How to Fix Autoimmunity with Whitney Morgan

Logan (00:00:20):
Welcome. Have an amazing conversation for you today that well tried to get to the heart of kind of the old paradigm, the new paradigm, where our healthcare paradigm is failing and great guest for you on this topic today, a woman that suffered through four auto-immune conditions and ultimately was able to correct these Whitney Morton is the founder of Morgan nutrition and the creator of the thyroid reboot method and the gluten Gotland system. She has helped dozens of women with chronic Hasimoto's and other autoimmune conditions bust through the obstacles, keeping them from the life they want by uncovering the root causes of their symptoms and eliminating their unique triggers. She is a licensed acupuncturist, a functional nutritionist, and a certified gluten-free health coach. Let's dive into the call today. Welcome Whitney. Thanks for joining the health sovereign podcast today.

Whitney (00:01:12):
Thanks Logan. I'm super excited. Glad to be here.

Logan (00:01:15):
Yeah, this should be a fun conversation here where I wanted to start was that I've been really interested in people's stories and I was just poking around on your website and some of the phrases, like I grew up believing that there was a pill for every ill being the daughter of a surgeon and an art nurse. I was certain that modern medicine could solve practically anything. And that's, I mean, obviously you have being the daughter of a surgeon and a nurse that's even more stronger for you, but that's kind of like the default paradigm that everyone is in regarding health, right?

Whitney (00:01:52):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that's the default paradigm of the health system, right? I mean, it's, it's not just us as consumers. It's, it's the folks we're training. So unfortunately, yeah, it's, it's a pill for every ill and in my household, if there was any kind of religion, it was medicine, you know,

Logan (00:02:11):
That's it like scientism and medicine at all being scientific, but certainly religious is one way you can definitely look at it. And some of the other stuff you said that I was a Western medicine groupie going from doctor to doctor, but getting no solutions, I thought that was a well put, obviously a sad state of affairs, but accurate. And you're obviously not the only person that has gone through such a thing.

Whitney (00:02:37):
Yeah. Unfortunately. And, and in my household, you know, my dad being a surgeon, which I think takes a very special type of ego it wasn't just enough to go see a doctor. You had to go see like cream of the crop specialist. Right. So there was a certain amount of medical snobbery in my family as well. Right. And so yeah, it was, it was quite a very narrow perspective on health for sure.

Logan (00:03:06):
And that's the thing like, obviously surgery is amazing when it is properly used, but as you were saying that narrow perspective unfortunately, as we look at things like chronic disease, some of the stuff we'll be talking about today, that's where we see Western medicine, not even falling short, but really kind of falling flat.

Whitney (00:03:28):
I absolutely agree. And, and in some instances they think not even just falling flat, but digging a deeper hole for everybody, you know, because there's that the, the, the chronic disease management is based on acute care. Right. So, but it's not, it's different. And oftentimes, you know, if, if the medical paradigm doesn't really have any options for chronic disease care, well then that's when all these no CBOs come in, you know, which is the opposite of the placebo and the regular, no CBO that, that I hear all the time from my clients is, well, my doctor said, there's nothing I can do, or there's no cure for that. Or I need to be on this medication my entire life, or, or, you know, five years down the road, it's going to get worse. And this is how it's going to be for me. I mean, there's all of this like crystal ball, you know, prophecy going on that is, is, is really powerful for, for the patients, right? Because these doctors are, are the experts, you know, and that's not a diss on doctors because God love them. We need them, but it's just a different paradigm.

Logan (00:04:40):
Yeah, absolutely. Then that's the thing, Oh, the doctor, there's nothing that the doctor can do for the person, because it is, they don't have the skillset to work with these things within their paradigm or the system. There actually is nothing that can be done, but that doesn't mean that's true. That's where we begin to look outside of the paradigm outside of the system and we find, Oh, there's like 50,000 things you can do.

Whitney (00:05:04):
Absolutely. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Logan (00:05:09):
Sorry. I think we might have a little delay here. So yeah, in your story, and unfortunately this is a common story. You get a disease, get another disease. The doctors can't do anything. They, they literally tell you there's nothing in that can be done. And eventually you get to a point, can you tell a story? Like what led you going outside of doctor? You said Western medicine groupie. The problem is when people say they've tried everything, it means they've seen 10 different doctors, but they haven't actually gone outside of that system. What led you to finally breaking free from this system?

Whitney (00:05:47):
Sure. Well it was after being diagnosed with already two different autoimmune diseases, right. And then I wound up getting what I thought was a bladder infection that just wouldn't go away. And then I, I seem to be in constant pain. I went to a urologist and ultimately got diagnosed with interstitial cystitis, which is a incredibly painful autoimmune disease of the bladder. And if you can, for any of your listeners, you know, if you've had a bladder infection, you know how painful it is, but just imagine one that never goes away, the pain is 24 seven. And there's absolutely nothing that takes the edge off. Right. That that's kind of what that diseases like. So I was around 40 and I was sitting in the head of urology of course, right. Because I was a snob. And so I'm sitting there in the doctor's office and he says to me, I mean, this is almost verbatim, says nothing can be done.

Whitney (00:06:51):
It's not going to kill you, but you're going to die with it. It's probably going to get worse. We can try and manage the pain, but you should join a support group. And it was in that moment. And I, and I swear Logan, it was like like every cell in my body in unison just scream the word. No, it wasn't a thought in my head. It was just like, I was just hit like full body slam with this rejection. Like, no, this is not my future. Cause he was telling me your life is over. You know? And that's really what I was hearing from him. And I walked out of that office and I knew that I wasn't going to accept what he said. I knew in that moment that, that aha of, Oh, in your world, there's nothing that can be done because you don't know what to do. And because you don't know what to do. You think that that's the end all be all right. But I can't believe that. I don't believe that I don't know where my path has headed, but I know I'm getting off the path. I've been walking my whole life. That was really the moment.

Logan (00:08:02):
Yeah. That's it's it seems that it is so often it's it has to get bad enough. That's that's when people break free, it's either people themselves or a loved one. Cause I've just been interested in like what actually pops people out of the, the dominant paradigm and you see it very clearly there. I loved how you're saying your body screamed though. And it is a sense that was like rock bottom. Yeah, no, I'm not going to accept that. So then what do you do that, is that searching for yourself? How did you then step outside the paradigm?

Whitney (00:08:37):
Well first it was just, you know, a bunch of online stuff and, and trying to do my own research, going to health, food stores and asking other people who I thought might, you know, have a different way of looking at things. I stumbled upon a local acupuncture clinic and started getting with, and I actually got a significant amount of relief and I just really fell in love with the medicine. And so I started acupuncture school. And that was kind of my first like talk about a deep dive, you know, outside of the traditional medical paradigm. Right. I mean, there's nothing further away than medicine. But I got so much healing from that. That by the time that I graduated from acupuncture school, my interstitial cystitis was gone. You know, I, it wasn't a part of my body anymore. And, and you know, everyone in the medical industry said that could not happen.

Whitney (00:09:31):
Right. That that's impossible. So that was really my first look at another way of perceiving health and how to heal the body from the ground up. And in Chinese medicine, there is this root branch philosophy. They look at health and disease much like a gardener, you know, looks at the trees and the plants that yes, the symptoms show up in the branches and the leaves, but it's the disease or the imbalance is really coming from the root system and the soil. Right. So that's where the majority of your focus has to be. So that's what started my healing was, was, yeah, I need to, I needed to do some things to alleviate my pain, which were the symptoms in the branches, but I needed to figure out what the hell caused this to happen in the first place, what was going on at the deeper levels that set the stage for this, right?

Whitney (00:10:28):
This doesn't just happen out of the blue. And it was Chinese medicine that allowed me to start doing that deeper work. And coincidentally, the acupuncture school where I was attending was right next door to a naturopathic clinic. And the doctor there taught some of the biomed classes that I was taking and I developed a great relationship with her and her husband and became very interested in natural Pathi as well. So did a lot of self study in that world. And then when I got out of acupuncture school, I went into a functional nutrition certification course and got some more training in, in that same root branch philosophy, but from a Western mindset, you know, so same language, you know, but, but spoken with different dialects sort of, and it just transformed everything for me. And, and then the confirmation came several years later when I went to to a gastroenterologist because I was having this very, very precise pain in my stomach.

Whitney (00:11:36):
And I thought, you know, I'm a type a student I study all the time. I'm, you know, I've just got that kind of a personality. It's probably an ulcer, you know, maybe I should check this out. So I went, I went just to get a scope and they've just said, well, let's go ahead and do a, a lower, you know, a colonoscopy at the same time. Let's just get it all done. So we did an upper and lower and they discovered I had celiac disease and I, I, I woke up from the anesthesia and my doctor said, I can't believe it. You have absolutely no symptoms of it. You don't present like someone with celiac disease, but you have full blown celiac disease. And and then all the pieces of the puzzle really fell together for me, because then I realized that's the first domino that fell was my celiac disease. And it was funny cause that's the last diagnosis I got, right. That was my fourth auto-immune diagnosis. And they found it by accident. So it really goes to show you how you have to pay attention to uncovering, you know, everything that could be at the root of whatever your diagnosis or your symptom, your set of symptoms might be.

Logan (00:12:46):
Right. Yeah. So interesting with auto-immunity, especially when we see this. So you had celiac they are only able to do that with this diagnostic test. You didn't have any of the normal symptoms, which is how they at least in the beginning begin to diagnose celiac, but it's tied into all these other at a tends to look at the things versus seeing the body as ecology as you were saying, or holistically looking at everything altogether. So that's very fascinating. Can you just list out for listeners to the four autoimmune conditions you had?

Whitney (00:13:30):
Sure. the first one I got was psoriasis. Then Hashimoto's then interstitial cystitis then celiac disease. But I had celiac disease long before I developed any of those other three. I am just what they call a silent celiac.

Logan (00:13:53):
Okay. I haven't heard that term before. And yet really that was, you know, the multiple causes, but that was at the root. Why then it expressed in your skin with the psoriasis that it expressed in the thyroid with Hashimoto's and then your bladder as well. Right. It's all tied together. Yeah. Yeah. So after you had this diagnosis, then that's when you went gluten-free

Whitney (00:14:19):
Well, I had actually gone gluten free before I ever got my diagnosis. Because in school I, I became pretty captivated by, you know, the paleo template and and that works really well for my body. I wasn't intentionally like, you know, obsessively gluten-free and I certainly didn't live in a gluten-free house, but just because, just because I was paleo, I, I, you know, my consumption of gluten, my, well, my intentional consumption of gluten rate was zero. So that just cleaned up my immune system and really took a lot of that systemic inflammation away that allowed my body to, to, you know, heal the psoriasis, to reverse the interstitial society cystitis. I didn't really know that it was wow. That huge domino of gluten has gone. I didn't, I couldn't draw that straight line until I got that celiac diagnosis. Right. So, but I would have never gotten it if, if that fluke hadn't happened. And 30% of people with celiac disease don't have any GI symptoms. They, they usually express neurologically like panic and anxiety. And I certainly had panic and anxiety attacks from that from my early twenties.

Logan (00:15:41):
Yeah. It's a, the way I liken it for other people was even though, obviously there's the problem with the gluten and the interest intestinal permeability, the kind of quote, unquote, the war, the battleground may be taken into other parts of your body which is just an interesting way that our body seems to work. Absolutely. So, yeah, this is interesting. Just kind of thinking through it. Did you, was it just the paleo thing or were you aware at my understanding is going gluten-free in general is going to be good for just about anyone that has auto-immune conditions. That's at least something worth trying out,

Whitney (00:16:22):
Oh, a hundred percent of the time. And in fact, the majority of my clients all have autoimmune disease. Usually more than one and I have yet to find a single person who doesn't have an underlying gluten sensitivity. Now that doesn't mean they have celiac disease. Right. But gluten is 99% of the time, part of the picture, along with other triggers, right. Everyone has their own perfect storm of variables that brings them to a particular diagnosis. But gluten is, you know, if you had to line up the usual suspects, right. Gluten would be in the lineup. And, and along with viruses or parasites and heavy metals, you know, things like that can trigger as well. But gluten is definitely a pretty popular culprit. Pretty common.

Logan (00:17:14):
Yeah. When my wife got diagnosed with autoimmune conditions, Sjogren's syndrome that's. That was learning about gluten sensitivity around that time. So that's one of the steps that we took in that, along with having her mercury amalgam fillings removed. Those are two of the like major factors that really allowed her to quote unquote, her autoimmunity. Yeah. That's fantastic. So with all these different things it, it part, yeah, cause and effect is not as linear or simplistic as most. Well as we would ideally like it to be especially as Western medicine tries to identify things with it. It often is, as you were saying, we have these usual suspects, but there can be all kinds of other things and how they play that perfect storm in a person's body can change from one person to another. And so it is with our treatments as well. Right. So you had the acupuncture going into natural paths, going gluten-free all these different things helped you to overcome these different conditions. Is there a few other the important pieces or was just these tools alone? Did that seem to be enough for you to overcome these conditions?

Whitney (00:18:40):
Well, I mean, I think I overcame 80% of, of what was going on that I, that I could identify as being wrong. Right. I would say I got 80% improvement on, on everything. But even for myself, I wasn't, until I got further education around functional medicine and started running certain functional labs on myself that I was able to identify deeper areas, areas of imbalance that needed to be, you know, restored. Right. So it's kind of a catch 22 it's it's, it's one thing to use your symptoms as your guidepost. Like, Oh, I changed my diet and this got better. Right. And so you've got that in equals one experiment going, but there are a lot of things that can be percolating in the root system that isn't necessarily expressing an, a symptom. Yes. Right, right. So, so you need to really investigate deeper. I think regardless of what your own feedback is telling you

Logan (00:19:46):
[Inaudible], so let's dive into that testing a little bit and that's that is an area that I think is a huge, really useful. obviously it can be expensive and it can be a difficult in and of itself. Like there's testing that is incomplete, that we can talk about that with thyroid specifically, like people get a TSH test and the doctor says my thyroid is fine. that's obviously not a big enough of a picture there. So there's really an art and a science to the testing. Would you agree with that?

Whitney (00:20:18):
Oh yeah, absolutely. So you're, you're spot on about thyroid testing. It's the traditional paradigm it's, it's kind of inadequate, meaning it doesn't really gather a whole lot of data. And so they, they make deductions based on a limited amount of data and usually, yeah, it's just TSH. Right. And as long as that TSH looks good, they're not going to dig any deeper. They just say, Oh, it's not your thyroid. But you know, TSH can look normal and you can still suffer from hypothyroid symptoms. There can still be thyroid dysfunction. It just isn't showing up in the TSH. Right. So yeah, there's limitations of the testing. And then also even if they're doing like, let's just stick with the thyroid, even if they're doing a real comprehensive thyroid test there's limitations in the reference ranges. So what, what traditional medicine thinks is normal? It's based on a standard reference range, which is actually pretty wide, it doesn't represent what's optimal or what's functional. It represents what's normal. Right? So when you're looking at functional interpretations of even standard labs their reference ranges are much tighter. So the ability to you know, to identify dysfunction of, of a system or a gland you're, you're gonna get that identification much sooner if you're looking through the paradigm of functional medicine.

Logan (00:21:43):
And could you talk a little bit about for listeners that aren't clear the difference between hypo and hyper thyroid and that these conditions there's Hashima Oh, no. So there's auto-immunity but they're not all autoimmune conditions. What's the difference between those?

Whitney (00:21:57):
Right. So hypothyroidism just means, you know, in general terms, your, your thyroid gland is under functioning. You have too little fibroid hormone getting into the cells. And so you've got all these classic symptoms, like your hair is falling out, you have dry skin, you're gaining weight, you're constipated, right? No libido all of that kind of stuff. Hyperthyroid is the opposite. You've got too much thyroid hormone. And so now you've got these that the symptoms of revved up metabolism, you know, so you're losing weight, you have a fast heart rate, you can't sleep, you don't have appetite just, you know, running around with more energy than, than, than you can stand, that kind of thing. So that's just the general definition. Then you have the auto-immune picture, right. Which is Hashimoto's would be the auto-immune version of hypothyroidism and graves' disease is the auto-immune version of hyperthyroidism.

Whitney (00:23:00):
But interestingly, the majority of hypo thyroid cases according to current research much of that is actually undiagnosed. Hashimoto's so many women go undiagnosed and they're just given this diagnosis of, Oh, you're hypothyroid. And they never really find out that they actually have an autoimmune process going on. And again, that comes back to sometimes the testing limitations, a lot of doctors don't even run antibodies. They're not looking at that, you know, so, so I always just assume from the very beginning, if you have hypo function there very well could be an autoimmune process going on and we need to look at that. Right. That's that's really important. But Hashimoto's any auto-immune disease just means there is excess tissue destruction, right? So in the case of Hashimoto's there's excess destruction of the thyroid gland that is compromising the production of thyroid hormone.

Logan (00:24:03):
So we mentioned earlier the, the usual suspects, gluten viruses, heavy metals parasites, probably like endocrine disrupting chemicals. I know those can be specific to the thyroid as well that these maybe causing the hypo thyroid, what, I mean, I'm curious what would be some causative issues where a person was not having auto-immunity so they had hypothyroid, but it was not Hasimoto's.

Whitney (00:24:32):
Oh, sure. So nutrient deficiencies is a big one, right? So just your standard American diet and a little bit of stress you're going to have nutrient deficiencies and most women by the time they're in their thirties, have most women have been on some form of birth control pill for several years, which is also going to set you up with some chronic nutrient deficiencies. So there are certain nutrients like the B vitamins and selenium and iodine and iron and amino acids. You know, there's, there's kind of a list of heavy hitters that do a lot to support thyroid function, not only you know, the ability to produce the hormone, but, but to convert T4 into T3, to make sure that your hormones getting into the cells, you know, all of these functions require certain nutrients to make them happen. So nutrient deficiency is, is probably a, a big cause when you're just talking about your general, you know, clinical or subclinical hypothyroidism.

Whitney (00:25:34):
But then there's also like halogen chemicals, you know, so if you're a swimmer or you spend a lot of time at a pool there's chlorine in your shower, water, you, you know, you brush with fluoride toothpaste these halogen chemicals compete with thyroid hormone, right? And they compete with iodine, which, which the thyroid needs. So chronic exposure to these chemicals can interfere with your ability to produce enough thyroid hormone and for it to dock into the cell receptors. Right. another big causal factor is just chronic stress. So, you know, the adrenals, you know, we used to think about in terms of adrenal fatigue, right? That, that you get to a drink Dremel fatigue when you've been so stressed out for so long that your adrenals are burned out, right? That's the language we used to use. But the, the messaging system of the adrenals that goes from the hypothalamus, the pituitary to the adrenals, it's kind of a parallel track along the messaging system that talks to the thyroid. So if someone is in a state of stress over a series of years or months all of that cortisol and those messaging hormones that are related to your stress response, actually drive down your thyroid hormone production and keep the hormone you do have from getting into the cells. It developed, it causes kind of a thyroid hormone resistance. So those are kind of like the three big ones just for your general, you know, hypothyroid cases.

Logan (00:27:10):
Excellent. And this is why we see so many people with hypo thyroid conditions. Do you know why women have this so much more? I forget what the statistic is, but it's like three times, or even greater than that women have a thyroid conditions much more so than men.

Whitney (00:27:28):
Yeah. I don't think there's a definitive answer on that, but I have my own suspicions that we're looking at a combination of things. One is just that we have a much more nuanced endocrine system. We go through you know, kind of stressful hormonal events just because we have a cycle. And then we, we go into menopause and, you know, so we have, and then there's pregnancy. So we have these big hormonal sort of disruptions and events that, that can leave us more vulnerable. On top of that, women tend to get more exposures to toxic chemicals than men do. Most women on average, you are exposed to about 160 toxic chemicals just by getting ready for work in the morning because of all the personal care products and the makeup and stuff like that, then nail Polish, right. Hair dye. So men's exposure on a daily basis throughout their life just tends to be lower. Right. so that really impacts our susceptibility for auto-immune disease. And a lot of the chemicals that are in those personal care products actually disrupt thyroid function very specifically. Right.

Logan (00:28:44):
That, that, that was my personal theory regarding the, the exposure to chemicals with the skincare. So that's great to hear that you came to the same conclusion from it. I think that is a huge part of it. So in general, I mean, this is going to support anyone, reduce the amount of endocrine disrupting chemicals and things like halogens heavy metals. If we can reduce these while treating nutrient deficiencies, I mean, this is going to help with everything beyond thyroid conditions as well. Right. it's crazy. Yeah. That, I mean, it, it kinda is very difficult when we're like, Oh, you have InterSystems cystitis. We don't know what to do, but basically almost every disease. If we look at nutrient deficiencies and toxicities, like that's as basic as we can go and we'll help with virtually everything.

Whitney (00:29:35):
Absolutely. I mean, even if you can't do all of the functional testing, like you can't find out if you have heavy metal toxicity you can still do some common sense things with the help of, you know, health coach to make the right dietary changes, to do the right, you know, liver support or gentle detoxes that can kind of just, you know, reduce your overall toxic burden, but you're not doing any heavy key lading. I mean, there are definitely interventions that are less costly and can get some progress for you. Right. and I would say hands down diet is, or nutrition. I don't want to say diet, but nutrition is the number one, most pivotal thing. If you get that right. Wow. That can, that can handle like 67 that, of, of what you need to get done, because it's just, it's a constant source of interaction, you know, with the body. I mean, it's what we do 24 seven. Right,

Logan (00:30:34):
Right. Yeah. One of the other things you said on their website that I thought was really well put was auto-immune disease. Doesn't just happen. This is an idea that I don't know where it came from. I mean, I guess it's because doctors couldn't find a germ that caused it or something specific. So one, sometimes I thought, Oh, it's just in your head. Secondly, you know, we don't know, we don't know what to do with it. So yeah, we're, we're just not going to talk about it that much, but yeah, there is causes they may be complex and often they are rooted in diet. Like almost always has their same in with gluten that's, that's something that is usually worth going for and far from blaming people for the things like, I, I don't think that's, that's obviously not useful, but I find it's really useful to take responsibility, you know, regardless of what the cause was it is going to be your responsibility to now work towards healing, this condition, whatever it happens to be. And that can be a long and painful road. But ultimately I think if you have you know, what you want to do and you, you can go outside of just a one paradigm, look at a few different options. I think people can, would be amazed at how much can be healed in doing that.

Whitney (00:31:54):
Oh, I totally agree, Logan. Absolutely. And in fact, it's a really hard road. If, if you ready to take personal responsibility for your own healing, right. It's, it's really difficult. Because there's, it's like swimming upstream against a lot of messaging that is trying to get you to stop doing right. Trying to get you to comply to the traditional paradigm. So you, you do have to kind of have a strong spine for that. And, and I think that that only comes from a place of personal conviction.

Logan (00:32:32):
Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about leaky gut or gut permeability. Are you of the opinion, I've heard this from some people that well obviously some people have really bad problems with gluten like you with celiac. I seem to have some sensitivity to it but never manifested in an auto-immune disease or diagnosis as such. But gluten is not digestible and causes gut permeability in everyone.

Whitney (00:33:06):
Yes, it does. And it does in a couple of ways. But one of the main reasons why it does is well, because the gluten protein is, is just, we don't have the evolutionary capacity to deal with it. So it, it, it sets off an inflammatory cascade and disrupts those tight junctions, which, which are the gateways, you know, between the cells. So every time you eat gluten, those tight junctions open up and they allow things to pass through that aren't supposed to pass through. And then there's the there's the wheat germ agglutinin, which is the lectin part of wheat that also disrupts the integrity of the mucosal barrier and kind of punches holes in the gut. So those are two primary ways that it causes leaky gut in everyone. It doesn't matter if you're sensitive or not.

Logan (00:34:04):
What are some of the other usual suspects or the prime causes of leaky gut?

Whitney (00:34:12):
Well, I'd say over the counter medications and prescriptions are, are pretty common culprits. Also chronic stress, just, you know, burning the candle at both ends staying up till 2:00 AM, you know, bingeing supernatural on Netflix or, you know, whatever, right. I mean, that kind of those lifestyle factors, a lot of computer time sedentary lifestyle go, go, go, right. And then you've got, you know even a moderate amount, if it's consistent alcohol consumption is going to make you very vulnerable to a leaky gut. And then of course you've got the heavy metals and the toxins, right. And the glyphosate that's you know, that's everywhere in this country, right? So you put glyphosate together with gluten and wow. I mean, it, it just, it just rips holes in your gut for several days, right. So if you're, if you're going to Starbucks every morning and getting that croissant, you're, you're ingesting gluten and glyphosate every morning and you will always have a leaky gut. So to a certain extent, even if you don't have a gluten sensitivity, even if you don't have an auto-immune disease, but, but you want to heal your gut, you have to get rid of the gluten or it's never going to happen.

Logan (00:35:32):
Okay. So let's talk testing for gut it's all on your website. You have some great regarding that this is, seems to be a topic that is growing in popularity. Like people are recognizing. Yeah. my, my gut health is not great and yeah, there's microbiome, there's different aspects to it. But as far as looking leaky gut, what are some of the best options out there?

Whitney (00:35:57):
Well, I mean, personally, I think the best option is, is a blood test where, where you're looking for antibodies to things like zonulin and actin and lipopolysaccharides. That's, that's what I want to see, because I want to see what's getting through the gut that your immune system is making antibodies to. But there, there are many practitioners who will use, what's called a lactulose mannitol test where you drink a sugar solution of a large sugar molecule and a small sugar molecule. And then a few hours later, you know, you collect the urine and they see how much of that sugar is recovered in the urine. So that's really based on you know, these large sugar molecules should not be able to get through a gut that is healed and sealed. So if there's a lot of lactulose showing up in the urine, right, then, then we have a problem, right.

Whitney (00:36:57):
So but these tests can, can give us a lot of false negatives because if you've got bacterial overgrowth in your small intestine and you drink that sugar solution, the bacteria is going to start munching down on the sugar and then your test results are gonna look normal. Right. and other things can affect those results too. Like just your, your transit time, right? How quickly you have a bowel movement after, after you eat. I mean, that, that will affect what happens to, so, so there are some things that we kinda need to rule out. So I frequently will see someone come to me and they've had a lactulose mannitol test done, and it looks totally negative. There's no leaky gut that's indicated. Then we run the blood test and we see that they have a pretty profound, profound and persistent leaky gut. So I always opt for blood testing if that's possible.

Logan (00:37:55):
Nice. And then as far as healing, the leaky gut, where do you start with that?

Whitney (00:38:01):
Well, removal is the first thing, right? You've got to remove the triggers. So there are just certain common sense things that, that I think everyone should do. The first being, get rid of all the grains in your diet not just the gluten, but all the other grains because they, well, one they're not particularly nutrient dense and they, they bring with them a lot of anti-nutrients and things that disrupt the mucosal barrier and create, you know, damage and inflammation and promote leaky gut. Doesn't have to be gluten to do that. And then legumes are, are not as bad as grains, but they also can be disruptive and inflammatory for the gut. And then there's things like the alcohol and the process sugar, and right. So I usually try and get people to transition to more of an ancestral template. So your paleo primal kind of template and then, you know, looking around the environment, right?

Whitney (00:38:59):
Stop painting your nails, stop dyeing your hair, stop, you know, stop putting on a lot of chemicals on your body. Get a shower, filter, you know, these kinds of common sense changes that we can make in our behavior and our daily surroundings. But then at that point you kind of have to look at, alright, well, what are the mysteries we need to solve? You know, are there other food antigens that are causing your immune system problem and, and disrupting your gut health, right? Or do you have a constant drip of mercury coming into your gut? That's a problem, right? Or do you have a chronic parasite that we don't know about it? So it's not uncommon to see Giardia and Blastocystis. These are two parasites. I see all the time where clients don't have any, you know, quote unquote symptoms of parasitic infection.

Whitney (00:39:49):
But these are chronic infections. And, and until you get rid of those, it's really difficult to truly heal and seal the gut. So removal is really the first, the first big thing. And then we look at, you know, replacing, maybe what's not, what's been missing reinoculating the microbiome based on you know, what their current gut flora looks like, right? They're bacterial and yeast profile, their short chain, fatty acids, stuff like that. And then we also think about repairing, right? So things like you know, L-glutamine and marshmallow root and slippery Elm and zinc carnosine and immunoglobulins, you know, that help repair and restore mucosal barrier, integrity.

Logan (00:40:33):
Are you fan of bone broth as far as repairing the gut?

Whitney (00:40:37):
Absolutely. And in fact, Logan, that's something that, you know, it, if someone wants to really get, get their gut healed and sealed quickly you do a five to seven day bone broth fast, and you basically have a pretty healed gut because those, the cells in our, in our gut, they turn over every, about every five days. Right. So if you can just lay off the food and just do water and a little bit of bone broth every day, that gives your body the ability to do what it knows how to do anyway, repair all that damage and, and create new healthier cells. Right? So for folks that are have chronic or multiple autoimmune diseases, and they've been dealing with chronic illness for a while, and they're kind of swimming upstream against this against the strong current that they've been fighting their whole life. Oftentimes I'll have people just do you know, a three to five day bone broth fast once a month. Let's just kind of like do a monthly reset. And that seems to really help them maintain a balance of low inflammation. So yeah, bone broth is super

Logan (00:41:50):
Wow. That makes sense. Because it hits on all the things you were saying as far as for removal replacement and repairment, you remove all the bad stuff by fasting, and then you get the bone broth in there, which is one of the most healing things for it. And I imagine you could throw a few of those herbs or probiotics in addition to that, and that would work even better.

Whitney (00:42:09):
Oh yeah. Throw a little L-glutamine into your bone broth and some extra collagen peptides and stuff. Yeah. You can kind of supercharge your, your bone broth.

Logan (00:42:20):
I liked that. How to fix auto immunity fast.

Whitney (00:42:23):
Yeah. Well, let's, I wish I could put that on a bumper sticker, but

Logan (00:42:29):
Know a person can do a fast like that. You know, that's stepping stones, many people I've never fasted before depending on where they're coming from. So that's not something that jump in with both feet in most cases. I mean, I'm sure it works for some people. It took me years and years and fasting before I even did a seven day fast. So

Whitney (00:42:48):
Yeah, it could be something that you need to work up to you particularly if you're coming from a place of standard American diet where you've got a lot of blood sugar dysregulation, it can be really tough to fast.

Logan (00:43:00):
Yeah. Although bone broth, I think is easier than water. I did my longest fast with seven days nonetheless day of that, I had bone broth after doing just like teas, water even some dry fasting in there. And that first sip of bone broth was like being hugged. It was so amazing.

Whitney (00:43:25):
Yeah. That's awesome.

Logan (00:43:28):
Okay. I think those are excellent strategies as far as doing that. And I mean, these are things that everyone can do. Again, we, we focused a bit on auto-immunity on thyroid conditions, but in general, this stuff will help people with just about everything, right?

Whitney (00:43:46):
Yeah, I think so. And, and in fact, you know, when I think when I look at chronic disease in general, not just auto-immune disease you, you really can get 80 to 90% of the work done. If you just have this mindset of let's remove all of the crap that we know really off the body and causes inflammation in everybody and all these chemicals that shouldn't be in our environment, but, but we're coming into contact with them all the time, you know, just these common sense things. And then, and then replace nutrient deficiencies that are there almost a hundred percent of the time, you know, that's just such a huge benefit, but that also kind of means for a lot of people getting the grid in terms of, you know, getting off the social grid of, of that behavior of fast food and going out to restaurants and socializing around food and socializing around drinking. And that's probably the, the thing that some of my clients have the hardest time with is that sense of, Oh, I don't want to be different than everybody else. Right. that, that can be kind of a hard adjustment to like find your new tribe, you know, that can support you in a different type of lifestyle.

Logan (00:45:05):
Yeah. And any tips on that, what has worked well as far as getting your clients to make that because yeah, I mean, food is such a social thing that, that often is the thing that holds it back, you know, that in addition to all sorts of mental and emotional baggage that people seem to have around food. But the, the social component is huge. So yeah. What do you recommend for clients that are finding that hard to do?

Whitney (00:45:30):
Yeah, well, there are some like certain phases that people go through, you know, they, when, when they realize that they have to make these kinds of changes, first, they go through kind of like a cycle of grief, right. Like lamenting for a previous way of life. And one of the first things I think that, that folks should try and do is replace some of their like mainstay comfort foods. You know, if you, if you go online and, and you punch in, you know, macaroni and cheese, paleo, I mean, just the paleo at the end of every Google and you, you can come up with recipes where you can kind of feed that emotional comfort food connection for yourself by perfecting a few recipes, you know, cause you gotta have something you can kind of pull out and go, okay, I, I'm not going to backslide.

Whitney (00:46:19):
I can have this comfort food and I can keep moving forward. The other thing is, you know, getting the support of your well, whoever you live with, right? So if, if you live with a family or if you have roommates or whatever, making sure that, that you, your immediate environment is a supportive environment and there are ways to have conversations around that and, and, and gain the support of the people that love you. Beyond that, I really recommend you know, today it's, it's so easy to find a community out there, whether it's, you know, just listening to like the primal blueprint podcast with Mark Sisson, right. Or, or other paleo podcasts, there's also a lot of books getting educated, right? Getting exposure to people in the community that are super excited to support you in an ancestral lifestyle or an autoimmune paleo lifestyle, whatever, whatever template you're doing.

Whitney (00:47:20):
The other thing is there is I want to mention this because there's an app and you can download it on your phone. It's called Vivify, it's a really bad for an app, but it's V I M I F Y. And they run these challenges usually once every couple of months. And so you can do like a primal or a paleo challenge, and it's all gamified there's coaches that have online support, you know, all this all smartphone-based they give you all the education, all the support, all the cheerleading. So for some of my clients who feel really isolated, particularly on, on a paleo journal, I mean, journey, they really find benefit in participating in these online challenges because it's just an instant community. And, and everyone who's struggling is kind of having the same struggles. Right. And they can be there in support not from a place of lamenting, but from a place of cheering each other on.

Logan (00:48:19):
Yeah. That's great. That's a long list of very useful stuff. And yeah, I found much the same, like as much as he can out of your house, like, it, it doesn't mean you can never eat crappy food again, but just upgrade your crappy food. Like you were saying with the comfort foods, like you can still eat Mac and cheese. It's just a paleo versions going to be not as detrimental to your body as, you know, Kraft, macaroni and cheese. So, yeah. And with diet, especially because of food, like willpower's a notoriously faulty resource. So having those fallback positions that are better off than previous fallback positions, if he can just upgrade those that, that can make such a huge difference.

Whitney (00:49:02):
It's, it's a game changer. It really is. And if you can sustain that for long enough, then if you ever go back to those old, you know, comfort foods, they don't taste the same as you remember them. And you don't feel good when you eat the right. They're not very comfortable anymore.

Logan (00:49:20):
Yeah, absolutely. That's I like this idea of this like upward expanding spiral of vitality. And as you improve over time, yeah. You may come back to different things, but as I was saying, even the crappy food that you eat, like it's still organic and it doesn't have all the chemicals and different things. So yeah, it's, it's just a better way of doing things once you can get there, but realize the, the path often is very long in doing this, but you gotta start somewhere and just one step in front of the other. Yeah.

Whitney (00:49:50):
Yup. And, and I think the, the architecture or the scaffolding that holds all of that together is the educational piece. You gotta be willing to educate yourself, to read a few books, you know, to understand why those foods are bad for you. You know what they actually do biochemically, you know, in your physiology, it's one thing to make decisions emotionally, but you gotta be able to defend them logically. Right. So that can be particularly for people who have any kind of a type a, or, you know, soap box kind of mentality certainly do. So I can talk about gluten all day long. And you know, anyone starts giving me resistance about, you know, Oh, you should eat this can't you have one little bite of this. I just go into full education mode. You know, I was like, no, let me tell you why you shouldn't put that in your mouth. So, you know, it drives my husband crazy, but so, you know, you can become your own little lifestyle warrior. And even though it might annoy the people around you initially, pretty soon it starts to wear off on them. You know, both my daughters are now paleo gluten-free they're, you know, they're loving life in that different way of eating, but when they were teenagers, Oh my gosh,

Logan (00:51:06):
Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's reminding me when me and my wife first went. Gluten-Free like, one of the things I did was a there's some Telus summit series all about gluten. So I was like, Oh, okay. Gonna go dive in this, learn all I can. And, you know, as he said that the kind of evidence, the education really backs up, it makes your actions easier to do once you really kind of understand what it's doing and why it may not be a good fit for you.

Whitney (00:51:34):
Yeah, absolutely. That one, one trip, my husband and I were in a long car ride and, and he really wasn't completely on board with the gluten thing. And we just listened to wheat belly all the way home. And by the time we got home, he was like, Oh my God. You know, I'm never eating that stuff again.

Logan (00:51:56):
All right. And the good news is there are, yeah. I mean, if you're still doing grains, there's, gluten-free food has come a long way from back in the seventies or so, although yeah. Sometimes definitely getting, removing all the grains and recognizing all that. But yeah, I mean, paleo foods come a long way and so it continues to become easier while still satisfying everything. And then soon enough, as you were saying, like your lifestyle is shifted where those stuff you used to love you try it again. It's like, no, this isn't even that good. But the memory of it is better than the actual

Whitney (00:52:34):
Exactly.

Logan (00:52:39):
One thing you mentioned a little as far as acupuncture. So we've really kind of focused on diet and diet of course, is super important, both for what it includes and what it doesn't include, but I'd like to focus on these other modalities. So using the acupuncture and no part of that, as part of your training probably involve the use of Chinese herbs included in there, which gets through the diet component. But I mean, this is energy. It's moving through meridians in the body and the insertion of needles, like how is that helping with health? Where do you see that place? Is there like certain conditions or certain areas that, that really helps? How is the acupuncture kind of assisting as you make these other changes? I know it's kind of a broad question, but could you speak a little bit to that? Sure.

Whitney (00:53:24):
Well, from the Chinese medicine perspective matter follows energy, right? So the health of, of the human body, all the organ systems is dependent upon the energy flow. And if you manage the energy flow, the matter follows, right. So everything has an energetic component when we're talking about any sort of symptom collection or, or diagnosis. So energy medicine is super important and, and it's absolutely, I wouldn't even say it's adjunctive, you know, I I'd say it's, it should be part of your medical team, right? Your healthcare team, if you have a community acupuncture clinic in your area, that's the kind of acupuncture I practice. It's a community setting, it's low cost. That way people can afford, you know, two or three treatments a week if they want. The beautiful thing about it is you're not treating a collection of symptoms.

Whitney (00:54:20):
You really are treating the energetic imbalance and kind of giving the body signals. And it knows what to do with those signals. You know, the acupuncturist themselves are not like, you know, wizards or anything. We just know how to balance and allow the body to manage energy flow in the way that it knows how to do right. She, gong is another way you can do that. You know, acupuncture is, is me managing your energy by, by putting needles in your body. But if you, you know, took some Qigong classes and started practicing, she'd gone on a daily basis, that is like manual acupuncture. You're doing for yourself. You are, you know, really influencing the energy flow and tapping into all those meridians. Something like EFT, emotional freedom technique uses acupuncture points and also, you know, mind, body messaging that can be transformational, you know, so I usually counsel my clients to do some aspect of energy management, right.

Whitney (00:55:26):
Sometimes it's acupuncture, sometimes it's EFT, sometimes it's Tai-Chi or cheek gong or something like that really depends on where they're at, what they're up for. But yeah, I think it's critical. And you know, the Chinese knew this for 2000 years, but now quantum physics is telling us that, right, right. Th that we are mostly empty space and energy. And and, and that our organs do vibrate at different frequencies. We can measure that now. Well, Chinese medicine has known that for thousands of years, there is a different type of energy in the liver than there is in the small intestine. And they've known how to access that and influence that, you know, for, for thousands of years, but we are now getting verification of that, you know, which I think is awesome. So you know, whether, you know, even if you're just someone who loves to meditate, you know, that's another way of managing your energy. But I think thing that you got to keep in mind, everyone needs to keep in mind is that emotions are energy, right? And that if you have particular habits of thinking and feeling that, that vibrate at lower frequencies, like anger and worry and fear and frustration and things like that, that can really impact your energy quality, that will impact your organs and your tissues. Right. So it's also about kind of rewiring your habitual ways of thinking of feeling that really don't serve your own health and wellness and vitality.

Logan (00:57:01):
That's great. Yeah. I really liked the, how you phrase that in the beginning. Like we've been mostly talking about kind of chemicals, obviously there's an energetic component to food as well, but the, the Western mindset it's, you know, it's all about the chemicals and what they're doing in the body, which is important, but this energy aspect is equally as important. So no matter what disease you're working with or what condition or what you want to do making sure that energy management as you phrased it is a important piece of that. And there are a bunch of different tools and methodologies for doing so, but you got to make sure to include some because well, it matters.

Whitney (00:57:38):
Yeah. And then it comes back to what you spend so much time talking about, which I really love that concept of being sovereign right. Of your own health. And, and that's part of that personal responsibility, not just for the food that you put on your body, but the way that you react to people in your life, right. Are you, you know, chronically judgmental, right? Are you, if you complain about everything, I mean, you really have to be in a place where you take an honest inventory about you know, your habits of emotional response and, and even thoughts that you don't voice, you know, because even if they're not spoken, your body still hears them, every cell in your body still knows. You're thinking that thought. So, so you really do need to be more mindful.

Logan (00:58:27):
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Whitney, for this wide ranging conversation. I, it definitely helped clarify and solidify a few things for me. I'm sure the listeners got a lot out of it. Where can people go to find out more about you and your work?

Whitney (00:58:43):
Sure. well, my website is Morgan nutrition.com. You can find me on Instagram at Morgan nutrition, 24, Facebook at Morgan nutrition. I've got a YouTube channel Whitney Morgan nutrition. So pretty much you can find me all those places and on my website if folks are interested, I do have like a free thyroid lab interpretation guide. If you want to download that that's a big frustration for so many women. Their doctors tell them everything's normal and they don't know whether or not they should even argue with that, right. They don't understand maybe what's missing. So this is a great for women to take more control of their own thyroid health and be a little bit more assertive and have better questions when they go see their doctors. And also I've got a great course called the gluten gauntlet mini course. And the first lesson is free and it's just about teaching you how to transition your house to truly gluten-free house. And the first lesson is all about how to have those conversations with your, with your family to get everyone on board. So that's free at my website as well.

Logan (00:59:52):
All right, excellent. And I'll be sure to include all those links in the show notes. So you can head to health sovereign.com, find this episode and find those there. Thanks everyone for listening. And thank you, Whitney. It was a pleasure.

Whitney (01:00:04):
Thanks you. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. You take care.