The Link Between Sleep, Alcohol and Weight Loss with Dr. Jennifer Horton

Kylie Larson:
Welcome back to Far From Perfect. I am your host Kylie Larson. Today we have the pleasure of hearing from Dr. Jennifer Horton. Dr. Jen is a physician. She went to medical school. She has 16 years of practicing traditional healthcare. In that time, she saw her days were spent just putting out fires and giving out bandaids, right? Just in reaction mode. So much of what she saw every day in her patients was actually preventable or at least modifiable by diving deep into meaningful lifestyle modification. Telling a woman to manage your stress and lose weight and eat healthy without the actual how and the why seemed incomplete to her. In 2016, she began to explore a more holistic approach through functional integrative medicine. This is an individualized patient-centered science-based approach that empowers patients and practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of disease and promote optimal wellness.

Kylie Larson:
I have actually been working with Dr. Jen for the last six months or so, and I have known her for much longer than that. She is a monthly guest speaker in our VIP community. Every time I speak with her, I learn something new. She is knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to women's healthcare. I mean, everyone's healthcare, but specifically women's.

Kylie Larson:
In this episode, we are talking about, why I reached out to her and how she has been helping me. I needed to talk to her because my family doctor, I knew wouldn't be able to address the concerns that I had. The second thing, we talk about the importance of sleep. Why is sleep so important? You hear me say probably at least once a week, you need to be getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep per day. Why is that and how can you start to get quality sleep in that time? That just led us into a conversation about alcohol. How does alcohol fit in? What is it actually doing to our bodies, to our brains, to our guts, to our weight loss efforts?

Kylie Larson:
We also talk about how so much of what we can do to feel better and then in turn look better for those of you that do have weight loss goals, physique goals, comes down to lifestyle factors. She will prescribe supplements and things of that nature, but all the supplements in the world won't do a thing if you are not focusing on all of the other lifestyle factors, sleep, stress management, meditation, moving your body and all of that. This is a super, informative podcast. Make sure you find Jen on her website, drjenniferhorton.com. I'll put links to all of our stuff in the show notes. Enjoy.

Kylie Larson:
Today we are joined by my friend, our Lift to Get Lean friend and my current doctor, Dr. Jen Horton. Dr. Jen, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Thanks for having me Kylie. Super excited.

Kylie Larson:
I am so excited too, because Dr. Jen, she's so gracious with her time. She speaks to our VIP community on a monthly basis. She's a wealth of knowledge. I've been wanting to get you on the podcast forever, because I feel like you could talk just about anything. Could you give everyone just a little insight into your background, what you do now and how you got here?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Sure. I'm a family medicine doctor by training. I'm going on my 19th year in practice, which is kind of crazy. I think I've been doing it this long. Family medicine, we treat the whole person. We treat the whole family. I mean, initially I delivered babies early in my career, but I was used to taking care of families and the whole spectrum of health per say. I loved learning all of those pieces of health for people and really trying to keep the big picture in mind when I was taking care of the patient in front of me. Certainly as a female physician, I drew a lot of women, female patients to me. Women's health quickly became kind of a mini area of expertise for me. It's what I was seeing on a day to day basis.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
I found wherever I worked, whether it be... I initially started my first practice in Flint, Michigan, my husband and I then worked for Mayo Clinic health system in rural Minnesota, and then came back to Colorado in 2014 and worked in a more metropolitan system. The bottom line is wherever I was, often people wanted holistic answers. They wanted something more than a pill, a pill for every ill. That got me early on really trying to figure out what other options I could give folks.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
So fast forward 2016, I was introduced to the Institute of Functional Medicine. Many of you might know Dr. Mark Hyman. He's the poster boy face, the physician who I think really popularized functional medicine. I quickly began to just do lots of continued medical education and see that, "Oh my gosh, this is like the paradigm that fills in all those holes." I felt like I was doing a little thing here, a little thing there, all kind of interspersed in a fast 15 minute office visit. And to me, functional medicine and what I learned through that certification really tied everything together.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Ultimately by 2019, when I left the conventional medical world, I had just tired of putting out fires all day long. I mean, there's a time and place for conventional medicine, but I just felt like I was just kind of giving out "bandaids," literally and figuratively. To me, that's when I realized I cannot keep this a secret. I need to have a platform and a way for me to share this in a way that's meaningful and that works because you just can't squeeze it into the last three minutes of your annual exam type of thing. That's how I got to this spot.

Kylie Larson:
Well, I'll be straight up honest with everyone. I'm so bad about making doctor's appointments. It's really hard for me, but there's nothing wrong with me. I don't make it a point to go to my annual physical or see my general practitioner. The more I learned about what Dr. Jen was doing, I was just more intrigued as to how she could help me, a relatively healthy person, get even better.

Kylie Larson:
I reached out to Jen at a point in time when things seemed to be fine, but right before I started working with her and submitting all of my tests, I noticed something was off with me. I knew something was off because I had gone from living in maintenance to starting a caloric deficit. Not only did I not lose any weight, I started to gain weight. I was going in the opposite direction. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was losing hair, a significant amount of hair and I wasn't putting two and two together. When I started working with Dr. Jen, she helped me get to the bottom of what is going on. With you and I, we did a GI mapping test, right?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes, GI effects.

Kylie Larson:
What else did we do? I can't all remember what we did.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes. We did a salivary cortisol and DHEA to just look at your stress physiology on a "typical" day. We also did an ION panel on you, which looks at organic acid. It sometimes called the OATs test. Because of what you do for a living and just how you take care of yourself, I really wanted to look at more at your nutritional markers. We looked at amino acids, we looked at micronutrients. We got a really broad picture of your starting point, because like you said, you're a very typical patient I often see that your overall healthy, feeling good, and really you don't have a "disease" and nothing really major is going on thankfully. But how do we, like you said, get to the root cause of really where is your hidden inflammation? It's all comes down to inflammation. Is it stress? Is it gut? Is it some type of nutrient deficiency? Then how can we, through the testing, really then guide you as to what you should be doing? I often say we test to not guess, right?

Kylie Larson:
Yes. I forgot also to mention right before this too, before we got all the results and everything, my PMS symptoms were through the roof. I was super ragy, super mood swingy, the breast tenderness, all of these things, which I would occasionally have some PMS symptoms, but it got to this point where I was telling my husband, I was like, "I'm sorry. I bet I am no fun to be around right now." Through you running these tests and analyzing them and helping me find where I am deficient and what I'm lacking. I don't presume that everyone would have a quick turnaround like myself, but I started to feel better within the month. I remember my next cycle I didn't have those mood swings. My hair stopped falling out quite so much.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Right.

Kylie Larson:
I would notice in the shower. You guys know those little... My husband's like, "Oh my gosh, Kylie, I have to clean the drain again." I was like, "I'm sorry. What can I tell you?" That's not happening anymore. It's not that I lost a significant amount of weight, but that inflammation that I was holding onto my body, it went away. My weight stabilized again. There's no way I would've known this, Jen, if I had not worked with you. There was something off with my mitochondria, right?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes. You actually had a pattern where your mitochondria, we call it hypometabolic, where they're all kind of on the lower end of the spectrum, which again, you would think somebody like you, you're eating well, you're exercising, moving, doing all the right things, it's almost a kind of sign of stress to your physiology. This could have taken place over the last few years even. This doesn't just happen overnight. It just showed that your mitochondria were just kind of a little sluggish, so to speak. We supported that.The other thing that I start with every single patient is just stress physiology support because I think that's how you start to see early and quick wins. Also your body can't heal if we're in this chronic revved up sympathetic state that just kind of tears us down. Again, PMS is going to be worse. You're not going to lose weight. Even hair loss is going to be an issue if that stress physiology isn't right.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
The other thing, I think somebody like you, who again is already doing a lot of the right things, I think your momentum just picks up a lot quicker than maybe somebody who's really been sick for a while and inflamed. They're going to start to see early wins, but it might take them a little longer than somebody who already have all the lifestyle pieces lined up. I think I said to you in your last follow up that you're an ideal patient because we can just take the foundations which you have locked in and we can now up regulate those and really make this great synergy with the protocols by understanding what your labs look like.

Kylie Larson:
Yeah. To my point, there is no way my regular doctor would've had this insight, right? There's no way.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
No. I mean, they would've probably checked a thyroid. You did do some conventional labs first. I'm not just saying that we just ignore all that, but all those were fine. Your thyroid is fine, your CBC, your chemistry panel. I think we even checked some testosterone. All the "normal" labs were fine. Your doctor probably would've said, "Work on your diet. Sleep. Do you want to take some Prozac for the PMS?" Again, those were the holes in conventional medicine start to show up a little bit.

Kylie Larson:
Then you do recommend supplements and I did get on the supplements, but you are also big on the lifestyle factors. Meditation was one of the things that I was prescribed to do.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Right.

Kylie Larson:
What are the lifestyle factors that you address along with all of the other stuff like that most people could be focusing on?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes. You're right. I absolutely treat meditation like I do a supplement. To me it's the glue that kind of holds the thing together and what will keep this going afterwards. Yes, I use supplements. Yes, initially some of the protocols are pretty extensive, so I don't want to have you be on pills forever. I want to correct what we're seeing on the labs. I want to lower your inflammation. I want to help you feel better quicker, right? So we kind of move the dial along with that.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
In terms of the lifestyle, the main pillars, absolutely figuring out how you can take care of your stress response, because stress will not go away. It's always going to be a factor in your life, but you get to decide how it affects you, right? What choices do you make? What do you say no to? What do you say yes to? How do you create this "pattern interrupt" that my meditation teacher David G always talks about. One of the ways, honestly is meditation and breath. I really work with patients to help them figure out what is this beginning of your day look like? What is the end of your day look like? The Bookends of the Day that I think... I'm spacing out that the author who's talked about that. I think it's Darren Hardy.

Kylie Larson:
Is it Matthew? No. He's the sleep guy.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Matthew Walker's the sleep guy. I think it's Darren Hardy, this is the Bookend of the Day.

Kylie Larson:
Okay.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Looking at, again, it's all about managing the stress. Where can you fill up your cup, so to speak? Stress bucket is crucial from the very beginning. Then of course, we're looking at diet. Everybody comes to me from a different place. Sometimes people need more of a therapeutic diet initially, but we're really looking at using food as medicine and helping to lower inflammation. We're always coming back to sleep. If that's a major red flag for people, we want to work on that from the very beginning, because again the body will not want to heal, detox, etc if it's tired.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Movement, again, that looks different for everybody. Sometimes people, they need to actually do less in terms of workouts when they first come to me because they've actually kind of overstressed their body. Obviously, movement is one of those pillars that needs to be incorporated. The last piece is just connections and relationships with people that you love. Hobbies, having fun, that bucket as well. I think sometimes we get so caught up in the work and what we need to do, we forget to take care of ourselves in that way as well.

Kylie Larson:
Oh, absolutely. I see that. I see that in myself. I see it in the women that I work with as well. A lot of them are really good at it, but then it's hard I think as entrepreneurs. It's hard. Well, two notes on this. I also just got my husband, he just signed up to do his initial talk with you or consultation, Jen-

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Oh great. Thank you.

Kylie Larson:
Last night, he and Brooks stopped at the gas station. Pat got a Slurpee. I will never food shame anyone. But I was like, "Did you get a Slurpee?" He was like, "Yeah, small." And I go, "I can't wait for Dr. Jen to tell you what you need to do. And it's not going to come from me."

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah. You can't be a prophet in your own land.

Kylie Larson:
You know.

Kylie Larson:
That sleep, you mentioned the importance of sleep. This is one thing that I really wanted to talk to you about because I talk a lot about sleep. One woman that responded one day, "I know. I know I'm supposed to be getting more sleep, but I can't. That's not helpful. How can I get better sleep and all of this stuff." Can you start speaking to the power of sleep? Why it is so important?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes. I'll just give a shout out to that book, Matthew Walker, PhD, Why We Sleep? It's a great read or listen about why you need to sleep. The short answer is, again, I think we're more sensitive to it as we get older, but our body, to repair, to detox, to detox our livers, even to detox our brain so much important, kind of cleanup so to speak and rejuvenation happens when we sleep. I think our culture definitely doesn't honor sleep. Especially with screens, devices, artificial light that just totally screws up our whole circadian rhythm and melatonin levels. Melatonin levels are going to raise when it gets dark. If we're constantly with all this crazy light, those melatonin levels get suppressed. That's kind of then, the beginning of sleep dysfunction. Often it's not just one thing. It's lots of poor, what I call sleep hygiene habits, that kind of stack up over time and you just kind of get in this sleep rut, so to speak.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Your body will not want to lose weight, will not want to be happy. Your energy won't be good. You'll probably have cravings. You'll just sort be on this never ending loop if you just can't get ahead of sleep. It's one of those things you just can't skip. I mean, food, sleep, movement, you need to take care of those pillars. Sleep especially I just think has become very undervalued in our society. I think as women, maybe things started to get off once you had kids and kids who aren't sleeping and then working. You just sort of get used to going without very much. Or often what I hear from patients in the evening, it's their only kind of me time. They don't want to go to bed because they need that break, which I totally get. Eventually, that catches up with you and you really can't go back and fix that sleep deficit, I mean. So the sooner you can get ahead of it, the better.

Kylie Larson:
I was going to just say that too. I hear that from clients too, that time at 10 o'clock to 11:00 is the only time they have to themselves, or 11:00 to 12:00. They end up only getting five hours of sleep because they have to get up to go work out or start get the kids up for school. And like you said, it's just this never ending cycle of trying to catch up. Naps won't do it. A nap in the afternoon isn't going to make up for only five hours of sleep.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Probably not. It's probably better than nothing, but you just want to make sure then that nap doesn't screw with your evening sleep. So it's a back and forth. Often, people have a lot of issues with memory, focus, concentration. So when you sleep, to the detox issue, your body goes in and cleans out all these "tangles." These tangles over many years, could be a precursor to dementia for example. It's just so important that you get that deep sleep so you can just clean out your mind, clean out your body. Also I'm just going to give a word about not eating right before you go to bed again, because you want your body to be able to rejuvenate and detox. If you go to bed with a whole bunch of food, now all of your energy and resources are going there, which then what can happen is your blood sugars can start to fluctuate and that can wake you up for example and then throw off your sleep even more.

Kylie Larson:
It's so true. I wear this Oura ring and while we do eat dinner kind of late, if I eat later than normal, if I'm eating at nine o'clock at night and then go to bed at 10:00, it totally messes with my sleep score. I can see it in the quality of my sleep. I'm very mindful of that now. What are some other things that people can do to help improve the quality of their sleep? You mentioned getting natural sunlight, not so much screen time, not eating right before bed. What else?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
I will say a meditation practice.

Kylie Larson:
Yeah. Great.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Ideally, number one, if you're just starting with meditation, do it when it works for you and when you can be most consistent. I think probably your biggest bang for your buck especially the downstream effect it might have on your sleep is actually doing it first thing in the morning. Exercising is important. Timing that appropriately, because sometimes too much exercise or certain types of exercise right before bed can rev you up. We talked about food. Thinking about what your wind down routine looks like. I get it, you've got kids, all the nighttime things you're doing with family, but even if it's 10 minutes where you have some quiet time to yourself, I would say screen time at least one hour off before bed, at least sometimes too.

Kylie Larson:
Does that include the television?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes.

Kylie Larson:
Asking for a friend.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes. Unfortunately, a lot of people go to bed with the TV on. That's still potentially disruptive. Trying to have some type of wind down routine that you can just get your brain and your body used to because then you get this consistent signaling that it's time to relax and time to sleep. Then over time, things just kind of flow from there.

Kylie Larson:
Yeah. I love that you said it's the signaling because we talk a lot about everything we do with our nutrition, with our training, it's all sending a signal to the body. If the body's not getting the signals, if you're looking at your work email at 10 o'clock at night, that's a signal that it's time to get up and go and put out fires. Not sleepy time.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah. One other practice I like right before bed is a yoga nidra or some type of guided body scan. There's some different supplements you can use, but again, you're not going to supplement your way out of crappy choices and rhythms, right?

Kylie Larson:
Right.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Melatonin might be appropriate, GABA, L-theanine, those are some things that kind of come to mind. The other thing is looking at what your adrenal physiology looks like, because sometimes I'll see people's cortisol curves where their cortisol should be lowest right before bed and it's like the highest or zooming up. Then there's actually some things we can do to start settling that down. Certainly the lifestyle things as well. I see that happen a lot. Of course, if it's things like hot flashes or some physical issue, you always want to tend to that. Make sure somebody doesn't have sleep apnea or chronic sinus issues and work on the hot flash piece as well because I know that can sometimes be the beginning of women's sleep issues and perimenopause.

Kylie Larson:
Yeah. It does not sound fun at all. Then things that are not going to help our sleep, that's a perfect segue into alcohol because just like people love that hour before bed, instead of going to bed, they just stay up, they also like a glass of wine or two to help them fall asleep.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Right.

Kylie Larson:
So can we start having this conversation about alcohol and what it's doing to our system?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Again, very common. I think it's something that we feel works for us and it doesn't really affect us maybe earlier in life, 20s and 30s, but I think as the clock keeps ticking, it catches up with us a little bit. Absolutely it has an initial slowing and relaxation effect on your central nervous system. That's why people like to drink, but especially as we get into our 40s and 50s, what can happen is it doesn't allow you to get into that deep REM restorative sleep. It also very commonly, and I don't think people realize this, it's messing with your blood sugar. Even if you don't have a "blood sugar problem," prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, the surges of sugar that are happening when you drink whatever it is and then go to sleep, things are really high with a sugar, then they plummet and that plummet can disrupt your sleep, wake you up or you just don't get into that deep restful. You're just kind of tossing and turning because of alcohol. So common in the 40s and 50s.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Then I can see that having a trickle-down effect on making hot flashes worse, and it just gets to be this vicious cycle. So alcohol, and women, there's technically no "100% safe amount. Even one drink a day we know has been associated with increased in risk of breast cancer. So nobody should be drinking for "health benefits." You can get your resveratrol and antioxidants from your food and not your red wine.

Kylie Larson:
Cheers to health.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
I don't want to be a Debbie Downer because I also like wine too, but it just can't be an every night thing. I think that if it's an every night thing, I think you need to ask yourself why is it an every night thing and then start to see what are those ripples that's having on your belly, on your weight, on your sleep, on your mood. Then what happens is, I see women then go back to it because they're tired or they just had a hard day. Then the cycle just keeps on going. It absolutely is going to affect our sleep amongst other things.

Kylie Larson:
Well, yes, speaking of, they don't feel like hot flashes. I don't know if I've experienced that, but I will say I do get hot at night after I have had alcohol. That's one of the reasons my sleep score goes down, I think. It's like I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'm just hot. It's crazy. Well then also, can you speak to the effects that alcohol has on our gut microbiome?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Again, multiple ways. I mean, it's inflammatory in general. It's messing with our blood sugars. When we have higher blood sugars, we then have higher insulin levels because you need insulin to kind of... Insulin is a hormone that comes in to try to get the blood sugar to go down. So it's not floating around in your bloodstream, but it starts to then get into the cycle of just general inflammation which starts to feed the bad bacteria so to speak. You start to get this imbalance bad bacteria. Sometimes we can see something like leaky gut where the barrier of the gut is inflamed, impaired and things start to seep through. That starts to then inflame us further, also overwhelm our liver a little bit in terms of detoxification because it's just seeing more "bad stuff" come through.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
It's just setting the stage. To me, I would look at alcohol as like sugar. It's just feeding the wrong things. It's just going to kind of potentially fan the flame of inflammation that often is going on in a lot of people. Regardless if they have "gut symptoms" or not, you can still have inflammation showing up on the functional medicine, gut lab testing without having irritable bowel syndrome or something like that.

Kylie Larson:
Sure. As you think about just regular people, like your neighbor, the people you see at your kids' school, I feel like if people could focus on these two things, they could really make some progress in how they feel and how they look.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes.

Kylie Larson:
I mean, these are big rocks.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah. They're huge rocks. It might take some time to move, but yeah, they can really open up a lot of positive changes when it comes to lower inflammation and just improving the common symptoms people have. Their weight, they're tired, their mood, can't sleep, all those things.

Kylie Larson:
Well, speaking of the gut, we recently had someone ask us, "Well, how can I tell if something is off with my gut?" I was like, "Please do not go off and buy some test on the internet. Please work with someone like Dr. Jen." If someone out there is wondering, "Well, I wonder if I do have gut issues," what can they do? How can they find out this information with under the guise of your test, don't guess?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
I would recommend looking for a functional medicine practitioner like myself. There's physicians, medical doctors like myself, some chiropractors might do this, Naturopathic doctors, but find somebody who's been trained, because again, there's a lot of people who say they're doing this and you just want to be certain of their credentials and they know what they're doing. It really comes down to doing the functional medicine lab testing. The two labs I use our Genova, the GI effects test, or Doctors Data has the GI map. I kind of like the GI effects one. I feel like it's a little bit more patient friendly report and really kind of breaks down, how are you doing in the area of digestion. Do you have leaky gut? What is the integrity of that gut lining? What's the balance of the garden, the good guys and the bad guys? What do the good guys and bad guys "goof off"? That's a whole other category because the more of the good guys, the more good stuff on that one.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Lastly, we look for, do you have candida? Do you have a parasite? Do you have an over infection? Sometimes people might not have a "over infection," but they still have bad scores or imbalance in the other places. So everybody's a little different. Depending on the category that's off, that's how we would tweak it. But you need to have a licensed practitioner who can order one of those labs and then be able to interpret it. I think sometimes I get nervous. There are some functional labs out there that patients can order themselves and then it just gets a little bit dicey as to what do you do with that information.

Kylie Larson:
Exactly. And that's what I told her. I was like, "Yes, you could probably find some tests online, but you're not going to know. Even if you do know how to interpret it, are you going to know what to do then with that information?" You can't just go buy some probiotics off the shelf.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Right. I was going to say it's so much more nuanced than just say, "Go take a probiotic.' Because again, if somebody has a lot of inflammation, the bad guys "growing down there" is how I always describe it to my patients, taking a probiotic, it's kind of like you have a garden that's full of weeds and rocks, you don't just go in and throw down fertilizer. You've got to tend to the soil. And that's a process. Some of the tests that are out there I will say, I feel like they're so basic and superficial. I don't know that they really give the patient the information that they're really wanting. I think it's worth getting the right tests from the beginning.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
The other part to her question. So let's say she... You know, "How do I know something's off with my gut?" Well, certainly if you're having a change in your bowels or the obvious things, yes, you should be checking. Other things are mood issues, can't lose weight. Those are big ones because we continue to learn that the balance of your microbiome influences those things. Even getting sick easily. Immune health is really closely tied to our gut because 70 to 80% of our immune system is living in our gut. So that would be another reason to look at it. That's why I start with gut testing and everybody whether they have GI sometimes or not, because gut health just touches everything.

Kylie Larson:
Absolutely. Well, and since we're talking about gut health, you know that we talk a lot to the perimenopausal woman and I just feel like every perimenopausal woman needs to be in touch with what's going on in her gut. Because if her mood swings are extra terrible, maybe you don't hate your partner, maybe you just have an overgrowth in your gut.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yep. Also if you have an imbalance in your gut, you might not be metabolizing your hormones properly, particularly estrogen. There's ways, there's a marker that we look at called beta-glucuronidase. If it's high, that can be a sign that you have bad bacteria. A beta-glucuronidase is high, that just means that you're just not potentially detoxing as efficiently and you could be having estrogen kind of backup so to speak, whether it be artificial estrogens from our environment or just the normal way our body is clearing estrogen after it uses it. Absolutely, gut health is crucial to our hormone health because if it's not where it needs to be, we're going to start maybe seeing estrogen dominance or it could magnify the symptoms of perimenopause even more. Naturally as we go through, estrogen, progesterone are going down, but it could sort of make the gap between that even worse if the gut is imbalanced. It's super crucial to hormone health, hot flashes, to look at the gut as well.

Kylie Larson:
I just want people to understand it is so worth this. It is so worth it to finally understand what is going on with your body, because it feels so much more. I feel just so much more empowered after working with you. I just felt so scared because... Not scared, but I mean a little scared, frustrated, bewildered, like, "I thought I was doing all the right things. Why is this happening?" And I just wouldn't have been able to... There's no way I could have rectified this on my own, I don't feel.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah. But again, it was a few tweaks with you. I mean, to you it wasn't this gigantic overhaul.

Kylie Larson:
True. Yeah.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
The labs helped us know kind of what lever to pull, that's the cool part of it.

Kylie Larson:
Yeah. I'm super lucky because Dr. Jen is local to me. Can you talk to people? How can we work with you? What is it that you offer? Because you offer also in-person, you have your Wild Collective. So tell us how we can find you and work with you and get a hold of you.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes. Thank you. My website where everything kind of lives is just my name. Drjenniferhorton.com. No periods, no spaces. That's a good starting point to schedule. If you live in Colorado or Florida, Florida has some weird laws so I actually am able to treat patients who live in Florida virtually. If you live in one of those two states, as a licensed physician I'm able to treat you as a one-on-one patient, order labs, make a protocol, et cetera. The starting point for that would just be set up a discovery call with me. You can book it on my main page. It allows me to understand what your health story is, your journey so far, what you're looking for, and just figure out if this is the right fit for you and learn more about what I do.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yes, I have a group program called the Wild Collective. I have run it virtually since the pandemic. I'm now about to launch the fall version and I'm going to do an in-person at Sattva Health and Wellness. My membership patients, it's a program now I'm going to offer to them. It's included in their membership. But also you don't have to be a one-on-one patient to be in it. I'm also going to have the virtual option as well. To me, it's kind of the merger of functional integrative health. So again, if you're new to this area or if you're just wanting more guidance, evidence-based guidance as to what you should be doing to support your health holistically, this program is a really nice container and a curriculum for that. But it's also about that self-care piece, your stress physiology piece. "Okay, I know all these things, Dr. Jen, but how do I fit it into my life?" To me, the Wild Collective helps us bring it all together. Actually, that's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about bringing it to my one-on-one patients as well.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
That's strictly educational, so it's open to everybody. We start... The next in-person one is September 13th at Sattva. The virtual one will be September 21st. I can share a link with you. If people use Kylie, I was going to say, you can get a hundred dollars off the program and it's 499 for it's a five month experience. There's details on my website, but it's, a great starting point. If you're not quite sure about, "Do I need to do labs or I just feel like there's some fine tuning that's needed," this is a really good place to start.

Kylie Larson:
It really is. I've taken part of it in the virtual version. I think we have a hard time. We know what we need to do, but we have a hard time carving out that time. That was one of the biggest lessons that I got from your program. So thank you.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah. The other piece about the Wild Collective that's cool is we talk about this idea of the divine feminine and that energy in us. I think we live in a very go, go, go male dominated kind of push, push, push world. It's just how can we soften and how can we listen to our bodies and go with the rhythms and our cycles instead of just always feeling like we're clashing against them? That's another piece that's weaved into the Wild Collective that I think is more than some other programs out there.

Kylie Larson:
I actually think that's why I was so interested in it in the beginning, if I recall. This is something I'm still working on and learning how to do.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah, I agree.

Kylie Larson:
It's a practice.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yep. It's not an energy that's-

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
It's just not an energy that we're used to cultivating and honoring, I think, you know?

Kylie Larson:
I do know. I think it's hard to... I love that you're bringing it to the forefront because I think a lot of the people that offer that are a little too, 'I don't connect with them. Their lives seem so different than mine." But if you're like me and I could see how you do it, I just resonate more with the message coming from you and the way that you go about it. Not that there's a right or a wrong way. I'm just saying for me, it's more powerful coming from you.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah. Thank you. I love weaving the two together, the Western side and the Eastern because I teach meditation and yoga as well. I mean, to me, that program is a culmination of all that. But ultimately, you need to find what works best for you, what feels right, who you resonate with. It's a really fun experience.

Kylie Larson:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. Like I said, I just had the most fabulous experience working with you. She's not a miracle worker, you guys. I want to be clear. You're not going to lose 20 pounds if you sign up with Dr. Jen and take her supplements and you meditate. That's not what this is. This is like, "I was feeling really crappy and now I don't feel crappy."

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Right.

Kylie Larson:
My hair's not falling out.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
You'll be set up to lose a 20 pounds later. It just might not be at the beginning, I will say that. I mean, too, I think everybody often weight loss is on their list, right? But if the body is inflamed and stressed or has detox issues, it ain't going to happen.

Kylie Larson:
No.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
So it's about setting up the domino so you can get the results you want.

Kylie Larson:
Absolutely. Just a quick side note on this. I have a friend who was in chronic pain. She started addressing her chronic pain about a year ago. She's finally in a really great spot and everyone cannot stop talking about how great she looks, which we all know what that means. She's like, "My goal was not to lose weight. My goal was to now feel better. Now I can move better. Now I can actually work out. Now I actually want to fuel my body better." It's that whole ripple effect. Just like you could have a negative ripple effect if you don't sleep, you drink wine, you're agitated, stressed. It is like which train track do you want to be on?

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah.

Kylie Larson:
Oh. Well thank you, Jen. I'll make sure everyone knows how to get ahold of you with Wild Collective, your website, and all of that. Thanks again for everything you do.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Yeah, my pleasure.

Kylie Larson:
I'll talk to you soon.

Dr. Jennifer Horton:
Bye.

Kylie Larson:
As usual, Dr. Jen always delivers the best information. I look forward to having her back on the show. You guys, do not forget to check Dr. Jen out at her website, drjenniferhorton.com, there's no dots or anything, so you can check out her different programs that I highly recommend as well as working with her one-on-one. Now, not everyone is able to do that because of state laws, but if you are in Colorado or Florida, you do have the opportunity to work with her. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Until next time, bye-bye.