Ep 458: The Crucial Role of Minerals in Boosting Energy and Metabolism With Kaely McDevitt

Struggling with your hormones? Feeling burn out, fatigued and just not your best?  Kaely McDevitt is a registered dietician specializing in nutrition for women’s health. Having experienced the pitfalls of a conventional approach to women’s health first hand, Kaely is passionate about empowering women to build health from a place of connection: to self, nature and community.  In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, Dr. Jannine Krause interviews Kaely McDevitt, RD on how minerals are the MVP when it comes to feeling your best, preventing or addressing burnout.

Resources From The Show:

• Trace elements – Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) example
• Instagram – @kaelyrd
• Kaely’s Website – https://www.kaelyrd.com/
• Find Your Magic Quiz

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

1:44 – Kaely’s story

5:00 – Using birth control to alleviate menstrual cramps

9:17 – What Kaely is testing her patients for

10:46 – Why Kaely starts with mineral testing

12:24 – Most common deficient minerals found and typical client served in Kaely’s practice

14:45 – Next step, food, beverage and possibly supplementation 

17:42 – Understanding calcium

24:21 – What are the red flags in the testing results if the issue is the water?

28:02 – Trends in perimenopause women

29:36 – How to get functional testing done and find some support

32:22 – Working with Kaely

33:44 – How Kaely approaches the nutrient and fitness aspect of getting healthy

35:38 – If stranded on an island, what 3 foods would Kaely bring with and why

37:12 – Dairy in the diet

39:33 – Testing things to see if it works for you

43:29 – Where to find Kaely online

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[Intro] Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast, where health junkies get their weekly

fix of tips, tools, and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds, and fit

physiques for life.

Hey Health Junkies, on this episode of the Health Fix Podcast, I’m interviewing

Kaely McDevitt. She’s a registered dietitian specializing in nutrition for

women’s health. And today we’re going to be talking about minerals and the role

that minerals play in balancing hormones, in energy, in thyroid metabolism,

thyroid metabolism and metabolism in general.

This is a fun podcast and we geek out on hormones big time.

So you’re definitely going to learn something in this podcast.

So let’s introduce you to Kaely McDevitt.

Hey, health junkies.

I have Kaely McDevitt on and we’re going to be talking about food.

We’re going to be talking about minerals.

We’re going to be talking about all the things that we kind of overlook when it

comes to the basics of helping you balance your hormones, health, life in general.

So Kaely, welcome to Health Fix Podcast.

KAELY: Thank you so much for having me.

I’m pumped to be here.

JANNINE: Well, gosh, before I hit record,

I kind of was like, you kind of do all the things

I need help with in my practice.

All the things that we’re working on with patients

and you’ve got kind of the foundation.

And sometimes, you know, as Doc’s,

it’s hard for us to do that underlying coaching.

And this is where I love looking to our Ds that are,

let’s say awake to what’s legit nutrition.

So of course, I always have to ask,

you went to the traditional schooling, I saw that in your website about your history.

And then you were like, oh wait, I’m missing something.

Give us kind of the backstory in terms of how that evolution came out.

And were you always interested in nutrition as a kid?

KAELY: Yeah, you know, I knew I would do something in the health space.

My mom was a physical therapist.

I was an athlete.

I was like, you know, it’ll be something in that space.

And I think I maybe it was a sophomore and undergrad when I realized that

dietetics was a thing that I could pursue. And it fit perfectly for me at the time because I was

obsessed with reading how to use food and exercise to manipulate how you looked. So I was like,

cool, I’m going to learn all the tricks from this program. I’m going to be an expert at this.

And so I, you know, moved into the dietetic space. I was thinking I’d be a sports dietitian because

that’s kind of what I was interested in at the time. And as luck would have it, I was dealing with a

a whole bunch of hormone health issues throughout the years

that I was in school.

So my undergrad grad school

and then getting ready for my boards after the internship.

And a lot of this comes back

to being put on birth control quite young,

which I’m sure we could discuss too.

JANNINE: Oh yeah.

KAELY: But I was like gold star, like straight A type student.

So I am meticulously applying all the nutrition information

I’m being taught to a T

and feeling worse and worse as years go on.

So I graduate, I get a credential and I feel horrible.

and I’m like, great, I am completely unprepared to help people.

And, you know, while I have no regrets

for the path that took me here,

and I think even the conventional education was huge

in like the biochemistry and anatomy

and physiology understanding, great.

I realized that I did not understand

how the female body worked.

I did not understand hormones,

and I definitely did not understand how nutrition

really should be applied in the context of women’s health.

And so I spent a lot of my first years as an RD,

not working in women’s health,

but spending all my free time trying to learn the stuff

that I didn’t learn and realizing, holy crap,

this nutrition advice that I’ve been following

is not moving in the right direction.

So yeah, I had a health awakening.

It kind of completely pivoted away

from my conventional nutrition

and ended up sharing this process as a blog at first

and eventually got back to feeling really amazing myself

and then realized a lot of other women

were looking for that info too.

so moved to private practice in women’s health

and have loved being here

because it’s such an underserved segment of the population

when it comes to nutrition research.

JANNINE: Yeah, I have to agree with you

because I mean, we unfortunately for women

were susceptible, right, to trends, fads,

what’s a quick fix, things of that nature.

And, you know, watching our moms, right,

depending on how moms are, I mean,

I started dieting at eight years old

when I saw my mom, you know, dieting.

And so I thought, “Oh, this is the way

to do it, but really we’re looking at, we were looking at this guru, that guru.

Now, one of the big things that we, you had mentioned is, is birth control.

And I think a lot of women start even their journey as a woman, as they go through puberty,

kind of messed up when it comes to hormones, balance and the things we need, like the nutrients,

the vitamins and minerals.

So I would love to hear you kind of chat a little bit about like, what did you learn

about birth control and how can we help younger women right now or women who are listening

and have grandkids or have children that are on birth control? How can we support them

and tell them what might be happening right now?

KAELY: Yeah, this is such a passion area of mine because it was just, it was the thing that

rocked my world health-wise and kind of started me down this trajectory. But, you know, personally,

I went on birth control almost immediately after starting to have a period because my

symptoms were so horrible. I was missing days of school, I was missing practice, and at the time

it was like, “Hey, here’s this that you can take and it’ll solve all those problems.” And I was like

immediately, “Yes, that sounds perfect.” And the problem with going on it so young is that I

likely hadn’t established really great brain to over-recommunication yet. I hadn’t established

really strong progesterone production yet. And if we look at causes for most of our miserable

period symptoms. It is typically that we have too much estrogen and not enough progesterone

around, just definitely the state that I was in. And choosing to go to birth control at that time

meant I never investigated ways to resolve that problem for real. And I spent about a decade on

birth control trying a bunch of different types because I was dealing with a lot of symptoms. And

when I eventually did come off of it, lo and behold, that original issue was very much still there.

does not solve that problem. And what I learned in my digging is that it also created a whole

bunch of nutrient deficiencies for me, which I saw like on paper when I did some micronutrient

testing on myself around that time. It puts a lot of stress on the microbiome, the liver,

and the gallbladder. And then it has a completely different impact on your physiology when we’re

using synthetic hormones versus naturally made ones. So for me that manifested with really significant

anxiety and mood swings, very low energy and just low drive for life.

I’m just really feeling like I was a dulled version of who I used to be.

All of those things absolutely can be repaired, but I think the conversation starts at a young

age about here’s how the menstrual cycle works.

And if we have symptoms, that’s our body’s way of communicating with us.

And guess what?

We’ve got some tools that we can use to try to mitigate those issues earlier on rather

than putting a big old band aid with some additional risks involved in it on top of it.

JANNINE: You know, I think it’s valuable to talk about this really early on because, you know, by the

time I see women, we’re looking at 30 plus years of being on birth control. If they didn’t stop to

to have kids or I’m looking at women who stop and then they’re like, okay, now I want to get

pregnant. And it’s like, we got to go back to when you first started because now we just masked

things. So what are some of the, what are some of the minerals you saw with

yourself vitamins, you know, give us the backstory on you, like kind of with

those really painful, heavy periods, because that’s what I hear, you know,

not too many people are getting birth control just for the fun of it.

It’s because life is difficult without an especially athletes.

I would agree. Yeah. Give us a hat story. Like what did you find was

deficient, you know, with your micronutrient and things of that nature.

KAELY: Yeah. Yeah. I was working in corporate wellness at the time.

it was the first job I had as an RD and we did surprisingly like functional labs for our

corporate clients. So we were doing tons of micronutrient testing, which was really cool

for me as a baby dietician at the time. And so I got the opportunity to run them on myself

thinking this is going to be like the best looking micronutrient panal anyone’s ever seen.

And I came back with deficiencies like really across the board. So it was like the whole

B complex section of vitamins, which again, our somewhat limited research on earth control

and micronutrient status shows us that B vitamins tend to be depleted. We tend to see a big hit on

our antioxidants. So thinking about vitamin C, E, selenium, and then minerals like zinc and magnesium

and even copper can be influenced by birth control. And I definitely saw all of those land for me.

I think probably to a T that entire list was deficient on my testing at the time.

And yeah, I mean, if we want to look at reasons why we might not feel good,

why we might have mood swings or we might have low energy or metabolic issues. I mean, look no

further. 

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the B vitamins alone are like so key for making hormones and detoxing

hormones as well. What micronutrient tested you have back then? And you know, because I love,

I see that you teach folks how to read tests. So I love to share on what you’re using and what

you had back then. 

KAELY: Yeah, back then we were using spectra cells, micronutrient tests.

It was relatively new at the time. It was pretty unique that it was looking at lymphocytes,

so a longer-term picture of nutrient status, and then a much bigger panel versus the types of

nutrients that would be tested on general lab work. We don’t do much of that type of testing

in practice now. We’ve moved to looking at minerals specifically, so we’ll use

HTMA’s or Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis. And I know we’ll talk minerals and talk about why

why that’s our starting point now.

It’s also a really cost effective tool

when we contrast that with micronutrient testing.

But there’s absolutely some value

in specialty micronutrient testing

if we wanna get a really expanded picture

of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

JANNINE: Awesome, awesome.

Yeah, a lot of people will knock

the hair tissue mineral analysis,

but that’s the thing, it is cost effective.

And one of the things that I find cost prohibitive

for folks is the testing can be really expensive.

And so especially my younger crew, you know, folks in their 20s, you know, just getting

started in life.

And now they, you know, I’m not shelling out 350 or more for, you know, like a neutering

or a neutering valve, right?

You know, I don’t blame them.

So, you know, those kinds of things that can be incredibly helpful.

So I think my next question would be just kind of going along the lines of your practice.

You’re talking about the minerals.

You already hinted it.

I’m like, I can’t hold back.

Tell us why you start with minerals.

What’s, what, what have you found?

KAELY: Yeah, so if we’re looking at really anything similar

we’ll be coming to either of our practices

for whether it’s cycle related fertility,

maybe they’re in the perimenopause,

time frame and not feeling great,

or this is a general like low energy,

low metabolic state type picture.

We’re really talking about energy.

And we can’t resolve really any health condition

if we can’t make great energy at the cellular level.

So if we really think about what minerals do in the body,

they’re co-factors for all of our enzyme function,

which means nothing happens in the cell

in a mineral deficient state,

whether that’s energy production, detoxification,

it’s getting nutrients and fuel

or even hormones interacting with the cells themselves.

And so we ended up stumbling into using HTMA testing

because we were trying to figure out

why certain clients got better so quickly and others didn’t

and why some people stayed better

and others kind of came right back into their same symptoms.

And our belief is that it comes down to mineral status

because that’s our energy and that’s our stress resilience.

And we’ve got so much stress as modern humans,

as modern women, that if we don’t have

a really robust mineral store,

we just get knocked down by that stress

and then we see energy levels just ratchet down as a result.

So what we found is if we start by looking at minerals,

cost effective VA symbol, also VA,

and the interventions are so simple as well,

it’s primarily like food and beverage based,

we can get really quick wins

on some of those initial symptoms

and things last a lot longer.

JANNINE: Makes sense, makes sense.

And so, I think a lot of people might be like,

okay, minerals, what are the most common deficient minerals

that you find related to hormone health?

KAELY: So the first four minerals that we would consider

like foundational are tier one,

are calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium.

And we see a lot of deficiency really across the board

in that section of the pattern on an HTMA

is called a four-low pattern and this is the burnt-out woman. This is, we probably had really

stressful years where we were running a million miles an hour and burning the candle at both ends

and now we have like come screeching to a halt and the wheels have fallen off. That is a very

common state for clients to embark on their work with us. I would assume you probably see

some burnt-out, high-achieving women as well. Just a few. Just a few. Yeah. So that’s a really big

one. And then the other most common pattern that we see in the clients we serve is actually an

imbalance between calcium and potassium. And that really influences cellular thyroid function. So

how well can we get that active T3 thyroid hormone actually into the cell? And what’s cool about

that is it solves a lot of mysteries for the clients that have textbook hypothyroid symptoms,

but their blood work looks okay. So they’re making it, they’re converting it, but hey,

it’s not actually getting to the cells, so we’re still going to feel that deficiency.

So a lot of just like hypometabolic state type clients, fatigue, weight loss, resistance,

loss of libido and drive for life, typically some cycle symptoms with that too. So I’d say

that’s kind of the other main class of women that we serve. It’s like burnt out high achievers,

and then low energy, just hypometabolic state.

JANNINE: Very common. I would agree. That’s kind of my, I would say that’s my practice too. Yeah.

I’m a pretty good juggle between between the two. And you know, yes, sometimes there’s folks

in between. So if those of you who are listening, you’re like, I don’t really fit either one. Don’t

worry. We’ll find you. You’re somewhere in between. Now, you go about it. You go, okay, we’ve got that,

you know, those base minerals. Okay, we go through that, you get to working on those. And then from

there with mineral supplementation, what’s the next step? Because you were saying food, I’m saying

supplementation, as I’m saying it out loud, but you were saying food. And you and I had

talked about the adrenal cocktail and how that was like magic. So tell us a little bit about

like food to help support the minerals. And then if that’s not doing the trick supplementation.

KAELY: Yeah. So starting with again, those first four, which we would spend at least a month,

just hanging out with those before we would go any further with additional minerals.

We’re looking at first and foremost, just getting a quality mineral rich salt into your diet,

which is one of the many things that if like baby dietitian me could ever hear me recommending

more salt to people she would have lost it. But we need mineral rich salt. So salt that hasn’t

been stripped of all its trace minerals. So we’re looking at things like Redmond’s real salt or

Celtic sea salt. Crucial for is a great brand as well or just any unrefined evaporated salt that

you can find at the store. So nature did the evaporation. We didn’t chemically extract things.

And actually adding some salt that meals may be a pinch to our water. I think the last couple of

decades, we had a lot of push around just like chugging mass quantities of water throughout the

day, carrying those gallon jugs around. And we were really just peeing all the time and further

depleting the mineral situation. And if we can just add a little salt back, food tastes better,

we hang on to that water better in ourselves. And we typically aren’t waking up to pee

three or four times because we’re drinking so much plain water. So that’s a nice starting point.

And you can see a big return on energy with just a little extra sodium coming in because we’re,

you know, now we’re digesting food better. And there’s a lot that comes from that sodium.

And then potassium would be another big one for energy winds. And again, looking back to the last

couple of decades of just nutrition diet dogma, we had a lot of like carb fearing and carb

eliminating going on. If we look at food sources of potassium, it’s primarily fruit and root vegetables.

And those were two like demons during the low carb phase. So it might mean bringing some of those

back in and seeing how we feel. If blood sugar concerns are in the mix, we might look at making

sure that’s coming with protein and fat and meal. Or maybe we look to a beverage like coconut water

as an example or aloe vera juice or any of the mineral or electrolyte powders on the market that

that are pretty high potassium,

but not coming with a whole bunch of sugar with it,

which I know when we were talking about

the adrenal cocktail,

that’s an unflavored zero sugar powder

that is sodium, potassium, and vitamin C,

and can make that really easy.

You certainly can DIY this,

you do not need to buy a product for that,

but if you’re on the go

or we need one less thing on the to-do list,

a powder like that is nice and easy.

JANNINE:  I agree, that’s my go-to, and then of course,

the DIY, everybody that’s been in my practice for a while is like,

yeah, okay, I know I need to be doing that on repeat, on repeat.

So as you know, you had mentioned the hypometabolic folks and you’re

talking about potassium, you’re talking about calcium.

You know, there’s a lot of press out there on calcium good, calcium bad,

calcium, you know, can you speak a little bit to how you describe

calcium being used, how you use the calcium, how you help folks

understand that connection for helping the hypometabolic states?

KAELY: Sure, so calcium is obviously important. And like everything else in the body, it’s a Goldilocks

situation. If we have too much calcium where it doesn’t belong, like in the vasculature and the

tissues, we can have risk of cardiovascular issues, or we start to see it messing with hormone

signaling like the thyroid, like we discussed at the cellular level. But too little calcium

does not feel good either. Calcium and magnesium are more calming, soothing sedating type minerals,

whereas sodium and potassium are more energizing. So if we lack calcium, it feels like

struggling to get out of the fight or flight state. It feels like a racing mind at the end of the

day when you’re trying to wind down. We can even see more allergies in a low calcium state as well.

So it’s not a matter of dropping calcium in the tissues. We want a sweet spot there.

And where I see a lot of mismanagement of calcium is we do a ton of like pretty blind

supplementation of calcium, especially in women, because we’re trying to preserve bone health.

But nothing in the body happens in isolation, and it’s never about just one mineral or one

nutrient. Calcium is part of a bigger matrix that influences bone health. And if we just give

supplemental calcium without any regard to where it’s actually going, we can actually cause some

problems in our clients, because if it’s going to the tissues or hanging out in the vasculature

rather than the bones and teeth, it’s not only not serving us, but it’s posing some risk.

So that means we have to zoom out and look at things like magnesium status and calcium to phosphorus

ratios. Even our vitamin A can influence this. Our vitamin D status influences this. And then,

of course, its relationship to potassium is big too. And things like K2 can also be really helpful

at moving calcium to the bones and teeth and making sure that if we are increasing calcium intake

through food or supplementation, it’s actually getting instruction on where to go to be beneficial.

So that’s something that comes up a lot in practice.

I would imagine it does for you too with the population that you serve for this osteoporosis

prevention is just a whole lot of calcium supplementation with no regard for where it is.

JANNINE: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s the standard. You have to get in 1500 milligrams.

you know, and it’s like, okay, that’s it. Like we what about the rest of the program?

KAELY: Right. 

JANNINE: So oftentimes, you know, I’m going to be doing similar things as you are looking

at the minerals and vitamins and go, right? Like where’s baseline here? Where’s where’s

step one? So moving into say that’s tier one tier two, where do you go next? You’ve got

the minerals balance people are feeling better. Now what? What do we look at next?

KAELY: Yeah. So now we might look at some of the like secondary or tertiary minerals, which

would be things like copper, zinc, and iron,

and their relationship with one another.

We might look at things like boron and sulfur on an HTMA

test to help with the way we manage and move things like iron

and protect our bones, and also our detox capacity

in the liver.

And then what’s also really fun on HTMA testing

is the mineral ratios, which, again,

is taking abstract mineral information

and making it applicable to different body systems.

So we talked about the thyroid one with calcium to potassium,

but now we might look at an adrenal or stress ratio.

We might look at how resilient are we to stress ratio.

We might look at blood sugar ratios to see

are we more prone to hyper or hypoglycemia

and can start to get a deeper, bigger picture

on what’s going on in this client’s physiology.

And then we can get more specific again with food,

with mineral beverages or even supplementation at that point.

JANNINE: Gotcha, gotcha.

So a lot of times, you know, folks come to me

and there’s multiple different hair tissue mineral analysis

out there, right?

You can buy them on Amazon and even to this day.

KAELY:  I actually didn’t even know that.

JANNINE: Yeah, I discovered it the other day.

I was surprised.

There’s like a lot of the same labs I used to,

like doctors data and stuff.

There’s a lot of labs that sell online now.

I’m like, oh, wow.

So, you know, of course I want to hone in

on what type of testing that you’re using,

what brand and kind of give us a little bit of the background.

‘Cause those ratios are something that I haven’t seen

on all the different tasks.

A lot of patients will come in and hand me

what they’ve done before or on their own.

KAELY: Yeah, I know.

And that’s probably one of the trickier things

is that different lab companies are gonna have

different methodology, different ranges

and different presentation on reports.

And you can’t necessarily read them all the same way.

I think they could all be useful.

We just have to know which one we’re looking at

and how that’s being reported.

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KAELY:  We use trace elements for HTMA testing.

They’re here in Texas too.

And their methodology is the same

as analytical research labs out in Arizona.

So either of those would be fairly comparable

in terms of how we read it.

the ratio presentation, even the ranges will have a slight

difference between lab to lab. But I really like those two

companies, because they do not wash the hair sample when it comes

into the lab.

And the idea behind not washing it is that if we look at the

studies where they do wash it, it doesn’t just strip things that

we don’t want to see, it seems to really influence actually the

mineral composition of the hair that would be on the report and

drop some of those markers. So I will say there is no perfect

flawless way to do this. And I would say that about any lab, you know, there’s a lot of

user error that’s potential for this. And if you think about a hair collection,

the water that is being used for the shower, the shampoo, all of that stuff matters.

So there’s some variables to help mitigate risk of an unreliable report, but I really like

the methodology of those two. 

JANNINE: Okay. Yeah, one of the things I’ve heard, and this is something

I’d love for you to help me understand because it isn’t something I’ve spent a lot of time diving

into is what kind of things can you see on a hair mineral analysis?

If you know that it’s maybe the water that the part like they don’t have filtered water,

they live in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know. I live on a farm. So I we have we have well

water, right? So who knows what kind of things could be in the water at in certain people’s homes,

right? So my question is like, can you tell is there like a thing that’s like flags on these labs

and say, “It might be water.” 

KAELY: Yeah. One of the most common ones is in places that have hard water,

which Texas is definitely one of those places. We have extraordinarily hard water. You will see

really high calcium on an HTMA if we haven’t done something to mitigate that calcium exposure.

If somebody has a lot of copper leaching into their water supply, so that seems to be more in

older cities or older homes where there may be farther down on the water line with old copper pipes, we might see a falsely elevated high copper.

We’ll see some heavy metal contamination depending on the location as well.

Uranium is a really common one that’s just coming from where people are geographically because there’s different areas that have more uranium in the soil and therefore in the water.

And then the last thing that’ll sometimes be skewed is if someone’s using a water softener.

We can see higher sodium.

Most of those are salt-based softeners.

We’ll see higher sodium if we haven’t done something about it.

So what you have to do ahead of testing is ideally,

you know about your water quality

and you’ve established some kind of filtration.

If not, though, what you can do is either

an apple cider vinegar rinse to remove some sediment

off the hair follicles themselves or rinse at the end

of the shower with distilled water a couple times

before you collect a sample, which would be the lowest cost

route if we don’t have filtration established.

JANNINE: Oh, that’s awesome to know.

Cause yeah, I wouldn’t have thought about that.

Honestly, um, it seems so simple to think about, but in my brain, you know,

uh, but I’ve heard, you know, I’ve heard from folks and, and so especially

with the apple cider vinegar rinse, you know, and stripping things off the hair.

I definitely’ve heard of that.

Now, you know, I know this, this is, you didn’t intend to talk about testing this

whole podcast.

I just find it fun because it’s one of the things they get the most questions

about and I think that a lot of people have beat up the hair mineral to human analysis.

And so I think it’s important to kind of hear, you know, how we can debunk some of the things

that people say with like, Oh, well, you, if you perm or dye your hair, you can’t use

it. And I’m like, I don’t know about that. Tell us about hair like her. All the treatment

stuff.

KAELY: Yes. So we do ideally want to get hair that is not treated. So the way that we’d handle

with our clients is if you color treat or perm or any chemical process on your hair, we need to

give about six months or sorry, six weeks of growth before we collect a sample. We’re really

looking at like the inch and a half closest to the scalp. It’s not the whole strand of hair. We don’t

need to wait for that to fully grow out. But we do want to make sure that we’re minimizing that

false. It would usually be like heavy metals that would show up interestingly if the dyes or

– Yeah, we’re chemicals, we’re present.

And so we’ll wait six weeks,

six to eight weeks post-treatment.

We try to catch it ahead of time.

It’s like, hey, if you’re going in for a hair appointment,

actually you could have your hairdresser cut

the sample for you before they proceed

with the treatment on your hair.

But every now and then we miss that

and somebody’s just dyed their hair and we have to wait.

And it’s okay.

We can still start with basic mineral stuff while we wait.

So what’s nice about mineral work

because it’s pretty low risk high reward type stuff.

JANNINE: Oh, that’s huge.

That’s huge.

Yeah and I think it’s something to be thinking about

for a lot of folks that, you know, we,

I mean, obviously you’re testing not guessing,

but when we can’t, you know,

something easy to start working forward with.

Now, you know, I think a lot of people might be thinking,

okay, we’ve talked about periods and things like that.

What about for ladies that aren’t getting their periods

anymore?

What happens in perimenopause and minerals and vitamins

and things of that nature?

What have you been seeing in trends there?

KAELY: Yeah, so we don’t serve menopausal clients very often

in our practice, but I have a lot of colleagues that do,

and we talk about this all the time

’cause it’s really interesting.

And when we transition into menopause,

one of the first things that happens is the adrenal glands

are gonna take up some of the job of hormone production

with the idea that maybe this would ease the transition.

But we’ve been hinting at the fact

that the last several decades have been really taxing,

whether we’ve just been eating in a way

doesn’t support us exercising in a way that doesn’t support us or the nutrition has just been

subpar. Maybe we had things like birth control in the mix contributing to that depletion. So in

a menopausal client, we typically see really depleted adrenals from a mineral perspective,

because now they’re getting kicked while they’re down. They were already struggling during our

cycling years and now they’ve got more workload, still haven’t been repeated. So we see that kind

kind of pattern too. We see a lot of the same calcium to potassium imbalances with thyroid

function. Nothing too new from a strictly mineral perspective, but now the state of the

adrenal function is even more important in that season of life.

JANNINE: Yeah. How much stress someone has either had externally or created internally, definitely

I think is a big factor as to how the trajectory goes for us.

So I’m gathering that, you know, from what we talked about before you hit record.

Now you’ve got your one on one and you’ve got a group program that’s that you’ve got.

I saw on the website there.

I think a lot of people might be like, okay.

All right.

How does this work?

How can we get testing and get some support or can we do testing and do the DIY course and be able to sort of figure it out ourselves?

I’m always going to go for the one on one or some support, but just so we cover all the thought processes that may be going on with

folks. 

KAELY: Yeah, so I also am the biggest fan of one on one and where I think functional testing

and even functional medicine as a whole can get a bad reputation is when people spend a lot of

money on testing and they didn’t get the follow through. There wasn’t a great interpretation and

there wasn’t an action plan built off of it and tests by themselves will solve nothing. They might

actually just add some confusion and then we’ve spent money. So having it like if you’re going to

going to embark on this journey, you want to learn about your physiology and be walked

through a process of really optimizing the way that you eat, move, and live based on

that. You really want to be paired with somebody that knows what they’re doing with the testing

that you’re spending money on. And I think a one-on-one relationship is the most potent

for transformations. But we do also have a course which essentially takes the framework

of our one-on-one and lays it out in a self-paced format because we wanted to be able to reach

those that either financially can’t afford one-on-one work at the time and want a place to start,

or maybe their symptoms aren’t severe enough to warrant that kind of a deep dive, but they want

to be proactive. So we don’t do testing inside the context of the course. We really just do it

with our one-on-one clients because I’m very protective of we’re going to spend time, money,

and effort on testing. We need to have the container where we can really use that effectively.

JANNINE: Absolutely. Absolutely. I don’t know how many times people have brought me tests from docs and

they’re like, yeah, my my doc ran it, but didn’t know what how, you know, and sometimes it’s because

the person requested it and just needed someone to order it, you know, and so no fault of the

doctors, but I have had other situations in which it was run and then there wasn’t really interpretation

and that is sad. It’s hard. And, you know, I think the other side of it in one of the areas that

I find it hard is that if you’re seeing a doc who still has a very busy practice doing insurance,

you know, heavy, heavy on that. And that’s where I’m coming out of right now. It’s hard to do the

one on one that people need. 

KAELY: Yeah. 

JANNINE: To support the background in a lot gets missed there. So I see

that you have yourself, but you also have some other colleagues that help you out. You have a team.

KAELY: Yes, which is amazing. It was not always that way. And we can definitely serve people better now.

JANNINE: Yeah, yeah, and so it’s folks are like wanting to work with you specifically. Can that be requested?

I, you know, because usually people let’s hear a podcast and they’ll be like, can I work with you?

KAELY: Yeah, so we actually do something a little bit unique in our practice. We have a collaborative

care model, which we started at the start of 2023, which means that if you’re a client in the

practice, you actually interface with more than one of us during our time together. And we do

do that on purpose because the types of women that are drawn to our practice are not brand

new to working on their health. They usually have been pretty immersed. They’re listening

to a lot of podcasts. They’ve maybe seen other providers. They’ve done a lot of trial and

error. And we just want to make sure things don’t get missed. And I love having multiple

brains on the case. So we round as a team every week, we go through the client caseload,

and then we’re able to assign different practitioners for different sessions based on what’s coming

up whose skill set is a really good fit for that. So it’s actually all four of us that

are involved in client care, which is really fun.

JANNINE: That’s cool. That’s cool. I like that approach. I mean, I personally like working as a team

too. And so I’ve been solo for a while and it’s kind of sad. I miss it. I like the more

brains in the mix. Now, of course, one of the other things that I always ask about is athletes

And specific dialing in because I saw you guys work with exercise and things of that nature.

How are you tailoring kind of nutrient needs and fitness? What is your program there? Kind of how

do you guys approach that? 

KAELY: Yeah, so none of the four of us have any kind of formal certification

in the exercise space. At one point, I had a personal training cert many years ago, but it has

lapsed. So we don’t prescribe specific training within our program, but we can help advise on

what might be most appropriate based on current health presentation, any lab data that we might have.

What’s pretty common for our clients is that the volume or intensity of their training is

exceeding their level of recovery from food and sleep and even minerals. And then if we know that

they’re active, either an athlete or just an active individual and we know that sweating is

increased, metabolic demands on the body are increased, we can be a little bit more aggressive

with that mineral support that we do right out of the gates, knowing that their needs are higher.

So we really are more consultants on exercise and how it fits within the context of their care.

We might connect them to other programs or apps that might be appropriate for them, but we have a

lot of very high stress clients, very nutrient-depleant doing really intense training.

So it’s a lot of conversation around how is this appropriate? Is this really a way that we

we can alleviate stress or are we adding stress back

with the style of training,

which I was 100% guilty of for many years too.

JANNINE: I hear you on that, I hear you on that.

So as with most podcasts,

I always like to ask questions a little bit more personal

about your, kind of your business, your jam,

what you’re enjoying.

And so I always, with nutritionists,

I always go down the route of like, all right,

what if you were on a stranded, like stranded on the island?

What three foods would you bring with you and why?

And guys, I didn’t give her any, any premise on this.

I’m going to talk a little bit and let her think over a couple of things for this.

But yeah, I always kind of ask nutritionists, like, cause I want to know, like,

what are you thinking about and why?

Because obviously we’re all different.

And when we’re thinking about ourselves, I like to hear the thought processes to

how you’d support yourself with the three things you bring on that island.

KAELY: Okay.

I actually, this is not too difficult.

I know exactly what I would bring.

Awesome.

I would bring great steaks.

Like I just feel really good and really nourished

when I’m eating quality animal proteins.

So I know without that, I wouldn’t feel as good.

I would bring milk, which is a random one

to an island and a hot climate.

But that’s such a staple in my diet.

It’s carbs, proteins, and fats together.

We get a lot of nourishment from that.

You can do a lot with that.

It’s very satiating.

And then I would bring.

I was deciding between some kind of fruit or honey, but I’ll just go with honey for

the time being like, I want that carb.

I want that energy.

Um, I enjoy the taste of it.

I think I could do a lot with the three of those things and not get super sick of

stuff.

JANNINE: Awesome.

And we’ll figure out logistics later in terms of how we’re going to cool things

in everything.

But no, that’s great.

Because, you know, I think a lot of people wonder like, why, right?

Why, why, why do we love the things we love and, and recommend the things

that we do and we’re all individual, but you know,

Dairy’s an interesting one and it’s been beat up for years,

years. So give us give us your take on Dairy for you for

clients, you know, what what’s your ballpark statement there?

KAELY: Yeah, I’ll be curious to know where you land on this to knowing

that you live on a farm. But yeah, I was I was like full in the

almond milk cult for a long time. I was eating almond

everything for a long time too. Not coincidentally, that was when I was not feeling great either,

but I also had some like dairy fears because I didn’t do great with dairy. I remember having

some bloating or digestive issues with it and I would get like skin breakouts when I had dairy.

And so I kind of stumbled deep down like whats in the price type rabbit holes over the years and

really learned that there’s a big difference between like commercially available dairy and

like actual dairy that hasn’t been manipulated. So I’m a big fan and proponent of well sourced raw

milk because I think it is so nutrient dense, generally really well tolerated, even in folks

that haven’t done well with pasteurized dairy before. And I think can be a really helpful component

of the diet. I don’t think everybody can do great with dairy, maybe not right out of the gates.

But if we’ve got a digestive tract that’s working well, then we’ve got good digestive enzymes,

I think it can be really a supportive food.

JANNINE: I agree.

I absolutely agree with that.

And it comes down to, and yes, I live in Wisconsin.

So you guys can take it for what it’s worth here.

There are not many raw dairy farms here.

It’s just not.

And there aren’t in the world, I don’t know about the world, but in the United States,

they’re not because it was illegal for so long, right?

But I have found the same thing.

If I have raw anything, I’m good.

But if I get pasteurized, I am not good and I am worse with coconut almond

You know all the like not the almond or the coconut in the can but the other stuff like it’s 

KAELY: Yeah

JANNINE: It’s mind-blowing and I think this is where we’re missing out especially when we go back to that calcium potassium

Balance business and and the thyroid stuff. I think it’s a biggie. I’m glad you shared that. 

KAELY: Yeah, I’m glad we’re aligned

You never know how that’s gonna go over. That’s a very polarizing topic for some reason

JANNINE: It is until someone steps out and actually does a test.

You have to test yourself.

KAELY: Yeah.

JANNINE: Like, I feel like, you know, it goes different ways.

And unfortunately when people are outwardly spoken

about that, I’m like, why don’t you try it yourself first

and then tell me what you think.

KAELY: Yeah, I’m really glad you mentioned that

because that fear around experimenting

is a really big issue with nutrition.

And you’re never gonna know how things land for you

unless you start trying some things.

And it’s okay for it not to be perfect at first,

but that’s such a miss, I think,

that has happened in the nutrition space

over the years is feeling like we have to seek

somebody else’s rules in order to know

that what we’re doing is healthy,

even if we’re following those rules and we don’t feel good.

So just normalizing that experimentation

and everybody’s different, why don’t you just try it

and see how it works for you?

And if it works great, if it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

JANNINE: Absolutely, absolutely.

I mean, we have too many rules.

We have too many gurus out there

that like this is the only way.

Carnivores the only way this way.

I mean, I’m like, oh Lord, you know,

people come into me and you probably heard it,

like they’ll come out with diets

and you’re like, I’ve not heard of that.

KAELY: I know.

JANNINE: You’re doing what?

KAELY:  I should have.

(laughs)

JANNINE: Like the latest one for me was the dirty fast.

That I was like, you’re not even–

KAELY: That’s new to me.

JANNINE: Organic, I don’t, I don’t explain this.

What’s a dirty fast?

You like, you didn’t take a shower?

I don’t know.

You know, the lingo is the lingo’s out of control,

but it’s definitely funny when we get down to that.

And you know, as humans, of course,

we’re looking for guidance, we’re looking for the quick fix,

but I’m gathering that you’re also similar in this case,

where we have the fix.

We just have to experiment and be willing

to try the things out.

KAELY: Yeah, I know the body’s so smart,

it’s always speaking to you and letting you know

what it needs.

I just think, I think we’re getting some initial guidance

is helpful is if we’ve had years or decades of suppressing

the signs from the body, it can take some time

and some expert help to get back in touch with that

and get a roadmap to start with.

But ultimately, that long-term path to freedom

is knowing how to take that input from your own body

and adjust accordingly.

And then you don’t need anybody else’s rules.

And then you’re not constantly consuming so much content

that’s conflicting and being stuck in the middle.

And that’s really my wish for anybody that we ever serve

is that they feel the freedom that comes from knowing

how to take care of themselves in really any season that might come up.

JANNINE: Super important. I, I heartedly agree.

Now, of course I want to round the podcast out again,

because I did that one and then we, we just started to keep going. Okay.

So you have a chihuahua.  

KAELY: Yes  

JANNINE: I love dogs.

And I have dabbled in my head with the experiment of using

my dog’s hair and seeing what he’s, if he’s deficient in of all.

You’ve done that at all.

KAELY: You know, I haven’t, but it’s a brilliant idea.

And maybe I will.

Why not?

I love him.

He’s currently asleep in my office

like he is for the entire workday.

That would be really, really interesting to see.

And I’m fairly certain that trays elements

does do animal panels.

Like I think there’s some vet applications

of HTMA testing, which is really cool.

JANNINE: Oh, good to know.

‘Cause yeah, I’m like, my,

he’s right here, my golden retreiver.

I’m like, I wanna know,

’cause we feed him rough foods.

And so I’m like, I wonder what he’s missing out

’cause I’m constantly doing my little,

“What I read in the book, right, the forever?”

Dog, I’m like, “Well, I just read this.”

And I’m like, “I’m treating him no different than…”

(laughing)

KAELY: I’m like, “I’m gonna test, don’t guess on these dogs too.”

JANNINE: What I’m thinking, that’s what I’m thinking.

Oh my goodness.

You know, I would love to hear if you did that.

I’m gonna check out Trace Minerals, guys.

If you’ve got pets that you wanna know what’s up with them,

I think we look and see what’s going on there too.

And obviously now we have gone from women’s health

to pet health, but us ladies, we love our dogs

and our cats and our critters.

So it is what it is.

So Kaely, tell us how we can find you online,

how folks can hook up with you,

how folks can find out if you guys are gonna be

a good fit for them.

Give us a scoop.

KAELY: Yeah, so you can find me mostly on Instagram.

I only have the bandwidth for one social media platform,

but that’s the only place.

And it’s @KaelyRD.

My name is spelled weird.

It’s K-A-E-L-Y-R-D.

And then my website is the same, kaelyrd.com.

But you’ll find a lot of free educational resources.

You’ll find info about the different ways my team

and I can support you and can help you figure out

what makes the most sense based on what it is

you’re working on.

JANNINE: Makes sense.

And you’ve got a quiz.

We don’t want to skip over the find your magic quiz

’cause I was thinking that that would be a great way

for folks to dabble too.

KAELY:  It’s definitely a great way.

And it can help lead you toward whatever resources

are most applicable.

We made this because we all grew up

loving the like Cosmo Magazine style quizzes, you know?

Like everybody loves a personality type quiz.

So it’s fun, but it also does ask you some questions

about main symptoms and goals

so that we can make sure we’re sending relevant info to you

and connecting you to ways that we can help

that would make an impact.

So it’s a fun, it’s a really fun quiz.

We had it in the works for a long time and it finally this.

So enjoy that.

JANNINE: Awesome, awesome.

I’m gonna have to take that.

You guys, I highly recommend you guys check it out.

And then we will put all the notes in doctorjkrausend.com

for everybody so they can look up the test names

and all the things.

So if you guys forgot what we said, it’s okay.

Head over to the website.

We’ll take care of you there.

Kaely, thanks so much for coming on.

What a great conversation.

I look forward to hearing what happens

if you decide to do the Chihuahua testing.

And I will let you know about the golden retriever over here.

KAELY: Please do.

And thank you so much for having me.

This was a blast.

JANNINE: Oh, my pleasure.

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