Dr. Wendy Trubow, an OBGYN, shares her journey from traditional medicine to functional medicine and the impact of toxins on hormone health. She also discusses her personal experience with celiac disease and a tickborne illness, highlighting the importance of addressing these issues.
Highlights:
Dr. Wendy transitioned from traditional medicine to functional medicine due to her personal health struggles and the impact she witnessed on women’s health.
She was diagnosed with celiac disease and experienced various food sensitivities and gut issues.
Dr. Wendy believes in eliminating reactive foods and following a low-grain diet, with the exception of corn and rice.
She discusses her current health challenges, including a suspected tickborne illness and mold exposure.
Dr. Wendy emphasizes the necessity of addressing tick bites promptly and seeking herbal support to prevent long-term complications.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio podcast. Feel free and head over to justinhealth. com. We have all of our podcast transcriptions there, as well as video series on different health topics ranging from thyroid to hormones, ketogenic diets, and gluten. While you're there, you can also schedule a consult with myself, Dr.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: J, and or our colleagues and staff to help dive into any pressing health issues you really want to get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Hey guys, Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome back to the podcast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have Dr. Wendy Trubo here. Really excited to have her on the podcast. Wendy is an OBGYN. She deals a lot in the area of detoxification and female hormones, and we're gonna have a nice conversation really diving deep into those topics today. Dr. Wendy, how are we doing?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Great. Thanks for having me on Justin.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Feel free to call me Wendy too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make it easier. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, tell me a little bit more about how you got into this field. 'cause you came in, we talked about earlier, you, you went to Tuft School of Medicine. Yeah. You were an ob, GYN. You were doing surgery, obstetric surgery for a while, delivering babies.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How did you make this transition from, from that kind of angle of medicine into more of a natural. Health functional medicine type of approach.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah. There's two major ways that happened. One, I was married to someone who was doing functional medicine, except they didn't really know, you know, you don't really talk about it with your spouse.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: He just was mentoring with someone in Boston. So I had exposure, but then really. As a result of having such a stressful job and being awake for 36 hours and doing all those things that you referenced,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I
Dr. Wendie Trubow: developed an autoimmune disease, but I didn't know it because I was so sick and it, you know, health isn't a straight line and then a plummet health is, is this just gradual decline.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So when I hit the point at which I was no longer able to function, I went and saw my husband's mentor and he diagnosed me with celiac disease.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh,
Dr. Wendie Trubow: yeah. So that it was personal, right? My mess became my message. So there came a point in my career where I had this moment and I saw there's a lot of people with good hands.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: There's a lot of people who can do surgery. OBGYN is a pretty straightforward profession in the sense of it's a lot of it's mechanical. And there's a lot of people who can deal with mechanical issues, but there weren't a lot of people who could deal with women's health, women's hormones, functional medicine for women.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And the. Having experienced it, I now could no longer, I couldn't unsee the difference it made. And since I wasn't making that difference, I couldn't keep doing it. So, I left OB and went into functional medicine for women.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Wow, and that took a while, about 10 years for that tradition to happen?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Dr. Sarah Silver No, actually, I got diagnosed with celiac when I was 35, and I left my practice when I was 38. So, it's actually only 3 years. Dr.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Justin Marchegiani And how did you get diagnosed? Was that like an endoscopy, or was it just like an antibody test? How was that picked up? Dr. Sarah
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Silver Doctors are the worst patients.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I So my dad has celiac except I was one of the I fell through the cracks. I never got tested I didn't even know it was familial until I I got diagnosed so I had The antibodies done and they were through the roof like no question Everything was way positive and then the doctor was like you should have an endoscopy and I was like my dad has celiac My antibodies are through the roof.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I'm sick as a dog What's it going to change? I'm not going to change anything. So I went off gluten subsequently my brothers got diagnosed with celiac. My kids all have gluten sensitivity. It's a really nasty gene. So I didn't have the endoscopy largely because I didn't want to wait another, what, three months to feel better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you need that 80%, you know, wearing of that microvilla, it'd even be picked up. And so there has to be a lot of damage there anyway. Plus a lot of times just a good elimination, Provocation diet. If you pull, you know, I tell patients always pull grains out in general because rice and corn and oats could still potentially cross react.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, it's good to cut all grains out. What antibodies came back? Was it like Endomycille? Was it just Gliadin? Was it Transglutaminase? Do you remember?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah, all three. I was off the chart and they were all, you know, the cutoff I think for the TTG is like 100. I was like two something and it was way off the chart.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So that's why I didn't even bother having the endoscopy because I wasn't going to do anything differently.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And my new, my dad had celiac and I was like, Oh, this is celiac.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And did you find that you had to really go grain free or could you get away with a little bit of rice or a little bit of corn?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How strict?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah, so it depends what phase of my recovery you ask me. And so when I got diagnosed with celiac, I also had a ton of other food sensitivities. So my gut was such a mess from 20 years of undiagnosed celiac and just on remitting inflammation. So I had tons of food sensitivities. I had also candida and then, you know, fast forward.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I also had a ton of toxins that are very corrosive to the gut. So I started by doing eliminating the top foods that were reactive. And then I went into a candida protocol. But I do fine with corn. I do fine with a lot of things like corn and rice. Totally fine. I don't do well with millet, quinoa, buckwheat, taff, amaranth.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I don't, I don't eat any of those. I don't eat oats. I just don't do well with them. So I tend to be green minimal, not green free, but low green.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I try to like 80 percent try to keep You know, pretty dialed in and then you can cheat a little bit around the edges. That makes sense.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I don't even consider it cheating.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It's more just, it works for me to eat corn and rice and, and so I eat those when they're around. I tend to lean towards lower carb, but I don't, I don't restrict it. I'll eat it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what does a typical day in the life look like for you food wise? Like what does a breakfast, lunch, and dinner look like for
Dr. Wendie Trubow: you?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So it's been evolving because I've been working out with these trainers who are like, one of them is like, you need more protein. And the other one is like, you need more carbs. And I was like, oh geez, I'm 53 years old, you know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: My trainer said to me yesterday, I eat 500 grams of carbs a day. I was like, dude, I would never do that.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I would never, that would just not me, but so
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: you're very active. If not, that's going to be insulin resistance. Probably. I
Dr. Wendie Trubow: was like, you're half my age and you're twice my weight and he's twice as built as I am.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So
Dr. Wendie Trubow: for him that works. So, so typical day I normally intermittent fast and I typically fast until around 12 o'clock.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And part of that is just because if I'm clinically seeing patients. I don't eat when I see patients. That's weird. So I'll fast until my break and then I will eat a shake, protein shake for the first meal. I'll have around 12. I'll have, and it's flexible. Like today, today I didn't do that. I had I had eggs and manchego cheese and a couple of corn crackers at, you know, so it's not, I don't see food like it has to be a certain way.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I see, you know, I generally intermittent fast and then sometimes I play with it. Do you allow
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yourself any coffee or tea? In the morning, I don't,
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I don't, I'm pretty jacked up normally. So I don't drink any coffee. If I do drink tea, I love it. It's herbal. And it's just as sort of fun fact, a lot of teabags come in plastic bags.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So you have to make sure that they don't have a plastic bag. So Yogi tea and traditional medicinals are the two brands. I tend to gravitate towards
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: those are good brands. Yeah. But,
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right now what I'm drinking is bone broth with collagen in it. And so that's
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: great. Yeah, that's really cool. So you're trying to keep the carbs down.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then do you start your day with some good hydration, some electrolytes in your water? Like what does your morning routine look like?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah. So when I wake up, so, so it's also shifted cause I've been really sick actually. And you're the first person I'm actually even talking to it about. So it looks like I have probably a tick borne illness and it looks like it's probably Bartonella.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I did testing, it was inconclusive and now I'm doing more testing, but clinically it looks like Bartonella. So, When I look back, I've been sick since I got a mold exposure in July.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And
Dr. Wendie Trubow: so before that I was doing, you know, metals and mold detox and I would wake up and take supplements and drink a lot of fluid.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: But since I got very sick in September, I've switched it because I also developed, I got headaches. I got brain fog. I got esophagitis. So everything bothered me. It was like really crazy. So in the last month, what I've done is I've stopped. 95 percent of my supplements unless they can be liquid and started doing when I wake up, I do magnesium in a powder form.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I stick it in water and I do mastic gum, which I take out of the caps and I literally just put in my mouth. It's very interesting experience. Do
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: you think this was caused by any H pylori?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I haven't tested yet, but it all kind of came together when I got this mold exposure and I flared with a tick borne illness, which was probably there before, but it wasn't It wasn't bothering me till I got the mold exposure.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So it's all shifted.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, with the tick borne thing, do you, did you feel like you, did you see a tick, did you see any exposure, see any bite, or are you just assuming it based on the neurological symptoms?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Well, so I live in Massachusetts and it's life with ticks. I did pull a tiny tick off myself 18 months ago I pulled it off and was watching for symptoms and didn't see anything and it was on for, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes, literally, I was like, what's on my ankle?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And I kind of pinched it with my fingers and pulled it off. So it wasn't really even embedded. It was just there. So that's the tiniest of exposures was not there for 24 hours. It wasn't engorged. It was just, I just pulled it on the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: surface.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It was basically surface. So I watched myself for a couple of months and then I was like, okay, I guess I'm fine.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And then I got a mold exposure in July and went off the cliff and I wasn't well since then. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah,
Dr. Wendie Trubow: let's unpack there. So, so when you talk about what's my normal routine, my normal routine is because of the celiac, I take a ton of supplements because I don't absorb well, but that's all on hold right now.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I'm doing a glutathione vitamin C. I do peptides. I'm doing the lorazetide acetate to support healthy gut lining. And I do a BPC and KPV together in the pill form. So I do those. And then I do the, okay. I do the mastic gum and the magnesium and then I do, at night time, I'm doing progesterone because I'm on, I'm 53, so I'm on hormones and melatonin and some adrenal support.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's good. Yeah, it's really important that clinicians be applying and practicing what they preach. I mean, if not, you can just feel the lack of authenticity when you're interacting with patients. Patients can kind of see through that and feel it. So I like to see, you know, your daily routine. Yeah. When you had the Lyme issue, did you feel like the mold issue kind of weakened the immune system and set the stage for the Lyme or the Lyme co infection to kind of take root?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What's your intuition on that?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah. So, so it's very interesting, Justin. When I look back, I'm a math human. I love math. It's how I calm myself down if I'm ever too jacked up and can't fall asleep. I do math problems in my head, like compound interest over time. And I found, you know there were signs of having had a tick borne illness before, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I just thought I was very stressed. And so about eight months ago, I noticed that my ability to do math in my head was impaired. I couldn't do math and I was like, where is that coming from? And then, I was, I was like getting through and then I had the mold exposure and, you know, mold is extremely challenging to the immune system, the gut.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So when I got that exposure, I never, I went off the cliff. I never recovered. My brain stopped working. I was disorganized. I was emotional. I had poor recovery. I was fatigued. I was low motivation. It was a mess and I, you know, hit it because I'm a clinician and I, I really need to be there for people, but I got very sick in September, end of September where I could kind of barely function sick and since then I've really been working on not only Drilling into what's going on, but also getting all the things I need.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I feel good because I didn't feel good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I recommend I see this a lot. My wife had a tick bite over the summer. The first thing I do is preventatively because I've seen issues like this where it's months later, just get them on some kind of an herbal tincture formula, whether it's like cat's claw cryptolipids, SIDA, CUDA.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Andrographis, astragalus, it's different herbs that have been around for millennia that work very good. I think it's anyone listening, if you get a tick bite, definitely jump on a good herbal support. See a functional medicine person preventively to jump on it. That makes sense. Don't
Dr. Wendie Trubow: do what I did. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it's tough though. Cause it's like, Oh, you're like, Hey, didn't dig in deep. I didn't see a bullseye rash. It's going to be fine. Only 50 percent
Dr. Wendie Trubow: of people have a bullseye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know that's true.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So you don't have to have, but for me, I was justifying it like, well, you know, I've dealt with my mold. I've been on a mold protocol for years and it wasn't on the conventional wisdom is 24 hours that the tick has to be on you for 24 hours.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I think that's BS honestly, because my husband got Lyme after like a 15 minute exposure. Who knows? Maybe it's the thing that tips you over, right? But But, but no, I, I really do, would agree. It's very hard to treat yourself, but a hundred percent, if you get a tick bite, deal with it. Don't do what your doctor did.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Oh, yeah. And there's a I'll get your take on it, too. I went to UMass Amherst. I grew up in the, in the same area. Yeah. Oh, you did? That's cool. All right, cool. Awesome. Well, I'm not sure, you know, but there's a, a big tick lab out there and they have a website called Tick Report. Did you ever send your tick out there to get analyzed?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Dr. Sarah Rich My tick? No, because we're in the car. I'm like, toss it out the window. But I do send people to And tell people to get their tick sent over to UMass and it's cheap. It's, I don't know, something like 30, 40 bucks. It's
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: cheap. Yeah. It's, it's not that bad. Like my wife's tick, we did it and there was nothing on it and it's good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know, you paid a little bit of money. It's worth it for that peace of mind, or at least save it, at least save it. And then if you have issues, you can always then send it over there and then, you know, you can, you know, exactly what's up. So that's tickreport. com. We'll put that link down below. And so do you feel, tell me a little bit more about the mold?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because the mold happened over the summer. Do you feel like the mold made the tick issue more susceptible where if the mold wasn't an issue, you feel like maybe you would have brushed it off? What's your intuition?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah. Well, I mean, mold mold makes lime works. Whenever I'm diagnosing someone with lime, my next step is to test them for mold because we're going to deal with the mold mold and metals before we deal with lime.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: That's not to say you have to finish your mold treatment, but you need to be in the process of dealing with mold because it does make it so much worse. I was very lucky in the sense of I can I can tell when I get a mold exposure. So I went into a home. It was moldy. And I was like, yeah, There's mold here.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I literally used the bathroom and left. It was like a 15 minute exposure, Justin. But because I was so stressed and you know, we've been in the midst of expanding our business and hiring and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: it
Dr. Wendie Trubow: was very busy. And so being stressed lowers your immune system, mold lowers your immune system. I had this underlying issue with the tick bite that I didn't know about.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It's not that I forgot. It was more just like, I didn't have issues for a year.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Whatever. It's
Dr. Wendie Trubow: probably not a problem.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And was the mold exposure that acute, like 15 minutes at a house or did it happen in your house too?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It wasn't my house. I, I was sick though, just, we actually, we went, we were looking at a home to see if we wanted to buy it.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And we went in and I was like, there's mold here. We're not buying this. The, my husband was sick. My daughter was sick. The real estate agent was sick and the inspector was sick. All five of us were sick from it, but I was the first to be like, Oh, this is not okay. I was sick for the weekend. I remember being really like not well that weekend and taking extra binders and.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: doing a sauna and, you know, I jumped on it, but still it set me off. So because it's so challenging to the immune system, yes, a mold exposure or a major toxins exposure will throw, will, can activate you essentially.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow. And I find most homeowners when they're selling their home, they will not be forthright with any significant water damage or mold issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's why I always tell patients just be patient. Go get at least a mold agar plate, hang out in that place for an hour, close it up, wait four days, count how many little polka dot spores you have. I have a patient right now who was looking at moving and he was doing that and he's like, it was coming off like 20, 30, like you couldn't even count the amount of spores.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's a good kind of heads up.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: We actually made the purchase contingent on, on mold testing because I'm so sensitive and I have terrible genes. So I, I said, that's it. It's contingent on mold testing. And so I recommend people do that. You know, make your sale contingent on looking for what doesn't work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Now, how did you, how are you testing it? Just air? Are you doing an ERMI? Are you doing any of the agar plate testing? All three?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: No, usually we're, we're hiring a company who will do formal testing. So it's, it's like, I think they charged us 150 or 200 to do the testing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And it wasn't the agar plate, it was more air testing, but honestly, we didn't even need to do it.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Cause we walked in and I was like, there's mold. And then they walked in the basement and they were like, Oh, the basement's really moldy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, and also just a good rule of thumb is if someone has. Let's just say a basement and they don't have a good dehumidifier running all the time, you're going to have mold.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The basement is going to be a heat sink from the moisture in the soil and bring it right up in. And you're going to have like my basement when I purchased my home, it was 20 percent higher in humidity than every other floor in the house. And so I have two dehumidifiers running down here. My humidity right now is at 38%.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any area in their home that's chronically above 50%, you're going to have, you know, you know, subacute levels of mold, not like, you know, black mold from a leak in your roof or a pipe bursting, but just that chronic high humidity. All you need is moisture, carbohydrate, and air, and you're gonna have potential.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's it. Yep. Okay. So let's talk about your approach to the top. Well, first off, so you ordered that. You know, I've seen air testing from certain companies come back negative and then some of the plates come back positive. So I like the plates because they're cheaper and you can just, you can go to your Home Depot and at least that's a good starting point.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Home Depot is great.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It's like 15 bucks for a thing. And I always say to people, test every room if you're doing it yourself.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you won't know what the kind of mold is, but you at least know, okay, it's lit, it's off the charts, and then you can resend it to the lab after the fact. So that's good. So, okay, came back positive.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How are you treating yourself? How are you? Are you doing sauna? Is it just glutathione? Do you add in binders? Do you use pharmaceutical binders? What's your approach?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah, so it's evolved over time. So there's a lot. There's a lot of options. And what I say to people is pick the thing that works for you. So we because I also had heavy metals and other environmental toxins, we invested in a sauna and there's a million levels at which you can get a sauna.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So we got a sauna and what's the brand
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: sunlight or
Dr. Wendie Trubow: we do sunlight. But there's a fantastic brand that's portable called Therisage and it's got no, no off gassing and no plastic. So that's a fantastic brand. It's like 1200 bucks. Therisage. It's like 1200 bucks. It's so it's an investment, but it's not, it's not as expensive as the sunlight and then it's portable.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So if you have a smaller space, you can break it down and put it in the closet. So you can do Epsom salt, sauna. I don't love. Sometimes I love the bath and sometimes I don't, but I love the sauna. So I go in the sauna. And then I also have been taking binders for about four years. And what I've been taking, I started out taking, I had five strains of mycotoxins when I first started this game.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I started out with well call, which is a prescriptive agent. It's cholesterol. I mean,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah,
Dr. Wendie Trubow: it's, it's, it was originally designed for cholesterol, but it's a terrible cholesterol drug. It doesn't work, but it's great for molds. It's a great binder. So I was taking that chlorella, charcoal, and clay.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I was taking those four items twice a day, morning and night. And then I, you know, the more I got into this, what I started to see was that there's a fiber called the propyl mannan fiber, which binds to all the strains of mycotoxins. And so I thought, okay, well, if it binds all the strains, then I switched over.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I still do the clorella because it's helpful for the metals, but I also do now fiber with the, the propyl mannan fiber and clorella. Yeah. I do those two things and I got off of the well, call the clay and charcoal just because you have to spend two hours without food or drink and it made it very challenging.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I stopped doing that just because it was too challenging and I found something better. So now, and because I haven't felt well, I've been doing more Epsom salt soaks and Epsom salts great for mycotoxins. detox.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And it's good for Epsom salt. We're all kind of chronically low mag. And so it's because we use this thousands of thousands of different chemical reactions every millisecond.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: We all need mag. So we, I was like, Oh, I'll do an Epsom salt soak every night. So it kind of evolves exercises, helpful getting sweaty, getting enough sleep, not being a stress ball. You know, these are all platform behaviors.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That makes sense. And Epsom salts, magnesium sulfate, and by doing it through your skin, it's you're bypassing the gut and you're going to supersaturate those levels.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very anti inflammatory. That's great. Now, regarding, regarding the sauna, I like the sauna because a lot of heavy metals or a lot of mold removal happens via hepatobiliary. And so, if you have someone that has a lot of poor gut function, you can kind of bypass that and push it to the skin, maybe while you're fixing the gut.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, I definitely like that. What other binders have you done? Like, have you done any, like, modified citrus pectin? Have you done beetroot powder. How about any fulvic minerals? You have any opinions on those?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I love beets, but it's not mutual. They don't like me. So I don't do any beet powder because I get sick.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: But I actually do do pectosol every day. I just forgot, you know, like, my life is organized around detox, I like forget. But yeah, I have my water over there. And I just throw pectosol, the powdered form of it in. And I do that every day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's awesome. And
Dr. Wendie Trubow: then fulvic acid, I love it. I have it just right now.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I'm not taking pills. Yeah. 'cause I 'cause of the esophagitis. So no, I think it's fantastic.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. And then,
Dr. Wendie Trubow: There's a great product, I just got it to trial from microbiome Labs. They have, they have a metals binder powder that binds to any metal that makes it into your gut. It's called meta.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Mega metallic. And so I'm about to start that because it's a powder and it's easy and it'll, so we tend to release about 1 percent of our metals into our gut every day, but we recycle 99 percent of that. So really you're getting 0. 1%. Of your metals out on any given day. So I'm about to try all that to see if we can keep moving the metals along.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and that's a freeze dried lacto, lactoplantum
Dr. Wendie Trubow: plantarum. Yeah, it's a, it's a probiotic strain actually. Crazy enough, it's, it's not going to do anything to you except help the gut. Dr. Justin
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani Yeah. It seems like also there's a lot of data on probiotics in the gut actually kind of neutralizing some of the mold toxicity.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I know,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know I've seen some data on you just having good healthy bacteria makes the mold less, less toxic, if you will.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Dr. Sarah Kessler it like a garden, right? You know, if you have, if you have a good well based garden, you're not gonna have weeds growing as much. So you need to plant your garden with things that are healthy.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Absolutely. Dr. Justin
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani Absolutely. Is most of the mold that you have in your system, is it more aspergillus, penicillium, stachybotrys, any species? Dr. Sarah Kessler Ochratoxin.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Ochratoxin. Yeah, we're getting a lot of you on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, okra is a mycotoxin of what? Aspergillus, I think. Okra
Dr. Wendie Trubow: toxin, I don't know.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I'm not good at that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah because usually you have mycotoxins which are basically the, the, the flatulence of, of mold, right? You have your, your big three aspergillus penicillium, stachybotrys, And then you have the, the mycotoxins, which are the, the flatulence of those big molds. And so, yeah, so those are what tends to cause a lot of the problems.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Are you monitoring it via like a urine analysis?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah. So I literally just got my testing back about two weeks ago. So the first time I did it was four and a half years ago and I had five strains all very high. And then, you know, what happens when you test is the numbers go up as you're treating. So the middle time I had gotten.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Down to three strains the fourth time. I did third time. I did. It was two strains this time. I have one strain It's slightly higher than what I started at and i'm assuming that when I got the mold exposure this summer that I probably got an ochratoxin exposure because otherwise There's no other strains that showed up.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: No citrinin citrinin is multiple Citrinin is indicative of multiple strains. So there wasn't that. Yeah, i'm like, okay. We're pretty good here. So, I just have this one strain left You
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow. Yeah. Okra toxin is aspergillus and or Lichtenberger
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And it's everywhere. You know, it's in your food. It's in your drink.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It's in your wine. It's everywhere. So that's probably the most challenging. Everyone has it. You know, almost everyone comes up positive when they test.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Absolutely. Now, when you test with my patients, I always like to, a lot of the tests will say, don't take glutathione. Don't take this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I, I always use some level of NAC and glutathione for a couple of days to a week before just, just to purge the system so we can actually catch it in the urine. So, glutathione. patients that have mold issues or mycotoxin issues. A lot of times, the reason why they're so sensitive is they're not pushing it out of their system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I always like to do a little bit of a purge so I can see what's there. A lot of the labs will say, No, what's your take on it?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: We've been doing glutathione and we were just at a conference where they explained why you shouldn't. Of course, I have brain fog right now. So I'm like, I shouldn't. I don't remember what they said, but I remember the take home message was, Don't do the glutathione.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I was like, okay, so we've switched over to not doing it. I don't have a runway enough to tell you if clinically it's significant, but they were saying, I mean, look, NEC is great for your liver and you're, everybody needs that and alpha lipoic acid and magnesium. You know, people say to me, what are the things I need?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I'm like, you need vitamin D, you need magnesium, you need to liver support. So I have no problem with that. I think because it makes glutathione ultimately, it might be a little counterproductive if they're saying, don't do. glutathione, but we've been doing glutathione for years and getting results. So I would say it's fine.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Dr.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Justin Marchegiani Yeah. And I just for my opinion, because I've run pre and pre and post with or without, and sometimes you just don't see them, the mole come out. And then what could be more worse for a patient is give them a false negative. You know, and then it's like, oh, they think they're fine, but maybe they're not.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then also, too, with a lot of mold stuff, I will, because glutathione is important, we know that, but it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, and that's an issue. That's why NAC, I think, is such an important component, because that can cross the blood brain barrier and then convert to glutathione in the brain,
Dr. Wendie Trubow: which I think is important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any comments on that? On the brain side? I think
Dr. Wendie Trubow: you're on the right track. No, I mean, I think you're on the right track. And I think, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm just old and cynical, but everybody wants the next greatest thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: But in my opinion, the next greatest thing is get enough sleep. Don't be a stress bomb over your body, eat amazing food and have great relationships with people.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Because if you're not doing those foundational things, it doesn't matter how much NAC and glutathione. I say to people, I can give you the Best supplements in the world, but you need to handle your plat, your foundation of your life first. And we can't go anywhere cool until we deal with the foundation.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I'm sort of feeling a lot now, like Nobody sleeps, right? Everyone's like, Oh, I got five hours of sleep. And we go, that's not enough. You need like eight hours in bed to get seven hours of sleep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So, so I think it's fantastic. And I just don't want to step over. Don't forget your foundations of your health, because that's going to take you farther, that's going to take you farther than the coolest, latest, greatest.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: biohacking thing is just make sure that you eat, sleep, poop, move your body, have good relationships and and then deal with detox. So I don't, I just want to not step over that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I a hundred percent agree. I see patients all the time. I'll see patients that have gone to some of the, the, the, the most well known clinicians in the And I'll see some of the most foundational things missed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I tell patients out of the gate, when you come in, we're going to work on the very non sexy foundations, like building a home. It's not that sexy concrete in it's, it's boring. It's simple, but like, that's where everything sits on top of. So if you want to do this fancy protocol or this. Fancy hormonal balancing, well we have to make sure blood sugar is good, nutrient density is good, digestion, motility, sleep, hydration, electrolytes, and then if we have, and stress management is that good, then we can stack everything up on that solid foundation versus the foundation of sand.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I think that's so important.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah, you cannot build a healthy body on a crappy foundation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Absolutely. So let me just pivot this conversation more to toxicity and female hormones. So I see a lot of patients that come in fibroids, endometriosis tell me about what you think the root underlying kind of etiology is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, obviously I think estrogen dominance, I think toxicity that may mimic estrogens in the environment, plastics, pesticides, what's your take on it? And then also how much does exogenous estrogens from like birth control pills or other things contribute as well?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right. There's a lot to unpack there, Justin.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So, so. Yeah. All right. So just as you can't get healthy, if your foundation is improper, we're all being deluged with a ridiculous number of environmental insults every day. And then if you're female, you're putting on makeup and dying your hair. And by the time you sit down for your day, you've gotten exposed to anything from 150 to 300 chemicals.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And a lot of those are endocrine disrupting. What does that mean? Endocrine disrupting means it looks like your hormones, it acts like your hormones, you detox it like your hormones. It actually binds to the hormones tighter than your own hormones. It binds the receptors tighter. And then you have to deal with it.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: You have to get it out. And how do you deal with it is with your liver. And so it goes through the same process that all most toxins are fat soluble. Your liver deals with them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And So your liver's on deck to deal with anything it gets presented with, but your hormones are also fat soluble and get dealt with in the liver.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And so my take on it is that we're getting, we're drowning, you know, we're standing under this huge waterfall and then going, why am I wet? Right? Like why is my hair frizzy? Well, you're standing underneath the waterfall and getting exposed. So the challenge is that it's become invisible. Right. You know, everything's plastic, everything that your makeup, your hair products, your, even your food, all of these things are plastic and they are leeching into what we're eating, drinking, using, putting on our bodies.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So, the level of convenience that we have in our life is great, but the exposures that we're getting are, are devastating and, and, And it starts to become difficult for the body to, to see the difference in, right? It just acts like your hormones, except it, it can also lead to estrogen dominance and improper, improper effect.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So where are we headed with that? We're headed to, you need to make sure that If you're going to live on this earth, and obviously you don't have any other choices that you optimize the downstream, the outflow, right? You're going to minimize the inflow to the best ability. Don't drink from single use plastic water bottles, level up on your beauty products, go to environmental working group, ewg.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: org and make sure it's clean. Eliminate, don't drink, don't drink your calories. Don't drink alcohol. Because it shuts down liver detox. It impairs the liver at dealing with the toxins and the estrogen mimickers because it's dealing with alcohol. Alcohol is a clear and present danger. So eliminate or minimize alcohol.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Get enough sleep cause you detox while you sleep. And then you want to look at how do you boost up your, your ability to. To get rid of these, not only your own hormones, but the, also the, the estrogen mimicking estrogen mimicking substances. So don't drink alcohol, ensure that you're pooping every day at least once and not about not bunny poops, bunny poops, do not cut it.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It needs to be a nice, lovely, long poop. The reason is if you're constipated, you will in your gut start to recycle these bound water, soluble toxins. When you recycle them, you separate them. They're no longer bound. They're no longer water soluble. They're back to their free radical state. Brief primer, liver goes phase one, takes it from its toxic hormone or toxic toxicity state into free radical.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And then phase two binds it. makes it water soluble and inert. Phase three, you pee, poop, or sweat it out. So if you're constipated, you separate the binder and go back to essentially the free radical state. And now you go through the whole process again. So if your liver is in any way impaired, you can't deal with all the inputs that you're having.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So what do I say to people? I say to people, you know, so when you talk about Birth control pills. This is a tough one, Justin, because some women can't tolerate the IUDs. Some men aren't willing to wear condoms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when you say IUD, you're referring to like a copper IUD, like a Paragard?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Copper or hormonal.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: They for some reason can't tolerate it or feel unsafe or whatever. So, so, so when you think about, okay, what's worse? Having to detox from your hormones or having an unintended pregnancy? Or severe financial distress. I think those second options are worse than You'll just have to deal with the impact, right?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So this isn't a black or white conversation This is how do you do the best with the opportunities you have and don't sweat the rest? so so birth control pills. Absolutely. They are synthetic As they are synthetic estrogen and progestins. They are exactly what I'm talking about that you have to process those.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And if it's that versus, if it's that versus nothing, cool, don't do the pill. But if it's that versus an unintended pregnancy or feeling unsafe or financial distress, do the pill and we'll deal with the health as we go. It's always a trade off.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So how about the different types? I know there are some different IUDs or kind of progesterone type of birth controls, like I know the Mirena is an IUD, it's higher dose than there's like the the Skyla or the Kyleena that are lower dose.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you have any opinion on those for women that are trying to avoid the estrogen dominance from birth control pills?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: I would do the Paragard, which is copper IUD. If you're, if you're really someone who has estrogen dominance. That's non
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: hormonal, that's So that's no hormones.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: No. And I usually say, since it is copper, most people don't need copper, they need zinc and copper and zinc compete for the same,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: think of
Dr. Wendie Trubow: it like an elevator in and out of the cells.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: They compete for the same receptor. So you want to definitely take zinc if you're on a copper IUD.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: But if you're really concerned about that, if you have a history of liver dysfunction, if you have estrogen dominance, fibroids, breast cancer, early, early cancerous changes, dysfunctional bleeding, weight gain that you can't get rid of, then I would say, okay, yeah, go for the, go for the Paragard.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: The Mirena, the Kyla, the Skylina Skyla, Kylina, these are all synthetic progesterones. They're not progesterone, they're progestins.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is that better than a synthetic, like, ethanol estradiol, or do you put them in the same thing? Yeah.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: They're on the same camp. They're all synthetic. You got to deal with them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, okay. So even though one's estrogen synthetic, one's progesterone, you still kind of put them equal in regards to their, their, their negative effects hormonally?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Well, when I put them equal, no, you still need to deal with them equally. I would say that a smaller dose of local hormones that's in the uterine area preferentially and doesn't generally get systemic is better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Better.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It's a level up, but it's still a synthetic hormone that you need to process. So it depends. It really depends. So I would say best in class would be no hormones and then a local hormone. I'm sorry. And then the copper IUD and then the local hormone and then systemic would be my least favorite.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Because yes, it is both estrogen and progestin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now someone could tolerate a hormonal based IUD. Could they also probably just tolerate the Paragard copper based IUD instead?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes. But for some women, you know, if you have heavy, if you have estrogen dominance, you often have heavy, heavy periods, cramping fibroids.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So the progesterone is going to inhibit that and quiet that down.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Anything else you want to say on how you deal with and address. Fibroids or endometriosis, just this abnormal tissue cell growth I, we understand like all the foundational things, diet, lifestyle, detoxification, stress, sleep, are there any specific things that you find in your clinical practice helpful on the detoxification or do you feel like, hey, if it's grown to this far, we may have to have a surgical intervention to get that tissue out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What's your take?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Sometimes people need surgical interventions. There's, there's no question, right? If you have a mechanical issue, you need a mechanical solution. If you're at the point of no return, if you're, I say to people, if you're at the point where if you had a 30, 40 percent improvement, you'd be okay.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Then I would recommend we do a functional medicine approach because we can get you anywhere from a 30 to 80 percent improvement over a runway of six to 12 months. But if you're at the point where you have severe anemia, your hemorrhoids are, Pissing out blood every month and you need transfusions and iron infusions, then we, it's too late, right?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: We don't have enough of a runway to get you where you need to go. It really depends how far down the path you've gotten, but it is, I mean, I used to have a fibrate, used to being the key term. It's gone. It, no, it wasn't huge. It was on the outside of the uterus. It wasn't causing abnormal bleeding. It was just there, you know, it was about four centimeters, but it's gone and that's the impact of this work, but it, it's a runway.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It's not an overnight kind of thing. Thank you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any specific nutrients you find helpful like EGCGs or all of
Dr. Wendie Trubow: the above flax,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: calcium allopurate. Yes,
Dr. Wendie Trubow: but, again Justin, you got to start with the foundational and then deal with what's, what's not working. But yes, all of the above. And really what I'm doing when we're dealing with fibroids is we're supporting detox because you need to improve your liver's ability to process all the way through estrogen.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: And then you need to make sure that the gut is good so you can poop it out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So let's assume all that's dialed in. Do you feel like if there is estrogen dominance, right, you're fixing that, but also progesterone is low. Do you feel like adding in progesterone can fuel some of that growth or do you find it's helpful?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: No, it's generally helpful because estrogen dominance means you have too much estrogen in relationship to your progesterone. So adding in progesterone is actually very helpful for a lot of women because that estrogen dominance You know what it's like, it's it's really disruptive. It can mess with your mood, it can mess with your sex drive, it messes with your weight loss, it messes with everything.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: It worsens your PMS and so when you add in the progesterone, it can actually be life changing for women because they're no longer experiencing that, that overwhelming estrogen dominance. Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and some people, I mean, I tell patients all the time, I run tests all the time, you could still have estrogen dominance but still have lower estrogen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's very possible. There's no way that progesterone and estrogen ratio, you know, 20, 23 to one, but you could be, you know, 10 to one, five to one, but everything's just low on that lower side too.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah. It's a balance, right? It's just that the seesaw is weighted towards the estrogen instead of being balanced between the estrogen and progesterone.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: So yeah, a hundred percent, you can be imbalanced and still be low.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, we're gonna put Dr. Wendy's information down below. She's a free gift, dr D-R-W-E-N-D-I e.com. I'll put the link down below. Dr. Wendy's website is five journeys.com. She sees patients on the functional medicine side all over the world.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We'll put some resources in the description. If you guys wanna click there, feel free and check out Dr. Wendy's information. Anything else you wanna leave the listeners with today, Dr. Wendy?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Two things, one to get the free gift, which is the quiz and a non toxic guide to healthy living in chapter one of our book.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: You need to go to drwendy. com forward slash gift, otherwise you won't be able to find it just on the site.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the link will be below, everything is below the description guys, so if you're driving, just, just table this and hit that link later.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes. And the thing that I would leave people with is, this is a process, right?
Dr. Wendie Trubow: You know, it can feel overwhelming to go from zero to one, be it feeling freaking amazing, which is our guidepost. But it's a process, and a drop becomes a ripple, becomes a wave. So don't give up, keep working, and don't give up. And keep looking for someone who's right for you. If you're looking for a provider.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, thanks for sharing this awesome information. I find that clinicians, doctors that have gone through their own health journey themselves have more empathy. They've been through it. They get it. So I really appreciate, you know, you sharing all your health experiences today.
Dr. Wendie Trubow: My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right. Dr. Wendy, take care.
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