The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
Dr. Sarah Myhill: The 5-Step Protocol to Fix Your Energy Crisis When Medicine Fails
What if the fatigue that's been dragging you down for months (or years) isn't just "stress" or "getting older" - but actually a fixable energy delivery problem that most doctors completely miss?
Meet Dr. Sarah Myhill, a traditionally-trained medical doctor who broke away from conventional medicine when she realized it only treats symptoms, not root causes. After decades of research and treating thousands of chronic fatigue patients, she's developed a revolutionary 5-step protocol that addresses the real reasons your energy is failing.
In this eye-opening interview, Dr. Myhill reveals how to diagnose and fix the energy crisis in your body - without expensive tests, endless doctor visits, or prescription drugs that mask the problem.
After listening to Dr. Myhill's approach, you might find yourself questioning everything you thought you knew about chronic fatigue. Her message is both empowering and controversial: you don't need more doctors, more tests, or more medications. You need to understand what's actually broken in your energy delivery mechanisms - and fix it yourself.
The tools are all there. The question is: are you ready to take back control of your energy?
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Welcome everybody to an interview today with Dr Sarah Myhill. Dr Sarah Myhill is a traditionally trained medical doctor, certified well, I don't think certified quite, but she became a medical doctor back in the 1980s and along her path, along her journey, she started, her medical practice, started to be guided by the word why why is this happening? And she began to have this very clear sense that if you can really understand the root causes, then we can maybe bring in interventions that can truly bring about the healing that clients were seeking from her and with her. So Dr Myhill, at some point and I'm not even quite sure when in her career, but it sounds like it might have been decades in she decided to switch over to become a naturopathic doctor. And now she is an international expert around the topic of root causes and in particular, around the topic of chronic fatigue.
FLORENCE:She also has another book on thyroid, so between the two she's really a world expert on this topic, very, very relevant to many of us in modern society. We're struggling with one or both most of us Somewhere on those continuums of malfunctioning. You know, mitochondria function as well as thyroid function, so she brings those together. One thing I want to mention about Dr Myhill is that I said to her so I think you have seven books out. She's like yep, something like that, like she has so many books and do you write them yourself, dr Myhill?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Of course, yes, I write them, but then I have a lovely editor, craig Robinson, super bright, and he edits them and he makes sure they are logical. And of course it's very good that they're read by a lay person, because if I don't use the language of lay people then I'm not communicating properly. So Craig is an essential part of the book.
FLORENCE:Writing Got it, got it Well. I don't know how you have that many hours in a day or that much energy, but I guess you must walk your talk that, if you're you know, if you've been doing this for this many decades, I imagine that you can't have done it without having taken care of your own thyroid and mitochondria, and you know, put into practice all the things you've learned. So why don't?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:we just go way back. And what inspired you to become a medical doctor? Oh gosh, well, I had no choice really, because all my family are medical my grandmother's one of the first lady doctors, my grandfather's also a doctor, my father, uncle, brother, they're all doctors. In fact, when I went to my interview at the Middlesex Hospital and I was asked that very question by the Dean of the medical school, who's called Sir Douglas Ranger, I looked into the distance, thought for a while and I said because I couldn't think of anything else to do, and thankfully they all laughed and thankfully that they offered me a place at medical school.
FLORENCE:Incredible, incredible and was, at some point it sounds like it wasn't quite what you'd hoped for that your heart was longing for more impact with yourhing and medicine has now been boiled down into simple protocols and simple paradigms, which means if a patient goes in with chest pain, they come out with five standard drugs.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:There's no thinking that goes into it. But of course I didn't know that as a medical student. We were just educated and you just wanted to get through your finals so you could get out and practice medicine. And of course I actually practiced. I actually qualified top of my year, I got honours in medicine, went into general practice thinking I'm going to be the best doctor that ever existed, and within a few weeks I knew I was the worst doctor in the world.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Because my patients were coming into me and saying you know, why have I got high blood pressure? Why have I got migraine? Why have I got cancer? And the answer was well, I didn't know. I didn't know the answer why.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So my early medical years were very troublesome for me because I didn't know the answer to those questions. And that's what people come in asking. They didn't want painkillers for arthritis. They wanted to know why they got their arthritis. Asking they didn't want painkillers for arthritis. They wanted to know why they got their arthritis. They didn't want to take medication on a regular basis because, you know, we now know there are lots of nasty side effects associated with that. So quite early on I started asking the question why? And actually this impacted on myself directly because within a year of qualifying I was married. I was then pregnant and I had baby number one, and she had the most awful colic In fact I know and there's nothing I could do that made any difference to her. She's up all night screaming and I can remember my husband then saying you're the effing doctor, you sort it out. And of course I didn't know the the answer, but I stumbled upon cutting out all the dairy products in my diet and within 24 hours her colica disappeared. My asthma was better, my chronic rhinitis was starting to dry up and I felt so much better myself.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And it was then that I realized that dairy allergy was a very major player in many problems and is so to date. And that simple fact that colic in children is so often allergy to dairy products. It's not in the medical textbooks, it's not in the midwifery textbooks. The health visitors don't know it, you know it's still not an accepted fact, and yet it's a very useful thing to know. So I then knew that there's a huge chunk of medicine that I was missing, so I started off with allergy and then I got to learn that actually, actually, um, micronutrient deficiencies were extremely common, um, the essential fatty acid deficients were very common, that we were all poisoned, and so on and so forth. So of course, you know, in my nhs practice I was then applying that to conditions that people come in with, let's say, like headaches, like arthritis, like irritable bowel syndrome or whatever. But the big question, the big condition that nobody was addressing and nobody had a clue how to treat, was the TATT patient, the tired, all the time patient, and it was estimated that in the 1980s that constituted almost 40% of all consultations and yet nobody knew how to tackle it. So that's when I started to get interested in chronic fatigue syndrome and ME.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And the key point to remember about those two conditions is they are not diagnoses, they are clinical pictures, and there's a crucial difference between a clinical picture and a diagnosis, because a diagnosis implies a mechanism and a causation. So, for example, dementia People you know, I mean, that is now the commonest cause of death in women in this country today. But dementia is not a diagnosis, it's a clinical picture. We have to ask the question why Does that somebody have dementia?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Because they have very poor blood supply to the brain and so they can't get the fuel and the oxygen there. Is it because they have a prion disorder like Alzheimer's disease? Is it because they've been poisoned by heavy metals? Is it because they've got Lyme disease? All these things can present with the clinical picture of dementia, but of course, depending on the diagnosis, the true causation, the treatment could be very different. And so it is with chronic fatigue syndrome and ME. These are clinical pictures. We have to ask the question why and in 1994, I did a naturopathic diploma which I was able to incorporate into my practice and started thinking about these things from a causation point of view, and that, of course, is the key.
FLORENCE:Right the root cause? Did your just out of curiosity, did your path as a medical doctor like the direction you went? Did it influence other medical members of your family?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:no, not at all in the early days.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:In fact in the early days I was called the witch doctor. Yeah, yes, my family are totally um, conventional um. You know it's down the. You know conventional medicine, drugs, prescriptions and so on, and of course much good can be done with that. But now there are far too many drugs. Everything is reduced to a drug paradigm. I mean, I think it's the Statistical and Diagnostic Manual that Americans have for psychiatric disease. It's got something like 300 different diagnoses, including bereavement and stammers. These are now all psychiatric diagnoses and guess what? They all end up with a drug prescription. That's just that. And and the awful thing is is, as I understand it, psychiatrists in america if they don't follow the red book, as it's called um, and they don't go down that path, then they risk being complained about the state medical boards, and that's not quite that awful in this country. But medicine is very controlled, it's very protocol driven, so without any thought as to the underlying mechanism, as to what is going on.
FLORENCE:Right, right, right. So I know you've mentioned ME. What is ME and how is that related to chronic fatigue?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Okay, Well, they are two different things but they have huge overlaps. Now the clinical picture of chronic fatigue syndrome is the clinical picture of poor energy delivery mechanisms. Me is poor energy delivery mechanisms and inflammation. And inflammation occurs when the immune system is busy. And the immune system may be busy for reasons of allergy, for reasons of autoimmunity or for reasons of chronic infection, and we know many people who have ME. It's a chronic infection that's driving that. But I always start with energy delivery mechanisms. I mean, there's a huge amount of overlap as the treatments for energy delivery mechanisms and treatment for inflammation.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:But the analogy I like to use for energy delivery mechanisms is the car analogy. So if you're a car to go, you've got to have five things. You've got to have the right fuel in the tank. You know, I have a diesel car out there. It's pretty ancient. But if I put petrol in the engine, in the tank, it the tank, it's not going to go. So you can have the right fuel in the tank. And that's all about diet and gut function. Then you've got to have some oxygen. Without oxygen, you know, um, your car isn't going to go. Uh. And the same the body. If you shut off the oxygen supply somebody's body, they're going to get acutely fatigued and probably die. So oxygen is. And then that fuel is burned by oxygen in the mitochondrial engine.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And mitochondria are my special area of interest and my patients love the subtitle of my chronic fatigue syndrome book, which is it's mitochondria, not hypochondria. So you've got to have the engine of the car right and then you have to have the thyroid accelerator pedal that tells you how fast the engine goes, and the adrenal gearbox. And the adrenal gearbox allows you to gear up in response to stress. And with those five things in place you've got a long way towards energy delivery mechanism. And again to using the same analogy as thinking of our body as a car. My car needs servicing every six months, but our bodies need serving every single day, and it's called sleep, and I can spend as much time talking about sleep as I do about dark, because it is as important. And so we need good night's sleep, good quality sleep, and that's and it's during sleep that we heal and repair, because we inevitably damage ourselves through the day just by moving around, talking, walking, gardening, whatever, and then a good night's sleep allows that all to be repaired.
FLORENCE:And how does these five different aspects like? Because you could see how you can malfunction in any one of those five areas where those systems could be operating suboptimally. Those systems could be operating suboptimally, um, and but how does the fuel that we, that we consume, the quality of our diet, um oxygen? I'm assuming oxygen refers to exercise and movement and and?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:circulation. No, no, no, actually no, it refers to breathing, and breathing and and the correct sort of breathing. So that's important. I know what your question is going to be and breathing and and the correct sort of breathing. So that's important. I know what your question is going to be and the point is um, I, I explained in that order, because that is the order that we sort things out.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Okay, so we have to start with the fuel in the tank. That's always the starting point and that's always about dart and gut function and um, sometimes when patients come and see me, I can spend the whole hour we just talk about diet and gut, because if you get that right, so much else falls into place. So always start with the gut function and then the breathing and then we go on to the mitochondrial stuff to get the mitochondria up and running and at that point then we can start looking at the thyroid gland and the adrenal glands, because the action at the thyroid gland and the adrenal glands, because the action of the thyroid glands and the adrenal glands are on the mitochondria and if the mitochondria are not in a fixed state to respond, then the thyroid and adrenal treatments are not going to be so as efficacious as they should be, and equally the mitochondria. You can't possibly fix the mitochondria until they've got the right fuel in the tank and the oxygen. So it's in that order and we treat it in that order, and although it might sound like, oh gosh, that's a lot of effort, it's a lot of work doing all that stuff.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:The point here is that this is also the starting point to treat all disease cancer, dementia, heart disease. If you don't want to get these things, then you put in place all the things we're going to talk about this evening to improve energy delivery mechanisms, and all this is highly protective against cancer, highly protective against dementia, highly protective against heart disease and degenerative conditions generally. So I can then have the pleasure of being able to tell my patients yes, it's hard work, but A we have a very good chance of reversing your chronic fatigue syndrome and b you're now going to live much longer because you're not going to die from cancer, heart disease or dementia. So it's a. You know, it's a very nice thing for people to know, and the joy of having this very simple approach is that there aren't enough doctors and therapists to go around and most people have to do this themselves, and so the message that we have to give them has to be a very powerful one.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Ie you can reverse your disease and you can stop yourself dying from nasty conditions, and also it's a very logical and easy way to go through it. And people do do this themselves and you know, I hear I get a christmas card, or I hear from them, you know, years later saying you know, I heard you on the florence christopher show and um, and I've reversed my fatigue and I'm much better. And it didn't cost. Well, it cost them a bit because in food and supplements, but they didn't have to spend a fortune on tests or expensive doctors in order to be able to cure themselves. So if you do it yourself and you do it well, there's no reason at all why people cannot make really good improvements.
FLORENCE:Oh my gosh, what an amazing message. You can DIY this All right. Well, let's walk if you're open to it. Let's just get really practical and walk people through the steps. So what advice would you give? On step one there around the fuel and walk people through the steps.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So what advice would you give on step one there around the fuel. The step one is the diet. Now, most people in Western worlds are carbohydrate addicts. They're sugar addicts and in the short term, sugar and carbohydrates are rocket fuels. But they are very addictive and you can't have an upper without a downer, and that's what makes them addictive. As their blood sugar levels fall, they crave another sugar, kick and back they go. And at the Kick Sugar Summit, this is obviously a very familiar theme for you. So mitochondria, which are our engines, yes, they can be powered by sugar, but they function much more efficiently and much better when they are powered by ketones. Now, ketones come from fiber and they come from eating fat. So carbohydrates yes, they are an essential to the diet. We need some carbohydrates in our diet, but not the overwhelming amounts that appear in Western diets. So that's the first priority we have to get our calories from fat, we get our calories from fibre.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And then the second part of the diet is the paleo bit because, as I mentioned at the beginning, allergy is very common. Uk allergy reckons that about up to 40% of the population have an allergy to something, and it's commonly to food. The two things that come up time and time and time again are gluten, grains and dairy products. Now there are other reasons why we shouldn't be consuming those, but those foods will drive inflammation in the body, and that's the other. The other half of that's the ME bit of chronic fatigue syndrome. So, paleo, no grains, no dairy products. The only safe dairy product is butter, because that's pure fat, and fat is the fuel that we're looking for. And then it's based on meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruits, those sorts of things, and all real foods. No processed foods. Processed foods are so bad for our health for so many reasons. So the first thing we have to do is establish the diet. Now you can eat the best food in the world, but if you can't digest it and absorb it well, then it's not going to get to where it needs. So we then have to look at the gut. So in order to explain how we treat the gut, you have to first of all work. Let's just quickly whip through what is the normal gut Now.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:The gut is a tube that starts at the mouth, esophagus, stomach duodenum, small intestine, large intestine and ends up at the tail end. It's about 30 foot long. It's about a 30 foot tube Now. The first 25 feet of our gut is, or should be, virtually sterile. Now there is no such thing as a completely sterile surface in the world. Everything's got some bacteria. But it should have very low microbial content. And it's a carnivorous gut and it's like that for the purposes of digesting meat, fat and some carbohydrates.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Now the last five foot of gut, the large bowel, the colon that's where the microbiome is. And the microbiome, as you know, is made up of kilograms of microbes that ferment. They ferment fiber to produce energy, but they do many other jobs as well. They produce neurotransmitters. The microbiome is essential to program the immune system and protect us from allergy and autoimmunity and help protect us from infection. It produces essential things like vitamin K and other such substances. So we have to look after the microbiome.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And that's a vegetarian gut. So the human gut is almost unique in the animal world because the upper gut is like a dog's gut, it's carnivorous. And the upper gut is like a dog's gut, it's carnivorous and the lower gut is a vegetarian gut and that is one of the reasons why humans can eat such a wide range of foods. So if I feed my horse steak, she doesn't do it all well Equally. My little dog won't survive on grass, so we can eat that mixed diet.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Now when problems arise in people who eat a lot of sugar or a lot of carbohydrates, because that overwhelms the ability of the upper gut to remain sterile, and then the upper gut starts to ferment instead, and that is very bad news. So if we've got yeast in the upper gut and this is called the auto brewery syndrome any sugars or carbohydrates that get converted into sugars then get fermented, and when yeast ferments you produce ethyl alcohol. When bacteria ferment you can produce propyl alcohol, butyl alcohol, hydrogen sulfide, aminocle compounds, d-lactate. You can produce a whole host of nasty toxins that are literally poisonous. And a common symptom that people often complain of is the foggy brain. Very often, when you clean up their diet and go ketogenic and you stop them fermenting, the foggy brain is often one of the first symptoms to clear. So having an upper fermenting gut is real bad news.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And there's another reason. Well, there are many reasons why it's bad news. Another reason is when you take vitamins and minerals and you know I do like people to take vitamins and minerals then the microbes in the upper gut, they are as hungry for those vitamins and minerals as we are, and so those microbes grab them and ferment harder and then they're not available for us to have. And so often I see people and they spent a fortune on vitamins CoQ10, multivitamins, whatever, whatever, whatever, and they've not done them any good. In fact, sometimes they make them worse because they've just fed this upper fermenting gut. So the aftermenting yes, it's poisonous. And the second point is is that the microbes themselves can cause problems. Now we are taught at medical school yes, you know, the gut is full of bacteria and viruses and yeast. And there they say we now know that's not true.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:These microbes do get into the bloodstream and if they get stuck at distal sites they will drive inflammatory reactions. So, for example, ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, is almost certainly driven by allergy to microbes from the fermenting gut Possibly Crohn's disease. Many cases of arthritis are driven by allergy to microbes from the upper fermenting gut. Now I learned this at medical school in the 1970s where the professor of rheumatology there was Dr Alan Ebringer, and he was doing work with patients with ankylosing spondylitis. Now that's a painful inflammation of the spine and what he demonstrated is that those patients are allergic to Klebsiella microbes in their bowel and he fed those patients a low-carbohydrate diet and vastly improved their symptoms. The same is true of rheumatoid arthritis vastly improved their symptoms. The same is true of rheumatoid arthritis, of Reiser's disease, of psoriatic arthritis. You know, all these inflammatory arthritides are driven by allergy to microbes from the upper fermenting gut. But I think many vasculitic conditions like polymage, rheumatica, like temporal arteritis, are driven by the same pathology. Intrinsic asthma, arteritis are driven by the same pathology. Intrinsic asthma, urticaria, venous ulcers, psychosis, all these conditions are driven by gut-related problems, allergies to microbes and fermenting gut, and this is why it's so important to sort that out.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So the overall approach to sorting out the off-fermenting gut is, first of all, stop feeding them, because microbes they cannot ferment fat, they can only ferment sugars and carbohydrates. So you feed them a low-carbohydrate diet to starve them out and then you kill them. And my favorite killers are first of all vitamin C. Vitamin C is a wonderful antimicrobial. It contact kills all microbes. So I like people to start with low doses and build up to at least five grams of vitamin C daily. And another very good antimicrobial is iodine and I like to use Lugol's iodine, which is very inexpensive, extremely safe, very well tolerated, and start off. I use 15% Lugol's iodine, maybe three drops. So last thing at night Lugol's iodine, in the morning vitamin C.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Don't take them together, because they knock each other out. One is an oxidizing agent, the other is a reducing agent. One's an electron donor, the other's an electron receiver. I can never remember which way around it is, but it doesn't matter. The key point is take them apart. Now, that does a very good job of sorting out the upper fermenting gut, and then one's in a position to absorb the nutrients that you need.
FLORENCE:So when you say low, I have two questions. When you say low-carb, can you clarify that? And can you clarify whether or not five grams of vitamin C on an empty stomach in the morning and Lugol's iodine before bed is enough to also kill off pathogenic candida, systemic candida conditions?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Well is is different, because we're talking about systemic I'm talking about the upper fermenting gut. Okay, systemic candida, um, uh, you might need a more aggressive treatment. But okay, the point is is that yeast can only survive on sugar and, um, you know, we always have to have a little bit of sugar in our bloodstream, but most people have got far too much sugar in their bloodstream, so it's all about. That's why it's so important to go low carb, to get into ketosis and burn off any sugars that are the excessive sugars that are in the bloodstream. And that is the starting point to treat systemic candida, because, as I say, yeast can only function on sugar. And then, in parallel with that, and again, there's a fascinating book by mark linton called the cancer resolution, or the cancer resolution, and he points out that most cancers have a fungal driver. And so the treatment, well, the prevention, the treatment of cancer is also about getting rid of cancer, getting rid of yeast.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Eating a very low carbohydrate diet is the starting point. To do that, because, you know, all sugar comes in through the mouth, doesn't it? So if you, if you, if you reduce the sugar that's coming through the mouth, you can, um, obviously massively reduce the sugar levels that are in the body. And guess what? We know. We know this diet, the ketogenic diet, we know it can reverse type 2 diabetes, and that's very important because diabetes is extremely common. And again, we know that diabetes is the major risk factor for heart disease, for cancer and dementia. It's all about sugar. That's why the Kick Sugar Summit is so important, because, um, that is absolutely the starting point, um to prevent disease and to optimize energy delivery mechanisms and therefore our energy and our health and all that goes with that.
FLORENCE:So by low carb then do you mean like under 20 grams of carbohydrate? Would you start people there? Or what if someone said can I just get rid of all the carbs, can I just go carnivore for a while? Like what would you say to that?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Absolutely. The carnivore diet is a very healthy diet and I often use the carnivore diet. It's particularly helpful for people who've got allergies to discern what those allergies are. But you know we have to live as well and you know we have to live as well and you know it's all about getting that balance right. And what is very helpful is to measure the ketones in our body, because the body, because sugar is so toxic, the body will always burn that off first to get rid of it, to get it out of the way. And so if we measure to see if we're in ketosis, either by doing blood tests which I don't like because it means you have to prick your finger or a urine test or a breath test and, um, something like this, an ace track meter is very helpful measure the ketones as soon as you're in ketosis, you've done the diet sufficiently well because, as I say, the body will always get rid of sugars first, so before it starts to burn uh, fats and fiber and get into and get into ketosis properly.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So the thing is there is no hard and there are no hard and fast rules. Measure the levels because everyone is different. So, for example, some people when they wrap with food allergies, they all spike their blood sugar. I'm not quite sure what the mechanism of that is, but it's a well-recognized phenomenon, possibly through cortisol, and men, for example, who have got a larger muscle mass, they can often get away with more carbohydrates than women can People. If they're able to exercise, then again they'll get away with more carbohydrates than people who can't exercise.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So what is often very helpful to do in parallel with the measured ketones is to have a continuous glucose monitor. Now you can get those online. These days you don't have to go to a doctor, you fit one just on the back of the arm there and you can get continuous glucose monitoring for, say, two weeks. In this country it costs about 50 quid and that's often very useful for people because they can really see then what their blood sugars are doing, if they're you know, if they're spiking in the morning, if there's a particular food that's a problem to them, what they can get away with, and we like to keep the blood sugar between four and six and to get it there and be in ketosis is a great start to get it there and be in ketosis is a great start.
FLORENCE:Got it Very helpful. All right, let me see if there's anything else I want to ask about step one diet and gut function A little bit around timelines. So, dr Myhill, I'm imagining most people have attempted keto at least once, or paleo at least once, or you know, and it's really hard like and headaches, fatigue, like, talk about fatigue, talk about like I've gone into funks, like I have found it really long and difficult to sort of get things turned around. So what can you, what? What can you say to us to help us get over the hump, because so many of us feel worse before we feel better.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Well, the only thing I can say is just do it Now. I've been doing a PK diet for 20 years 25 years and it's easy. You know, whenever I test, I'm always in ketosis. I eat really well these days. I time restrict my eating so I don't have breakfast, and then lunch is I have. I have a recipe for fiber cake which is very, very good. My energy bars, which are just cocoa butter with nuts and seeds in them, very easy to make, very quick and easy, so I can have lunch on the run, or I just have last night's leftovers. And then evening is, um, it's just meat, fish, eggs, um, vegetables. I'm lucky. I'm a keen gardener, so I've got lots of vegetables in the garden and then berries with maybe coconut cream. So, okay, I might eat a very similar diet, but it's delicious. I look forward to every moment of it. I'm permanently in ketosis and I think I'm living my life to its full potential. And um the.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:The worst bit you can do is the worst thing you can do is is do the data bit. It's like giving up smoking. If I said to somebody you know you've got to give up smoking, but it's okay to have one or two a day. We all know that's bad, bad advice, because that one or two a day all that does is switch on the craving and soon before you know it people are back on 10, 15, 20 fags a day. It's the same with alcohol. When alcoholics give up alcohol they have to be absolutely about it. They have to have complete abstinence. They know they can't have a little nifter because then they're back on the wagon because it switches on the craving. And it's the same with sugars and carbs. And my test of a food is if I can just have a handful of it and I don't want any more, that's okay. But if somebody gave me a bar of chocolate and I had one square, I wouldn't be content until the whole bar had gone. If somebody gave me a biscuit and I had one biscuit, I wouldn't be happy until the whole packet had gone. If somebody gave me a biscuit and I had one biscuit, I wouldn't be happy until the whole packet packet had gone, because it switches on the craving.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So I do have the self-control to say no to the first mouthful. If I say no to the first mouthful then I'm not troubled by it. So I mean, for example, in the garden at the moment. You know, it's the time of year, we've got loads of strawberries, but you know, and okay, well, as I'm picking, I'm eating them, but you can only eat so many because, because you're full, because just have, I'm not getting a sugar spike from it, but they're just absolutely delicious, uh, but when I've had enough, I've had enough, I don't want any more, but say it would be different, different with an addiction. So if that is my how I test foods, to know that I'm not addicted to them.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So guess what? I do sometimes have chips, but my chips are. I parboil potatoes, let them cool. Now, if you do that, much of the starch is turned to resistant starch, which doesn't upset the blood sugar, and then I fry them in lots of coconut oil or lard and make really crisp chips and I only have to have three or four and I don't want any more. It doesn't spike my sugar, it doesn't switch on craving. So you know, I know I've done it right.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So when you do the PK diet, the important thing is to do it properly and stick with it, and then the cravings just go away, they just melt away. Now we all fall off the wagon occasionally, don't we? Yes, you go to a party and somebody offers you something you absolutely can't resist. But the key is to get back on the wagon as soon as you can Know that when you eat that food you're going to fall off the wagon and then you've got to be doubly strict with yourself to get back on it. It.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:But the thing about when we eat food people say say, you know, oh, it doesn't taste nice. But there are two aspects to food. There's the taste and then there's the addictive hit. And the carbohydrate addicts are looking for that addictive hit so they can have a. They have a large meal of steak and chips and salad or whatever, but they're not satisfied until they've had a huge lump of ice cream at the end of it because they've got that sugar hit at the end. So they know they've had their full, they're not really hungry, but they haven't had that addictive hit. And that is the thing to look out for. So what I would say to you, and again, when people say, well, when I'm out there's nothing else I can have except and so you know they go and buy a bar of chocolate or a sandwich or something like that, I say, well, just don't eat it.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:You know, fasting is very good for us, and one of the joys of being in ketosis is you don't run out of fuel because we are fat burning from our bodies, and even slim people have got a lot of fat stored in their bodies. Now you might have a stomach rumble, you might have a oh you know, I'd like something to eat, sort of thing. But if you really ask yourself is the brain working well? Is the body working well? Guess what? Yes, it is. If you're in ketosis, it's working fine. In fact, to be in ketosis is a very good ploy for the athlete.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:When I say the athletes, I mean the endurance athletes. They can function at a much better level and they can improve their personal bests simply by being in ketosis. So, for example, the world record for the furthest distance run in 24 hours is held by Mike Morton. He's a keto adapted athlete and during the 24 hours he ran 172 miles without needing to eat anything. Yes, of course he had to have a drink, he had to have some electrolytes. He's running along, but he didn't need to eat anything, whereas nowadays most marathon runners, they run on carbohydrates, they carb load before a competition and they have to eat as they're going along. At 17 or 18 miles. They, otherwise they hit a wall, what we call it hitting a wall in this country, in america, I believe it's called bonking, but the point is they have, they have to have a sugar snack, jube, jubes or sweets or something like that as they're running on, in order to fuel their bodies.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:That's not a problem for the keto adapted athletes and, again, if you look at this from an evolutionary perspective, that was a highly desirable state to be in because, um, primitive man was a persistence hunter.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Now, he couldn't run faster than his prey, but he could run longer than he could outrun them. And because he was intelligent, he probably had teams of people you know running as prey, but he could run longer than he could outrun them. And because he was intelligent, he probably had teams of people you know running as well, but he ran and ran and ran and he literally ran them down until they could. They couldn't run any further and then he would catch it and, of course, kill his prey. So being in ketosis is very good for the endurance athlete who can improve and the endurance is, you know, the cyclists, the runners, the long distance sw athlete who can improve, and the endurance is, you know, the cyclists, the runners, the long distance swimmers. They can improve their you know their times by maybe up to seven or 15% just by going into ketosis. So it does can make a massive difference.
FLORENCE:So interesting. So before we leave this, so in terms of the timeline and how quickly people can start to expect to feel better, because I think most people quit while they're still feeling fatigue and headaches. And like exercise or like exercise, I can't exercise right now. I'm exhausted. So what does the journey, you know, over the hump look like and how long does it take?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Well course is it. The answer is it depends, because everybody is so different. Um but um, the first thing you have to do is get um into ketosis and get keto adapted, and that can take about about at least a week, probably two weeks, before you're keto adapted, then you, and then, in parallel with that, you're going to be sorting out the upper fermenting gut. So in parallel with that you're going to be taking your vitamin C and the Rd. Now, of course, many fatigues are caused by micronutrient deficiencies and it's only once you're in ketosis and you've got the Rd and the vitamin C set up that you're going to see any benefit from the multivitamins, from the multiminerals, from the eskimo, from the fish oils, from the vitamin D, which is all you know I consider to be an essential part of staying well in a modern world. And our body renews itself about once every six months. So every cell in the body is turned over, is replaced, is renewed about once every six months. So if someone's got profound deficiencies, it might take six months to correct. So there's an element of that. And then we have to look at the, as I call it, the mitochondrial engine, and it was in the 1990s that I started to first think about mitochondria. Now, mitochondria was a subject that, yes, we all study at medical school. You might get up for biochemistry. You mug it up the night before on black coffee and chocolate and hope you remember enough to regurgitate onto the exam paper the next morning and so pass. And the reason that we did it that way is because in the 1970s, when I was a medical student, mitochondria had no clinical application. They were never otherwise mentioned at all in my clinical work for heart disease, cancer, cancer the word never even came up and still doesn't come up in conventional medicine. But we now know that mitochondria are implicated in almost any disease process that you care to mention, from diabetes, cancer, dementia and so on. In the 1990s, I started thinking to myself, you know, I wonder if mitochondria are implicated in patients who've got chronic fatigue syndrome.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And I was incredibly fortunate to work with a wonderful biochemist called Dr John McCarron Howard who really, if anybody should have the Nobel Prize for biochemistry, it should be that man and he set up a mitochondrial function test and as part of that mitochondrial function test, which measures how well our engines work, he also looked at the nutrients that were necessary for mitochondria to function, and in 2009, we published our first paper. Now the way this worked is I had, during the 90s and the 2000s, had accumulated patients who weren't getting better, doing all the things that I knew to do the diet, the fermenting gut, thyroid and so on. So when they came to see me, we agreed between us their energy score and what that might be. I then sent bloods down to John McLaren Howard, who did the mitochondrial function tests, and the results were collated by a third party. That was Professor Norman Booth at Mansfield College, oxford. So I didn't know what the biochemistry was. John McLaren Howard didn't know how sick the patients were and say Norman Booth put it together and, to cut a very long story short, those people who had the most severe fatigue had the worst mitochondrial function and those and vice versa. And that was the first solid bit of evidence in the whole world actually, at the time that mitochondria was so important in chronic fatigue syndromes, and from the test that John also did, we were able to acetate the main rate limiting steps. To acetate the main rate-limiting steps, that is, coenzyme Q10, acetyl-l-carnitine, magnesium, penicillin and D-ribose. Those are the nutrients that were necessary to correct those rate-limiting steps, and then, of course, mitochondria could be going slow because they're blocked by something which might be products of the fermenting gut, it might be heavy metals, it might be pesticides, it might be volatile organic compounds. John was actually looking at these substances and measuring them, and that again gives obvious clues for management, because those people who were poisoned we then have to put on some sort of detox regime. So the point is we were then able to individually establish packages of treatment for people with poor mitochondrial function, and then our second and our third paper followed up those patients to see what happened when they put in those regimes, and it was very lovely to see that the mitochondrial function improved reliably.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Well. Now, the important point about that is we can get mitochondrial function tests, but they're expensive. But we now know the regimes that are necessary to correct mitochondrial function in people with fatigue syndrome in fact in anybody and the most important. Well, the regimes would be magnesium at least 200 milligrams, maybe 300 milligrams of magnesium, and vitamin 10 000 iu for its absorption. To absorb magnesium you need vitamin d, then coenzyme q10 100 milligrams. Vitamin b3 is narcinamide 1500 milligrams. Astel l-carnitine, um, which comes from meat, and so all the vegetarians and the vegans are were always deficient in acetylcarnitine and then, in order to make new ATP, um, d-ribose again is very helpful. So it's a very simple package, very affordable. So you don't have to do the fancy test. If people just take that package, that will get them a long way.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And then, of course, let's say some people have um their mitochondria are blocked because um they had been exposed to chemicals at work. So, for example, every farmer in this country has probably been poisoned by organophosphate pesticides. They're used widely in sprays in agriculture and, of course, in livestock. They're used for sheep dipping, for controlling flies in the milking parlour and things like that. Organophosphates have now been largely replaced by glyphosate, which is an equally toxic, nasty molecule, and you're probably aware of the work of Stephanie Seneff, who's written a fantastic book, a Toxic Legacy, detailing the horrors of glyphosate. In fact, I don't think there's ever been a time when it's more important to eat organic, because there's so much glyphosate getting through into our food and it's wreaking biochemical havoc in our bodies. And of course there are other things that can inhibit mitochondria. But that's basically the overall plan for treating mitochondria and fixing them the, the overall um uh plan for treating mitochondria and fixing them.
FLORENCE:So how would a person decide whether or not they needed to do a detox protocol before bringing in the supplements? Um, does everyone benefit from a detox protocol or do you try the supplements and if you're not feeling better, let's?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:let's try a detox no, we, you do it all. This is not a case of oh, let's try the diet. Oh, that didn't work, we'll forget the diet, let's have a go at the mitochondria. Oh, that didn't work, you've got to do it all. Okay, so, and you know, I've done well, not thousands, well, possibly thousands, but certainly hundreds of tests of toxicity for heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, for pesticides, and I have never seen a normal result. We are all poisoned, some to a greater extent, some to a lesser extent, obviously, but the point is we should all be doing detox regimes Now.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Probably the biggest single source of toxins is from the upper fermenting gut. So the first thing we have to do to reduce our toxic load is sort out our diet. Eat good, real food, low carbohydrate, cut out the grains, cut out the dairy products, and that is a great start. But I define toxins by how we get rid of them. Now, of course, the liver is a vital for getting rid of toxins in the body and um, um. And to help the liver get rid of toxins we need a few. We need some b vitamins, we need some essential fatty acids, we need some zinc, magnesium, saline, ie. We need a good multitamin, we need a good multi-mineral and some essential fatty acids. But then there are other toxins, fat-soluble toxins, that don't get to the liver. They don't get to the liver because they're stuck in our fat. They're stuck in the fat of our brains, of our bone marrow and our subcutaneous fat. Now we can get rid of those toxins by heating regimes, and when you get hot and you can get hot in a hot bath, in a sauna, in the sunshine, through taking exercise you literally boil off those toxins from the subcutaneous fat onto the lipid layer of the surface of the skin and then you can wash them off. So if you've got the energy to exercise and then have a shower afterwards, that's a great way of getting rid of those chemicals. My sicker patients. Far infrared saunering, traditional saunering, hot bath with epsom salts in it, will do a great job of getting those toxins out. And roughly speaking and I know this because I used to do fat biopsies for toxic levels roughly speaking 50 heating regimes will halve your body load. So say you've got a notional level of 100, then 50 will get it down to 50, another 50 will get it down to 25, another 50 will get it down to 12.5 and so on. You never get rid of them entirely, but the body can deal with some toxic stress. So my view is we should all be doing a heating regime at least once a week. Now I'm too old to go for a run, but I can get hot work in my garden and shower off, or I love to have an Epsom salt bath. So that's that.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And then the third group of toxins are heavy metals. Now, heavy metals are a particular problem. Again, they can't get to the liver because they get stuck in the tissues. And the reason they get stuck in the tissues is because micronutrient deficiency is very common. Zinc deficiency is common, Selenium deficiency is common, magnesium deficiency is common. So if the body doesn't have those micronutrients available, it will grab something that looks similar and that something might be heavy metal, like aluminium, like mercury, like arsenic, like cadmium or whatever, and they get stuck in our tissues. And so, again, heating regimes won't take them out. Liver detoxification might make a bit of a difference, but not a lot.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And to get rid of those, first of all we take lots of minerals, because that helps to displace them from their binding sites. As we mentioned earlier, the body turns over about once every six months, and as it's renewing those enzyme systems. There's lots of zinc around. It'll grab zinc instead of mercury. It'll grab a selenium instead of aluminium or whatever. So that's a good start. And then glutathione, which has been described as the master antioxidant. It's a very important antioxidant that will also help to grab those heavy metals so we can pass them out in our urine.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Vitamin C helps to get rid of heavy metals. Iodine helps to displace them for their binding sites, so that's going to be additionally helpful. Some people need chelation therapy to get rid of toxic metals. I tend to use DMSA, which works incredibly well. Lots of lovely work done in Germany by Dr Eleanor Blauer at Bush, who runs a trace mineral services there, has demonstrated the efficacy of DMSA, so that can be very helpful too, to measure the metals before and afterwards. So the point here is all these regimes are, as you mentioned earlier, do-it-yourself. They're within the powers of us all to do, they are available to do. You just have to know what to do are available to do.
FLORENCE:You just have to know what to do.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:What about green juice cleanses like celery juices or that kind of thing? Well, I mean, the answer is I don't know, because I haven't seen any science or papers that demonstrate their efficacy. Because I mean, for example've collected um a test of toxicity, fat biopsies or dna adducts or translocated protein studies or whatever before and afterwards. So I know these regimes work, so I tend to stick with the things that I know work, um, and if you can find me a good paper showing me that you know celery juicing, whatever, will reduce, um, uh, your levels of pesticides, then then you know I would love to use that. But though you know it's, that's probably a good idea. You knew you're certainly not going to do any harm by using celery juice, but I don't have any evidence it actually works.
FLORENCE:So until I do, I shall stick with the things that I know are effective and I I don't know if people are doing that kind of research Like I don't. I don't know that people are thinking like you, dr Myhill, where they're like let me test this. I want to do before and after biopsies here, like because those are probably expensive and you need to have permission from your clients and like sounds like that isn't easy to do that research.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:No, and that's why I was so lucky, say, to work with John McLaren Howard, because he did these tests pretty much at cost. But the thing is I now have the data, I now know these things work, so my patients don't have to spend a fortune on tests and all these regimes. They're on, they're free on my website, they're available in my books for people to do. I know they work and we're all poisoned because we live in a toxic world. So what I say to people these days is just get on and do it. You know, don't spend a fortune on tests. Just make this a in a normal and natural part of your diet and much of this will be done. Say you sort out the upper fermenting gut, get rid of those. Epsom salt bath once a week.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:That gets rid of many of the volatile organic and uh residues and such like, and heavy metals, glutathione, iodine, vitamin c, you know all these help to reduce our toxic burden and I say that is essential in the world in which we live today right, right, right.
FLORENCE:Yeah, I would not be surprised. I would not be surprised if, if, if green juices are actually, if the science was done, I think it would be impressive. Like it just makes sense that the cilantro and like it just feels like they're juicy and very mineralizing and hydrating. I can't imagine that they're not supporting detox, but okay. So one other thing I want to ask about sometimes people will do intravenous glutathione and wind up quite unwell. Is it because they're detoxing too quickly?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Well, I never have done intravenous glutathione so I'd hate to comment.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:But the point is you know, I've done so many tests measuring glutathione before and after taking it by mouth, and the levels come up reliably well. Taking it by mouth, and the levels come up reliably well, and I would always use glutathione as part of the methylation package. Now an incredibly useful test which we should all do is to measure homocysteine. Now, homocysteine is a toxin. It's a mark of the methylation cycle, but it's also toxic in its own right and it is a major risk factor for heart disease, cancer, dementia and, of course, chronic fatigue syndrome. We should all know what our homocysteine is. It should lie between 5 and 10, I think it's micromoles per liter, so it can be too high, it can be too low, but the point is you can fix your homocysteine with B vitamins methylated B12, methylated B6, and methyl folic acid brings the levels down and glutathione brings the levels into range reliably well. So there's a fantastic doctor called Patrick Holford in this country who runs a website called Food for the Brain. Now anybody can access this, and on that website you can access a kit where you can measure your own homocysteine with a do-it-yourself test. I think it costs £50. Everybody should do that.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:We should all know what our homocysteine is and that is a very powerful prediction. Your homocysteine levels in your 30s will predict your risk of dementia later on in life. It's a really important thing to know and, of course, guess why conventional medicine never talks about this. The answer is follow the money. There's big money to be made by big pharma from sick people, and big pharma do not want healthy people. They want lots of sick people that need their drugs, need their cancer therapies and the dementia drugs which actually don't work at all well anyway. But prevention is better than cure. Know your homeocystine, bring it down and prevent these horrible diseases from coming from arriving.
FLORENCE:And you know what occurs to me for a lot of people that are in the medical mainstream, medical matrix, I think they genuinely honestly believe what you and I are talking about is complete quackery. I think they're offended. I think they genuinely, in their heart of hearts, believe that their medicines work and this paradigm that we're in is just dangerous and misleading people, and I believe that it's not money, not always money motivated. I feel like they're just in a paradigm.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Well, I think more doctors are beginning to wake up, as I call it, and open their eyes, and it often happens because of personal experience and you know they suddenly have a member of the family or a friend or relative or you know, or indeed themselves. I have a lot of. I've seen many doctors you know as patients sort of thing, and in doing so it's lovely to see them wake up, change their thinking, and then they go away and they change their practice. Now the big problem in this country, and I'm sure it's the same in America, is that the state medical boards problem in this country, and I'm sure it's the same in America, is that the state medical boards and in this country, the General Medical Council, have become the thought police.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:And any doctor who speaks out of line, who goes against the narrative, is immediately sanctioned, and to lose your license to practice medicine is a very serious thing because you lose your livelihood, you lose your job, you lose your reputation, you use your income and so on. And so, doctors, sometimes they just stick to the narrative in order not to be struck off now, as you may or may not know. Um, you know, I know I've never stuck to the narrative, I've always spoken my mind. But the result of that is that I have been endlessly attacked by the General Medical Council and in fact, I'm the most investigated doctor in the history of the General Medical Council. The current score is Myhill, 39 GMC nil, and there are six cases outstanding and I have a high court hearing in October.
FLORENCE:So it's a real battle just to stay qualified. Wow, Dr Myhill. Wow, and it sounds like you just know. Okay, another case. I'm looking forward to showing the science and my research, and I'm going to win this one too. I bet at this point you're just kind of confident.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Well, exactly One of the funniest comments that came up, because I often do a Freedom of Information Act search in the GMC to find out what they're saying behind my back and one of those telling comments came from one of their senior legal advisors called Mr Tom Kark, who stated the problem with the Myhill cases. The problem is that all the patients are better and none of them will give witness statements against her.
FLORENCE:That's amazing. Oh, did you know what I have? This little heart's desire? It's been going on for so many years. I can't help but believe that maybe one day this dream of mine can come true, that I do a documentary about these doctors, like Professor Noakes and Dr Fedke and you I didn't know you were under the same kind of scenario. Oh my god, the stories and their triumphs. And oh my goodness. Back to this, I have a question about the fermenting upper upper gi as you say so there are.
FLORENCE:Now there's a. There's a home test kit for SIBO called food goodness marble food marble have you heard of?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:it? Yes, I have heard of that. Um, I mean the point. The point is is the fermenting upper gut can be by bacteria, it can be by yeast, it may be there are some parasites there, but I deliberately call it the fermenting up a gut and don't try to break it down into SIBO or yeast, because the treatment is the same. Okay, the treatment is don't feed them, so it's a low carbohydrate diet. They kill them with vitamin c, kill with iodine people who don't tolerate that, sometimes msm or sulfur, which is very cheap and easy, you know works well. So you know there are several ways that we can kill microbes in our fermenting gut, but, as I say, I like to keep it simple.
FLORENCE:Okay Now for people who might want to do have done like a SIBO test. They've been diagnosed. Can you they do your protocol and then go back and get tested again and show improvement? Or is it possible that that's also picking up hydrogen or methane from the lower, like from the colon, and so it's missed?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:yeah, but I mean, you know, I I don't these days I don't do many tests because the clinical picture is the most powerful, um uh, guide to what's going on. And you know, the battle against the upper fermenting gut is not a battle, it's a war. It's a war that we have to fight for life, because you know, if I settle down um, if somebody gave me in a half a kilogram of grapes, for example, if I had one, you know, because it's a very sweet fruit, I'd want another, and I'd want another, and I'd want another. Now, a grape, of course, is a bag of sugar surrounded by yeast and immediately my upper gut would probably start to ferment and I would feel awful as a result. So it illustrates the point that anybody can have a fermenting upper gut. If you just eat a whole load of something sweet or sugary, or fruit juice or something like that, then you're probably going to start fermenting very quickly, because you've got the microbes there and you've got the sugar there, and away it goes. It starts to ferment like nothing else.
FLORENCE:Got it, and the thing that's so darn frustrating is that sure we'll feel bad later, but we sure feel really nice for a little while right, and it's just.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:That's the story of all addiction, isn't it? Alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine, doesn't matter. You feel great in the short term, rubbish in the long term.
FLORENCE:And it's just so. It's so hard to imagine like getting through that short-term agony of missing out on the incredible pleasures of sugar and these carbs. So I have heard uh I actually was uh talking with I got diagnosed with SIBO, so this is and I imagine that most of us would like how can we not? 97 of us are metabolically damaged, so I imagine it's probably very, very common.
FLORENCE:But a functional medical doctor I was talking to was saying I had said to her you know I was going, I was doing stints of carnivore and keto, and she's like no, I want you to go back, I want you to eat grains daily and fruit daily, because the research shows that if you try and kill off these pathogenic bacteria, these fermenting bacteria in the small intestines, that what can happen is that they don't actually die off. They go into this sort of biofilm encasement and they're just dormant. They're dormant and they don't actually die off. They're just waiting for you to eat carbs again, right. And so she said I want you to eat them every day and then we'll bring in the sort of herbal antibiotics so that they're alive well, these antibiotics, and then they get killed off.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So I'm curious to know what you think of that. No, I don't get that at all.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:This is not a battle, it's a war. Okay. So, yes, they will go into dormant phase for a while. But if you stay off the carbs and stay off the carbs and stay off the carbs, eventually they're going to just disappear. They can't stay dormant forever. So I don't buy that argument. I would say keep at it, stay low carb, keep playing away the vitamin C and the iodine. Eventually you will wear the little bugs down and the numbers will reduce. Remember, you can never get rid of every last bacteria or yeast. There's always going to be some there, always. In fact, just the business of eating food is going to inoculate the gut with some more.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:Sorry, I think I'm fading away at the moment, but that's because it's going dark out here. Oh good, no worries, the lighting's gone a bit odd. That's because it's going dark. Yeah, yeah, no worries. But you just have to say just stay low carb. And to say it's like not drinking when you've been not drinking for a while. It's easy, it becomes the new norm. You're not thinking, oh, when can I have that next drink? It's like smoking. When you stop smoking, you feel so much better, it becomes the new norm.
FLORENCE:You're not on that addictive up and down all the time. Have you ever had any patients who sincerely really did low carb and did it right and did everything you said and didn't feel good?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:oh yeah, didn't come on, of course, because there are. There are many other ways, that many of things. You know, I'm talking about the very, the simplistic thing. But, for example, I'll give you, um, a common reason for that is the underactive thyroid, because normally the body gets into ketosis, gets into fat burning with thyroid hormones. Now if you haven't got the thyroid hormones, the fat burn because the thyroid is underactive. Then you will fat burn, but you will fat burn with adrenaline. Now, adrenaline is the hormone that makes you feel wide but tired.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:So people say I've done the keto diet but I I still feel. I still feel like I've got low blood sugar, because, of course, the symptoms of low blood sugar are not symptoms of low blood sugar, they're symptoms of adrenaline. It's the adrenaline response to that that makes people feel so terrible. You know the shakiness, the pallor, the faintness, the sweating, the tachycardia and all that. So, um, so, yes, um, and, and, and sometimes that's a very useful clue that they do have an underactive thyroid. It's called ketogenic hypoglycemia. It's a dreadful term but, um, it illustrates the point that you're in ketosis but you feel like you've got low blood sugar because of all the adrenaline there, and all the adrenaline is there because you haven't got the thyroid hormones to be able to fat burn with. So then we move on to thinking about the thyroid gland is that a?
FLORENCE:is that a? Relatively quick I know we're just about to wrap up here is there a bit of a quick soundbite and I know you've got a book on it, so we anyone who's interested in that phase of this journey maybe go buy it, because I understand it's quite detailed and yeah, yeah, no, I'm very naughty.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:I called it the underactive thyroid. Do it yourself because your doctor won't. So, um, which is very cheeky thing to say, I know, but that is the fact of the matter. And thankfully we can get thyroid glandulars which do contain active material in them and are highly effective in treating the underactive thyroid. But the key point to remember about this is that you don't diagnose an underactive thyroid just with the blood tests.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:The blood tests tell you if there's biochemical scope for a trial of thyroid. So very often the T4, the free T3, are right at low end of reference range. So at that point I asked myself well, do you have ketogenic hypoglycemia? Is your pulse slow at rest? Have you got thin hair, poor quality skin? Have you got carpal tunnel syndrome? Are your periods very irregular? There are lots of clinical clues that point to an underactive thyroid. And if the answer to some of those questions is yes and the blood tests are at low end of range, then there's biochemical scope for a trial of thyroid hormones. And in the book I describe in detail how to do that, how to estimate, how to start it, how to run it up slowly, how to monitor it to make sure you're not overdosing and sometimes the results with that are dramatic.
FLORENCE:That makes so much sense to me, because those are the, those are the people I've heard from. They feel like they're wired or tired, they can't sleep, they're swear they're doing everything right, they've got, they're in ketosis. They're like maybe I'm just not meant for this, this approach, maybe I'm meant to just burn sugars. I can't burn fat and feel good the thyroids.
DR. SARAH MYHILL:They always think the thyroid, always think thyroid. In that event.
FLORENCE:Right, always think thyroid Okay, great, oh, so amazing, and I love that. You're like your mission. I don't think I really appreciated this about you before this interview how DIY you are. You can do this. Let me share you share my decades of research and the studies that I've done, and here let me take you by the hand and let me guide you forward into doing this, so that you don't have to get lost, because that was a functional medical doctor whose opinion I just shared with you, right? So we can get so lost between different functional medical doctors' perspectives. They don't even agree necessarily. So is there any final words you'd like to share with us today?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:People always ask me that at the end of an interview. And, uh, what I would say to people is take responsibility of your health, uh, yourself, because there's not going to be anybody who is more motivated to get you well, in a better position, to observe the symptoms and signs and see the changes and actually do it. You don't need a doctor. Ok, doctors can be very helpful, but there's all the information on my website and my books so that you can do it yourself and take control. And so often doctors end up, they put people off, they discourage them, they say, oh, you know, don't be silly, it's not this, it's not that, don't try it. It's not this, it's not that, you know, don't try it. You know you'll make yourself ill or you'll give yourself high cholesterol or other such tosh. And, um, you know there's so much that can be done, so, um, just do it.
FLORENCE:Thank you. Last question Do are you still working with clients and patients? Can people work with you? Yeah, okay, great, great. I wasn't quite sure what that looked like. So can you tell people how people can find you and maybe a couple of your books?
DR. SARAH MYHILL:so they can go and buy them. Oh well, just go to my website, drmyhillcouk the details, the books there. I run online workshops that are good fun. I run workshops at my home over a weekend, which are good fun, and I also have I'm helping other doctors get started in this practice, so I'm running an apprenticeship scheme for other doctors. So, yeah, just get in touch with me and I will do my best to point people in the right direction.
FLORENCE:Thank you.
