Poop. It’s something we all do, some more frequently than others, but it’s not something we often talk about. Getting into the nitty-gritty of your daily dooty can help diagnose all sorts of health issues, and that’s just what our guest, Dr. Marisol Teijeiro does.
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Dr. Marisol is a qualified naturopathic physician who specializes in lifting the lid on poop. Her passion for cleansing the gut started from an early age when her and her mother would examine their weekly movements to try to see what was up with their health. Now known as the Queen of Thrones, Dr. Marisol helps women diagnose and treat health issues and tame menopausal symptoms by looking at their poop.
Find out exactly what Dr. Marisol’s 11 golden nuggets are and how they relate to your gut, mental, and spiritual health. You’ll also learn how much you should be pooping every day (hint: probably more than you think) and why you should be aiming for movements that don’t smell and leave behind no mess. And lastly, you’ll find out how menopause affects your bowel health and why castor oil becomes such an important supplement as you age.
Do you have a bowel movement every day? Do you know what the color of your poop can indicate? How do you connect your gut health to your spiritual health?
In This Episode:
- What your poop and Dr. Marisol’s “11 golden nuggets” are really telling you
- How much you should be pooping and how many bowel movements you should be having a day -- yes, a day
- How changing your lifestyle can help you achieve your dreams
- What “hyper wiping” is and why you should strive to “wipe once and wipe clean”
- What the perfect poop is: it shouldn’t smell, float, or leave any mess
- How the color of your poop indicates possible health issues
- How menopause affects your poop and what you can do to mitigate those effects
- Why you should increase castor oil in your diet to improve your gut health
Subscribe to Couch Talk w/ Dr. Anna Cabeca on Youtube
Quotes:
“If you’re constipated, you feel bloated, your pants don’t fit, you feel just horrible: foggy brains, you feel off/sick, and then when you’re running to the bathroom all the time, you’re scared to have a social life because first thing you do when you go somewhere new is to scope out the bathroom - because heaven forbid you have an accident.” (4:26)
“I cannot get a patient healthy if they are not having regular brown banana bowel movements.” (7:11)
“The digestive tract is like Toronto’s Union Station: a central hub where everything happens.” (12:51)
Links
Find Dr. Marisol Online
Follow Dr. Marisol on Facebook | Instagram
Learn more about Castor Oil Packs
Full Episode Transcript
Dr. Anna Cabeca
Hello everyone Dr. Anna Cabeca here for episode 36 of Couch Talk and today we're going to talk about some pretty poopy stuff. Or, as my guest today, who is Dr. Marisol Teijero, is going to talk about is how we're going to flip the lid on poop.
So I want to bring Marisol on. I’m just super excited to have you here, Marisol and I’m excited to talk about this topic that no one likes to talk about. There is a lid on this topic.
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
That's right. I like to take that lid off. And let's get real about what really matters, right? Which is our poo! Because we know it. We think about it all the time. Especially for those people out there - those women who are constipated or going to the bathroom too many times or bloated. We all know that something's wrong with what's going on the toilet.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
It's an issue that we certainly don't want to talk about. But it's important. We talk about it all the time when we have our babies. “Well, how many bowel movements today? What's going on?” We're so in tune that it makes for a cranky baby If there's something wrong with their bowel movements.
I'm pleased to introduce you, Marisol, to my audience. Dr. Marisol is a naturopathic physician. She's a world leader and renowned for her passion for cleansing the gut. So not only because she has a degree on the wall, but more so because she's experienced feeling kind of poopy herself and figured out this key aspect of a hierarchy to get healthy.
She has been crowned the Queen of Thrones and, for over 15 years she has trained and educated healthcare professionals and helped thousands of patients transition to owning their throne, essentially. As she likes to say “from shit show to owning their throne.”
She also has a clinical practice in Canada called Sanas Health, and she does a tremendous amount of work in cleansing and healing. She has this beautiful vibrancy and, as you can see already, sense of humor and joy that exudes from her that we're so happy to share with all of you today.
Because to make a difficult topic really easy, fun, and digestible now. We've got a lot to talk about.
How important digestion is, how important these bowel movements are, and how critical that is to optimal health, to detoxification, to help the hormones, to improving hot flashes, skin health, immune health, etc... the list gets on. So Marisol, share with our audience a little bit about your story about how you got to this title.
Who is Dr. Marisol Teijeiro?
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
It's always about trial and error and having accidents, right? Like, that's really what it is. And for me, it was early on when I was younger. I grew up in a Spanish family and I was immigrated to Canada. We were extremely poor, had no money, and ate very poorly.
So your diet was based on high carbohydrates, rice -- like I look back now and I'm like, “oh, Lord, how could I have been eating that?” Rice, potatoes, and bread where a staple at every single meal. So I was overweight. My mother was overweight, my sister was overweight, my father was overweight, we were all overweight.
And my mother would go to the bathroom, maybe one time a week, or one to two times per week. And I was the same. I was following along that same trajectory when I was younger. And it was normal, right? Because that's just what was happening in our family. And we didn't know any better.
But one thing my, my mother's my mother would always be like, let's look in the toilet bowl after you go to the bathroom. So she was always call us in or her come in when we were going to the bathroom to see what we produced.
I started becoming aware of poop. Then as I got older and things started happening,I became educated.
Oprah was one of my idols, I would love watching The Oprah Show. I remember one time watching when Dr. Oz first came on board. I don't know if you remember that episode. But Dr. Oz became famous because of his whole explanation of poop.
And for those people out there who watched Oprah and Dr. Oz, to me, that day changed my life. Because here I was, this young adult, who from constipation, transitioned over to having an irritable bowel, then switching back and forth between diarrhea, bloating, then not going to the bathroom. It was just this lifestyle of being dependent on what was going on in the bathroom.
I know so many of the listeners out there have been there, done that, or are doing this now. It's such a tough place to be at because if you're constipated, you feel bloated, your pants don't fit, you just feel horrible, foggy brain, you feel off and sick. Then when you're running to the bathroom all the time, you're scared to have a social life. The first thing you do when you go somewhere new is to scope out where the bathroom is because Heaven forbid you have an accident, right?
So it's no way to live and it felt like I was being betrayed by my own flesh and blood. My body and my most natural function that I learned how to control when I was two years old, being potty trained. I can't do anything about it now in my 20s and 30s.
It took me down this path to become more aware of my bowels and what was happening. I fixed my lifestyle, I lost weight, and I became a beauty queen. I was doing everything right: I was taking the supplements, I was eating the right diet, and I was exercising but I still was having problems. I didn't get quite what it was.
I became a naturopath because I figured if people can’t help me, I'm going to go help myself and figure it out. And that's what took me down the pathway of learning how to fix my irritable bowel.
From there, I learned some amazing tools and tips which I'll teach everyone today. Then I started really collecting data on what our poos were telling me. I started realizing that, over my 10 years of clinical practice, the poos are telling me more than the questions I would ask patients about what they've observed in the toilet. They were telling me more than even the average lab tests would tell me!
I would be able to fix and treat patients by assessing their stools and what they said about their stools and then helping them to fix it. Their symptoms would go away. I could collaborate it with labs and I could see everything: from nutrient deficiencies to problems with hormonal systems, did they have a high thyroid, a low thyroid, did they have estrogen dominance, or progesterone deficiency? I could see it all just from the 11 Golden Nuggets that tell us about your stools.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
I've got some things to talk and emphasize here.
One of the things you said was that you had bowel movements growing up once to twice a week, and, for you, that was your normal. That was something I recognized early on in my client patient population and working with them that I would ask, “Are you constipated?”
“Oh, no!”
I'm like, “Well, how many bowel movements do you have a day?”
And they're like, “A day?! One a week or two a week!”
The concept wasn't there because that's our normal. Once you see that shift, “Oh my God, I'm having a bowel movement every day. I didn't think it was possible! I’ve been constipated for 30 years. What a difference this makes.”
I cannot get a patient better if they're not having regular, healthy, brown banana bowel movements.
But I've got to digress because so beauty queen?! Tell me about that!
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
I was asked to go into a pageant. It was at the time when I was younger, I actually quit dancing. When I was a child, people would ask me what I wanted to be. I would say two things: I wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to be Liza Minnelli.
Because I was overweight, though, that ended up crushing my dream. Because of how my body was working, it crushed my dream. My dance teacher wouldn't put me into the Excellence Dance Troupe so I wasn't able to compete and to do all the things that all the other kids were doing.
So I quit dancing, and with that, my dream got crushed. In my team, someone had asked me if I wanted to enter the Miss Ontario, Miss Sudbury, and then go into the Miss Canada pageant. I was kind of shocked that they asked me because I didn't really believe in myself at all because of what happened.
But I thought that this is the way I can learn and I can win the talent portion of the beauty pageant. So I entered, I won, I didn't end up winning the talent portion... I ended up winning the pageant. That took me on a trajectory of actually rebuilding my confidence. That helped me with working through my irritable bowel, because I started focusing more on eating better, being a better person, and realizing that my lifestyle is part of being able to achieve my dreams.
It was just part of what made me who I am today.
The funny thing is that now in my career, I truly am that doctor and Liza Minnelli. I spend my time doctoring and teaching but I’m also on stage and on podcasts, with amazing doctors like yourself. I get to spread my word and my wings on a different level.
I'm a true queen. I owned that throne. And I took on Queen of the Throne.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
I love it. You absolutely are. You know, it's so funny, because you're saying this. I'm sure many people in the audience are relating to having their dreams crushed as a child. Like, just that sense of “Oh, well, you can't do this.” I'm laughing with you because I was 6 saying I want to be a doctor, a ballerina, and a nun.
I became a doctor by default. I was kicked out of ballet, I was too heavy to go up on toe shoes. There was no way that I was going to be a dancer. And well the nun… anyway!
Soul Connections in the Gut
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
That story was the fundamental thing that changed my life. At that point in time, I thought nothing of myself. Nothing. I thought I was dirt, I was trash. But then I realized I had the power! I wasn't going to let the way that I was eating or what I was doing dictate my dreams, or anyone else to take my dreams.
I took it, I learned, and I evolved.
That’s what I hope for everyone listening out there: for them to grab whatever points in their life they had that crush them and realize that that's their turning point to change.
That if they start looking at their digestion and looking at their bowel movements, that is all the tools that they need to really start to work and improve their body.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
That illustrates something I always like to say, and I coach my Magic Menopause group online with this: “My soul image takes precedence over my self image, my others image and my body image.” Connecting to that soul image and recognizing that anything else is lies because our spiritual body, or spiritual connection, is connected to God and the Universe. We are that beautiful, precious energy spirit. Everything else is a lie.
It’s a retraining. My soul image is not what I'm criticizing myself for today.
My soul image is just me and spirit. That was a transition point that helped me in my life.
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
I wouldn’t have said a doctor and Liza Minnelli but, when you’re a child, your spirit is talking. I feel that I'm in the manifestation of my true spirit, because everything I do is guided and the amount of signs that I see is incredible.
I know that I'm on exactly the right path where I need to be and this is my mission. This is what I was brought to the earth to do: to teach people how to regulate such an important part of their body.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
There’s more to that mission than you can even imagine, I'm sure.
At this point, I would tell our audience that I met you just a few months ago at a MindShare JD Virgins event in California. I met you through a beautiful mutual friend of ours, Magdalena Lackey, and she raved about you and I thought “Woah, I have to meet this girl!” You did a five minute presentation on stage, rhyming and beautifully illustrative performance. We're sitting there otherwise, listening to some excellent speaking, but not necessarily joyful. Yours was close to a musical and I thought “I have to interview her!” so I’m glad we connected today.
The other thing you said is about the hormone functions: how you're looking at that aspect of balance and what the stool is telling us. So you're going to tell us about that. I'm looking forward to that.
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
People think that the gut is just about digestion, that it's a standalone and no big deal. They think “If I'm having problems, it’s my hormones, and I don't have problems with my guts, so they're not connected.”
But the reality is that the gut, the digestive system is a central hub like [Toronto’s] Union Station where everything happens. And, actually, all the regulatory systems: your hormonal system, your nervous system, what dictates anxiety and depression, your immune system, what protects you from the invaders, they all interconnect within the gut.
So if your gut isn't right, your hormonal system won’t be right, your nervous system won’t be right, and your immune system won’t be right.
The hormones are higher in the gut than they are actually in the tissues. Same goes for all for the nervous system and the immune system. Our gut is such a center of our strength and our lives that we need to do whatever we can to make that our total foundation and our core. How we digest isn't just about how we digest food, it's how we digest our lives. Because when you're not digesting well, it's because you're having problems digesting and swallowing life.
It's such an important aspect and if we don't address it, we will allow it to escape and we’ll be working at fixing our hormones.
But we can't fix them because our gut is feeling everything. We have to go to our soul, who we really are, to the person that we are, our true being.
The expression gut feelings is because our gut feels everything, they are our center of intuition and it's our center of connection. When our gut is off, we are off.
Anxiety predominates for people when they have an irritable bowel syndrome because these people have the ability to get more connected, are more in tune, and are more intuitive than most other people. They just don't know how to direct it in the proper way.
It's fascinating how the gut really is our center of our universe. It's a matter of learning how to tune in, how to understand what it's saying, how to understand the gut feelings that we're getting into, and go with them because those are the expressions of our soul.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
Taking that root cause and the root energy of the concept of digestion:
“How do I digest life? How to digest this feeling that I'm having? How do I digest the situation that I'm in?”
I love that broadening and that physiology and energy are interconnected.
11 Golden Nuggets
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
There are 11 gold nuggets but I'm not going to say all them.
I'm going to give everyone the most important ones, the ones that I start with, because those are the most digestible and easy to understand.
Hyper Wiping
The one I love talking about is hyper wiping.
I trained all my patients from the first visit and all the people on my online platform, too. The first thing that we start to train them on is the 11 golden nuggets, because they need to know these things in order to know what to do best and if I'm the best person to serve them. Because sometimes their stools may be the problem, but really, they need a lot of hormonal support. So I would refer them over to you, depending on what stage of their life they're at.
Hyper wiping is super important because we should actually be wiping once and wiped clean. I guarantee you that the majority of people out there wipe 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 times and it's still sticky, they use wet wipes and do anything they can to clean the area.
If you think about it like this: if you have a dog, the dog goes outside daily to go to the bathroom, you never wipe the dog’s bum because you don't need to. The dog is eating food that's right for him and it has a good digestive capacity.
Another way to look at it is indigenous cultures. Indigenous cultures are living in an indigenous environment to them. It's healthy, they eat indigenous food, they're not having McDonald's, other fast foods, the over processed foods that we may be having in our sad, standard American diet, and they basically squat, they pop, and they walk away. Because for them, it's a completely different scenario. There's no wiping needed, no wiping involved.
Here we are in our North American lives, or wherever we are in the world, and we're hyper wiping.
Why do we Hyper Wipe?
That's a big, huge sign of Dysbiosis, which means that there's bad bacteria overgrowth in the gut. You might have things like yeast, parasites, or just overall bad bacteria.
I call the bad bacteria “con-biotics” because they're like the con artists of the bacterial world and overtake the activity of the probiotics, the good bacteria that we want and so many of us are taking, and don't allow the probiotics to work properly.
So that's one big sign.
The other signs are that there's inflammation mucus in the intestine or it can also be assigned a food sensitivities. That’s when there's some foods that you're eating that are creating inflammation, that irritation, and the mucus problem in your gut.
That's one of my first ones that I talk with patients, and it’s always the first thing they come back on follow up visits to say, “I'm not hyper wiping anymore.”
It's a matter of identifying different foods, trying to watch what you're eating, that you're not eating mucus forming foods, and then it's a clear no brainer to fix it.
The Size of Your Poo
I always tell people to lift up their left arm and measure from wrist to your elbow. That’s actually the length of your lower descending colon. That's where your food, fiber, and fluids over a 24 hour period have accumulated.
That 24 hour period is what should be coming out of your body every single day.
It can be in one denomination. You can have about one 12 incher or you can separate different denominations. You can have it in two big brown bananas, or you can have one really big brown banana, or you can have three of them. But as long as you're getting that amount out of your body, you're having an excellent transit time and a sufficient amount of stool coming out.
If you're not, that's a big key sign for hormonal problems and for low thyroid. You tend to be more constipated when you have a low thyroid and you tend to go less to the bathroom when you have a low thyroid.
It can also be a sign of estrogen dominance and low progesterone, because progesterone is required to have good bowel movements. Those are two really big signs of slow transit time.
The other thing could be that you just have bad gut tone and that you need to be retrained. You're likely more in a stress state than in the relaxed state for having bowel movements.
Those are two huge golden nuggets that I love to talk about. They're probably two of the most important ones.
The Perfect Poop
Dr. Anna Cabeca
Now, I think that just gives us an idea. Describe the perfect poop.
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
The perfect poop is simply like this:
- You have a sudden urge to purge.
- You want to go to the bathroom and you position for success.
- You take a deep breath…
-
In zero to 65 and 3.5, you're done. You reach the finish line.
That's it.
The poo came out rapidly, you didn't even realize it came out of you, but you suddenly have a sensation of relief.
- Then you wipe and there's absolutely nothing on the piece of toilet paper.
- You stand up, look at the toilet, and it's basically slid down the toilet drain. It left absolutely no stain. No skid marks, no plop marks, no smackle all over the toilet, none of that. It completely went down the drain.
- There is no smell. The lack of smell is important. Too much of a smell is a sign of zinc deficiencies, which is very important for women who have hormonal problems. Zinc is one of those master nutrients that helps with cleansing of hormones, helps with creating thyroid. Therefore smell is indicative of low zinc levels.
-
It should also be very large and it should have sunk, not float. When it sinks, it’s a good sign that you're eating the right amounts of fats and the right amount of fibers, everything's working well there. When it floats, you may have problems with digesting fats. There might also be a bit of an oil slick around the toilet water.
Women, especially white women in their 30s to 55, could have problems with their gallbladder. So if you see this happening in the toilet, it's time to start taking some digestive enzymes that have lipase and bile. These will help to break down the fat a little bit better before you have to go down the route of removing your gallbladder.
So that's a really big sign. If you see anybody that you know and love, women up there, sisters, your friends, your daughters… if their stools are floating, they're having issues with digestion of their fat. So enzymes are good thing to get on right away.
- It flushes, it sinks, and you feel like you feel full on satisfaction. When your stool went down the drain, it was a pure sausage, no food particles sticking out. It didn't break apart on impact, or on flushing. It just went down the drain. It slid down like that little submarine going down the drain. And it's gone. Gone from from view.
- That is what I’ve titled “The Royal Flush.”
Dr. Anna Cabeca
That's awesome.
So many mistakes that we make, right? The straining and the rushing, those aspects are key.
You mentioned so many good things and we'll touch on hormones in a little bit so we'll come back to that. But also the stickiness of the poop. What's going on there?
What’s So Bad About Sticky Poo?
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
It's the same thing like that happens with hyper wiping.
It's an extra degree of a problem because if it's sticking onto the toilet bowl, if you’re having those skid marks, then you know that your inflammation in your gut is severe. It's not just a minor thing. You have to go check out your food sensitivities, because you just have too much mucus and it's really sticking onto the bowl.
If it's only sticky when you wipe, it's really not as severe, but it's time to start doing things. It’s basically a different degree of how bad the inflammation mucus food sensitivities are within your gut.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
I was just regressing thinking of how much the poop tells about you and you use that for your diagnostics. And certainly, in my medical practice, I would say that no evaluation is complete until we've done a digestive stool analysis.
There’s so much you can do just by looking!
So for our listeners, you're going to be looking at your poops, right? You're going to be evaluating them. What are they saying about you? What's your poop saying about you today?
Fifty Shades of Poo
As we continue to look at our poop, what about color? Let's talk about color.
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
Color is fascinating, especially when it comes to hormones as there's a big hormonal interplay with the color.
I know your women are going to love my title of this Golden Nugget, it is the 50 Shades of Poo.
Why 50 shades? Because normal poo is brown colored and there are many different shades of brown that they can be. As long as it is the color brown, like of the ground and of the soil, it can be a dark, dark brown to a lighter brown. Those are all fine, those are good, those are classified as a good healthy 50 shades.
Outside of that is what's not healthy.
When your stools are white or clay color that could be a sign of a blockage in your intestines. That's a medical emergency, you must go to your practitioner right away with that.
If it's very red, and it's red blood, that could be a sign of bleeding in the lower intestine. This is also a medical emergency.
If it's red, because you've eaten beets, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That could be a good thing, so just make sure it's not associated to the food that you're eating.
The other thing is black. A black stool is a sign of bleeding in the stomach and the upper digestive tract. This is another medical emergency.
Green stools are very interesting because they give a lot of juicy information. Especially for people who are transitioning to a healthy lifestyle, a lot of them start doing things like green smoothies, bumping up on all their green vegetables, and they're doing everything green. Then they see their stools come out green and they're like, “oh, no big deal. It's just because I've had those green smoothies, I've been a lot more green vegetables.” But it is a big deal.
When you have green stools, it's actually a sign of low stomach acid. Especially with women who have thyroid problems and as we age and go into menopause, your stomach acid becomes less and less. So those green stools indicate that your stomach acid is getting low.
We need some acid to digest proteins, a lot of awesome foods, to protect our body from incoming bad guy con-biotics that we don't want to come into our system. Low stomach acid is typically correlated to low Zinc status and low B12 status because those two nutrients are required in order to make stomach acid.
Typically those people with green stools are also having smelly farts or smelly stools because they're low in zinc as well.
A big category of patients and people who have this is those who have a Hashimoto Thyroiditis or if they have autoimmune types of thyroid conditions, they'll see this little connection.
The green stools aren't really good.
Green, when you put it into acid, like into vinegar, which mimics stomach acid, should turn brown because that's what happens with chlorophyll, it just turns brown in an acid environment. It's a good key sign that the step-by-step mechanisms of your digestion aren’t on track.
Hormones and Gut Health
Dr. Anna Cabeca
We've got browns, 50 shades of brown, white, black, red, green stools, and they're all telling us a little something different.
Let's touch on hormones before we wrap up.
We talked about how important the gut is, and our mutual friend, Pedram Shojai, is coming out with Interconnected: The Power to Heal From Within, about the microbiome, gynecology, and hormonal balance. We're learning a lot about estrobolome, that estrogen producing vector of the gut, how critical it is, how unique it is to a woman's body, and how important it is.
This is something you've mentioned before we started talking. You said that having regular bowel movements is so important for healthy hormones. We talked about hot flashes and that key component, because we are reabsorbing estrogens back into our circulation, creating that estrogen dominance and impairing healthy estrogen detoxification.
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
It's absolutely so important, especially to like vitality. And especially as we're transitioning into our changes of life. Because we do have periods where we're a bit topsy turvy, because everything is changing and our hormones are different.
The one thing that we can maintain is our bowels because even though they might go under the pressure of the change of hormones, you can actively work on things to make them stay regular, which will help you in the transition phase.
I love this example. Because so many women are suffering with hot flashes when they go into menopause, and it is such a disturbing symptom, but I like to call them “Power Surges” because I feel we're so powerful at this transition stage of our life. We know what we want, we are in our full on glory, so we get these power surges, but let's make them more manageable.
Hot Flashes
Hot flashes are actually in response to the level of toxicity that we have in our body and the level of waste products that we have in our body... and our number one waste product is our stools.
If we are better able to eliminate out our stools regularly, having those big 12 inchers from wrist to elbow stools every 24 hours, we're getting that all out of our system. So the likelihood of having hot flashes is greatly reduced.
If we're the opposite extreme, going less to the bathroom, having smaller stools and little pebbles (typically a sign of low magnesium, because as we age and go into menopause, our magnesium levels get utilized much faster and we need much more magnesium), what ends up happening is that we tend to be burdened with much more worse hot flashes, worse night sweats, and our symptoms of menopause are just completely aggravated.
We want to address the stools before that time, or at least during menopause, so we can start to address and improve all of our symptoms that we are getting with menopause.
I know the biggest problem in menopause population is constipation, it happens because of the switch between the estrogen and progesterone as we start to lose those hormones. Unfortunately, our body sometimes can't regulate our stools as well, because the smooth muscle in the gut actually relies upon estrogen and progesterone balance in order to be functioning properly.
It's one of the reasons why my mother, when I was younger, wasn't having good bowel movements, because she was a hormonal disaster. And why I wasn't having good bowel movements of the same thing because I as a young teenager, I wasn’t healthy, I had too much weight, and my weight was creating too much estrogen, so I was constipated.
Make Easy Changes
Simple things can help through these changes.
Start with diet. I'm a big, huge supporter of a modified Paleo diet. I love healthy fats, as many good, healthy fats as possible, a small, decent size of protein, and then lots of greens. That's how I recommend people to eat.
Exercise and supplementation for things like Magnesium and Zinc, the things that we deplete so quickly as we get older, digestive enzymes, so we can digest our food properly.
Castor Oil Packs are a Godsend
There's one tool that has become the crux of my practice and has become a major part of my platform which is a castor oil pack. They’re a godsend.
It took me a long time to actually use them because they were so messy, and I knew that I had to use them for my own treatment. I think to myself had I done that earlier on, I would have been in a much better health place much faster but I was resistant to it because of the mess and the unease of it.
Because of that I ended up creating a pack for my patients and for myself in order to be able to do it. Out of necessity comes creation and innovation.
I'm so thankful that I have in my practice as a number one product, number one treatment that all my patients do, they absolutely love it, and they love it for this reason.
When you place castor oil packs on your liver, which is under the right rib cage, they do five very important key factors that we require for overall health.
- it reduces our core inflammation. So many women are holding a lot of their weight in their belly and in their abdomen. These castor oil packs help with reduction of that inflammation.
- Castor oil has been shown to increase glutathione, which is a master detox agent, that helps with hormonal detoxification, all types of detoxification in our body. It's very hard for us to recycle and to improve it but castor oil packs is one of those things that helps with that.
- Castor oil packs help to improve the microbiome because they break down biofilm. Biofilm is so hard to treat. Barely any natural things even scratch the surface to help fix biofilm. Biofilm is basically a layer, almost like a happy campground for all those con-biotics, those bad bacteria, to stick to and it gives them resilience. It's almost like giving the bad bacteria vitality. There's very few natural substances that actually break down that biofilm so that the antimicrobials you're taking, so that the probiotics you're taking can actually work. Castor oil does do that. That's one of the biggest reasons I love these castor oil packs.
- Castor oil packs help with gut motility. It actually stimulates, like estrogen and progesterone did, it stimulates the movement of the food muscle within the intestine. It also helps with the uterus as well too.
- Castor oil packs calm the nervous system down. They are like the escape button on a computer. From frazzled to relaxed! And relaxed is where your body can do the act of balancing your hormones, balancing your nervous system, balancing everything and allowing you to heal and transition properly.
It's a godsend.
It does so many different things and because you're so spiritual and energetic, there's an energy behind these castor oil packs I have to share with you, Anna.
Traditionally, castor oil was used in the Bible. They use it as the oil that anointed, I have a second book coming out called Anoint: Castor Oil, The Legend of It.
Jesus Christ actually used castor oil whenever he was anointing a sick person to help them heal. Kings and queens were anointed with castor oil as they “owned their throne.” Then the priests, as they elevated in their clergy, were anointed with castor oil because castor oil is one of those oils that was said to connect them more with the spiritual Universe, God, whatever people call what's out there that helps us. I call it God, but everyone has their name for the Universe.
Castor oil is not only just like a therapeutic treatment oil, it's actually a majorly spiritual oil. We use it in our practice now to help people to connect because it calms them down. It also helps them to move into a meditative or prayer practice because it's one of those oils that has such an amazing legendary significance, historical, through all the different cultures.
This is a treatment that has been here since the beginning of man and I don't want our professions to lose it. I want to make sure that people out there know it, because it really can change lives. I'm so emotional when it comes to this because it, on multiple occasions, has saved me from the brink of being ill.
In third year of naturopathic school, all the stress, I couldn't get out of bed, I had chronic fatigue, Epstein Barr Virus, and I that was when I invented my first castor oil pack. Because of that, it brought me back to life. And it has been bringing my patients back to life. I'm so thrilled with it.
That's one of my gold stars of treatment. It's the first thing that I prescribed to patients, along with probiotics, and it's for every single condition, doesn't matter what the condition, it's beneficial for them.
Except in pregnancy! In pregnancy, because it moves things so much, they're worried it can potentially make you lose a baby. But other than that, it helps your system reset itself.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
Marisol, where does castor oil come from?
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
It comes from the Mediterranean basin. This oil is a beautiful tree, the leaves look like the palm of the hand, so it's actually given the name Palm of Christ Oil. You can imagine the significance with this oil.
The bean of castor oil is unique. The oil is ultimately healing and the bean actually has a molecule called Ricin, which actually is used as a biological warfare that can kill within six hours.
But don’t worry, there's none of that in the oil. I just used that as an example to say that this powerful plant is a perfect example of Yin and Yang, the duality of nature, the light in the darkness. It has an amazing amount of power, spiritually and physically.
Its individual characteristics as this unique vegetable oil are so different to all the different oils, the coconut oil, the sesame oil, and the other oils.
This is number one best carrier oil because castor oils molecular structure actually allows it to go into the dermis. It can go underneath the upper layer of skin, which is why we do the pack topically.
We actually use it cosmetically to prevent aging on the skin, as well, because this was Cleopatra’s secret! The history behind this oil is so fascinating. She would use castor oil around the gentle area of the eyes for all the effects I spoke about, like the anti-inflammatory to improving the glutathione, improving the microbiome structure.
Because it went down into the dermis, it would help to protect the collagen formation. It would reduce inflammation and preserve the vitamin C that was part and parcel of collagen formation.
We use it now to help grow eyebrows, eyelashes, and also to help with reducing the fine lines around the eyes. I have a little beauty sleep tip that I use for patients: they can just apply it and go to bed, have a great night’s sleep, and improve their melatonin, which is so important for when you're in menopause, and also for women in general because our melatonin gets depleted.
Castor oil is a phenomenal oil.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
It is. That is awesome. Thanks for sharing that with us.
Tell people how they can get in touch with you.
Dr. Marisol Teijeiro
They can follow me on my website: http://www.drmarisol.com/, on Instagram, I’m very active just like you are. I love all your posts as well. And it's @queenofthethrones. That's a great resource. We're constantly educating about the golden nuggets, about different definitions that people hear about dysbiosis, the microbiome, what are these words that we hear out there? I want people to really have a good base knowledge of their gut health and those are the best places.
I've sent you a little present so if you want to hand this to your people, a little link where they can download something called The Legends of The Throne. This Legends is basically an awesome infographic that gives people an idea of what is showing up in their toilet bowl every day and what it means about them. It's basically a little starter pack for them to get to know their stools a little bit better.
Dr. Anna Cabeca
I love that, thank you.
Alright, so we'll put the link in the show notes and also will be sharing this on YouTube and our iTunes podcast.
For our listeners, I know this has just been an amazing amount of information!
Marisol, first of all, thank you so much for sharing your time.
I can go on about this, there's so many levels that we can talk about here. It’s nice to find a kindred spirit in you as well.
For our listeners Dr. Marisol at https://www.drmarisol.com/. Please share this information because it's so important. I know so many women, men, and children have been struggling unnecessarily and Dr. Marisol really puts it into a beautiful package so that you can see what you need to do.
And also simply, holistically using some really easy, simple, non invasive, traditional modalities to help move the body and restore balance. You can't just get better than this. Go visit her website, share this information, and post your comments below.
I want to thank all of you for listening today.
Thank you.
