's hard to not be anxious.

And so when we're going through perimenopause, which so often we're told it's not your hormones because we're only 35 and so we're misled. But when we're going through hormonal changes, it's pretty much a given that there's going to be some kind of brain chemistry that's off.

I mean, we can think about it from so many different perspectives, but just thinking about neurotransmitters, our hormones are intimately related. So progesterone to Gaba.

So I call progesterone. Hormonal Xanax. Right. It just it is your chill pill. It is I have had I have had numerous husbands send me flowers because I gave their wives the progesterone.

And they're like, we're in the doctor's pills. We love this stuff. So whether it's progesterone affecting Gaba or testosterone affecting your dopamine, which is like your get up and get it done neurotransmitter, or it's estrogen affecting serotonin, which is your happy sunshine neurotransmitter.

So it's intimately related. The brain is full of receptors for estrogen, for progesterone, for, you know, for testosterone. So it of course has this neuropsychiatric effect.

And we have to really broaden what we think about hormones because we think hormones for women. We'll just talk about women. We think hormones are what give us our period, allow us to get pregnant and then go out of balance and create hot flashes.

But there is so much more to the story from every single system in our body. And so we really have to broaden what hormones can do. And remember that if you are feeling like your hormones are off, or you are feeling like you're losing it like you're not yourself, then trust in that.

Trust yourself and find a doctor who will work with you. Not someone who just says, oh no, you're crazy. It couldn't possibly be your hormones or it is your hormones.

And too bad you just got to live with it. Here's an antidepressant. Yeah, so to that point, too bad at your hormones live with it. Or that's just a normal part of aging.

Here's an antidepressant. You know, I feel like there are millions of women out there who get handed these prescriptions, these antidepressants, right?

Or even worse, I'm seeing this trend of women who are getting handed stimulants like Adderall and things like that because they are saying, oh, you have ADHD, you're scatterbrained.

Right? And that, I think, is even worse than an SSRI. But to these women who are getting these prescription drugs given to them, instead of somebody actually trying to figure out what's the root cause of this, you know, I think that's kind of scary.

It's also kind of negligent, and it's just because they have side effects. Right. And so, I mean, can you explain to women some of the side effects of SSRI, like, why is this a counterintuitive thing to do with women?

Because they can cause more depression or they can cause weight gain, or they can cause your libido to go down. So all the things you're trying to improve, they can actually worsen.

And I always talk about, you know, and you've probably heard this before, like anxiety is not a deficiency of Xanax or it's it's something that's going on in your body.

And so we're looking at through the hormone lens. It can be anything from low or high cortisol. It can be your thyroid gland. It can be your sex hormones dropping.

It can be a lot of different pieces. Hormones are an orchestra. Lately I've been calling on the spider web because as one moves, they all move. And so you have to really look at them in conjunction to each other.

You can, you know, have patients say, well, can I just do one hormone and start slow? And it's like, no, you can throw things out of balance. Just like if you take a high dose of a specific B vitamin, you want to take a B-Complex so you don't deplete any of your other B's.

The same for hormones you want to use them together because they work together. And so in menopause, your root cause is that your hormones are not being produced any more by your ovaries.

So a lot of women will say, well, I want to do it naturally, or, you know, I want to get to the root cause. And I hear all sorts of craziness from I'm sure you do, too, like patients coming in saying, I can't balance my hormones.

Yet I was told I have to detox copper. I was told I have mold, I was told I should get my gut fixed first. And it's like, no, no, no, you've got to fix the hormones.

Not saying we don't have to pay attention to those other things, but the hormones are like the middle of the wheel. They're the hubcap and all these other things are spikes off of it.

And so when you're going through menopause, the ovaries are naturally going on permanent vacation. They're like, Sia, I'm done headed to Hawaii. It's been nice. I've done my job.

And so we hear, we know, oh, the adrenals are going to take over, my adrenals are going to produce my hormones. Well, by the time you get to menopause, show me a woman who has like tip top adrenals.

And even if they were tip top, which newsflash, they're not going to be because you've lived life and you've had stress. That's part of life. So even if they were, they're not going to produce the quality or the quantity of what your ovaries were producing.

And we are not dying in our 40s anymore. Like our ancestors, we can live. I plan to live to 130. So if you go through menopause at the average age of 51, 50 to 50, then we'll just say, even if you're going to 100, right, you're you're just in middle age when you're in menopause and you don't want to live half your life in a hormone desert, in a deficiency where you don't have hormones, it is going to make the aging process a lot more difficult.

It's going to make you sicker. You're not going to have as good quality. So the root cause of problems as you go through menopause is the declining hormones.

Now, does your diet and your community and your trauma and your toxins and your gut and your and your and your play a role? Absolutely. I am a very brain based physician, and I want to put hormones into a happy, healthy terrain.

But you have to have the right hormone. You can have a real great terrain, but if it's hormone deficient, it's not going to be as good a terrain as you want.

Because as I was saying before, our hormones are doing everything from glucose metabolism to bone health to brain health to cardiovascular to immune function to our genital urinary tract.

They are involved in everything. They're busy bodies. They have a lot to do in our body. And so it's a little different. Say when you're younger, say you're having real bad premenstrual syndrome.

Maybe the root cause is that you do have an excess of toxicity, or you have a high a load of, beta glucan a day in your gut and you're recycling your estrogen, or you're super stressed out and you're pulling through the cortisol instead of maintaining your progesterone.

So maybe then you can do more lifestyle things. You can change your diet, you can take some herbs and you can rebalance your hormones. But if you are in menopause, getting ready to be in menopause, postmenopausal, then taking bioidentical hormones, in my opinion, is the root solution.

And any patient I've seen who has thought they weren't going to do that when they finally get to my door and they take them, I hear the same thing over and over.

Oh my god, I wasted so many years. That was silly of me. Why was I letting myself suffer? And sometimes we just have to get out of our own way because we decide we get very zealous and it doesn't get more natural than me.

Like I'm supernatural and I wouldn't go anywhere without my hormones. Like they are the number one thing that I'm, you know, I always kid around. I'm going to be buried with them.

Just in case. Because, you know, you never know. So you want to have them, but they're just so super important and like, why would you not want to support yourself in a way that will give you such grace?

Yeah, I completely agree. I like the spider web analogy, and I agree with the fact that, you know, there are lots of important things that help you support those hormones that are good environment, but without those hormones, that environment is going to be a pretty toxic or just sad environment.

Right? And so, I mean, your hormones and even to your point, they, they promote gut health, right? So without hormones, your gut, you're not going to metabolize things correctly.

You're not going to you're going to be constipated. You're going to have secretion issues. And without hormones you get a lot of inflammation. And when you have a lot of inflammation, it's hard for your other hormones to work in your body, your thyroid hormone.

It's hard for your, you know, cortisol and your sex hormones if you have them. But if you don't have sex hormones, even your thyroid, like it's hard for your thyroid to work.

You know, as an endocrinologist, I tell people this all the time, like, I can give you all the thyroid hormone in the world, but if you're super inflamed and your cell membranes are super inflamed and you don't have the right micronutrients to help the cofactors of hormones, thyroid, hormones getting into your cell, you're not going to feel well.

And a lot of people are walking around with chronic inflammation from some lifestyle choices, but from the lack of hormones because we're so stressed out or we've gone through menopause or whatever, and we don't have those hormones.

And I see it all the time, just like you do. The mood, the mood is just like, and any woman that's listening this can probably relate. Men, I think, you know, men, you can relate if you're listening because you know that time that your wife did something and you're like, oh my God, she's legitimately crazy.

What happened? And then the next day she's fine. She really doesn't feel well. Like every woman has experienced this, right? Like you don't know why, but you want to cry or you are crying or you're angry, or you want to throw something, or you just feel like you're dying, and then the next day you're fine and you're like, what happened?

It's just a terrible, terrible feeling. But any woman listening this has had that feeling. And it's not that we want to, like, make everyone around us miserable.

It's just we've got some offset, some irregularity in our in our balance that day or for a few days, for whatever reason, like you said, our estrogens low or our progesterone is not coming up.

And it is a terrible feeling to have us as a woman. It's a terrible feeling to experience as someone around a woman. Right? And so everyone can relate with this.

And so, you know, you were talking about some of the things that contribute to this, and you're talking about how some women want to do it more naturally.

And it is very difficult when you're on menopause or when you're in menopause. And so to women out there who are in menopause have gone through menopause, and are thinking, well, I do want to do this a little more naturally.

What Doctor Sharon is saying is it's very difficult. You probably need to add a little bit of hormone to help, but what are some of the other things that women can do to help with?

Let's talk about like mood swings or anxiety, depression. What are some other lifestyle modifications or supplements or just things people can do to help with that?

Yeah, there's plenty of things that you can do. And in a lot of the interviews that I've done for this summit, I've really focused on, we've talked about trauma, we've talked about regulating your nervous system, we've talked about opening the fascia.

So I think these things are really, really important. And eating the right diet for you, which may not mean not eating any carbohydrates. You know, women can use some carbohydrates or you can really crash your thyroid and create depression.

So I just want to make sure that, you know, it's a very global thing, right? Because we're here as humans to heal, to grow, to learn, to share. And so we do need to address our emotions and our trauma.

That's really, really important. And giving you progesterone and estrogen or oxytocin or DHEA or thyroid or whatever it is we're giving is not going to address that, but it's going to make you much more stable.

So you can go and address that. And so honestly, I mean, for, you know, using things for anxiety, whether it be l-theanine or doing deep breathing or moving your body when it comes to menopause, I, I go to hormones first because often you don't need to do all those other things, just like anxiety, having a depletion or a deficiency of Xanax.

It's not necessarily a deficiency of mocha or l-theanine or black cohosh either. And don't get me wrong. I mean, I love my hormones. I'm an herbalist, so I can appreciate plant medicine very much, but there's a time and a place.

And if you came to my office or you talked to my patients and say we were talking to ten patients who all were dealing with the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, they would all have different prescriptions, different plans, because their autoimmune condition came because of a different reason, whether it's toxicity or stress or permeability in the gut or mold or trauma, whatever it is.

But when it comes to menopause, it is the same. It's kind of like, you know, the most allopathic way, I think, is that all women are losing hormones. So let's replace the hormones.

I kind of say it's like the hormones are throwing it at the bull's eye. And a lot of times the right hormone prescription hits the bull's eye and we're done.

The craziness goes away, the sleep improves, the libido comes off, the hair stops falling off the joint. Stop aching. The bowels start moving, etc., etc.

and then if it doesn't, you know, if it's like, well, this improve, but this didn't or this only improved to 80%, then we go looking okay, are you missing.

Let's run a red blood cell. Magnesium. Are you low in magnesium? Is that causing your anxiety? Do you have a neurotransmitter imbalance? Are there heavy metals attacking your thyroid?

What's going on in your mouth? Do you have cavitation? Do you have root canals? Do you have mercury that needs to be removed properly? So we start to look at these other things.

But a lot of times from a mental perspective, I, I see it all the time. And I know you do too. You it's like I have a patient. I just had a patient a few hours ago.

She's like, I took myself to the emergency room because I was so scared. I was losing my mind. I didn't know what was going on. I went to the emergency room because I was freaked out and it was her horn.

Yeah. And. And it's really doesn't have to be this long journey. Like something like mole toxicity or mercury toxicity or even repairing the adrenal glands.

That's a longer journey, right? It's not going to happen overnight. You don't just laid out mercury, you just don't fix your adrenals. Take some TLC. But hormones, when you get the hormones, it can be it can literally be overnight.

We have so many times we prescribe hormones, and the next morning we're getting a phone call at the office. Oh my God, I like feel 100% better already.

So it it doesn't have to be a long journey when you get the right hormones, when your hormones are evaluated the right way, you can feel better. Pretty quickly.

And it can be pretty comprehensive. Where I've gone from, like you were saying, the whole roller coaster mood swings, crying, cursing, throwing, angry, this, that all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I'm home.

Like, I feel like me again. And so it's, you know, I just want to like, scream it from the rooftops. And I, I get so I'm really riled up today because I just had a string of patients today who it was like first story after horror story of what they've been put through, trying to get hormones from their primary care or their ObGyn and being told, you're too old, you're too young, you're not a candidate.

You know that whole fallacy of you have a family history of cancer or you have clots? I mean, so just there's so much misinformation out there and what ends up happening is women suffer unnecessarily and sometimes for I mean, I had a patient last week, I mean, like 15 years she's been suffering trying to get hormones.

It just it breaks my heart because you don't need, first of all, antidepressants. And, you know, I can prescribe meds if I need to. I don't because I don't ever need to.

But I have had over the 23 years I've been practicing, I've had like two patients that I could think of off the top of my head that were on an antidepressant, and it was actually working for them.

And if it's not broken, I'm a big fan of like, don't fix it. But for the most part, patients on antidepressants, it's depleting nutrients. It's not doing anything for them.

It's making them worse. And it was never meant to be a long term solution. Maybe. Maybe you had a death in your life and were put on an antidepressant.

You know, for a couple of weeks, a month or two months to get you through that time. I mean, that's not what I would choose to do for a patient. But there are doctors who treat that way.

But it's not meant to be like a lifetime experience that you're on this antidepressant. And so if you're on an antidepressant, like don't stop it, right.

Because you could do more harm than good, you need to be weaned off properly under medical supervision. But if you're listening and you're on an antidepressant and you're not on hormones and you're in this perimenopausal menopausal range, it would be a really great idea to work with the doctor who's hormone literate, who understands hormones to evaluate you, and to see if they can ring you off and get you on hormones.

I do it all the time, and we're able to say goodbye to the antidepressant. And it's not just about, oh, we want to be natural. Like, yes, we do want to be natural, but it's about you feeling.

And when you get off the antidepressant and you get on the right hormones. My experience is women always flourish. They always feel so much better when they than when they were just numbed out on an antidepressant.

Yeah, for sure. Because like you said, there's so many side effects with those antidepressants. And I've never had a patient I've taken off an antidepressant after I fixed their hormones and got everything else fixed that said, oh, please put me back on that antidepressant.

Right. Never like it doesn't happen. And so unfortunately, to your point, you know, like you said, a lot of times with physicians and providers, if they don't know the answer to something or they don't know how to fix something by medicating it, then they don't know what to do, like, and instead of I don't know, it is here's the pill like because that's what we learn in med school, right?

Like you just you treat something with a medication. And that's I guess what's so frustrating to me is like I tell patients all the time, I don't know, like, if I don't know the answer or something, I don't know.

But we're going to figure it out, right? I'm not sure what's wrong with you right now, but we will figure it out. And to your point as well. Like a lot of these things, you know, mold toxicity and healing your gut and a lot of these things, they do take a lot of time.

But I like your point of like, start with what's going to get you the, the most bang for your buck, which is giving somebody that hormone. And then if they're still having issues months down the road and their hormone levels are, you know, optimal, then we can address some other things, right.

If you're not getting better. But so many people, I think, go to these providers and providers just they don't know what to do. They check their levels.

They're like, I don't know, they seem fine. Instead of saying, you know, truthfully to a patient, while it seems like you really do have these symptoms, I don't know how to help you.

Let me help you find someone who can. And I think that's what's really frustrating. And that's where medicine needs to, you know, take a step back, remove some egos from the picture and figure this out.

Right. And med schools need to do a better job of training people. That's I think it's. Yeah. You know, there's also there's a whole bunch of coaches or health practitioners who I was just talking about this to my best friend today who's also a physician, and I was like, you know, I just feel like there's a lot of people out there who can't prescribe hormones.

So rather than saying, you really need hormones, you should go find a doctor who can prescribe for you. They say you don't need hormones, you just need to fix your gut, or you just need to eat more protein.

And that does such a disservice. Like, it just it's it's one of my biggest pet peeves of the of the week that I see this happening constantly. Oh, go through menopause without hormones.

You can do it. You don't need hormones, you just need acupuncture. You just need the right diet. And it's like, no, I mean, I love acupuncture, I love eating the right diet, but you need hormones.

It is the foundation of what you need to live, not only quantity. Like I said before, but quality. And then you need someone. It's like it's, you know, it's great because there's a lot of information out there.

So I find patients are so much more educated than like when I first started practicing where we didn't even have the internet and like, how did I get through medical school without the internet?

But I did somehow. But we also have you have to first find the right doctor with an open mind who will work with you. Then you need to have someone who's going to run the right tests.

Then you need to have someone who's going to interpret the right, the tests the right way. And then you need to have someone who's going to implement the interpretation the right way.

And when we talk about depression, I think of thyroid hormone. And I think over and over and over again, women are told your thyroid is fine because they had a TSH run and it looked okay.

And then there's women who get the right levels, right. So they've they've been on the summits and they've done their homework and they're like, I got my free T3 and my free T4 and my reverse T3 and my antibody tests.

And then they have a free T3 of 3.0 and they're told, no, it's in range. It's fine. But no one ever says, well, maybe that's not the right range for you, because my experience is most women need to be at the high end of the free T3 range to feel good.

Some even need to be higher because it's just a range. It's not like law, it's something to guide us, and we're all biochemical individuals and there are other things going on.

Like you could be the poster child of a low thyroid, your hair's falling out, you're gaining weight, you can't poop, you have no energy, you're depressed.

You're cold all the time. Your basal body temperature is 95.9 on a good day. And they're like, nope, you're free. T3 is right in the middle of the range, so couldn't possibly be your thyroid.

And it's like, so you need to find someone who's going to think outside the box. And this isn't even in the box to me, but someone who's going to trial, someone who's not just going to put you on a dose of thyroid and go, nope, it didn't work.

Like getting the right dose of thyroid can be a damn. Sometimes we hit it immediately, but sometimes you need to titrate. Sometimes you need just free T3.

You don't need the T4 pumps, your reverse T3 to your home. So and then you're told it's not your thyroid, but then you're still depressed and it's like, well, it is your side.

So I guess my message is like, you know, I mean, my patients, you know. Right. Like, you live in your body 24 over seven. And if you have an intuition that it's your thyroid, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh my God, that's me.

Like, don't give up. Find someone who will help you, who will work with you, who will do the dance with you till you get to when your thyroid is optimize is.

It's like a light switch. You go from boom to it's like very you will know it. And so you just need a doctor who's going to work with you and not just say, well, it's not that.

And then like, you know, to your point, well, maybe we should just give you an antidepressant and the other side, it's also like emotionally looking at the depression, you know, is it.

So I, I kind of do things what I believe and what I do are a little backwards because I actually believe that a lot of our imbalances start out here. They start in our energy field, they come into our body because we're not living according to our souls desire to our path, however you want to put it.

And they manifest to get our attention because we might not be living the life we desire and we may not pay attention to it. But if we have crippling headaches that we can't get out of bed, we'll pay a little bit of attention.

So sometimes we need to be like hammered over the head, literally to get to pay attention. And so I believe that. But I also believe that we are in a physical body.

And if our physical body is not balanced, then it's really hard to do the deeper work of clearing our trauma, of looking at our lives and all of that.

So I actually, in practice, I start typically with addressing the physical body because say your thyroid is not optimized and we get it optimized and your depression goes away, which is very possible.

Then maybe it was just really in your physical body. It was just something that needed to be addressed biochemically. And you don't have to go down the big deep trauma hole of why you're depressed.

If you get your thyroid optimized and it gets a little better, but it's still there, then you can start looking at these other things. So we have to look at healing as a journey, as an opportunity.

We have to get curious rather than getting annoyed. We have to start to say, what is this here to show me? What is this teaching me? What can I learn from this?

Where can I be better and balance? Where can I be more in alignment with my values? And so it's it always. I had a patient today who's like, I went to Mayo Clinic.

They can't figure out what's wrong with me. And I'm like, well, we shouldn't have that problem because I have like a list of like 75 different things that could be affecting you.

So we have to we have to be open minded and know this is a journey that we're going on. And usually something, especially when we have chronic illness and I wouldn't call menopause or hormone imbalance a chronic illness.

Menopause isn't even a disease. It's a natural occurrence that's happening whether you want it or not. It's coming your way at some point. But when we have like I work with a lot of patients who are dealing with cancer diagnoses, and when we're dealing with a cancer diagnosis, there's almost always an emotional component.

And when the patient says doctor's bills, I'm really grateful for the gift of cancer. I'm grateful I had this because I learned x, y, z. I know we're moving somewhere and we're getting somewhere, and so we have to really look at things very multifactorial.

And sometimes it is you're just deficient in zinc or you need your thyroid hormone bomb. Sometimes it's a little more complicated. I think that's a very, very good point.

So I think that we touched on a lot of great things, for people to kind of to take this in. And I like the point of, you know, sometimes it is really simple.

You're just missing a hormone. And you give somebody that hormone and they feel better. But and that happens a lot of times, especially when we're talking about menopause.

But if that's not the case, then continuing to work on things like we talk about in the summit, sleep and mindfulness and exercise and diet and light therapy and relationships and all the things we're going to touch on in the summit, then those are things that that do need to be addressed.

And to your point, it helps the journey. I tell my patients, you know, health is not owned, it's rented. And the rents do every single day. It's something that you work on continuously.

And I do like that whole energy field. I believe in that, too. I believe so much. My actual goal for 2025 is to make my energy around me, and just in general, better.

So I've gotten rid of so many toxic people in my life and just a lot of toxic things. And so my goal for 2025 is to make sure that the energy that surrounds me, because I believe, like you believe, there's a vortex that surrounds you and it's either positive or negative, and that affects your being to the core.

And so, you know, I have this app that I listen to on this positive mantra energy and things like that that make me feel good. And I'm going to do that a lot in 2025, because I feel like I've gotten rid of a lot of the toxic inside of me.

So I want to make sure that surrounding me is like this, you know, nice halo of light as I walk around. No bad juju around me. So I like that that we are light beings.

We are. I was, was it a patient I was on zoom with the other day, and it's like her picture didn't come up. It was like she had something covering her camera.

But instead of seeing her, I saw this beautiful purple rays of light. And I was like, I think that's really you. She's like, no, I have my camera covered.

I was like, no, but I that is what you truly look like. You are a purple ray of light and we know we are. I mean, light heals, but bio photons are where it's really at, which is even, you know, beneath the biochemistry.

So health. I love what you said. You know, it's it's rented. You got to pay the rent. That's great. And every day. Because there's a lot of people who walk a line.

Right. Like I walk a line too. I have some autoimmune conditions. And if I don't walk that line, if I let myself, you know, oh, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow.

I'll do it tomorrow. If I do that for a week, I feel terrible. And it takes a month to get back to where I should be. And so I'm sick of doing that, like I've done that for years.

And so I decided last year I'm not going to do that anymore. And I didn't do it this year and I'm not going to do it anymore. And so you just have to walk that line every day, right?

It's not worth it. And so and but it's a journey and it's something that you, you got to do every single day. It's not necessarily like it takes a ton of time or it's really hard.

And that's what I like people to understand, too. Exercising can take 15 minutes, you know, meditating you can take two minutes, taking three minutes in between seeing patients and being mindful.

I mean, they're little snippets of things you can do throughout the day, but you got to walk that line and you got to do it every single day. Because if you don't, you turn around and look back where you started drawing those lines and it's way back there, right?

Yeah. So it's, it's definitely an energetic thing and having a regulated nervous system. So you enjoy so these things you enjoy doing and they don't become one more stressful thing to check off.

But you are really present here with my every year I choose a word to guide my year. And for 25 it's thank you. And it's thank you for this gift of this life.

Thank you for waking up today. Thank you. It just deepens the gratitude, not just for my but thank you. Like really thank you. I appreciate everything because we never know when it can be taken away from us.

Life is precious and it's worth taking the time to, like you say, walk the lines so that you feel good. Because my whole when you were saying like my read program, it's like, I want you to reinvent your health so you feel good because when you feel good and you're not distracted by pain or mood swings or headaches or blood problems, then you can really explore your spiritual aspects and your emotions.

And when you do that and you've balanced both of those, then you get to like discover your passion, your gift, your life, why you're here and that's what makes it really fun about being a human.

And so we just got to be committed. I had a patient the other day say, well, when this is airing, but we're filming closer to the holidays. And so patient was like, well, you know, it's the holiday.

So I always eat jam and I get that mindset, but it's too like what you're saying, like at some point I stopped eating junk because it wasn't worth feeling like crap the next day, and now I don't see it as a treat.

I see it as, oh no, that's going to that's going to make me not be able to participate in my life the way I want to. So it's just mindset sets. Yeah. And to your point, for the holidays, you know, a lot of people use that excuse.

And so yesterday was Christmas. And to be honest with you, you know people give me a hard time like my team. We had a group text going on and everyone's like, nobody tell Doctor Cassie what they ate for the holidays because she would be very upset.

And my response to that is like, I'm not going to be upset. You do whatever you want with your body. But I'm happy to tell you what I had yesterday, and it's what I typically have.

I had eggs for breakfast. There were vegetables in it with me. I had a protein shake yesterday for dinner. I had some beef and some avocado. I mean, we don't I don't eat crazy things on Christmas or Thanksgiving or because I don't want to feel like crap.

I have a lot of stuff to do today. I had, you know, two. I had three zoom meetings. I had two podcast. Like, I didn't want to feel that. So that doesn't I don't need that as part of my life.

You know, I, I just yes, I hung out in my pajamas all day and I watch movies and I hung out with my husband, and I relaxed. But I don't need to eat bad food because I know what that's going to do to me.

And to your point, like when your health gets good and then you can actually figure out what you were put on this earth to do when you actually do that.

So like, you're you're healthy and spiritually you're doing what you want. It's not even like a one plus one if you've experienced it. It's like a, a one times a million, you know, it's like it's so exponential how things change.

But in order for you to get that, you know, that feeling and be able to be doing what you're supposed to be doing in this world and doing well at it, you have to feel well. Right?

And so it's just I think that's a lot of people's issue with alcohol, too. You know, we could digress for a second, but I have so many friends and, you know, who say, like, well, I have to drink alcohol because whenever I go out, everyone's drinking alcohol.

And if I don't drink alcohol, I feel, you know, and I get that I had that pressure in my early 30s, but now I'm like, I don't care what everyone's drinking because I don't want to have a headache tomorrow and I want to sleep.

I don't want to wake up hot like I don't. I literally don't care. Drink whatever you want, but I will have water with lemon, you know what I mean? Like, it's it's it doesn't matter because it's not worth it to me.

So once you get there, then you're there, but, you know, you got to get there. Sometimes you want to have the drink, and I just tell my patient, you know, we're big girls or boys, and, you know, if you know, the drinks are going to make you sleep like crap, but you want to have it like you do, that you're a big girl.

So, you know, it's good to have some balance and be able to swing. But, you know, for you like saying managing autoimmune. And, you know, I was very, very sick as a child.

Like it's just not worth it to me. My health is much more worth it. So I remember like when I first I was like, oh, I can't eat pizza. But you know what?

If I want pizza, I can have a grain free crust with some dairy free cheese and it's just good. And if I look at a regular New York pizza now, I just see bloating and not.

And I'm like, no, thank you. Not interested. Yeah, not worth it. And you know, when you don't eat that because I'm like you, I don't eat dairy. I don't eat gluten when you don't eat that, if you ever do eat it by accident or something like cheese.

I haven't had cheese in years and I ate. I don't even remember what I eat something in my husband's and it had cheese. I almost had like a visceral like.

But it was disgusting. Like, if you've ever not had shredded cheese for a long time and then you have it, it is vile tasting like it doesn't. Make. Milk, you know, it's like, oh my God, people sprinkle that stuff on everything.

It's the anyways, definitely not worth it, right? Oh, I'm definitely. On a tangent. Yeah. So. We kind of got off. Off kilter there. But I hope that this was interesting for everyone.

And if you're still with us, thank you for being with us. We have a lot of great things on this summit that will help you as far as mental health goes.

Anxiety, depression, ADHD. So make sure that you tune in for the next episode of the summit. And thank you for doing this entire interview with me. Thank you. It's fun.