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The 9 Biggest Health Myths Debunked - With Real-World Fixes

• Hadlea Shaw

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We pull apart nine health myths and trade quick fixes for simple steps that work. From reverse dieting and gut integrity to hormone support and recovery, we focus on what changes first inside the body so results can follow.

• when eat less move more helps and when it harms
• gut lining integrity over blanket gluten and dairy bans
• practical gut supports and nutrient-dense meals
• why birth control manages symptoms not root causes
• supplements that support PCOS and endometriosis
• real detox support and lowering toxic load
• quality fats for hormones versus inflammatory oils
• labs versus symptoms and functional ranges
• beyond IBS labels to root digestive causes



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SPEAKER_00:

Hello guys, welcome back to the pod. Here we go. This is my second time recording this week. Slego me. Today's topic or episode is gonna be a little bit longer than some of the past ones that I've done. And we're just gonna take a big, big old deep dive in. These are nine common myths that you may have heard in the health, wellness, fitness space, and I want to debunk them. So we're just gonna hop right into it. The first one that I wrote down was this connotation of eat less, move more. This has a time and a place, and there is definitely nuance to this. If you're somebody that has there's two different spectrums, okay. If you're a girly that's been chronically under-eating, dieting in a calorie deficit, or maybe you've been undereating and you don't even know it. You don't even know that you're undereating because you don't track your food, whatever, and you're like, I can't lose weight. I've tried to, you know, under eating, but you're actually, or you are you like, I'm tried dieting. You've been dieting likely is because you've been there for too long. You've been in that space for chronically undereating, and when you're in that space, your body, what it does is it adapts and that becomes your new metabolism. Your thyroid starts to slow down, it stops producing as much thyroid hormone, therefore, your metabolism slows down. So, what you need to do in order to fix this is start to slowly increase your calories up by maybe a hundred a week, just depending on how your body responds. Get your body to at least 2,000 calories, stay there for a while before you decide to go into a calorie deficit into a fat loss phase again. Now, there's another side of the equation where a woman has been eating in a surplus for years and years on end, and she is overweight, and yes, she does need to eat less, and yes, she does need to move more. But if you're somebody that's coming from that spot of you've been dieting, then you don't. Another thing, too, is to take into consideration is I I could be, you know, very stressed out. I I'll just take myself for an example. So last year I did a mini cut, and yeah, I had to eat a lot less because my thyroid had slowed down because I was cutting for so long. And so what happened was whenever I started, which I I did, I was losing weight, right? Because I was in that calorie deficit. Now my calorie deficit had to get really, really low, like a thousand calories for three days at a time, and then I'd have like one high day to help keep me weight. Now I didn't have a period at this time, so definitely would not recommend that to somebody if you're wanting your hormones to stay good. That was pretty dumb on my part. All that to say is when I started reversing my calories back up, my body started responding well because that food is being poured into training, and now you have food for brain power and function, and your body starts functioning better. And I actually started to get leaner because I had started increasing my food again. Now there comes a point in time where you're gonna get to a baseline of calories where your body's not going to lose that weight anymore. It's probably gonna maintain unless you go into a surplus and you're gonna gain the weight. And so you're ignoring your hormones and you're also ignoring gut when it comes to that. Because if you have low stomach acid, like if you have some gut issues going on, how you know you have low stomach acid is you know, you burp a lot, you don't feel hungry at all. If you have proper stomach acid, you will feel hungry probably every three to four hours, which is a good thing. When you have sufficient stomach acid, your metabolism is better, and so that doesn't that can't apply if your gut function is fucked up and you try to eat less, well, what's gonna happen? So cortisol have to and stress in general have to take that in account too, because if you are chronically dieting, that's gonna that's gonna bring that stress level up, and therefore, same thing, not gonna be able to. You also have to think about blood sugar, you know. If blood sugar gets too low, if blood sugar is too high, you also have to consider that. And stress directly impacts blood sugar, and so blood sugar could be completely skewed and high, and you're not even be eating a lot of food or that many carbs or that much sugar. So, eat less, move more does not work for everybody. There is nuances to every single thing. I'm so tired of seeing this online. Eat less, move more applies to the majority because the majority are overeating, but there is a fraction of women that are under eating, and that is exactly who I'm talking to. I'm not talking to the women and to the people that actually need to diet. Case close. Second myth, if you're bloated, it's probably gluten or dairy. This is not always true because there could be some gut lining integrity issues that are going on. What happens is when you get leaky gut or a or yeah, aka leaky gut or gut permeability is what I was going to say, is the lining of your gut becomes almost not thin, but it becomes more permeable, meaning toxins can come in there quicker and they can really wreak havoc on your body. And so that's why repairing your gut lining is very, very, very important. And so if you're if your gut lining is strong, then gluten or dairy should not and would not affect it as much. So, how you can support your gut lining integrity, there's a couple supplements like a gut cocktail, I guess you could say. So, two ounces of aloe vera juice, some warm water, electrolyte tablet. I like the N-U-U-N ones at none. Uh, zinc carnosine, two capsules, pull them apart, put them in there, 20 grams of powdered glutamine every single morning, help rebuild that gut lining. Now, you what happen what tears the gut lining down is poor food stress, high stress. And so regulating that stress, managing stress is going to help so much, but you can also supplement with that. And I would 10 out of 10 recommend that for anybody. Another thing, too, is if you have low stomach acid, low stomach acid can also come from stress. So you need to support your stomach in that way. The ones that I mentioned in the gut lining integrity also help that. Also, uh DGL, which is D something liquor ish, that can help. Marshmallow root, all of these things can help. But it starts with nutritional therapy. When you start with nutritional therapy, eating real dense foods, foods like sweet potato, um, getting insufficient protein sources. So think grass-fed beef, chicken, whatever, uh, fruit. Fruit is a really good one. Blueberries, those are full of antioxidants, and like I've already mentioned, managing that stress. Another thing, too, that could be contributing to the sensitive sensitivity of gluten or dairy is you lack the enzyme lactase to help break it down. And so you could take digestive enzymes. And these are just things that you could do. And I'm not saying you need to do them, I'm saying they can help support. You should always consult with a coach or somebody before you start incorporating these things, and really you need to get down to the symptomology of what's going on all inside of your body, you know, what digestion issues and symptoms are you having, what hormonal symptoms and issues are you having? And that's why I feel like my health coaching is very, very good because I'm so detail-oriented on the exact symptoms you're dealing with and how we're going to eradicate those. And usually it's the most simple approaches, but sometimes we have to incorporate these things in there to help with that. Number three, birth control fixes hormone issues. You already know what I'm gonna go with this. Birth control does not fix any hormonal issue, it helps control the symptom, just like any other medicine on the line does. You're not getting, you're not getting to the root of why your periods are bad or why you have the hormonal chaos or why there's hypertension, you're just sticking something on it, which is fine, but not unless you're not going to work towards the lifestyle things, the preventative care to help with that. So that being said, it doesn't fix it. What hormone does is hormone, what birth control does is it suppresses your ovulation. Therefore, you do not ovulate, you're not getting that the you're not getting that connection from brain to ovaries of like, hey, let's ovulate. That's that's what it suppresses. And so, therefore, you don't have a period when you're like, oh, my period on birth control, you know, you're not, it's a withdrawal bleed, that's not a real period. So when you're suppressing that for long periods of time, that's why we're seeing these issues with fertility, taking longer for people to get pregnant. Not saying you can't get pregnant, a lot of people have gotten pregnant off of being on birth control, it's just taking them a little bit longer, but it's not going to fix and cure what's going on, the endometriosis symptoms, the PCOS symptoms. And so there are natural supplements you can take to help with that. Some for endometriosis that I like, DIM, NAC, but I like for PCOS, and nocetyl, uh, magnesium, zinc, B6 are the three vitamins all women should take. I also like, I'm trying to think of what I like. NAC and DIM for the endometriosis to help support estrogen detox, same that can also apply to the PCOS thing. Uh omega-3 fatty acids are good, which is DHEA, EPA getting that in. Not DHEA, DHA, EPA, your omega-3 fish oils, vitamin D is also really good, vitamin E as well. And these are just some great things that you can incorporate inside. And so, though I would rather you go that holistic route instead of just slapping the band-aid on it, along with diet and exercise and stress management, play a big role in it as well. So, number four, you don't need to detox your body, does it naturally? Yes, and only if pathways are supported by proper nutrient-dense foods, by sometimes supplementing, you can supplement to help support liver detoxification. Knack is a good one, milk thistle. Oh, I'm trying to think of another one that I can't think of. Tudka. Those are all three that can help support detoxification of the liver. Another thing that you can do is to help help with the load, but help decrease your load. I'm trying to say burden. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Help decrease the toxic load, I guess like you'd say, by not using plastic to heat your food up in or to store your food in because microplastics get into there, and just being more of aware of the things that you're consuming that are not food. So using glass tupperware and reducing more plastic exposure, like plastic water bottles, things like that, can help a lot. And just a lot of the like fragranced candles and stuff, which I actually do like those. I'm not gonna lie. I do like a good candle. I do like a good candle, even though it's endocrine disruptor. Do what you can. You can't do everything at once. Focus on the basics because you'll go down a rabbit hole and you'll be like, oh my gosh, this cash I'm sitting on has flame retardants on it. Oh my god, I'm gonna freaking die. You can't be that caught up in it because you'll start to freak out and stress out more, and that's gonna make things so much more worse. So make sure you're living your life. Just remove things where you can. Okay. Next. Low-fat diets are better for fat loss hormones. You probably have heard this a lot. Be like, oh my cholesterol's high. Like, I shouldn't be eating eggs and I shouldn't be eating fat. Cholesterol is the building block of hormones. Cholesterol, without cholesterol, your hormones are non-existent, I should say. Fat, cholesterol turns into fat. Fat, meaning the the macronutrient fat, the lipids, is the building block for our hormones. When anytime I've been on a low fat diet, and when I'm in bodybuilding prep, you have to be you're on a lower fat diet because you're trying to reduce calories from wherever you can. Your hormones are fucked. You have low estrogen, low sex drive, low libido. It's about the quality of the fat. People are scared of fats, and that's that's so backwards. It should be the quality of where you're getting the fat from. The fats that you should be consuming should be coming from things like avocado, eggs, olive oil, nuts, seeds, your red meat, your seafood. But the fats that we're talking about that are the inflammatory ones are the ones that are coming from the process, the the uh, what am I thinking of? More of like the seed oils and the high fat of like the grease from the burger, from the fast food restaurant, from the Mexican restaurant, these types of fats where they're using not so good fat sources of like canola oil and these other oils that are not offering any benefit for you. So when you focus on getting your fats from the things that I mentioned, your hormones love that. Love it. I think that's all I have to say on that. And I think the misconception of this is because fat has more calories than other macronutrients. And so people think, like, oh, since it has more calories, let's cut it out, which is not true at all. Oh, this is a good one. Number six, of if labs are normal, you're good. And I think a lot of doctors go off of simply labs, and they say, Oh, labs look fine, everything is good. But deep down, when you look at your symptoms, they do not look good at all. And so, going back to what I said earlier, that's why I have such a really big health appraisal questionnaire. The simp the type of questions I'm asking you on there are freaking intense. Like, I wish I could pull up the exact questions on there because you have to rate yourself of like how often this happens to you. And it could be like belching excessively after meals. Anytime I eat a spicy food, I get heartburn, like very, very in-depth of like a specific thing that could happen and the exact outcome, and then you rate it, and then it tells us what things need the most work. So I do have clients coming to me, they're like, my labs look good, everything's fine, but like they're not losing weight and their periods are regular, and the list goes on and on and on. That's because it's not always going to be accurate. It's just not. Not only is it not accurate, they're going off, the labs are being based off of a the average American person or the average person in society, and the average person is not a very healthy person if we look at it from a stand uh from a from a large uh point of view. So, all right, number seven, gut issues equals IBS. How many of you have had gut issues and you go to a gastro or somewhere and they're like, oh, IBS? I, for this exact reason, did not go to the doctor for any of my GI issues, and I will not go to the doctor for any of my GI issues because I know they're gonna say IBS. And I've been able to fix with the help of my coach so much of my gut issues and my gut symptoms simply by herbal supplementation of controlling my stressors, of fixing things inside of my diet. These things alone, I know for sure, would have done way more than me going and them saying I have IBS or acid reflux and then them giving me a supplement, which is only going to decrease my stomach acid, which when you have low stomach acid, you're at more risk for bacteria and pathogens and bacterial overgrowth to come in. You see what you're picking up what I'm putting down? Anyways, so they will label that and not try to figure out the root cause of why this is. Is there dysbiosis? Is there inflammation? Is it low stomach acid? Is it dysregulated nervous system? And usually it's a combination of the both, of the both, of all of those. But I want you to know that like solving gut issues is so much more simpler than you so much simpler than you probably think. And it's just it's just a process, and people don't want to go through the process of having to eat the monotonous meals for a while along with targeted supplementation. And that's just a part of it. That's just gonna, you're just gonna have to embrace the discomfort on that one. I don't know what else to tell you on that one, but you got to. I've I've lived that one. All right, number eight, you just need to be more consistent. Yes, and consistency without the proper inputs, equal burnout. If you don't have the correct plan that's tailored to you and your lifestyle, if you're being consistent with that and it's not actually conducive, it's not actually what you need to be doing, or it's just completely what am I trying to say here? What did I write down? Oh, yeah. If it's if it's too much, basically what I'm saying is if you're consistently doing something that's not serving you, if it's too much, your body is gonna reject you. You're not gonna see the results. You need proper fuel, proper recovery, proper safety. This can go towards, say, like you started training for a half marathon, and you're like, it sucks, I can't recover, I'm not getting faster, my time suck, maybe like I'm gaining weight while I'm doing this. It's because you don't have the proper recovery, your body does not feel safe, you're not doing the right types of movements, you're not easing into it properly. And you think that on being so consistent with this why I'm not seeing results, it's because you're not doing it in the right way, and in a way that's actually conducive to what actually needs to be done. A lot of people think they're doing it, doing the thing right when it comes to eating healthy and exercising, and they're like, but I'm doing it. If you were doing it right, you would already have the results. And that's why it's really important that you get feedback from somebody who knows what they're doing. Same thing whenever you want somebody to help you with your finances, want somebody to help you with your business, somebody who has walked the walk, who has gotten the body that you want, who has has the business, has the foundation, the systems, who knows how to manage the money. You gotta find somebody that walks that walk. Like when I have clients come to me, it's because, yeah, you are who you say you are. That's exactly what you're gonna get. You're gonna get somebody who's done it before, and you're not trying to do it on your own because you don't know what you're doing. But then when you know what you're doing, that can rub off onto other people. And now I'm just in a tangent and just going off topic. That's totally fine. Okay, number nine, our last one. Oh, healing takes forever. Be patient. Healing does take time, and but it doesn't take forever. Like, I have been on this gut journey for like four months at this point. Yeah, four months, and I've got about two months left, and I have felt so much better, but I've had to be so freaking dang just in it and disciplined with my meals. And yeah, there's gonna be there are some times when I have not been perfect, and that's fine. I know that, but I know that that isn't going to completely destroy all my progress. I know that when I do stick to that, I feel better. My symptoms have decreased. I follow my supplements. Like you, you're picking up what I'm putting down. They should, whenever you first start something of like trying to restore your cycle or trying to Lose fat or trying to get your gut healed. And when I'm talking about healing, I'm talking about gut health, cycle restoration, or even just your body starting to respond in a way that it's supposed to, getting that energy back. Your digestion, your energy, your sleep, and your cycle, these should all improve way before your body composition starts to. So I have people come to me and they have these issues, but they also want to change their body composition. And while that's fine, we have to think about the internal health and let that flow into the external health. Yes, we can still exercise. Yes, we can still do all things, but know that your internal health will always come before external health. So I hope you guys enjoyed these nine myths, nine common myths and debunk me debunking them. That's all I had. I thought this episode was gonna be like way longer. I'm glad it isn't. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. If you like it, shave it, shave it, shave it, save it, share it with a friend, share it on your stories, your support means the world. I'm doing the damn thing. I'm getting consistent as fuck. I did not want to do this, I did not want to record my podcast, but I did. And I'm glad I did it because that was that was a fun one. That one really spoke to me because I loved talking on all these all those things because they mean a lot to me. And I see them on the daily. So love you guys. See you in the next episode. Bye.