Kaely McDevitt | Why Minerals Are Vital To Hormonal Prosperity

The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Welcome to The Hormone Prescription Podcast, the heart-to-heart space where we unravel the tapestry of women's health! 💜 In our latest enlightening episode titled "Why Minerals are Vital to Hormonal Prosperity," we are joined by the incredibly knowledgeable Kaely McDevitt, a Registered Dietitian dedicating her life to the well-being of women.

Key Points Discussed:

• The Mineral-Hormone Connection: Discover how minerals are the unsung heroes in the choir of hormones. 🎼 They conduct the symphony that determines your energy, fertility, and overall hormonal balance.
• Reclaiming Your Energy: Learn about the specific minerals that can turn the tides on fatigue and give you back your zest for life. ✨
• Optimizing Fertility: Kaely shares her expertise on how strategic nutrition can support reproductive health and make the dream of parenthood achievable for many. 👶
• Conquering Hormone Symptoms: Find out which key players in your diet can help you take control of hormone-related symptoms from PMS to menopause. 🛑
• Personalized Nutrition Strategies: Take a deep dove into the world of tailored nutrition and how personalization leads to health transformation.
• Building Health with Connection: Kaely emphasizes the importance of connecting with self, nature, and community on the road to hormonal health. 🌿

About Kaely McDevitt:

Kaely McDevitt is not just any dietitian; she's a trailblazer in the realm of women's health, armed with a passion for natural wellness and a deep understanding that there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to health. 🌱 Through her virtual practice, she and her team have cultivated an oasis where women can find answers, hope, and a path to reclaim their energy and vitality.

Why You Shouldn't Miss This Episode:

Take command of your hormonal health by tuning into this episode. Whether you're someone battling with hormonal imbalances, searching for fertility support, or simply thirsty for knowledge on women's health nutrition, this conversation with Kaely will be a beacon of insight and inspiration. 🌟

Step into a world where minerals and hormones dance in harmony, where personalized nutrition is the key to unlocking the mysteries of your body, and where healing comes with an empowering sense of community. This isn't just about health; it's about thriving in every sense of the word!

Listen Now!

Find your sweet spot in the world of health and hormones by listening to this must-hear conversation with Kaely McDevitt. Tap into the wisdom, comfort, and practical guidance that will propel you towards hormonal prosperity.

Pour a cup of tea, find a cozy corner, and hit play! 🎧 Listen now and infuse your life with the balance and vitality it deserves.

Sharing is caring! If this episode sparked a light in you, spread the love by sharing it with your friends, family, and community — because every woman deserves to sing a hormonal harmony. 🗣️💕

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings. Elizabeth Gilbert, stay tuned as Kaely McDevitt tells you why minerals are vital to hormonal prosperity and the manifestation of your own blessing.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:18):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an OB GYN I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:11):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive in with Kaely McDevitt, who's a registered dietician into minerals. And I know there's the alphabet soup nutrients and it can be hard to keep track of them. And you're like ki Now you're gonna get into the real nitty gritty. Yep. We're gonna get into the nitty gritty, but she's gonna make it super simple because is hormonal balance and hormonal prosperity necessary? Absolutely. But if you don't have the right co-factors for those hormones to be able to get into the cell first, to get to the cell, then to get into the cell, then to be used by the cell, then it's kind of pointless to try to get to hormonal prosperity. So you've got to address your mineral repletion. There are some essential ones that you need to really pay attention to and why.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:14):

We're gonna talk about why it's best to get from your food and supplements, which ones are most important, first, second, and next. Where are the pitfalls when it comes to balancing and repleting your minerals? And we're gonna talk about this amazing quote from one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gilbert and one from Fitch, not Han, that will help you in your life. Kaely's gonna share part of her journey from poor health to vitality and really serving and her purpose in this lifetime because isn't that what we all want after all? Yeah, I know you want that. You sure do and you deserve it. So I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. So Kaely is a registered dietician, as I said, specializing in nutrition for women's health. And she owns a virtual private practice where she and her team help their clients reclaim their energy, optimize fertility and overcome hormone symptoms through personalize nutrition. Having experienced the pitfalls of a conventional approach to women's health firsthand. I know a lot of you can relate, I can relate. Can relate. Kaely is passionate about empowering women to build health from a place of connection to self, to nature and to community. Please help me welcome Kaely to the show.

Kaely McDevitt (03:30):

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:31):

I love talking about nutrition because as a traditionally trained mainstream doctor, originally I got no education in nutrition. And even though I'm now fellowship trained in anti-aging, metabolic functional medicine, I find that nothing replaces the depth with which a nutritionist or dietician can go into each specific nutrient, can go into the foods and where you find that and really has a depth and breadth of knowledge that I probably will never have in my lifetime. So thank you for being here and sharing that with our audience.

Kaely McDevitt (04:09):

Yeah, my pleasure. .

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (04:11):

So when it comes to a woman's health, right, so from Menarchy when she first gets her period to motherhood when she's pregnant to perimenopause, usually by 35 40, the menopause average age of 51, there are a lot of hormonal transitions that women go through. We talk a lot on the podcast about that. So I think women are pretty familiar with what's happening at these different stages as they go into hormonal poverty, as I call it. Hmm. But we don't talk a lot about how minerals are changing and how they might be the key to any transition. So I'm wondering if you can start just by sharing with everyone from your perspective, 'cause you have a unique RD perspective. Is that something that you were taught in your training about these changes through the transitions for women's health or is that something you came to a realization about on your own in practice? How did this arise for you?

Kaely McDevitt (05:14):

Yeah, it came about on my own kind of out of personal necessity. And I think, you know, your personal story to the work you do now is, is pretty similar to mine in that I finished about seven years of higher education in the health space and didn't feel like I really learned anything about women's health in in particular and how hormones work, how they operate, how they impact things like metabolism and nutrient utilization. And you know, I initially went into this field thinking I would work in sports nutrition and as luck would have it, I was dealing with a whole bunch of hormone health symptoms while I was in school getting my credentials. And so I was spending all my free time trying to learn this women's health stuff that really wasn't part of our curriculum. So you know, at the end of all the schooling, I had an RD behind my name but really felt horrible health-wise.

Kaely McDevitt (06:01):

And I was like avidly applying , the nutrition stuff I was learning. So I would say the realization for how we need to customize nutrition for women specifically and how that might change over different seasons of life really came after and it was personal necessity. First it was like creating this life raft to get myself out of hormone chaos. And then when I got there I looked around and was like, huh, I think a lot of other women are hungry for this kind of info and they don't want this like one size fits all recommendation for things. And so once you start digging into that and working with clients to kind of across the lifespan, you start to see some pretty clear patterns of things that get depleted at different times and how we might make for smoother life transitions.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (06:42):

Yes, personal necessity is really I think the driver of everything important that we accomplished in life, right? Pain becomes our purpose. So I love that you're really focusing on nutrition around hormones and helping women with it. 'cause What you put, you are really what you put in your mouth. And I know we say that all the time, you are what you eat, but I think we don't really get it. And I, I've seen this meme on the internet where it's a person that's literally made out of food , right? So their shoulders broccoli and their right eye is cauliflower and their left eye is pork and you know, and so when you look in the mirror and you see your flesh and bones and skin really think about it's that it's, it's what you ate for dinner last night. It's what you ate for breakfast this morning or didn't eat I should say. So how would a woman know she is, you know, we generally talk to women who are over 40, so they're possibly in the perimenopause transition, maybe they're having PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, maybe fibroids, endometriosis, some of these estrogen dominant conditions. How should she suspect that she might have a mineral imbalance? What would you say to her?

Kaely McDevitt (07:56):

Yeah, so I think minerals don't get the airtime that they deserve. I feel like we talk about vitamins a lot more and that was definitely the avenue of investigation I was interested in. First minerals kind of came around after the fact when we were trying to figure out why the heck certain clients weren't getting better as fast as others. And so minerals like kind of in as simplistic of a term as possible, they're really just enzyme co-factors in the body, meaning that they kick off reactions. And so these reactions can be things like producing energy or a TP in the cells. So our metabolism and energy production, it could be part of making healthy red blood cells so we can carry oxygen around. They are how we get nutrients and hormones into the cell. So actually the way your hormones interact with their target tissue is dependent on enough minerals being there at the cellular level, they're necessary for digestion and absorption.

Kaely McDevitt (08:46):

And so really the point that I'm making is minerals impact everything and if we are deficient or imbalanced in minerals, some of the classic symptoms would be fatigue, brain fog, kinda your list of hypothyroid, constellation symptoms that might be cold, hands and feet, brittle hair and nails or maybe some hair fall slow wound healing, a lot of digestive complaints secondary to not making enough digestive juices. So things like bloating, food, kind of sitting on comfortably constipation or just sluggish transit. And we typically see women peeing all the time when they're minerally deficient because we don't have the minerals to actually hold hydration in the cells. So you might feel like you're drinking water constantly and just peeing constantly or maybe waking in the night to pee. So those would be a couple of the first clues that we'd be looking at. Right.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (09:32):

So many of the symptoms that we experienced, but I love how you explain that really minerals are the co-factors that make everything else work. So we might be looking at your hormones, looking at your vitamins, looking at your fats, looking at your macronutrients, but we might not be looking at your minerals. I know this was really brought to my attention by an acupuncturist I worked with years ago and she had me take some liquid mins, trace minerals and all kinds of other minerals and really we started looking at it and I saw how much better everything else worked. That was my real life experience. Let's kind of talk about what are the biggest nutrients that women are deficient in that they might want to look at?

Kaely McDevitt (10:15):

Yeah, so we do a lot of mineral testing on our clients. It's actually the only test we automatically do for everybody because for all the reasons we've discussed, minerals impact everything. It's kind of like our grassroots approach for getting things to work really well. And a common pattern that we see, especially women in their forties, maybe getting into that perimenopause territory, is depletion in our foundational minerals. And so foundational minerals would be calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium depending on who you're learning to interpret mineral testing from. Those can be considered foundational or kind of tier one minerals because they dictate really what happens with the rest of our trace minerals. So they influence the state of the nervous system and our buffering capacity with stress, they influence thyroid uptake at the cellular level. They influence digestion in our adrenal health too. And so if we think about what is happening in life in our forties and fifties and we've had decades probably of a lot of stress, we've had decades probably of some pretty poor nutrition advice.

Kaely McDevitt (11:18):

I think most of us grew up with a lot of like be skinny at all costs, 1200 calorie diets on all the tabloids at the grocery store, checkouts maybe we've been through a couple of pregnancies, maybe we've breastfed babies and there's just so much mineral loss that happens from all of those different types of stressors that if we haven't been intentional about it, we're gonna hit that point of those things being really depleted. And that's the most common pattern we see in that season of life is just very low minerals versus them being really imbalanced, which is a different flavor of of mineral issue.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (11:51):

Okay. And I know people are gonna, I in and ask us what tests , what tests yeah. Are available to check minerals, maybe the one you do, maybe there are others. What would, what are the TE names of the test?

Kaely McDevitt (12:01):

Yeah, so we run an HTMA, which stands for hair tissue mineral analysis. So it's actually a hair sample that's looking at mineral status because hair is telling us what's happening in the tissue level and it's giving us about a three month picture of mineral status. Whereas blood work to look at things like sodium, potassium is telling us what's in transit and it is going to be transiently impacted by things like hydration food or supplement intake. So we just get a longer term picture from a hair sample and there are many different labs in the US that run HTMA tests. We use trace elements specifically, but there are several that do it.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (12:39):

So my question would be, for instance, when we look at heavy metal levels in people, there are many different tests. You can get a blood test, you can get a urine test, you can get a stool test. So urine and stool to look at how much is is excreted blood, how much is in the blood. And you can get a hair test, which some professionals like because they say it's a three month excretion average. But the problem is that heavy metals are not floating around in your circulation. So a blood test is pretty inaccurate and because they're not floating around in your circulation, they're not being excreted through your stool or your urine readily nor are they being secreted in your hair. And so really you have to do these provocation tests where you give them medicine to bring them out. So how accurate is hair analysis when it comes to looking at kind of the steady state mineral levels that are in your systems and in your cells on a day-to-day basis?

Kaely McDevitt (13:36):

Yeah, I think it's a really great tool for assessing mineral status, but the testing procedures of the lab really matter. So this was one of the more recent tests that we decided to bring on the practice a couple of years ago because I kind of had a bad taste in my mouth about HTMA testing, validity and accuracy. I think I read some studies back when I was in school that kept this perception there. And so what was important to me is that we found a lab that used mass spectroscopy, which is the gold standard for assessing mineral analysis. It's also what the EPA uses to look at like heavy metal toxicity from a chemical spill in an area. So it's their gold standard test method for it. And then I also wanted to find a lab that did not wash the hair sample before they process it because that could influence and skew the results.

Kaely McDevitt (14:21):

So we found that in trace elements, they do a ton of, I forget the term of this for like their quality assurance, but they'll take, oh, a split sample report to make sure that their test is accurate and we're getting the same result for the same person run at the same time. And they do a lot of kinda independent measures for quality assurance, but all tests have their limits. No test is gospel is what we talk about with our clients. It's a tool, it's a guide, it's a way to learn more about you and your physiology. But with things like minerals and with metals, we often find that when we do a retest four to months later, things have shifted quite a bit because minerals are defense against heavy metal accumulation. So as we start to restore mineral status, we start to shift, we almost provoke metal movement. So we'll often see more heavy metals in the hair on a retest because we started to move their foundational mineral status. So I think it's been an extremely reliable and valuable tool in practice. But it's always important with lab testing to keep in mind that this isn't the only story. We have to use this in context with you, your symptoms, your life past data that we have. And we typically can't just run something once and call it a day.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (15:29):

Yeah, I think helping people to understand the limits, the value and the limits of lab testing and each lab test has its own value and limits. And because we are living systems in a living in environment that's constantly changing, we are constantly changing internally. Our external environment is constantly changing. It's not like setting the thermostat in your house, heat at this temperature, cool at this temperature and set it and forget it. And that's why I always say repeat testing is necessary. Looking at your story as you said, your symptomatology, what's going on, where have you been, where have you been traveling? Yeah, what's your diet been like? What's your stress level like? Just all of the different inputs. So you start at, start with testing. So calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, foundational or tier one minerals you might look at first and then mm-Hmm . What are some, I mean I know magnesium is huge for women, you know it's used in what, over 450 processes. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about these individually?

Kaely McDevitt (16:36):

Sure, yeah I think, I think magnesium gets good attention now, which is awesome because it does so much for us. I'm very rarely recommending something to like the general population at large, but magnesium is one of the few things I would feel really comfortable doing. So because most of us are deficient, whether it's from the stressors and life seasons that we discussed or the fact that it's really hard to get enough minerals from food today thanks to the fact that the soil mineral content is so depleted versus even 50 or a hundred years ago. So sodium and potassium are really good starting points, especially if you resonated with that kind of low energy, almost hypothyroid picture of symptoms because sodium and potassium are our more energizing foundational minerals. These keep things in solution. These help get hormones and other nutrients into the cell. They help us make digestive juices.

Kaely McDevitt (17:27):

So when we think about sodium, which I think if I had told my like young dietician student self that one day I'd be recommending more salt to my clients, I would've never believed it. But I, we really, really need a good quality nutrient rich salt in our diet to function optimally. And I know we're coming off of a couple decades of being really salt fearing, but there's a big difference between very refined processed table salt and unrefined mineral rich. And the difference is that it hasn't been stripped of additional trace minerals and I think it's probably not new to your audience that things exist in nature typically in the form that they belong in the body. Meaning we don't just find an isolated sodium molecule somewhere. We find sodium with the abundant trace minerals in actual salt. So actually just adding like a pinch of a good mineral rich salt to water first thing in the morning or making sure we salt our meals can make a big difference with digestion and energy levels.

Kaely McDevitt (18:25):

I know for me that was a pretty quick win that I felt personally and we see that play out with our clients. Potassium is another one again that's commonly very low and especially if you resonate with the hypothyroid stuff, potassium is actually how we get that active T three into the cells. And if we came from the low carb kind of fruit and potato fearing diet dogma, then we probably haven't been getting a lot of potassium because fruits root vegetables, those would be our biggest potassium powerhouses in our diet. So we'd be looking for ways to bring those in with each meal. You can of course use mineral and electrolyte powders to accomplish this too. But again, those like whole food forms are gonna come with a bunch of things that science hasn't even yet. Understood. Calcium is very good. Yeah. Oh go ahead. Well

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (19:10):

I wanna, before you go on to calcium, I just wanna mention with the the sodium and potassium. You know, it was interesting, I just am back from traveling kind of to 13 different or 14 different countries in the past year and a half and it's, it's amazing in some of the countries I was in in Africa, middle East, they in commercially prepared foods, they don't put any salt because they really have taken the salt as the villain dogma to the N degree. So they're like, it's a public health problem. We're not putting salt in restaurant food. A lot of places limit the amount of salt that's put in the food. And it's so interesting because yeah we need, we so need the salt. And so I had a lot of conversations with people about yes, maybe stricted salts, sodium chloride is not great but that sea salt, that pink chimay and sea salt with all the rich nutrients, right? It's got color in it which tells you and usually the colors very vary. So right there that tells you different colors, different minerals is so vital for your health and at any functional medicine conference you'll see all the doctors like fighting over the salt shake .

Kaely McDevitt (20:24):

Yeah, it's true. So they bring those tiny ones in their purses sometimes ,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (20:29):

Yes. Right, because we know, you know, you got to have the peak salt and lots of it. So anyway, I just wanted to to add that that's it for everyone but go ahead with calcium.

Kaely McDevitt (20:39):

Yeah, I'm glad you added that. The salt, the salt thing just needs to get out for sure. But the cool thing about minerals in particular is that you can do a lot of experimentation with this easily with things that are in your house and feel the difference in your body in a pretty short period of time. Which is why it became so fun to focus on minerals because in the world of hormone health, as you know, things typically don't resolve overnight. We usually need like 90 days of an intervention before we have huge shifts in in cycle related symptoms. But minerals you can feel that change pretty quickly. So if you're listening and you're curious, I would just dabble a little bit in what we're talking about and note how that feels. So we hit sodium and potassium calcium. Mm-Hmm I think gets a decent amount of airtime just primarily about like bone health, especially for women.

Kaely McDevitt (21:27):

But it does a couple other cool things for us too. So it is very calming to the nervous system. So when we lack calcium we tend to hang out in that sympathetic fight or flight state more often and struggle to get out of it. So that might feel like poor sleep racing thoughts or minds just feeling really amped up and kind of anxious and that state further depletes minerals. So calcium is one of the ways we break that cycle and actually create some flexibility in the nervous system to go back to that parasympathetic or rest and digest state. So much like sodium, I love calcium from food forms the best more than a calcium supplement. 'cause Again we've got co-factors that we don't even yet fully understand and probably never will in science that really help with the way that we move and use calcium in the body.

Kaely McDevitt (22:13):

That it goes where it belongs in the bones and teeth and stays out of things like circulation and soft tissue. And then magnesium is the other piece of that kind of soothing mineral puzzle. So we've got sodium and potassium being more energizing calcium and magnesium being more soothing and calming to the nervous system like you already mentioned. I mean magnesium's involved in literally hundreds of reactions in the body. We actually can't even recognize an A TP molecule without magnesium attached to it. So the energy conundrum is a big magnesium situation. Most cycle related symptoms improve with some supportive magnesium. So I'd be thinking about potentially a magnesium supplement because as much as I love food as our first line of defense, it's really difficult to get a therapeutic dose of magnesium through the diet. We could do Epsom salt baths if you don't have time for a full bath, you can do an Epsom salt foot soak, which is like a nice hack I like to do in a busy workday and still absorb that transdermally. There are a lot of topical magnesium sprays and lotions that you can leverage too. I think this is the mineral that when we're on vacation, especially if you're in the ocean and you just like feel so good and you sleep like a baby, it's probably 'cause of that

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (23:21):

, yes sunshine, sand, you know, the ionized air and the salt in the water, it's the best. So you know, this is where I think people get a little intimidated by minerals because one, there are so many two, there's so many forms of each different type three, how do there now people are wondering, well how do I get this Kaely, how much do I need and how much, how do I get it into my body? Right? A lot of us want the convenience of prepared foods we don't wanna cook. I was amazed particularly in Dubai and the UAE and in England, how the proportion of prepared foods in the grocery store compared to America where it's more you have to put it together and cook. I was astounded in London, it was, I'd say three quarters of supermarket was all already prepared foods and similar in Dubai. So there's the idea of convenience. So I know that's a lot of topics I'm throwing at you, but there are several different types. Let's take magnesium for instance. So you said mentioned take a supplement, magnesium citrate, magnesium chiate, magnesium malate, magnesium three innate, you know, how do people even begin to know what to do

Kaely McDevitt (24:40):

Here? I know, I really empathize with this. There's just, there are too many options for things these days, which is a blessing and a curse and we get kind of stuck in the middle In my experience best tolerance and absorption and price has come from magnesium glycinate really well absorbed, generally well tolerated, does not have the bowel loosening impact that like a magnesium oxide or citrate would have because it is better absorbed. Three and eight is another good form as well that I think is generally well tolerated. It tends to be a little bit more expensive than glycinate and I'm a big fan of like the lowest effective dose of things. I don't need to get the creme de la creme if the second step down does the same work for me. So I think that's a pretty good one to start with to trial that I find most people tolerate well if you are totally brand new to minerals, you've never taken a magnesium supplement before, then I would actually even start more simply than that and do like an Epsom salt bath or foot soak or a topical spray or lotion because we're getting to bypass the digestive tract when we do a skin transdermal delivery of magnesium so we can avoid any potential bowel disturbances.

Kaely McDevitt (25:47):

It tends to be a little bit more gentle than a supplemental form. And I would also say too that everything works best in tandem. So I wouldn't get hyper-focused on just magnesium. I would also be bringing in, you know, a little good pinch of salt in your day and your water on your food. And then just keeping in mind those potassium rich foods. And this is the main reason why we like to start with those foundational minerals, those first four before we get any further on in somebody's report because it does get so overwhelming so quickly. And if we can hone in on those first four, everything else tends to fall into place. It becomes much easier to address some of those secondary and tertiary minerals. But we always start with those first four for about a month first get some, you know, good momentum going, some quick wins in terms of symptom changes and then we can get more complex from there.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (26:35):

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And as you were speaking when I was traveling one store I went to for Epsom salts also had pink Himalayan salt in a big bag for a bath soak and they had did sea salt and so I got one bag of each including the Epsom salts and I really tried to notice what was the difference I felt after taking a bath with each of these and by far I felt the best with the pink Himalayan salt and I think it's because of all these, the panel of contents of minerals, the panel of of minerals that were in there. Totally. And then where would you go next from the foundational minerals?

Kaely McDevitt (27:14):

Yeah, so I would spend about a month kind of playing around with that, bringing some of those foods into your diet, noticing how you feel. And then when we look at HTMA testing some of the next kind of orders of operation I guess if we're using a math term for what we would address next. We love to look at what's happening with copper and its relationship with iron and zinc, particularly for women. So copper is a really big deal for the way that we handle and move iron around the body. That's a goldilock situation as most things are. We want enough but not too much. We want enough so we can make really healthy red blood cells that carry oxygen well. And copper's also big for our connective tissue so our collagen cross linking and so healthy skin, hair and nails And then if you've been pregnant or had babies, we pass a lot of copper on to babies during the third trimester.

Kaely McDevitt (28:04):

It's big for developing new vasculature and healthy connective tissue for baby as well. So we do see abnormalities in copper quite a bit in women to add a layer of complication to that. Things like birth control, particularly copper IUDs can start to skew that copper balance with zinc and iron. So we would look at that next mm-Hmm and that varies so much from person to person. I'm not seeing like a flat, everybody in this season of life is deficient or everybody in this season of life has excessive amounts. But we would be looking at that and workshopping that accordingly. Meaning we'd look at the diet to make sure that there were good copper and zinc rich food sources. We'd make sure that we had enough co-factors to help the way that we balance and move things like copper and iron. So things like vitamin C and vitamin A come into play with that conversation and then just making sure that they can move and access iron well and that it's not being stored in tissues. Those would be our next three that we'd look at.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (28:59):

Right. And I do just wanna reiterate the copper and iron are both kind of these Goldilocks minerals. You do not want too much. So if you're kind of, oh, if it's good for me more is better. Do not do that with your iron and your copper because you can totally overload yourself. And then these are heavy metal, they become heavy metal toxic in your body and I've seen that with both of these minerals. So don't do that. So test, I'm always like test don't guess. Yes, test don't guess. Yeah. Amen. And so amen. It's true here, right?

Kaely McDevitt (29:35):

Amen. Yeah, especially with those. Yeah. Which is why I don't like to give out any recommendations related to copper and iron for someone to try. 'cause I just don't know enough about you or what your testing results look like or history to make a safe recommendation there. But that would be the next area of investigation for sure.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (29:50):

Right. And what you will see is that a lot of the over counter, you can buy copper and iron separately, but a lot of the multi women's vitamins that are over the counter will not include iron and copper specifically because of the potential to over overlap load for nutritional supplements tend to be a very litigious area so they just steer clear of it. But this is where some of the higher level prescriber prescribed are available nutraceuticals that you can only get through a healthcare practitioner have versions. Usually for women they'll have a multivitamin mineral with copper and without copper with iron, without iron because they're assuming that you're getting tested in, you're being appropriately followed and counseled. That's how delicate it is with these. And what are your thoughts about, you mentioned earlier you prefer people to get these minerals from their diet, from food dietary sources rather than supplements. Can you explain why that is and how successful people should expect to be with manipulation of their diet? To increase their mineral status? Yeah. Versus taking supplements. Mm-Hmm.

Kaely McDevitt (31:03):

. Yeah, it's tough like we talked about with the way that the soil and therefore our food supply is different in terms of nutritional value today it takes a very concerted effort to do this through the diet and I've yet to be able to be completely void of, of supplementation to really accomplish this. But I do think it's important that we start with food because food is brilliantly designed by nature to have minerals and vitamins in ratios that really support utilization and absorption. So for example, with our kind of like copper conversation, the relationship between copper and zinc is a really important one in the body. And foods that have copper always come with a little bit of zinc and vice versa. So we've got good checks and balances in place with food where we're not likely to overdo something. And we have a whole bunch of non-identified by science factors in whole foods that I think really benefit the whole human being.

Kaely McDevitt (31:56):

A lot of our antioxidants and polyphenols and things that are not nutritive but do influence the health of the of the host. So I think looking at, again, bringing in some good fresh fruits and vegetables as mineral rich powerhouses, good broths, whether it's a bone broth or a vegetable broth is a great mineral rich food to bring in those good quality unrefined salts are great to bring in quality dairy if you to tolerate that for some of the calcium, those things would be great foundational elements to build that diet. And then we can supplement beyond there if there are gaps to fill based on your testing, your stressors, your story. But I think we're remiss if we wanna take, you know, three handfuls of capsules every morning and then not have to care about the food that we eat. It just doesn't play out the same .

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (32:44):

Yeah. And you know there's something that food has that by the time they crunch down these nutrients into a vitamin capsule for you that's the prana or the chi, the life force in the plant. And like you mentioned earlier, everything exists in nature in a form with a life force that's meant to nourish us. So what are we doing if we're only taking supplements and we're only, we're not eating food. So just to learn story. So someone who I respect very much in the business world who I was working with and he had a bit of a weight problem and I hadn't seen him for a while and then all of a sudden I saw him and he's telling me that he's gone to this diet that he, and he's looking great, right? Really tram lowered his body fat, muscular. So I asked him, what are you doing? He said, oh I changed my diet. So he's using making protein powder pancakes in the morning and having like, you know, artificial sweetener syrup for breakfast and he's basically not eating real food all day long but he's cutting his calories and he's like, I feel great. And inside I'm like, that's not gonna last for an hour. . No this is not getting that. So talk, talk about those intangibles and food and real food that are so important.

Kaely McDevitt (34:02):

Yeah, I think there's so much more to nourishment than just like the actual food and the composition of it. Like carbs, proteins and fats. We get real focused on the composition of food in the weight loss space and miss the nourishment that comes from eating something that you enjoy that you took time to prepare, that you put love and intention into as you prepared it. Or maybe put love and intention or gratitude into it right before you consumed it. Maybe this is a family recipe, this is something that's culturally relevant to you. There's so much more nourishment we get from that than something that's been packaged, processed, manipulated, and is so far removed from that initial version of the food. A good example of that would be like a whole apple being as close to it as it exists in nature as possible versus apple sauce, apple flavored candy, you know, at the far end where we've gotten really far removed.

Kaely McDevitt (34:55):

So we just get more nutrition on the closer to the natural form as possible. And when we contrast that with really processed foods, which they normally have to go back in and add some nutrients to make it comparable, the form is different. So we have synthetic lab produced vitamins and minerals in fortified foods and a lot of supplements. There are some great supplements out there that are not synthetic forms, which would be a helpful thing to look at. But what exists in nature is the form that your body is most easily recognizing, most easily absorbing and using. So there's a big difference between like the vitamin C that you get from eating a whole orange or grapefruit than the like refined ascorbic acid you might get in a vitamin C drop very different functions and they come with, you know, that full spectrum of polyphenols and antioxidants in the food form versus that kind of refined extracted supplement.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (35:45):

Right. Thank you so much for, for sharing that. So copper, iron, zinc, co-factors, vitamin C, vitamin A, what would we work on next?

Kaely McDevitt (35:56):

Yeah, so there's a mineral that's kind of further down our chart called boron that does not ever really get talked about. It's not like this fun sexy nutrient that you're gonna see a lot of posts about, but boron really helps with the way that we retain potassium and magnesium. So potassium and magnesium are supposed to mostly be inside the cell and they dip outside of the cell during seasons of stress. So that's one of the first cellular changes when we see stress hormones enter the system is magnesium and potassium leave the cell. That's why we can sometimes see them actually shoot up on a hair test if we catch this acute stress picture. But anywho, boron helps with the retention of potassium and magnesium, which is a big way to bolster our tolerance or resilience to stress. We talk a lot about stress and burnout with our clients and I know that in and of itself can become overwhelming because we can't like quit our jobs, leave our families and typically can't just take a sabbatical tomorrow if we need it.

Kaely McDevitt (36:56):

And so the goal is not this stress-free life where we have just a whole day of meditation and yoga unless of course that's an option for you, which is amazing. But our goal is to build that resilience and retaining our potassium and magnesium is a big part of that and boron is a piece of that puzzle. It does have some function with the iron copper balance too and even the way that we make sure that calcium stays in the bones and teeth. So it is a kinda an unsung hero in the mineral world that we definitely look at with our clients on testing and can provide support if needed. A couple easy ways to provide some boron support if you wanna go food, we're actually looking at prunes and prune juice being a good boron source. Yay. Which is funny. easy, right? If we wanna supplement form that can come from you know, drops or capsules.

Kaely McDevitt (37:42):

It's usually just like a plain boron supplement or like you mentioned a trace minerals dropper. A lot of the trace mineral formulations that are out there have boron in the mix because it is the full constellation of macro minerals and trace minerals. So there's easy ways to do that. Then a lot of the like mineral baths, so we talked about Epsom salts, we talked about Himalayan pink salt being in the bath. You can even put like food grade borax that we would use as like a cleaning aid into a bath and actually get boron from that absorbed through the skin. So there's a couple of different options for some boron support

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:17):

Now I have never heard that. What food grade Bax. MM-Hmm and put it in your bath. Where do you even get that

Kaely McDevitt (38:25):

On Amazon? So it's usually a cleaning supply, right? It's what people add to their laundry to boost the effectiveness of their detergent. But you can absorb that in a bath. And so we've experimented with this a lot because we do so much HTMA testing with our clients and we've had some clients that really struggle to move the needle with the potassium and magnesium stuff. We'll do retest and it's just not budging. And so we started bringing in where we sprinkle in a little bit of borax in a foot bath or as part of like their bigger mineral detox full bath and they sleep amazing that night and then their mineral retest actually look better. So it has stuck with me it as like a very low cost mineral added .

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:03):

I'm gonna have to try that and I will get back to you on what please do. . I never heard of that. That's amazing. Yeah, there are many, many minerals we can't possibly go through all of them during this this show and teach you about all of them. You all obviously hear that Kaelyn knows what she's talking about. I love that you test and don't guess I, I'm such an advocate for that with everything. But I do wanna touch on, you talked a little bit about burnout and it's the beginning of the year. A lot of people are like, oh my gosh, January of a new year I didn't do all the things I wanted to do last year and now I have new things I wanna do and how am I possibly gonna get them done? Especially because my hormones are out of whack.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:47):

I don't feel good, I don't have good energy. You shared this quote with me before we started recording from some bylaw of Elizabeth Gilbert that is you have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings. Which that's, I I love so many quotes of her. She just has a beautiful facility with crafting sentences and paragraphs and storytelling stories and I think that this speaks to kind of the the burnout issue. So can you talk a little bit about, I know it's a lot I'm asking you to do, but this quote and how it relates to burnout and where we are kind of at a new year, 2024 and there's a lot going on on this planet, right? There's, I think I heard in one news story and you may not hear about this every day, there are a hundred wars going on on our planet right now and we're in this kind of insanity where we're overwrought with technology and now here comes AI and you guys listen and you know, you know the stressors that you've got. I'm not gonna stress you out by listing them , but where does a woman even begin and how does she begin to deal with her transitions and prevent or reverse her burnout and manifest her own blessings? Yeah,

Kaely McDevitt (41:07):

I'm glad you brought this up because I think this is like, this is the root I think of most hormone health issues is this like chronic state of stress and then on the other end of that being burnout. And it's tough because we're living in a time where we have access to limitless information and exposure to everything that's happening around the world. And we also have like pretty extreme pressures on our personal and professional lives and maybe there's families in the mix with that too. There's just a lot on the plate and I think we also tend to get almost addicted to the way stress hormones feel in the system. It starts to become a bit of our personality and I'm like fully calling myself out a few years ago with this, but we love the feeling of being that like yes person, we just say yes, we take it all on.

Kaely McDevitt (41:53):

We are the one that shows up for everybody we do the most and our own cup is left on the back burner and it's very, very empty. So a way that we like to talk about this with our clients and I think what ties us back to that quote is you have to decide for yourself what that vision of your life looks like. And in order to let go of the stress and burnout picture, there's often a like renewing your identity or letting go of things that don't fit anymore. So what I mean by that is if we want to not live in this burnout state, we have to figure out who we are. If we're not the person that says yes to everybody and no to ourselves, who are we in that room? If we're not the people pleaser that derives our worth from what we do for others only And that's a pretty uncomfortable piece of work.

Kaely McDevitt (42:37):

But I think it's the only way out of this because like she said in that quote, you know you have to relentlessly participate in creating that vision for your manifestation. So what do you want life to look like? How do you wanna feel in your body? How do you wanna show up in the room? And I don't think we have enough examples of women that are really grounded in who they are that aren't burning the candles at both ends that know their worth comes from who they are, not just what they do. And I think if more of us awake to that vision and really resonate with that being the image, we can start to rearrange our life and our priorities and even our personality to support it so that we don't burn through our minerals like a mad woman every single day and have to play catch up so that our sex hormones can actually thrive because we're not in an environment of stress hormones all the time. And so that when we do go through perimenopause and into menopause, it's not such a rocky road because our adrenals aren't just burnt out and in the gutter already. So I think I maybe created more questions than answering any, but I think it's just this big conversation of who am I if I'm not burnt out? Who like who is that person? But

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (43:39):

It's such an important conversation to have because so many women are suffering with hormone problems, they're also suffering with micronutrient deficiencies, whether it's mineral, vitamin, other nutrients and they're running around looking for answers. I just need my estrogen fixed, I just need my magnesium fixed. But like you said at the beginning, this gets to the root. The root is that we're running around trying to live and create our worth by everyone else's expectations being the best. And you know the epidemic of busyness, particularly in some of the countries that I visited, it's in the nth degree, it's really at an insane level. And what was so beautiful is is visiting some of the less developed countries where it's more of a simple existence. Connection is way bigger. You would see people walking to work together in groups of women or groups of men and talking, you know, in groups and you know, everybody wasn't on their phone.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (44:43):

Oh my gosh, in every country I've been to that's considered a progressive country. Nobody's looking at each other, nobody's talking. Everyone's got their face in their phone and they're doing, doing, doing. And so I think having these larger questions, which we're gonna be having more of on the podcast this year, I would love to have you on 'cause it sounds like you've grappled with some of this really talking about like this quote you shared from Fitch, not Han, which I love The miracle is to walk on the green earth telling deeply in the present moment, right? Are we doing that ? And that really gets to, to the crux of the issue. So before we wrap up, do you wanna talk a little bit about how you're, you've changed your life and your way of being in the world to dwell deeply in the present moment?

Kaely McDevitt (45:33):

Sure. And I wanna be clear that this is an ongoing and ever evolving practice. . I don't think you , I don't think you just like arrive there and that's, that's the end of the work. But as a business owner and working in like the health field that I know you can relate to, it's really easy to feel like your worth comes from what you give to everyone around you. And that the more you do, the better things get in your life. And I was basically just burning myself out trying to do work that I ultimately love. So I had to reevaluate that because when I do my own tests I was getting called out left and right about things being out of whack because I wasn't living in an alignment with what it takes to have balanced hormones and balanced minerals. So I had to really consider the pace and how I structured my days and create opportunities to really focus on being present and being outside and off of screens and just being instead of focusing on the doing so much.

Kaely McDevitt (46:27):

So having a morning where I don't check my emails or social media for like the first hour of the day. Totally life changing for me because I get to pour into myself before I let my energy go out into the world getting outside. We have chickens, which was a really fun thing for me 'cause I have to go out there in the morning and do stuff with them. So get to be out there. Mm-Hmm seeing the sun and trying to do that in the middle of the workday made a big difference. And I think at the end of the day, one of the like thought processes that changed it so much for me was remembering like you're the main character of your life. Like you gotta make decisions as the main character, not the support role. We're always doing things for other people and for whatever reason I wanted to share that 'cause it really made things click with me where I was not choosing things as like main character of my life. I was letting circumstances kind of steamroll me, but you steer this ship, you create this vision, this manifestation that you're working towards. So what do you want it to look like and how can you own the responsibility for when it doesn't look that way? So mostly just called myself out a lot and and continually work on that each day. .

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (47:33):

Yeah, I think it is a work in progress for everyone, but I find that as women share more about this and talk about strategies they find things they've done, how they do it and make it work for them, it gives permission for others to do, do things that are off the beaten path and and create their own map to their own sanity. The manifestation of their own blessings, their own ideal health. And so thank you much so much for sharing the path that you're forging and how you're helping other women. I think it's been a great value. And please share with everyone where they can connect with you online.

Kaely McDevitt (48:12):

Sure, yeah, you can find me mostly on Instagram. I don't have the bandwidth for multiple social media platforms, so I'm on social media and it's just at Kaely Rd on Instagram. My website is the same. So you'll find more education like the stuff we discussed and then ways that we can help if, if you need help on that

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (48:30):

Journey. Thank you so much Kaely. Thanks for being here. Thank you for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription. I hope you are inspired to work on manifesting your own blessing, starting with your minerals 'cause that will help your hormones. Reach out to me on social media and let me know what you're doing and how it's working out. I'm gonna try that thing we talked about , I'll let you know on social media how that works out and I hope to see you again next week for another episode. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (49:00):

Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

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