How to Use Food to Improve Your Mood | Jolene Brighten on Health Theory

and so loving yourself fiercely and never apologizing for the boundaries you need to maintain so that you can be your whole self because that's what we need more people in this world really standing in their power so we can get the change that we absolutely need everyone welcome to hell theory today's guest is dr. Jolene Brighton she's a naturopathic physician and functional medicine practitioner who has been featured by countless high-profile media outlets including Good Morning America the New York Post The Huffington Post cosmopolitan and Forbes which come as no surprise given that she is a best-selling author who's racked up an incredible list of credentials that includes degrees in chemistry nutrition science and clinical nutrition the focus on nutrition I found pretty interesting what was it that drew you to nutrition in such a big way oh gosh it really started with my own personal journey like so many of us right so I was a kid who was pretty sick a lot of digestive issues and it was a decade of struggling I would literally vomit after most meals because I had such bad reflux and it got to the point where doctors were like well we think she has an eating disorder or we think she's seeking you at this point so at this point where they decided to kind of throw in the towel I was around 12 12 years old and yeah so I'd been struggling for quite some time and it wasn't until I was 17 that h pylori had been discovered and finally made its way into clinical practice and so my doctor was like you have we need to test you lo and behold I had this stomach infection in the entire time and so in that there's a whole course of treatment you have to go through antibiotics and I asked my doctor about changing my diet and he actually said to me you know that doesn't do anything for hurt burn it's not going to help you at all you need to take this proton pump inhibitor for the rest of your life and at that time I'm like okay hold up firstly I'm 17 I'm not going to take a pill every day then I get on birth control so that's kind of funny but in mine I also was asking my doctor about like you know I started doing some research I'm like it's not been studied in someone as young as me and also the research wasn't done on women it was done on men and I started to make this connection that like if I ate refined carbs and a bunch of acidic foods like tomato sauce and drinking orange juice and like lots of sugar I would get really about a heartburn and feel awful so I started using food to really modulate my own symptoms and it was through that that I figured out like if there's a lot of power in food in terms of how it was not only affecting my digestion how I was affecting my mood my energy and so at this time I was actually a dental assistant so I started in dentistry at 16 years old studying them in the street yeah this is the books backstory most people don't know about I dropped out of high school started working in a dental office high school I was really bored I was gonna say bored out of your mind boy guessing at some point you had to start feeling pretty isolated if the doctors are like there's nothing we can do yeah you have an eating disorder that would get pretty hard to deal with totally so you know there was there was boredom I was bullied a lot but it was also that like I just bullied around well my hair was one thing I also grew up in poverty so I didn't have the shoes I didn't have the this to see sweatshirt that everybody had I couldn't go on the trips that my friends went on even field trips and you know the other part of it is that I grew up in a household where I was told like I was quite frankly told I better find a man to marry to take care of me because I'm not smart enough to go to college and I'm not actually smart enough to do anything else and so it was a lot of that I'm like why stay in high school I'm not gonna be able to go to college I don't have money to go to college and I my parents were telling me you have to find a job and then you're gonna have to find a man like this is your formula for success and that's why I ended up going into dentistry because I could be self-sustainable and I could actually take care of myself so this whole idea of like finding a man to take care of me I was silently rejecting that it's not gonna happen that's not in my jam so yeah I went into dentistry I was always fascinated with health I'm really great with my hands and I very much you know saw this as an opportunity so I found a pathway in which I could become a registered dental assistant so my first medical license was at age 18 and it wasn't until I moved to the Central Coast of California just because I wanted to live by the beach that I was working for two dentists who pulled me in their office one day I thought I was in trouble and they were like what are you doing with your life I'm like what do you mean like I'm a registered dental assistant I've accomplished my goal and they're like you need to go to college like you're too smart to be doing this that was the first time anybody really had sat me down I mean like you have to go to college like you're just you're too smart you're wasting your life and at that point I'm 21 and I'm like I'm too old to go back to college I'm too old to go to college but then I did and Here I am now and that's the you know winding back story and I decided to study nutrition because of my own journey that is super interesting one so when you're dropping out of high school are you recognizing that you're bored and if you're recognizing that you're bored why did you think you were bored if you didn't think you were smart mmm isn't that weird so I mean as you're saying that and framing that way isn't it weird this like that we can compartmentalize these things in our mind where I'm like I'm so bored I'm in AP classes and I don't have to study and I'm bored and I'm not saying that to be braggy I think that's kind of that's an issue with the high school system overall and so I actually I left high school became and I went into homeschooling and in a matter of months I had accumulated enough credits to be able to graduate but they said to me you can't like in the state of California we can't allow you to graduate until you're 17 and a half and so at that point that's when I was like well I'm just not doing anything anymore and I ended up taking the California proficiency exam so while I'm here i'ma go hi I'm a high school graduate but when I'm in any other state it's it's knowledge a thing yeah oh wow that's actually super interesting did you have to get emancipated no I didn't get emancipated and there's like no way my parents would have fought me tooth now I could notify you yeah in a very very abusive and very controlling households and it was very much of like women are basically meant there you're here to serve men so to speak so no how did you begin to rewrite that narrative I love that you use that language actually that's exactly that I use with my patients all the time it's not these are just stories right they're stories that we've been told their stories that we can choose to continue narrating or we can choose to rewrite that and I remember being around 7 was the first time that I was like I think it's smarter than my parents like in when I don't I think what they're telling me is not true now mind you I was born to two teenagers so as I'm growing up they're growing up and they're developing and they can't help but repeat the patterns that their parents had laid down for them I mean I have a lot of compassion for them although I don't have a relationship with them because that's the healthiest thing for me but in that I was you know group in a really religious household contradictions drive my head brain crazy so and there were some times that I would speak out of turn and I'd be met with physical abuse for saying that and I think a big part of my superpower my strength is grit and that's a muscle I've always exercised I think that's important for people to understand it's not you know your your personality your mindset these traits like you can actually work them just like you work your physical body and I think it's easier in health for people to be like oh I'm gonna change my diet I'm going to change my fitness routine it is way more difficult to change your mindset to change your outlook to call yourself out on your own [ __ ] and you have to I mean really that's like the rocket fuel the secret sauce to healing like if you want to be a whole healed beam like your mindset is everything they ask my patients this actually like on our intake forms of like do you believe you can heal do you believe like you can achieve the things that you're you're wanting to achieve and who in your life supports you and if you've got those three things in place I know you're gonna be able to heal and I see people when they have this support when they're like laundry list of people who can support me they're making change in like six months time any things that they've struggled for sometimes you know decades with and so you know I would say you know it's going back to your question really like starting at seven is when I started to wake up and I very much believe that I had to go through the childhood I had to go to to to wake up faster like I was here I'm here to do specific work in this world and I had to wake up faster I couldn't be lulled through people who take care of me on everything being handed to me I'm going through and then having like the crisis at 30 like I had to have my crisis early on and I realized around 14 that I had to escape my family and I had to escape all of this and part of that had I had to become very complacent in the religion and so stopped speaking up and speak out even though in my mind I was like I don't agree with any of this but I need to survive like and it's 16 that's when I was really like I have to survive I have to buckle down I have to get my plan in order and share it with no one so that I can make sure then I can do what I need to do and then seventeen and a half I believe is 17.5 his when my parents got a divorce they decided to separate after an escalation of extreme physical violence and at that point that's when I was like this is my out and I had to go into raising my brother and sister at that age thankfully I did have that job and so you know there were times where we would wake up and my mom wouldn't be in the house and we wouldn't know where she was for you know she would just be traveling somewhere and I had to pay the bills and get food and make sure my community father and sister got to school and you know with all of that one tactic that has always helped me it's not I would actually have my entire catalog of things I wanted to explore my brain and things I wanted to spend thinking time about so I'd go in and just go into my brain and while people are talking to me just having my thoughts making my plans just thinking like and if this is a practice I still hold today where I always carve out time to have space to think and just have my thinking time and to not be in that constant state of go yeah that is one good strategy to that is a really rough way to grow up obviously but it seems to have had some pretty profound echoes in your life that are wildly beneficial to other people your quest to help people is pretty extraordinary from working in the team teen homeless shelter which I thought was really interesting so as you're going through that process and you're realizing that you have to begin to distance yourself one thing that people really really struggle with is when they have a toxic relationship in their life but it's someone that is an important role like a mother or a father how did you create that space mmm so you know the thing is I will say is that I think they created the space a bit for me like these are the two people that hands-down should absolutely love me no question and protect me in this life and these were the two people I had to fear the most and that I had to always be on guard with so for people familiar with eighth scores I am 9 out of 10 actually the eighth score so these are adverse child experience had experiences that are predictive for disease chronic illness and psychological issues I'm kind of asked you how much you think that has impacted your health mm-hmm my first endoscopy they told me that my stomach looked like a 60 year old stomach it was so enflamed I had chronic gastritis they were like this is not something you see in a child well this is a child who's literally having a hard time digesting what's in her environment so very much impacted my health like when I got diagnosed with autoimmune disease after the birth of my son it's like going through grief there is definitely this whole formula of like reject it deny it you know hate it the angry accept it and in all of that I remember there's this moment where I was like well of course like of course like you developed our immune condition in which your body is turning on is attacking itself like we've had all of this negative programming body turning on itself you know people that you turning on themself and I've always looked at these things as an opportunity so you know before we started recording we talked about my son having pandas pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder that's triggered by stress and so the most classical definitions the research going back a couple decades is strapped which is a bacterium however as we see more research coming out it looks like any infectious agent can trigger this just like other autoimmune conditions as well and so this affects the brain and it's not like as I you know I talk about these things kind of casually but people who were following me on Instagram while I was in Paris that was we call it the break the great Instagram breakdown where as I'm alive and I was like I am like sunshine rainbows unicorns lalalalalala and then I just lost it and I was like 90% of my day sucks like let me tell you what's really going on here and which was so healing in itself and I think we you I want to get in your head for that moment yeah I didn't know this happened so you're you're on alive and you're like you know what I need to present a brave front I need to you know do the typical thing of presenting the best side of myself and then midway through you like I'm gonna call myself on my own [ __ ] here and you allowed that to happen or did it catch you off-guard like yeah I very much I just I remember having a moment sitting there and thinking what are you doing right now like you are modeling an unhealthy like adaptation right now like this is not healthy and I don't and like i'm guessing is not healthy biessing is not healthy and there's one thing to compartmentalize like this is something I'm really good at of like okay I'm having an emotion put it on a shelf I'll come back to it later we learned early on in life you better come back to it otherwise I call it the closet I think the dirty closet that people shove stuff in and one day you're gonna be like I'm gonna I'm gonna compartmentalize it then the closet door opens and you're like oh now it's worse than that one thing that I put away so you know I was on this live and it essentially I I knew I was being fake and I don't want to be that because I think that's unhealthy I think it's the messaging we've gotten a lot as women in for society as always smile be a good girl do what you're told don't make anyone uncomfortable so didn't want to model that like I realize like okay they have influence here and I don't want people to know that okay I'm stuck in Paris my kid has a chronic illness and Here I am faking it right and I think that is you know the power of social media is it can connect us I mean I have women from around the world that are part of my community like that's tremendous and yet it also has the power to make us feel really bad should we allow it and I think we all have to check ourselves up like how are we showing up in the world are we showing up in a way that serves or are we showing up in a way that really feeds that whole machine and that programming of like not being enough having to pretend having to be this certain person so you know as I was on this live I just was like you know what this is what's going on and I just let it out and with that came emotions I hate I hate to cry in front of people this is definitely this is still a throwback to my childhood of where I'm like you have to be strong you have to be stoic I mean I think it probably didn't smile for like several years of my childhood I was just like poker face was my nickname because I'm like show no emotion because if you show emotion that's weakness someone will get in so here's my phone sitting in front of me my husband's on the other side of it and he's like should like gesture should I pour you a glass of wine or like what was that and he's like oh my god I've never seen you just cry and I'm like but this is what I was feeling and this was the truth of what was going on what was so amazing from that is how many women wrote in their child has a chronic illness their child has autism their child you know has Down syndrome their child also has pandas and realizing how many people are in pain and how many people are struggling and how many people you know have these limiting beliefs and and then see the highlight reel on social media and then start writing that story and continue writing that story if I'm the only one failing I'm the only one not enough like we all feel like we're failing at some point if you don't you're probably not doing big scary things so we all we all have these insecurities and some people are better at hiding them than others don't judge them if they're doing that because there might be a reason or they might not be ready I mean there's a lot of stuff from my past that's been coming up and I've been working through and I'm like I'm not ready to share these things because I don't know how to share it in a way that respects my boundaries and who I am and how to share this in a way that serves people as well and so that's the other thing is that we can't just be like the black hole of emotions either that's not what I'm saying don't go on there and be like oh let me just break down but does that help give you an insight into like what was going on every much so this is really interesting to me because I think that the the body and the mind are so connected ALAB there's no way to sort of tease went out from the other and so it's like this we try to pull them apart and conceptualize them as very different things and certainly when I was growing up the notion of mental health was such a crazy stigma other so too and so it was like that only further reinforces notion that there are two very separate things and I think only now like especially with functional medicine are things really becoming to get back together and people are asking what is a real cause of mm-hm and so looking at that and like that's why I was so fascinated by that you've gone so deep on nutrition because that to me is where a lot of this stuff begins or certainly is exacerbated so hearing you be able to talk as eloquently about hormonal dysregulation as you're able to talk about well let me tell you the emotional toll that things take that to me I think is is sort of the ultimate destination of functional medicine is bringing it all back together looking at the body as a system and that you know sort of dysregulation in any part of the system can cause weird outcomes and places that you wouldn't necessarily expect and so one of the reasons I wanted to talk about your son's pandas is I want to know like how are you treating that like what are the protocols so autoimmune to me is beyond fascinating it expresses itself in a thousand different ways you never know like for me if I eat poorly I'm sorry and I get like skin irritation mm-hmm my wife won't get that at all but she'll get brutal cramps and excruciating pain but I don't get that yeah so it's like how all of this stuff manifests itself is pretty intriguing so are you using diet what are other things I'm looking at Rita yeah so you know it's really funny is that um you'll hear people really push against this food as medicine idea really I know right you're like we like did you think this through and so every food that you eat becomes every cell in your body should you absorb it right and to understand I think and I hope it's in my lifetime then we're gonna be moving away from this macronutrient micronutrient talk and argument and really into food is communication food so signaling molecules right yeah and but if you think about it from a biological and evolutionary perspective what forms first the tube the gut it's the way we actually interact with our environment it's how we can signal to our environment or to our body that the environment is safe or it's dangerous think about what babies do early on everything's going in the mouth it's all communicating to the two so when you know science come out and son oh well you know the the gut is the second braid I'm like it's always been the first catch up and so in all of that food is absolutely fundamental I mean people the thing that I usually say especially like when I hear a doctor say oh food has no impact on how food is not medicine you'll hear these things and I have to remind people are they an expert in nutrition how they study nutrition No then their opinions just an opinion it's not actually an expert opinion well they are an expert in the arena of Medicine their forte isn't food you need to talk to a dietitian and nutritionist somebody else who's actually studied this so with my son absolutely we're using food and it's so interesting for you to sign you know the way that you and your wife respond is so different when you eat certain suits because this is where science is like oh wait a minute like okay so I get gluten I have extreme joint pain few days later I'm not moving my husband's the canary in the coalmine because he gets gluten and within a couple hours he has a migraine so I know if he has a migraine I'm gonna be hitting the turmeric because it's coming for me and so we respond differently and we first yeah how does that help oh so turmeric can help with the NF kappa-b pathway in modulating inflammation so it's a great anti-inflammatory I actually in my book have what I call the upgraded turmeric tea which is tons of healthy fats it's great for the brain great for gut motility really important for building hormones but with turmeric I will sometimes throw a whole root in the blender and make like turmeric shots with like lemon juice and we'll get some ginger going and maybe an orange I also love to grade it into a pan with butter so it's a blower butter with fat so I'll grade it into a pan with butter a little bit of pepper pepper oil black pepper also helps absorption saute it a bit crack some eggs in it and just you know sunny-side up fry them in that is like my favorite way to eat it so turmeric is great it's great for the brain it's great for the God it's great for modulating inflammation I think it's important to preface and say that inflammation is not all bad like we need inflammation we need our immune system to do what it's designed to do we just don't need it getting all hot and bothered like it can with autoimmunity so with myself and with my son we absolutely use food so no gluten for him in particular he can't do dairy and sugar so inflamed him Oh sugar so bad so bad it was I mean that's part of when we went to Paris what did this kid get I mean so we pull back some supplements because if we're traveling for a week we don't we're gonna keep the probiotic we don't need the vitamin D in fish oil it's gonna be okay mmm except those three things are great at modulating the immune system so I pull those family we're in Paris let's have gelato my child has like a psychiatric breakdown and even once we figured out it was pandas if he got into any sugar things got so much worse for him so for him sugars no go and but you know I don't like to focus on what not to eat and so very much my focus is let's bring in so much great quality food and that you don't feel deprived and you don't feel like oh you know I'm like I I don't get to eat nobody ever wants to go gluten free like it's it's delicious yet we have to recognize that in our country it's a privilege I mean it's great privilege that we can pick and choose what we want to eat and we have I mean never in history have had such access to food I mean here we are talking about turmeric that was not around when I was a kid so with my son and with myself we focus a lot on high quality produce and high quality protein high quality fats so can you give us some in each category ya know cruciferous vegetables always part of the playlist daily we love broccoli cauliflower brussel sprouts just yesterday him and I were on Instagram eating raw cabbage great for when you fly because it helps with liver detoxification I actually that's the thing when you fly oh my goodness so I did Adi I did a toxin panel and I did my toxins like I'm not too bad I wonder if what happens when I travel I go traveling and I came back and with that test my glyphosate the metabolites for rocket fuel for pesticides now I grow a lot of my own food and I have had a chemical free yard and my house is non-toxic chemicals for for 12 years now so to see all of this I'm like wow what is that that's being in airplanes that's sleeping on mattresses in hotels that's walking around we're like hotels spraying glyphosate and these other chemicals around and so we actually get exposed to a lot of environmental toxins on planes and that's why we love cruciferous vegetables and if you're someone so as you were saying like so if your partner has digestive issues like cruciferous vegetables especially broth that's not going to work for you you can actually select for sprouts instead so this is a really economical and really nutrient dense approach broccoli sprouts if you have about a quarter cup of them it's equivalent to one over two pounds of broccoli itself can give you in terms of sophia-rayne and the molecules that eventually become dim and dim helps with liver detoxification especially important for estrogen metabolism so whether you're a man or a woman we all have estrogen we want to get it into the right metabolites so we have 2 4 and 16 hydroxy ester own now there's not like the healthiest form there's like the best and then not so good and the ones that cause tissue growth and cramps and breast tenderness and so eating cruciferous vegetables helps us get him into the healthiest pathways as possible which is really important when you talk about you know the fact that we're exposed to all these xenoestrogens I mean just going to the grocery and touching that receipt and you're getting BPA exposure and these xenoestrogens can dock on our receptors and this with our hormones and so do you think about soy oh so you know I'm not a fan of you know products that are that basically we've been messing with a whole lot and that comes from like my you know my time in school and working working in like recombinant DNA technology and working with like how do we modify the food supply and the thing I really take issue with is and then we talk to you mo we talk glyphosate we talk about these chemicals in our environment is how so often people are like well there's no evidence that they're not safe so they're fine well the absence of evidence is just absence of evidence it doesn't it's not a gold stamp approval of like safety and that yet it's always falls on the consumers lap to prove it's not safe really I mean the average person it's enough to navigate food it's enough to navigate their day-to-day life to also have this extra layer on and so there's several layers to this one is generally GMO so we want to be aware of that I think eating fermented organic soy can work for some people you have to test what is true for you and everything I say view it through their lens of what's true for you because I'll say a lot of true stuff but bio individually speaking may not be true for you now the other thing is that I give a lot of pause when it comes to monoculture crops and things that are stripping the earth of not only new tree but decimating the microbiome and so the earth has its own microbiome which is great when grass-fed cows are there eating the grass pooping we've got chickens coming in like the bugs are flourishing less chemicals and this is really important for people to understand that like yeah we talked a lot about how mom's microbiome becomes babies microbiome so mom's got health so important but mama Earth's microbiome it's also become the neuro microbiome and that's also important we have to consider that so you know when it comes to soy it can work for some people it is one of the top allergens recognized up there with like we shellfish peanuts so that's why you can have an immune response in some people so I say test what's true for you and try to get organic when it comes to that and don't do what I did in the 90s when we all thought so it was so great and I was like I'm gonna barbecue tofu and I'm gonna eat drink my soy milk and like soy everything and so we have to be really aware done anytime we have too much of anything it can become a not so good thing for us what's the reality around soy and estrogen response mm-hmm is that like a real thing yeah so he goes back and forth it is a phytoestrogen so sometimes you hear the research is like soy can cause estrogen problems and you know if you have a history of breast cancer avoid it and then you hear other times where it's like well it's great for bone health and you actually should be eating it and this is something that anytime nutrition research becomes extreme one way or another you're probably safer to take the middle road and to be like okay hold up and the reality is is like we have to check in on what's true for you it is a weak phytoestrogen which means that yes it can stimulate your estrogen receptors but you know if you're eating it in moderation you're having it every now and again probably not gonna be too big of an issue for you but if it's something where it's like you have your soy milk latte then you have a tofu scramble then you have a tofu burger then you eat chocolate that also has soy in it and like all of these things that may be overloading the system so again you know the best way to know is to actually just test it pull it out of your diet bring it back in and pay attention to every symptom because it might be good most the time it's most of the time it's like oh my head like maybe I'm having brain fog maybe I'm having migraines maybe it's my skin maybe I'm really irritable that's the thing about our immune system so when we have these emotional swings like you were talking about that can be your gut yeah but it also can be immune mediated so think about when we get sick so you get a virus how do you film irritable you want to quarantine yourself you want to stay away from people that's actually an evolutionary adaptation to save the other people around you like you quarantine you're not going to spread a communicable disease and so these interleukins which are the chemical messengers the immune system absolutely do impact our mood okay so that gets us to vegetables what about some proteins and fats what are good sources for that stuff yeah so when it comes to fat we do want to have a variety but we want to avoid things like hydrogenated fats anything again if they have a chemist made it you probably don't want to eat it because mama nature she won't get it wrong very often but humans we get it wrong a lot and then it's like generations later that were like oh what did we do so when it comes to fats I like to look on whole food fat so egg yolks getting avocados coming in eating nuts and seeds so bringing those in part of your diet maybe it's part of seed cycling or you're just adding them that I think seeds are such a great economical and nutrient-dense way to really boost your nutrition getting other foods like Coldwater fish in some well caught salmon sardines mackerel these fatty fish great sources of omega-3 fatty acids you would all worried about metal heavy metal horse we are right what what how do we steer that game with fish yeah smaller the fish the batter that's what we've come to understand so like I grew up and we shark and swordfish and my son's not gonna eat those things because that's just the reality of the state of the planet right now so in that getting small fish there's definitely the best way to go if you are a vegan or vegetarian they often you know to get omega-3s they opt for algae or they'll go with flax and we have to understand design as women especially we actually require our own natural estrogen to make the conversion from plant-based omegas into the epa and DHA that we use as anti-inflammatory great for the brain so if you're on hormonal birth control though you're not making your own estrogen and if you're inflamed and you're having mood symptoms you may very well need to start thinking about going with a fish oil so with those fats the other thing is being bringing in grass-fed butter coconut oil so that's the healthy fats when it comes to animal proteins I always tell people let's choose grass-fed as often as possible make sure that it's not just muscle meats we want to bring in our oaf all or our organ meats so things like what is it that the organ meats have so this is one of those like I'm super fascinated by the carnivore diet yeah yeah like I want to know right now everybody's raising their hand and volunteering we need to do the research I'm like because there's an ethical dilemma perhaps of researching that diet because you think that it could be potentially that bad for people if it is right if it is that's an ethical consideration so sometimes when we don't have the research we want leave a lot of studies on pregnant women but they're not they're like on Plan B taking that in pregnancy the research isn't there why because ethically it's like we have to pause and to that if people are voluntarily saying I'm going to eat carnivore diet let's study them or at least I mean if we can get that end of one that's better than the end of none and it can start answering some of the questions that we have the carnivore guy I find really fascinating and people keep asking me like are you gonna recommend it and I'm like as of right now I feel like I don't have enough information to make that the educated recommendation and at the same time I have patients who've tried it for short periods of time have gotten benefits in terms of like gut improvements I mean we've seen inflammation improvements into the hot I'm like okay well that's interesting let's continue to monitor now they're bringing in foods they didn't tolerate before and now they do tolerate it so it's something that I'm I'm always like that's interesting okay let's monitor it like I don't I don't subscribe to this idea that we need to be putting beliefs on which you know religion politics and diet come with their own belief systems and I really think we just have to stay curious I mean that's what science is it's humble and it's curious it's willing to always be wrong and to prove yourself wrong I mean that's really what you set out to do it's like am I wrong like can I prove that I'm wrong in this and that there is something else going on otherwise you're not being objective now you're being biased yeah humble and curious I like that a lot so you brought up the pill a minute ago talk about an endocrine disruptor mm-hmm talk to me about that the mate selection thing in your book is so interesting so walk us through what that whole effect is why we should care how it plays out this is where men really need to pay attention in this conversation as well I think a lot of the time men are like birth control I don't have to worry about that I'm like mmm but it depends like on when you met her on how your relationships gonna go so we've known for quite some time when you place a woman on hormonal birth control and actually disrupts who she's attracted to and they've done these studies with sent right we like to conveniently forget things like sense of smell when it comes to like me attraction we think like we're we're way more evolved in that and yet it very much comes down to interacting with scent and and what we see so all the senses are involved now MHC major histocompatibility complex this is something we can actually pick up in pheromones that tell us about the genetics and the immune system of our mate so when you smell that MHC you're looking for somebody who is genetically dissimilar to you as possible so genetic diversity that's the name of the game right we actually have laws that protect us so that we make sure we keep that genetic diversity and that is how we help create the most robust immune system for baby yet well you're on hormonal birth control you actually select for a mate who's more similar to you genetically so like your cousin mmhmm right that's the that's the point where everybody's like you and researchers believe why we do that is because that what you if the birth control pill is or birth control in general is mimicking us in a pregnancy state then we would want to select for our family right to be around our family people who would protect us except that that's not really how tribes used to work and body has different hormones when we're pregnant and a lot of people believe oh it only affects your reproductive system well actually works on your brain that's the level it works on so the primary mechanism to shut down ovulation is to stop your brain from talking to your ovaries so whenever people will dismiss like mood symptoms or what is going on in your head as it's in your head and like well yeah because like you're taking birth control nots it's there's receptors in your brain there's receptors all over your body for these hormones if you're in natural hormones and for these synthetic ones which is why we see that birth control has such a far-reaching impact every single system in the body because they're all set up to interact with our hormones now with made selections through the other way it goes is that they've actually done studies with exotic dancers strippers for lack of a better term and in that what they found is if you are on hormonal birth control you make less money your tips last men actually you're picking up on that if you're ovulating and naturally cycling female you make a lot more money when you're ovulating which makes sense because you're plumper like your hormones are stimulating all of your curves like even your fine lines and wrinkles start to go away a bit there's not going to totally reverse and and then can pick up on that and when you know you're on your period you may make less money and so there's these cyclical and these hormonal changes that happen they change our appearance they also change our sense of smell I've had men write me and say I always thought as a weirdo because I could tell like when women were ovulating like I just that would be attracted to them and I can smell it and like I've had partners and I'm like no because you're an animal and that's like what animals do know where it gets really interesting in the research is when we start to look on the studies that have been done with women on and off the pill and what they do with males faces so researchers brought women into a room bunch of screens said alter every face on the screen to make it more attractive to you men and women's faces coming up he put them on birth control bring them back three months later and what they found is that well originally they made the faces more masculine so think Gaston from Beauty and the Beast but once put on birth control I actually make the faces more feminine isn't that crazy so they alter the faces to look more feminine now that's just how women so we know it changes sense of smell the partner that you're picking and also change their we're changing the face and so we're wanting a man who looks more feminine and interestingly how we select the criteria what we select men on like on a logical level is different and that is when you're on hormonal birth control you actually select for a man who is smart and makes money and less about what he looks like which once you come off that flips in terms of the priority now this is where I'm like you know cue Kanye West like she's a gold digger no no no evolutionarily speaking she's selecting for the mate that will ensure the survival of her Oscar offspring and in this day and age when we shut down the detection of the MHC complex we shut down that primal that animal self we default to is he smart and does he make money okay great that will ensure the survival of my offspring but when you come off of birth control if that's how you selected your mate now how he looks becomes much more important and while hormonal birth control can tank your libido causes pain with sex painful or gonna orgasms if again you can actually have an orgasm it's sometimes painful when you come off women actually report higher levels of sexual dissatisfaction and research believes it's because of that attraction to their mate and because now the way their innate looks is more important to them now does that mean that if you come off of birth control you're just going to get a divorce maybe if you know maybe because research has shown that there you're more likely to initiate divorce as a woman when you're coming off of hormonal birth control and by the way we don't have research on if you're in a same-sex relationship with like what happens we're all based on because presumably right why do you take birth control to not get pregnant by a male counterpart except that more than half of women now are using it for symptom management so it's not actually just for pregnancy prevention but the mate selection stuff is so fascinating to me and just the fact that birth control can you know alter our behavior so now questions are starting to come up so does it actually alter our community and our ability to form relationships and bonds talk about a huge determinants of health having people around you does an impact the way that we mother is that a possibility and I also think we need to be asking these questions just in the 2019 Scientific American has this article coming out talking about birth control and dr. Elizabeth Kissling in there stated you know long-term menstrual suppression via hormonal birth control is the largest and longest uncontrolled study we've ever had 100% so instead of saying this is inconvenient because believe me doing 10 years on the pill it's inconvenient for me to have written this book to discover the things that I've discovered like hi there were times that where I was doing ugly cries about like oh my god what did I do to myself and they didn't know and yeah I didn't know so if you didn't know you just don't waste time judging yourself like you need to take that step forward great that's good data to have now what can we do moving forward but I completely understand like these I mean again wanting to be the ostrich to sticks your head in the sand and just acts like the Predators not there you still could get eaten though like not the best way forward and really that's what I'm calling for is that we need to one start believing women's stories to start validating them with science and three stop dismissing and being so flippant and being like well you should be so lucky and grateful to have access to birth control just take it don't ask any questions and like you know just be thrilled to have it yeah I am thrilled to have it I'm a first generation college student I'm the first woman my family did not get pregnant before my 20s like these are huge things I can be simultaneously grateful and also skeptical like I can ask the questions and also advocate for education and access like and it's this either/or where I think that I mean humans just left to do that though right they're like it's black or it's white you're this camp or you're that camp and that's where I think I'm very frustrating for people because I'm like it depends maybe it's best for you maybe it's not and really where I want to see science going is stop dismissing women I mean like with the mood stuff women have been complaining about this since the introduction of hormonal birth control and we still see people saying really not real birth control doesn't cause depression or anxiety therefore not real we may never have a study that says causation causation is difficult but we do have correlation we do have studies showing that teenagers are at higher risk of suicide when they start hormonal birth control when I advocate and when I teach other clinicians is that if you know this and she's getting birth control without her parents knowing no if her parents know great have a conversation with mom or dad tell them what to look out for but you know we do give young women birth control without their parents knowing I wouldn't advocate against that but I would advocate the doctors follow-up if we know the peak of suicide is within two months have someone call her at four weeks have someone call her at eight weeks do a mini mental health screening before she starts birth control and follow-up and see where she's at have her tell her best friend listen if I start dodging your tax messages you notice I'm not posting on social I don't want to talk about that cute boy I don't care about anything anymore please get me to the doctor something's wrong like we can actually save women's lives by educating them better and helping them be informed to know when to go to their doctor we can't afford to lose another woman to a side effect that we could have been in the know on and we need to stop arguing whether or not she's telling the truth we need to start asking the question of why her and not her what is one woman get the IUD and she feels like it's the best thing in her PMS or PMDD or gone her mood symptoms are gone and another woman gets it and now she has depression and one woman starts the pill and now you know this is like the best you know pseudo period she's ever had and she's you know getting more done laughs and she's feeling amazing and yet another woman she can't even get out of bed like why how can we screen better how can we educate better how can we ensure that we are first doing no harm and doing the best thing for the person sitting across from us and so that really has to begin with believing women and recognizing we don't have all the information that we need yes yes and I really can't hear you like getting passionate animated your whole book reads like that which is really incredible where can people find out more about you get a hold of the book yeah my main hub is dr. Brighton calm and that's Brighton like the Sun not like the jewelry that's my main hub you can find the book there and anywhere else they sell books and then if you ever want to play I'm usually on Instagram amazing if you were going to have people make one change to their life that would have the biggest impact on their health what change would you have to make mmm unapologetically love yourself and set your boundaries and hold them strong because I think that so much of what I see especially in women's health it starts with doing everything for everyone else first mind you the whole species probably wouldn't be here if women didn't have a propensity to do that but also feeling like somehow we're not worthy we're not worthy of love we're not worthy of these things and so loving yourself fiercely and never apologizing for the boundaries you need to maintain so that you can be your whole self because that's what we need more people in this world really standing in their power so we can get the change that we absolutely need I love that guys she does take a very holistic approach which I found really really interesting and super useful and speaking of useful if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're gonna get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential