ATHE_Transcript_Ep 599_Marcelle Pick
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times best selling author. Yes, I'm a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can, and that's why I created the Well, beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive.
In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out.
I'm really excited to talk [00:01:00] about adrenal dysfunction and weight today because I just don't really know how you go through life and not have some adrenal stuff come up, especially as a woman. And, you know, I'll tell you a little funny story that happened to me. And if you've been listening to the podcast, you know, the last couple of years.
During the pandemic, I went to a Dr. Joe Dispenza week long meditation retreat. Having really never successfully meditated and not really knowing what I was getting myself into, I'd listen to Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. I really loved Dr. Joe's work, but we were supposed to do this program before we came.
And I did the program, but I didn't do the meditations because why would I do that? I'm going to the meditation retreat, right? And boy, did I have something coming. So, I go through this 7 day meditation retreat where you do 35 hours of meditation along with a lot of lectures. Literally, you're down there and it starts somewhere between 6am and 4am every morning and it goes till like 7 o'clock at night.[00:02:00]
Okay, you are all in it. By the end of that first week, I realized that this was like taking your nervous system to the gym. This is how I could make sense of it with my exercise physiology brain that I would not in any way, shape or form expect that I could go to the gym for a week and all of a sudden, boom, I'm in great shape.
I'm done. Check that off the list. Much as I was hopeful that that would be the case. And so what I decided to do Was commit for six months. Commit to this and commit to a daily practice. Now this was ridiculous because all of a sudden I was gonna start adding 30 to 60 minutes of time meditating into my already packed calendar.
But I decided to it. My husband committed with me, and we actually signed up for the next meditation retreat. This was April, 2021. Now we're gonna go to the next one in June, 2020. But I just knew this is what I needed to do. Next step for my health, [00:03:00] because I'd had shortness of breath, anxiety, adrenal stuff forever.
So during the next one, I still didn't feel like I was really, you know, I really am more of a left brain person. I love math because you know, if you're right. And I was like, I still don't know that I'm really getting this, but I'm seeing everybody around me making great progress. So I'm sticking with it.
And again, that wasn't six months yet. Went to another one in September. And another one in January. By that point, I'm like, I'm starting to notice a difference. And so much so that my coworkers on my team were like, Hey, we really have noticed a shift in you and keep going. But the funnier thing that happened, and I had the good fortune to be sitting with Dr.
Joe dinner one night and I go, you know, I have lost five pounds sitting doing nothing because this whole thing is you're going to be nowhere, no body, no thing. And I was like, I have been doing no thing. And I have lost five pounds. He goes, yeah, it's called the nothing diet, [00:04:00] which we laughed about. But that's the reality is I finally got out of flight or fight.
I stopped having shortness of breath. And so I am super excited to talk with Marcelle Pick today. And we are going to unpack all of this because this is such an issue and it's kind of hard sometimes to grasp because it's not so tangible. But today we're going to talk about how to really identify the symptoms of adrenal dysfunction, how you can test for it, what leads to it, what things you might be doing every day.
We have some great resources for you as well, which you'll see in the show notes, including our healthy hormones program free. So let me tell you about Marcelle. She has been a friend now for, gosh, I think at least 15 years. And when I first met her, I'm like, Oh, this is a woman I need to know. She is literally the OG.[00:05:00]
She's an OB GYN nurse practitioner and she co founded the world renowned Women to Women Clinic in 1983. Now this was like revolutionary when she founded it because it was a women's clinic for women, by women, that was, you know, integrative, wellness oriented. Sounds like, oh, of course, but back then, that was like, wow.
Early on in her career, she discovered functional medicine, and She was one of the first people to become certified as a Functional Medicine Practitioner. She's got her BS in Nursing from University of New Hampshire School of Nursing, a BA in Psychology from University of New Hampshire, MS in Nursing from Boston College Harvard Medical School.
And she's certified as an OBGYN Nurse Practitioner and a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. She's a member of the American Nurses Association and the American Nurse Practitioner Association. And she's a faculty member of The Institute for Functional Medicine, where she teaches on hormones and she's a medical advisor to the Healthy Living Magazine.[00:06:00]
Plus she writes for her website, Marcellepick.com, P I C K. And she lectures all over the place. She has written a load of books. The Core Balanced Diet, Is it Me or My Adrenals? Is it Me or My Hormones? And been all over the media, including Dr. Oz, Fox, ABC, Glamour, Elle, Women's World. And also did a public television show.
So you are in for a treat. Marcelle's been on the show before. We'll also link to her other episodes because she is just a wealth of knowledge. And as far as someone to talk to about adrenals, this is your go to. So enjoy the show and again, check the show notes. And I'm going to put her healthy hormones program also at jjvirgin.com/Marcelle. I'll be right back with Marcelle. Stay with me. Welcome back and back and back and back, Marcelle. It's so good to have you here.
Marcelle Pick: It's always great to be here as well.
JJ Virgin: Well, I'm in love with what we're going to talk about today. I know both you and [00:07:00] I have experienced these issues personally and you are the literal OG. I mean, to me, you're the OG of everything hormones, like You Are It, Founding Women to Women, and all the books and PBS and everything else. But this especially, because I know this is really your passion, is to talk about how stress, how adrenal dysfunction can impact your weight. And I really am looking forward to digging into this.
And where I would love to start. Is to go back because looking at where you were and looking in the eighties when you founded Women to Women, which was like this novel idea back then, Oh, a clinic for women by women. Wow. But back then when no one knew where the adrenals were, I just wonder like, what's the difference now?
Like, were a lot of women walking in back then with some kind of adrenal dysfunction? Is it a bigger problem now? Is there just more awareness? What's the big difference?
Marcelle Pick: I think it's a bigger problem. [00:08:00] I mean, I think social media, the news, you know, what happened with COVID, the world, you know, the interesting thing is I was one of the women that was marching for the ERA and I was in Washington all white with all the other women.
And I think in some ways it did a disservice to us because not only then CEOs of companies, but we still had to be mothers and we still had to be. I can't do it all. And we're all trying to do it
JJ Virgin: all. Well, we didn't win anything there. It's like you got the promotion and you just got more stuff to do.
Marcelle Pick: And I think we women tend to not be so great at self care anyway. So it just made it that much worse. And so, yes, I think since 1985 when we founded Women to Women, it has gotten worse. And I think at the time also women felt like they weren't being listened to. And now the appointments are shorter, so they're having the same comment, which is, I'm really not listening to that.
And healthcare is in such a crisis that it's become much, much more of a problem.
JJ Virgin: I just think we've got to get that message out that women do not work like men. [00:09:00]
Marcelle Pick: Oh my God, hands down. I mean, we don't interpret information in the same way. We are very oriented toward collaboration and not unilateral decision making.
And we are feelers. Sometimes it takes us a little time to kind of gather all that information and we don't do it in the same way men do, but we're expected to do it in the same way. I had to represent my company, even though I wasn't kind of the head cheese at the time, in a lawsuit. And I remember just thinking to myself, I've got to get iron ovaries, because the lawyer was on the other side of the table.
And I got enormous, gigantic ovarian cysts the next day. Oh my God. And it was eight centimeters. I mean, it was huge. And I could feel it happening at the time going. Oh my God.
JJ Virgin: I was kidding. I don't need an iron ovary. I think
Marcelle Pick: women are having to feel that way and it shouldn't be that way at all. We're equal but different.
JJ Virgin: Period. So do you think that's why there's… And I'm just assuming, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that this is [00:10:00] more common in women than men. So that might be a wrong assumption. So I guess the first question is, is adrenal dysfunction more common in women than men? And if so, is that the reason why, or what else?
No, I
Marcelle Pick: think that's the reason why. And I think that women are not great at being able to say, you know, I don't feel good. They push a little harder, especially since the feminist movement came out, you know, well, I can do this all. Well, no, we can't. For the longest time, I wouldn't have people help me with my suitcase when I'm on the airplane.
Me too. But that was a big stretch for me is being able to say, look, I am an equal to a man, but I'm also very different in terms of my thoughts, my behavior, my strengths. I'm not as strong.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. I love what Alison Armstrong says is men are not hairy women.
Marcelle Pick: For a long time. You know, I wanted that equal talk about how you feel and now gag me.
I mean, that's what men have to offer, which
JJ Virgin: is quite different. Right. So the big question for someone listening, cause I feel like this is still a [00:11:00] little bit. Intangible is what really is adrenal dysfunction. I still remember 20 years ago, I was working with a doc in Century City and he was fairly integrative because as a traditional doctor, he went and took acupuncture, right?
So he was more open and integrated than most. And I did an adrenal salivary test on him and he was flatlined. I said, you know, you've got adrenal exhaustion. And his wife was an MD who was teaching at the medical school at USC. And she goes, that's ridiculous. There's no such thing. You're just burnt out. And I go, I think that's the same thing.
We're just using different language. So, you know, let's unpack what really it is and how someone would be able to identify it.
Marcelle Pick: So we don't ever talk about adrenals. That's the problem. We just talk about them in the kind of alternative functional medicine world. But in the conventional community, we never talk about it.
And if you're tired, you know, it's your iron level or you're depressed. Or you've got a thyroid problem or, you know, you have a serious kind [00:12:00] of condition. Otherwise, you're probably just depressed. It's nothing. And what we know is that the adrenals are crucially important to our health and well being.
They are the sizable walnut that sit on top of the kidneys. And they're the mechanism which we're able to deal with the stress that we have in our lives, like, you know, 2000 years ago. They would come to our rescue when we had a battle coming and they would be really, really helpful. And then the battle would go away or we'd be dead.
And we didn't have what we have now, which is constant 24 7 stress. And the body's meant to have the balance of that, which is that we've got a parasympathetic nervous system and a sympathetic nervous system. The drive is the sympathetic, the parasympathetic is the brakes. And if we don't have that kind of reserve rake time, which most people don't have, ultimately cortisol produces and produces to help those adrenals, but at some point they can't do it anymore.
And the body can't live without cortisol, so [00:13:00] it will produce cortisol at the expense of their sex hormones, i. e. estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and DHEA. So for many people, it causes enormous hormonal dysregulation, and we have different forms of adrenal issues. She has that person that's wired, but tired, wired all the time.
They can't sleep very well. They get up and they're just kind of wired. And we have the person that I call the workhorse in my business. So, they're up and down throughout the day, sometimes they've got energy, sometimes they don't. And then we have, you know, what we call a flatliner. The bad news is that in functional medicine, we don't call adrenal despair or whatever.
We call it adrenal dysfunction. The adrenals are not working the way that they should. Adrenal fatigue, do the adrenals really get fatigued? Well, they probably do, but it's not a great medical term. And the American endocrinology of society has basically said there's no such thing. Well, that's unfortunate because there are so many people, especially women, that are pushing the envelope.
You know, it's like what I say to people is, you know, you're running with a stress fracture. [00:14:00] When are you going to give yourself a little bit of a break here? Quiet it down or doing, you know, mountain climbing or being pregnant and just pushing the envelope. It's like the body's talking to you. Listen. So how do you know you can't fall asleep at night?
Or, you sleep well and you wake up exhausted, or mid afternoon you're exhausted, your get up and go is get up and gone, you don't have the stamina, you can't think clearly, you have foggy thinking, you may have more, you know, headaches than you used to have, you have reactions to food that you never had before, and the bad news is, we now have a lot of the scientific research that shows us, with adrenal issues, We have more auto immunity, we have more, you know, immune issues, we have more hormonal dysfunction, we have more digestive issues, we have more thyroid problems because it intervenes on that level.
So it's a significant problem and it increases metastatic cancers. It's like, yeah, we got to pay attention to this. This is a big deal.
JJ Virgin: So a lot to unpack there. And I'm thinking of your book, Tired and Wired. Probably everyone listening has been in that [00:15:00] state. The tired and wired state, and it's the worst feeling.
Is that tired and wired state, is it the first sign? Like, where is that in the, cause I know there's different stages here, but like when you just listed all of these things that adrenal dysfunction can cause or exacerbate, you kind of wonder what are some of those earlier signs that people probably are missing is tired and wired.
One of them, or is that like further down the line?
Marcelle Pick: Well, tired and wired is one of them, but one of the things that people start to notice is their road rage is higher. You know, what used to be a situation that they just had a normal reaction to, they have an enormous reaction to. That's already telling us that the DHEA level is compromised.
When you're feeling like you've had a good night's sleep and you wake up in the morning, you're just a little bit more tired than usual, but you can kind of get it. You have a little cup of coffee or you're starting to want more coffee to get through your day. Or you're wanting more sugar because sugar gives you momentary energy, [00:16:00] but then you bottom out on the other side.
So it's really understanding that when you're not feeling yourself, we have to unpack what that might be, especially. If you look at the stress that you have in your life, when I say on a scale of one to 10, how high is your stress? Seven, eight? That's okay short term. It's not okay long term because ultimately it will get you.
JJ Virgin: One of the challenges there is I think people think stress has to be something super stressful.
Marcelle Pick: So here's the interesting thing. So my father introduced me to the ACE study in 1998, long time ago. He was a psychologist and he was working with Albanians and Serbs at the time doing conflict resolution. And he said, this is something you might want to look at. Well, the interesting thing is Valetti, and I don't know if you know how that study started.
He was working with women that were. Significantly overweight, 100 pounds or more, and he had them on a liquid diet, and they were all losing weight, and then half of them dropped out when they were successful. [00:17:00] And he pulled one of the women back. By mistake, he asked her, how much did you weigh? He wanted to ask her, how old were you when you were first sexually active?
And she said, 30 pounds. He pulled many of the women to come back and found that 85 to 90 percent of them And he was in at a conference with the CDC and the CDC researcher said to him, well that happens to them, but I'm sure it's not true in the general population. So that's how the ACE study was actually started.
And they looked and they got 17, 000 men and women and they looked to see if they had adverse events as a kid, did it impact their health long term? And the answer was, oh my God. At the time, they had questions up to 10. If you had a score of 4 or more, your chances of heart disease were increased by 165%.
Cancer, early death, smoking, addiction, and metastatic cancers. So that study is an ongoing study. It's one of the largest studies in the history of medicine looking at, it's not just today's stress, [00:18:00] it's our historical stress. And the body doesn't know the difference between today and yesterday. So if somebody's screaming at you, It sounds just like what you heard as a kid, cortisol levels go up until you actually get the frontal cortex, the front part of your brain to be localized and say, wait a minute, you know, that was yesterday and do some techniques to really help you.
And that's where PTSD comes in. It's the body still remembering and so it just happened. It
JJ Virgin: feels like an ACE questionnaire should be really part of annual exams, doesn't it? Instead,
Marcelle Pick: I did it. I mean, when I was in practice, I was doing it and it was interesting. I was at a conference getting my CEUs at Harvard and they were talking about opioid addiction.
I raised my hand, you know, is anybody doing an ACE score on these people? Cause you could predict who's going to have a problem. They didn't even know what it was. So, unfortunately, and Folletti was going to retire, and then he said, no, this is too important, this information. So there are communities that know it, and there are other communities that don't.
And [00:19:00] the part that's so important, that I'm passionate about, is that we can change it. You know, it's not so hard. You don't have to go into 14, 000 hours of therapy every day. It's really understanding. And I had somebody in my weight loss program. This is a great example of this. She'd lost 40 pounds. She looked amazing.
All of her friends were really excited for her cause she did it quite quickly and they were saying things to her and she became embarrassed and she started overeating again. And so we dug deeper. And when she was a young girl, what her mother said to her all the time is don't you ever think you're better than anybody else.
Every time somebody said that to her, it triggered that. And when she unpacked that and really worked with it, it was like, Oh, I might not be better than, but I'm as good as. And so she's now kept the weight off for years.
JJ Virgin: I just wonder how many people are actually able to figure out where that is coming from.
Sometimes it's an obvious thing, but [00:20:00] like how often it just was told to you and you just incorporated it into your tissues and it just became reality and you forgot about it. Hands
Marcelle Pick: down. I mean, that's why sometimes it helps to have coaching or it helps to have somebody really unpack that or even doing Feldenkrais or polarity therapy.
When you have that deep kind of massage, people are sobbing on the table because we store so much of that in our tissue. And you can see it from behavior and there's different modalities. I mean, there's the Hoffman process, there's Joe Dispenza's work, there's Annie Hopper's work. I mean, there's people that do trauma work.
So a lot of things are out there, but a lot of times JJ, these are not traumas as we think of them, incredibly hurtful that you keep going through the rest of your life. And as we unpack that, what I say to people is, look, if you don't deal with your story, your story will deal with you. At some point during your life, it would benefit you to unpack that because we all have stories.
We
JJ Virgin: all do. Yeah. I [00:21:00] wonder how often it's just some flippant remark a teacher made or a parent made. And, you know, having now gone to six Dr. Joe retreats, the first time I went, I was like, what is that? And I'm like, tell that person to knock it off. Cause people will shake, they'll scream. And you're like, you're messing up my meditation over here.
Right. And then you realize, first of all, you're like, I want to have that. You know, but you see people shaking just like an animal shakes it off. It's like, they're just healing their nervous system. It's stunning.
Marcelle Pick: I have always had an outrageous kind of mindset and now practice was that way from the very beginning.
Out of nowhere, we just closed the practice. We stopped surgery. We rebooked them and all kinds of stuff. And we went to an Ann Wilson shake retreat. And that was really about codependency cause they didn't have to spend so much time. And then we had that same experience, you know, that people were shaking and screaming and yelling and doing all this deep work.
As they uncovered some of the pieces that had been carried, that co created some of the [00:22:00] codependency behaviors. So let's pop
JJ Virgin: back over to hormones since you've been at that for so darn long. And really talk about it in terms of perimenopause and menopause, because one of the things that I've always looked at is, boy, if you want to be able to have a easier time during that time, first step is to look at your adrenals.
So I'd really love to unpack why that's important, how they interact, et cetera.
Marcelle Pick: So the interesting thing is that for so long, when we talk about hormones and people say it to me all the time, is it me? And that's why I call my book, Is It Me and My Hormones. If we look at the biochemistry of the adrenals, the adrenals as I mentioned, cholesterol normally makes and helps produce estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and DHEA.
If we have a need for cortisol for too long or too much, as a defense mechanism, there's an enzyme, fancy word, it's called 17 20 lyase, that actually blocks the conversion to estrogen, progesterone, and [00:23:00] testosterone. So you're making lots of cortisol, but you're then becoming low in those hormones, and the first hormone that goes down is progesterone.
So what we see in people that have very bad PMS, so I used to see a lot of people in my practice, and again, we were one of the first practices in the country prescribing bioidentical progesterone for people with PMS, and I would sometimes have people on up to 400 milligrams a day, depending upon that, but I would always say to them, look, PMS is an exaggeration of how we feel all the time, Only premenstrual don't have defense mechanisms to deal with that.
So as we corrected their stress and their emotional kind of baggage, and then got them on progesterone, many of them, even if they were suicidal, got much better. And in perimenopause, what I say to people is, look, menopause is a journey of self discovery. Who am I? What am I going to do for the second half of my life?
And how do I get there? And what are those things that are under the carpet that I didn't have time to deal with when I was a mother and working and all [00:24:00] that? Because it all comes out in menopause. So it's a time in which if we start to look at the adrenals, we start to ask the questions, you know, have I taken care of myself?
Well, and if I haven't, what were the messages I got as a young girl? What do I think about myself? Self-esteem is a huge issue for so many women. I'm not tall enough, thin enough, big enough, whatever it is. Really digging deep into those things. And when you're a mom, you don't have time to do that. And in perimenopause, menopause you do.
And that's the time to really look at uncovering that because the adrenals trump hormones and the adrenals trump thyroid. The other thing that happens is that we've got thyroid hormones and if you have too much cortisol, it increases reverse T3, which is great thyroid. So that our thyroid's not working properly either.
So we've got a double whammy and hormones are crazy. And our thyroid's off and our cortisol's off and we're just not knowing kind of where to go and a place to always, always start is with the adrenals. And many times I could get [00:25:00] hormones normalized when we dealt with that cortisol production. And sometimes for me it was most helpful to get it tested because I thought I knew what somebody was and I was completely wrong.
And sometimes I see very high cortisol and I expected to see it very low. That was a wired and tired person. And people that are just exhausted, then we have to talk about what do they need to do to rehab? Because sometimes it takes six months to a year. And I would see in my practice, people coming back and back.
I'd get them better. They'd come back because they never dealt with the cause, what caused that deep emotional stress for themselves that Joe Dispenza talks about so well.
JJ Virgin: What were you doing for
Marcelle Pick: testing? So it's a cortisol that's done with saliva. And then you're looking at the morning. Some people use as soon as you wake up, then a half hour later, then noon, then four in the afternoon, then at nighttime.
And you can see the pattern. And what we do in the labs is we're doing a 24 hour cortisol. Well, that's not going to help me at all because yes, it's going to help me make sure they don't have Cushing's syndrome, which is way [00:26:00] too much, which is a medical emergency, or too low, which is, you know, Addison's.
We don't want those. But you don't see that very often. So, if I'm doing a 24 hour cortisol, I don't get a sense of what the pulsatile experience is during the day because you want it to be high in the morning and low at night. And sometimes they're up and down and sometimes they're flatlined and sometimes they're shy all the time.
So you get a sense then of how to intervene because we do have amazing herbal interventions that are called adaptogenic herbs. So if they're shy we can bring it down, if they're low we can bring it up. And we can also use that for people that can't sleep. Phosphatidylserine is one of my favorite adaptogenic herbs that brings cortisol levels down.
What about diet? Well, in that situation, intermittent fasting is not such a great idea because the body is already stressed out. Do I use intermittent fasting in my practice? Hands down. We know the research is there. But for those people with adrenal issues, I don't recommend it because it's too long without food and the body has another stressor going on [00:27:00] board.
But it's protein. It's not sugar. It's lower carbohydrates. It's healthy, organic food. It's being aware of the skin care products, anything that tracks the body in any way. The ingredients that you clean your house with. What is your water? Do you have a filter on it for chlorine? Cause we're soaking this great hot water.
It's like, no, it's got chlorine in it because we're using public water. All of those things make an enormous difference.
JJ Virgin: I think that's really important. One of the things I like to say is that we've got to look at these diets as tools, not religions or absolutes, like intermittent fasting is a tool that can be very Therapeutic used in the right time and exercise is the same.
And I think that's an important thing to look at right now because a lot of the things that we would look at as healthy, and especially for women who I feel like so often are trying to drive their body to something that's. Not realistic for their body type. Right. And they're seeing everything out in the media and [00:28:00] they are literally over exercising, under eating, fasting, and crashing themselves.
So that's the other piece of it is like, what are some of these things that are considered to be healthy that may not be healthy at this time, because it's about doing the right thing at the right time in your life to get the right effect. So someone who's adrenally exhausted. Intermittent fasting is not going to help you, but what are some of the other things that would be issues during this time?
Marcelle Pick: So, you know, what's interesting, JJ, is that it's also finding out what foods your body's liking. You know, is your gut microbiome healthy and healthy? You know, one of the things that we know is that the uterus has a microbiome, so it can actually affect how much cramping you have and how much bleeding you have.
The vagina has a microbiome, the lungs have a microbiome, and now we're starting to understand that the. Endothelial vessels, the endothelium has a microbiome so it makes sense. I mean, our body's mostly bacteria. So it's understanding that we're all different, you know, what works for you doesn't work for me.
[00:29:00] Looking at, are you someone who does better with low fat, carb, and a true imbalance. It's helpful. What foods work for you? Dairy is not a good thing for most people. Gluten is not a good thing for most people. And for some people, you know, it's soy and even almonds. I see allergies to almonds all the time.
So it's truly being loving with yourself and saying, you know, what does my body need? You know, the world is on Ozempic Now or semiglutide, and now the new one is Manjaro. And those are fantastic for people that are diabetic. I mean, Oprah Winfrey is skinnier than I've ever seen her and is doing very well, but is it really appropriate for people that have 15 to 20 pounds to lose that are not diabetics?
I have big concerns about those people because if they stop using that medication, they do gain the weight back.. It's understanding that we're different and that we have to treat our body. Not going and running a marathon with a stress fracture. Just saying, you know, what do you need? What is the thing that's going to comfort you more?
How do I learn not to be so codependent? How do I learn how [00:30:00] to take care of myself? What is my adrenal reserve? You know, what are those numbers? What do they look like? And what nutrients do I need that are adaptogenic perhaps to help me with my lifestyle? And how do I walk my talk? I might be talking about doing all these things, but I don't do it because how you teach your children is by what you do, not what you say.
All of those are hugely important and understanding that we do have a stroke of stress. You might not have immediate stress around you, but if you're someone that's beating yourself up and intermittent fasting and, you know, using a whip on, I've got to do this, that, and the other. It just doesn't work.
And at some point it really backfires on you.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. I just saw a girlfriend I hadn't seen for a while and she had decided she was going to do one meal a day. And I've been doing it for over a year and looked like she'd aged. She'd gotten fluffy cause she's losing her muscle. I'm like, would you knock it off?
Like, this is not meant to be a way of life. This is a intervention, [00:31:00] therapeutic. You know, I hear all of this and I think for the person listening who maybe has more of a conventional doctor and I can just imagine them going into their doctor wanting to get a test and knowing how that's not going to work very well, like where does someone go wants to do an adrenal salivary index who wants to work with someone who understands this because I don't think it's our job as consumers, like I don't think it's the patient's job to educate the doctor.
I think it's the patient's. Job to find a doctor who is on the same page with them. And I'll tell you an interesting story. I have a girlfriend who broke her jaw. It was just before we were all going on a trip and literally had to get her jaw wired and she's in seeing this dentist and the dentist is telling her all this horrible stuff that is going to happen because she's had this happen.
And, and she said, you know, I need you to hold the vision. Of perfect healing for me. And if you cannot hold that vision, you are not my doctor. [00:32:00] Because, you know, thoughts create. And so I think it's really important, you know, if this is something and everything you've said today on this interview, Marcelle, tells me that this is like the first place we should be looking.
Gut problems, we need to look here. Hormonal problems here, thyroid problems here, autoimmune here. Like we've got to be looking at this connection and yet in more of the conventional space, it's not looked at at all. And I just was listening to a podcast the other day that kind of dismissed this testing and I'm like, come on.
So what is the person listening who's going, you've described me, what do they do? So
Marcelle Pick: the Institute of Functional Medicine or ifm.org has practitioners. You can find a place that says find a practitioner there. And they have practitioners literally all over the country. I teach for them still and do the Hormone Maga, which is coming up in a couple of weeks, training doctors, cause it can get certified that way.
I'd recommend you do work with someone that's certified. And if all else fails, then you can go to Life [00:33:00] Extension and get the testing. Cause they do have testing that you can do
JJ Virgin: yourself. The Hopkins have their lab, your lab test too. We'll put all of this in the show notes, including IFM, the ACE study, how to get an adrenal test, but they'll still need someone to work with there.
Absolutely.
Marcelle Pick: And that's the hard part. We don't have enough functional medicine docs around. And the bad news is for many people, they get frustrated because they're not taking insurance. And I just want to explain to people why that happens. And that is that the insurance industry is not very Loving of us that practice functional medicine, we're not allowed to have 30 minute appointments.
And I got my hands slapped all the time because I did insurance until I left a year and a half ago. So that's why they have to go over so they can spend 45 minutes for an hour and a half people to really look up what's going on. I mean, I'm spending an hour and a half or two VIP program, which is not in the insurance model, just doing one on one with people.
And really getting deep into, were you breastfed, were you bottle fed, [00:34:00] how many childhood illnesses do you have? All of that gives us information about the gut and gives us information about your health and your status as well as your emotional history as well. So we're trying to train as many as we can.
We do generally 700 people five times a year. So the numbers are going higher, but we still don't have enough trained in functional medicine.
JJ Virgin: Meanwhile, they have your book. We're going to put everything about Marcelle in the show notes because you have so many resources. You're also giving everyone your healthy hormones program for free so you can get started right away.
And I'm going to put that at jjvirgin.com/Marcelle. And I think the very first thing is to really look at those symptoms and go, have I addressed this piece yet? Because quite often you're sitting, you're going, I've, I've tried all these things. They haven't really moved the needle. Well, the biggest piece of functional medicine is to go to the root cause.
Marcelle Pick: And they can also go to my first book, which is called the core balance diet which has got all the areas. You've got a quiz for adrenals, a quiz for [00:35:00] hormones, a quiz for detox, for the gut, a quiz for emotions. You know, on my last chapter in my book is, are your issues in the tissues? So they can go and take a quiz there and see what is my biggest game, you know, being issued here and then do something about that as well.
JJ Virgin: Awesome. Thank you so much. And again, jjvirgin.com/Marcelle to get the healthy hormones program. And I will put all the things we talked about today in the show notes because you mentioned a lot of great resources too. So there's lots of ways to get help if you're listening. And this is really one, I don't know that I ever told you this, Marcelle, I took my first adrenal test.
Way back when with Bill Timmons, do you remember him? Yeah, absolutely. And he absolutely forced me to do it and boy, was he right. And so then it was a whole, whole story of, I would get them back in balance and I'd blow them out again, get them back in balance. And so this is such a big thing. And quite often it makes us really reflect on [00:36:00] our whole life and go, no, actually, you can't get up at 5 AM, study for grad school.
Go do mom's stuff, run work all day, then go do mom's stuff, then study some more, then try to go to bed at 10 or 11, throw a workout in somewhere, like, no, you can't do that and stop it.
Marcelle Pick: And I think that's the key point here, JJ, is that, you know, you do your adrenal tests, you do the adaptogenic herbs, and you think, I'm done.
And the answer is no. If you're doing the same behaviors, that's a definition of insanity. Expected results.
JJ Virgin: The herbs will get you out of the woods, but they didn't fix the original problems. I think so.
Marcelle Pick: And I used to say is, look, I can get you feeling better. So you can go do the deep work that got here to begin.
JJ Virgin: Yes. Very good. All right. Thank you so much for your time today. As usual. It's been amazing. And I so appreciate everything you do. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great. And more importantly, [00:37:00] that you're built to last and check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.
And my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode at subscribetojj.com. See you next time.

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