Ep 479: Incontinence, Belly Fat and Muscle Loss Do Not Have to Be Part of Your Aging Story – With Dr. Dominika Hertsberg

Feeling adrift in a sea of symptoms when it comes to getting older? Not sure where to start?  Dr. Dominika Hertsberg is a chiropractic physician, acupuncturist, yoga teacher, exercise and functional movement specialist  as well as the owner of Balanced Flow Wellness in Chicago IL. She’s on a mission to help women age well by not accepting or enduring the discomfort that comes with hormone shifts and instead taking charge of their health. In this episode Dr. Hertsberg and Dr. Jannine Krause have a candid conversation about perimenopause, menopause, the common symptoms and what they are doing in their practices to help women feel their best for as long as they are able.

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Resources From The Show:

• Balanced Flow Wellness – Chicago-Bucktown/Highland Park 
• Accelerated PT to health optimization for women

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Podcast Transcript

2:52 – Dominika’s backstory

11:33 – After effects of child birth

16:02 – Bioidentical hormones

16:31 – Belly fat – MSCOP & MSELLA

17:28 – EMS training

23:34 – Helping the digestive system

24:31 – Probiotics and Prebiotics

32:06 – Diet

33:16 – European union and GMO’s

38:06 – Meal prep

41:01 – Pelvic floor pain

45:51 – Following a passion / Finding purpose / Salt and Light Coalition

54:52 – Where to find Dominika

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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

Dr. Dominika Hertsberg. She’s a chiropractic physician, acupuncturist, yoga teacher,

exercise and functional movement specialist, as well as the owner of

Balanced Flow Wellness in Chicago, Illinois.

Now she’s on a mission just like me to help women age well by not accepting or enduring

the discomfort that comes with the hormone shifts as you get older.

So on this episode, we’re going to be talking a lot about the different things that women

experience and our personal experiences and how Dominique is helping folks in her office

with all aspects from vaginal health to bladder leakage to hormones and even aches and pains.

This one’s a fun podcast because we kind of go into some of the really cool things that

she is using like tech devices, including a muscle stimulator that can help you with exercises

to like cut time off your exercises and help with belly fat.

How cool is that?

So let’s introduce you to Dr. Dominika Hertsberg.

JANNINE: Hey, health junkies.

I have Dominika Hertsberg on, and we

are going to be talking about probably, at this moment in time,

my favorite subject, getting older, Harry Menopause,

and what the heck we need to do about these things

to help us survive the, let’s say, the change in energy that’s

going on within our body.

So Dominika, welcome to the Health Fix podcast.

DOMINIKA: Thank you so much.

I am super excited to be here and talk to you about

Perry Menopause, the vaginas, and all beautiful things

women related.

JANNINE: Love it, love it.

I love that you went right to talking about vaginas

’cause really honestly a lot of women,

we’re still in that age range where it’s a little bit like,

“Mmm, do we talk about it doing not?”

And I’m loving that more people are focusing

their practices directly on helping women

survive this crazy time in life.

Now, before we hit record, you and I just kind of chatted

like how it’s interesting.

You know, in our 20s, we focus on certain things

in our practices and your practices is similar to mine

in terms of wanting to offer everything for women

and you have a physical location.

So we’ll talk about that in a second,

but give us a little story in the background

How do you notice your body start to change how different symptoms you started to notice?

And when you were like, I need to create a wellness center for helping women go through the same thing.

Give us this background story.

DOMINIKA: So, you know, I came to it way too late and I’m hoping that other women who listen to your

podcast are going to catch those symptoms much earlier on.

My practice, as you mentioned, it began in 2013, 2014 and it was primarily

physical therapy place. And I was still young and beautiful. We’re still young and beautiful,

by the way. But at this time, all you want is your body, your bank account, your boyfriend,

all the fun bees. So we did this for a while. And then as I turned 30, I wanted to get pregnant.

And I couldn’t. It was quite a journey. We can talk about it in some other episodes.

But through this whole fertility journey, I started to notice that maybe there’s a little bit more going on.

It was my age. They call it, unfortunately, Geiatric Pregnancy for a Reason. It’s a yucky term.

But that’s when your ovaries are deciding to take a little nap.

And hey, it’s your progesterone. I didn’t know that. I had no idea. I thought it was just me. There was

something wrong with me. And then I learned that it’s all women between the ages of 35.

And what is it like 51 52? JANNINE: Oh gosh, I’d say it’s even later sometimes, even into like

55, we’re having women extend. It’s crazy. 

DOMINIKA: It’s the torture extends, right? So I can’t

get pregnant, be finally get pregnant. And then all of a sudden I am angry. And I’m a

really chill person. I was a Yogi, right? So meditation and yoga practice were a part of my daily life.

And now I’m losing temper. I run just like you. I run a few businesses and I all of a sudden

started to get overwhelmed by dirty dishes. How ridiculous. You’re like, Yep. Uh huh.

JANNINE: Full on meltdowns over the dumbest things. Yep. 

DOMINIKA: The dumbest things. And is that normal? No,

it’s typical, but it’s not normal. So I started to look for answers because we want just settle for

feeling miserable, especially when I have two kids now who really meet me and meet me for much

for much longer because they’re babies. So I got my blood work done. I learned about

perimenopause and figured out, “Dumb, whether you like it or not, you’re getting there. You’re in

in it, you’re in it to win it and let’s make the best out of it.

That was kind of the beginning stage.

And, and then we started to incorporate a bunch of fun things into the practice

to help other women who were in the same predicament to get better.

JANNINE: Yeah.

Oh, it’s good stuff.

It’s good stuff.

And I would agree that I kind of came to it late too.

Maybe it was in denial, you know, like, oh, there’s no way that my

like, women’s are shifting right now.

Like, and for me, it was definitely seeing the same thing,

like dishes overwhelmed.

I mean, a bunch of patients on the schedule

and schedule mishaps at my office

would just throw me into a tailspin, like crazy tailspin.

And then I’m trying to be like, everything’s fine.

And then inside like,

DOMINIKA: Do you remember the mental fog

when you come home from work

and then all you can do is stare at your phone?

And I think there’s a name for this right now.

They call it social media dimentia,

where you go on social media 100 times a day,

just so your brain can relax,

what you’re really doing, the opposite.

But that’s another thing,

just the overall fatigue, both physical

and emotional at the end of the day.

Again, not normal.

JANNINE: Yeah, I remember staring at things going,

I should do something, I don’t want to.

I’m just going to sit here and then the other for me was eating.

I would just mindlessly eat.

DOMINIKA: Were there your did you have favorites because I developed a sweet

tooth. 

JANNINE: Really? Really?

DOMINIKA: Oh, yeah. 

JANNINE: Me.

I went hardcore on nuts.

I think I was a squirrel in my previous life or something.

Yeah. It was like macadamia nuts.

I could pound like literally a pound of them.

I could eat it mindlessly, which my God, like how many calories is that?

DOMINIKA: Right. It’s good, but it’s not.

JANNINE: Not a pound at a time, not a pound at a time.

But yeah, I can crush them nuts.

So you you went sweet tooth.

What kind of sweet tooth stuff were you going after?

DOMINIKA: So you see, that was the problem.

So I was always super healthy and no one in my family had any issues with sugar levels

of diabetes and also we’re from Poland.

I’m from Poland where you’re eating very wholesome, hall foods with addition of

really good healthy meat.

here a little bit different and I developed prediabetes while I was pregnant, which again,

my what my BMI is perfect. I am wonderful and young and beautiful. What is happening to me?

And stats show it’s which is another kind of a bummer just like geiatric pregnancy is.

If you have prediabetes while pregnant, you are most likely or gestational diabetes. You are most

likely going to get prediabetes and diabetes later in life. And guess what? That girl.

In “Sulin Resistance on Steroids,” another sign of very menophause, isn’t it?

JANNINE: Yes it is. Yes it is. It’s ughh. 

DOMINIKA: So you know what? There’s something I was just reading recently,

which made me laugh and also cry, that we should be dead by 35 because that’s when

our production dies. But let’s do happy now. Let’s talk about happy things.

JANNINE: Oh my gosh. I mean, wow, that’s profound. And I am so, you know, my happy to that is I’m going

to defy that and like, you know, challenge, challenge to do that, like, defy that by like,

I don’t know, three times. Let’s go for three times. 35.

DOMINIKA: Yes, that’s right. And now we have medical advances that allow us to live for, oh gosh,

for almost ever, but it’s all about the quality of life. So that’s why I love what you do and what

your guests do, because we are all on this mission to defy the crappetude. To live not only longer,

what have a fantastic quality of life.

That’s what matters.

JANNINE: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, I think you’re in a situation where a lot of women are,

I ended up not having kids. We just never achieved pregnancy probably because I was too busy with

my business. You know, running around doing that. 

DOMINIKA: That’s your baby. 

JANNINE: That’s my baby. But you know,

a lot of women are having kids later and then kids and perimenopause are like weaving together.

So I’m seeing a lot of overwhelm, a lot of folks not like basically thinking that they’re feeling

symptoms because they just have you know a lot going on. But I’m like, no, I think I think there’s

more to it. 

DOMINIKA: I love you saying this. I was reading statistics yesterday too. I’m kind of sort of

of working on a book. I’ll let you know when the materializes. But back in the 70s, only

about 2 to 3 percent of women over 35 were having children right now. Or the last, the

latest legitimate sets are from 2010s. It was close to 15 percent of women over 35 having

children. So now we’re faced exactly what you’re saying, not only with inability to get pregnant

easily because we have stuff going on. We have jobs, we have, we have life to live. But then the

aftermath is just crushing. Your hormones not only are depleted while you’re pregnant, but then

afterwards when you’re at 35, 39, 45 year old mother, everything just, yeah, it just crashes down.

So thankfully we have some solutions now because there were none. There were none only a few years

ago. None of us talked about it. 

JANNINE: Right. Right. I know that’s the thing. I feel so bad for,

you know, folks who are in the 60s, an older range where it was right at that cusp of folks

not talking about these things. But of course, we can bring them in, we can bring you guys in and

help you out with some of these things. Now, what is it like, you do so many things at your office,

like I don’t even know where to start. But since we talked about vaginas, let’s talk there first,

just because I think for a lot of women, the incontinence,

the painful sex, the dryness,

I think all of this we chalk up is like, it’s stress.

It’s normal to have a little incontinence

’cause I had a baby or I’m just getting older.

Let’s talk about that a little bit.

Kind of, how have you seen that show up in your practice

and what kind of things are you guys up to

in your office with those?

DOMINIKA: Sure.

for me personally, definitely one of the things that happened was I just didn’t want to be touched anymore.

Not only by my husband, but also even when my kids wanted to snuggle, I was not into snuggling period,

which shows you that something is happening there on the oxytocin level,

as well, of course, is progesterone.

So with my patients, it’s the same thing.

We don’t want to talk about it because we think it’s embarrassing that we pee ourselves

when we jump, when we walk, that we can’t.

Oh gosh, during COVID, you’re going to love that story.

One of my very, very good friends,

she is in her 40s right now, she loves playing golf.

She went on the golf course,

and all the public bathrooms were closed during COVID.

So she’s suffering from urinary incontinence,

and she needs to go pee every couple of hours.

She said it was miserable.

And this inequality when it comes to man versus women,

a guy can comfortably go behind the bush

and keep playing the game.

She couldn’t.

So she gave up golf completely during COVID.

Even though it was one thing she loved,

it was a baby.

Right? So what do we do?

There’s this amazing device that I heard about

called Ansela.

It’s made by a company called BTL and it’s not an endorsement advertising it any shape or form

I wish they gave me money, but they don’t I paid them money

Exactly

But they not invasive device that helps to read it’s a big claim

But it helps to cure urinary incontinence

So the research studies that the company has done showed it after about six sessions on themselves

other 30 minute sessions you set there in your genes reading a book or working. They will help to

decrease usage of pads or again completely eradicate your dysfunction. So of course I got this for

myself, where wouldn’t I? For my patients. And guess what? It worked. It’s phenomenal. What happens

It’s almost like a Kegel’s on steroids where you experience close to 30,000 contractions

within that 30-minute session.

And it’s not unpleasant.

It’s also not pleasant, but it’s not unpleasant.

It’s just this weird sensation within the pelvic floor.

And it helps to stimulate collagen production.

It helps to increase muscle mass as well, and it helps to lubricate epithelium.

And that’s what helps tremendously.

So not only that the incontinence is going to hopefully go away, but also your sexual pleasure

increases.

And that’s awesome.

Big deal.

JANNINE: A big big deal.

Because I mean so many women, like probably the biggest statement I hear is, “Oh, yeah,

my husband’s still into it.

I have to take one for the team, you know, all the time.”

And I’m like, “That’s not fair.

That’s not.”

DOMINIKA: No.

Exactly.

And it’s almost like, we as women, we think that it’s okay to suffer.

We suffer when we have our first period for those of us who have kids, when we have kids.

And then this whole period of menopause, menopause, the vaginal dryness,

the taking one for the team and that era is done.

It’s done. We’re not doing this anymore.

So since I have so many tours, I’ll take you if you’d like on the journey of what it is

that I did and how I came to all those items.

All right, so very manifest, we know it’s happening.

I need to do something about this.

So we started to incorporate bioidentical hormones

into the practice to help with the symptoms.

And you know, it’s not necessarily cure at all situation,

but it’s definitely helpful.

You deal with supplements, which I love.

I don’t know that much about them,

but I seek out other providers who do.

And I use supplements as well.

So it was step one, but it doesn’t fix everything.

So what comes next?

I could not lose my belly.

It seems like such a minor thing,

but it has so much to do with how you feel about yourself.

If you, you know, the way that your spouse

or your partner is looking at you,

they’ll probably love you anyways,

but you don’t feel the same way.

So I invested in EMSCULPT and EMSELLA

to help to bring my belly to order

and bring my vaginal floor to order as well.

That was helpful, that was successful.

But what comes next is I don’t have time

to exercise anymore.

Desire or time to as much as I used to.

We are supposed to exercise 100 ends,

is it 160, 150 minutes a week?

JANNINE: Yes, yes.

DOMINIKA: You know, sometimes I can,

but in my 40s, I don’t know if I want to.

So what I did is brought in things like EMS training.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with EMS.

– Yes.

– Huge in Europe.

And here a 20 minute workout is equivalent

of three almost hours of hit training.

So I started doing this and increasing my muscle mass.

So then I had energy, good sex life.

No belly and I was able to shave my workouts time

to really buy one at 20 minutes a day.

And honestly, that transformation,

those things helped me to become the person

that I was in my 20s.

And that’s amazing.

JANNINE: Nice, nice.

DOMINIKA: That’s what I do.

JANNINE: I like all of those things and I’ve tried

and seen all of those things throughout the course of time.

And of course, bioidentical hormones are something that I also use in my practice too.

And they can be game changers.

But like you said, they’re not everything.

And that’s one thing I definitely want people to realize that we have there needs

to be a holistic approach, not just here’s your bioidenticals, because I’m the one

people see when they go south and they don’t work, you know, that’s the hard part.

Now, with the transformation that you had,

I think a lot of people will be like,

okay, that’s nice, that’s you, right?

And one of the sad things is that I think a lot of women

are kind of resigned to seeing how their mom aged

or their grandma, and someone significant in their life

and they’re like, this is as good as it gets.

Or I don’t have time to take care of myself,

kind of like you were saying,

with the workouts and using the EMS workouts.

I don’t think a lot of people have been exposed

to the EMS workouts though.

I mean, I’m aware, but let’s describe those.

Like if someone’s using those,

how does it exactly work?

Give the background.

DOMINIKA: So the background of electromyostimulation in general,

it originated in Europe and Germany about 15 years ago now.

The funny thing is when you go to even Poland

and my little tiny town by Oświęcim Auschwitz

where I was born, there’s EMS studios on every corner.

JANNINE: Really?

DOMINIKA: So it’s huge in Europe, yes.

I learned about it because my best friend,

Magda, is paralyzed waist down.

She got meningitis when she was in high school

and she started using EMS to prevent atrophy,

the dying of her leg muscles.

So I thought, you know, let’s try this.

the electro muscle stimulation operates on the entire body. You have those electrodes that are

hooked up through your arms, your legs, your butt, your chest, your core. Sounds very high tag

and it is, but it’s actually quite comfortable. The suit is then wetted with water to conduct

the impulses better and you get 93% of your entire musculature in your body gets contracted

it while you are performing the firm exercises like squats, lunges, crunches, you name it.

And it’s not painful at all.

I would almost say it feels like your traditional stim machine, but amplified.

JANNINEL: Okay.

Okay.

DOMINIKA And within, from what I’ve noticed with my patients and the clients within three to four

visits sessions, their back pain completely goes away.

I have few patients who had back surgery and use this as posthab, post rehabilitation.

And it was amazing how quickly it worked.

So the promise is that your function and your endurance is going to improve.

And is there going to be some muscle hypertrophy, some muscle growth?

Sure.

But that’s when the supplements come in because as you and I know very well, you can’t work

out only without proper nutrition or supplementation to experience this tremendous change.

So like you said, all of it.

JANNINE: Yeah. I love the EMS stuff. I mean, we, let’s say I think I had somebody from Katsu,

the Katsu company on the podcast a while back, but I’ve seen it before, just in rehab, like your

friend was experiencing and was like, “Whoa, this is really neat.” But, you know, I didn’t connect

it in my head about using it for fatigue and for folks are just like, man, I am not feeling

a workout and to use the circulation component there to help. So learn the new things today.

Learn the new things.

DOMINIKA Learning new things. And you know, it’s like, imagine yourself right now, how much easier

would it be for you to figure out, you know, Tuesday afternoon, you do a workout for 20

minutes and then you just get to live life. Of course, people go through the gym and go

for walks for their mental health as well. But you know that you’ve already covered the

health benefits that’s done. You’re fine. Now everything else you do is a bonus. It’s pleasure.

And not a must. That’s really cool. Hopefully we’ll come over closer to you and we get to hang out

more. 

JANNINE: I know I would love to go check that out. I’d love to go check that out. And of course,

not too far from me, guys. She’s in Chicago. So not too far from where I’m hanging out these days.

Now, in terms of, you know, you’re mentioning the free time, you’re mentioning kind of the mood.

One of the other things I noticed is as we get older, we start to feel like, like you said,

we don’t feel so good in our body and we feel like some things either hijacked it or

or we just don’t feel comfortable. And one of the biggest things about not feeling

comfortable in the body is that a lot of women experience gut issues like bloating and acid reflux

and that side of things.

What are your go-tos for helping the digestive system?

What have you guys been up to in that department?

DOMINIKA I, based on the research that I’ve done

and the folks I’ve talked to,

a lot of this has to do with insulin resistance.

Would you agree?

JANNINE: Pretty heavily, because now we have like

the cortisol component along with the decreasing.

DOMINIKA Yeah.

JANNINE: Stress eating.

DOMINIKA Totally.

So it’s a really horrible answer,

but I’ll ask you some questions, sir,

because they want to know your opinion.

So I’ve noticed that stress reduction,

and no one wants to hear that,

what does stress reduction mean?

But that’s what helps a lot,

and it’s such an easy thing to do

aside from the supplementation.

Getting into meditation practice,

or at least breathing practice,

we can stop for a moment during the day

and breathe, that helps a lot with whatever’s happening

your gut. But I do have a question for you because you know everything about this and I don’t.

Can you tell me about probiotics and prebiotics?

JANNINE: Yeah.

DOMINIKA: What’s your thought on that?

JANNINE: Well, it depends. It depends. Because if we throw prebiotics, which of course are fiber

into the system and someone can’t tolerate that because either their immune system of their gut

is so low because they’ve been stressed for so long or they have a bunch of bacteria in the gut

because maybe they have constipation or maybe they’ve just had a poor diet for a long time.

And so maybe too much yeast, right? You put in fiber and then you’re going to sometimes have

folks blow up like this right away with the antibiotics. So I’m pretty cautious on prebiotics.

Probiotics, I’m super neurotic about what type. Because I feel like a lot of companies went

crazy and like everybody decided to create their own probiotic.

Yeah.

And it went wild and I don’t know.

It’s interesting that you’re Polish.

My heritage is Polish as well.

And I always watch for my grandma make yogurt and way back in the day.

And so I met this gal Natasha Trenev.

She’s Russian and like her family has made yogurt for like 700 years.

Like she has this crazy long history of yogurt making in her family.

And in any way she created a probiotic company, I honestly believe that her system of giving basic one pro like one strain not

85 different strains in a thing is the way to go. 

DOMINIKA: Oh my gosh. I love this. So I was just talking to a good friend of mine

Dr. Gupta

Roshi Gupta she recently came out of a very interesting book as well specifically on God biome and what I’ve learned is that

We are born with a certain set of God’s microbiome,

and it really develops until we’re about three to five years old.

And we’re stuck with that colony for the rest of our lives.

So it’s not necessarily kind of like what you’re saying,

to introduce a lot of things through your gut right away

that you may be lacking,

but to introduce one thing at a time,

because she was comparing it to high school.

And I want you like enter high school,

and there’s all those collects,

all those girls chit-chiving in the corners and then a new girl comes along.

Yeah, that can be difficult. So you want that new girl, but you want a lot of that one new girl

who can come in and you want to give this girl power consistently every single day. So to use

maybe a probiotic that is very high quality with very specific bacterium and do it consistently day

after day until that girl gets integrated into the circle, into the cycle of right, and then add

more and more and more. You just do it all at once. It’s going to be a complete chaos.

So it’s cool you say that. 

JANNINE: Yeah. 

DOMINIKA: You know, it’s a powerful circle.

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. That that’s a crazy thing. And definitely, I mean, have I tried all the

different comprehensive stuff? Yes, of course, trial and error. I mean, I’ve made all kinds of

of different switches over the years because of just figuring, oh, gosh, this happens,

this happens.

But boy, the, the Naturing and ATRE and Probiotics and like she doesn’t give me any money to say

this.

I just, they’re, a lot of my patients are like, oh, they’re so expensive.

And I’m like, yeah, but they’re the only ones I’ve seen to actually move the needle on people’s

guts.

And so anyway, that’s kind of like my, my go to unless of course we’re doing some other

kind of protocol, but really like if we’re looking for basic probiotics to just help,

especially in the perimenopostrine transition, once this particular one seems to do well and

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JANNINE: I think basic.

DOMINIKA: You have to.

I’m definitely going to incorporate it.

And I really appreciate that you’re saying this.

So food in general is so, so important what you put in your body and the quality of food,

the quality of supplements.

And when you say if you expensive, the sad truth is you get what you pay for it.

You really do.

It goes with you know, you’re biting in D, which by the way we should talk about, sir,

because that’s incredibly important.

More and more people know that they need to say biting in D right now.

But if your medical doctor prescribes your vitamin D,

typically in some small quantities, it doesn’t do anything.

Yeah.

JANNINE: Or we have the pharmaceutical version that gets prescribed

and it’s only D2, not D3, which a lot of people are really.

DOMINIKA: Sorry.

JANNINE: Yeah.

Yeah.

I’m guessing you’re seeing a lot of folks coming in,

just being in the Northern Hemisphere and with the winter in Chicago too.

But I’m guessing you’re seeing people really deficient.

DOMINIKA: Oh, beyond.

And all races.

It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from, as long as you live here.

It’s really, really tricky.

I saw in the past six years, it’s when we started to do labs, two people who had openly

high levels of vitamin D, and that’s because they were on heavy supplementation.

We’re talking about getting hundreds of thousand IUDs every couple of weeks of shots.

Everyone else is just boom.

Also, you know, I know you mentioned this in your on your website too.

And in your practice, the lab values that we are seeing are so

you just because you are normal, doesn’t mean that you are normal.

If you are symptomatic, we are also so different.

I

JANNINE: Well, and the thing that kills me is our lab values are based off of

people who are average and most people are.

DOMINIKA: Right.

– Let’s thank.

– Exactly.

For nutrition, so what do you tell your people?

What kind of diet do you follow, your patients?

JANNINE: Good question.

The one that suits them the best is what I follow.

I don’t tend to subscribe to a specific.

What we do is we figure out what works best for them

because a lot of, first and foremost though,

I will say organic.

And if it’s not organic, you grew it in your backyard

and you just didn’t put anything on it,

or you found a farmer that just didn’t get certified,

but everything’s close to the nature.

Like, it’s so important.

And especially when we’re talking about

if you wanna continue using wheat and dairy,

I found a farm, so this will be relevant

for anyone in the Chicago land area.

There’s a farm in Racine, Wisconsin that does wheat.

They cut it by hand and they’ve only ever grown the wheat on land that has never been

like, no pesticides put on to the land ever.

Not the wheat.

It’s called anarchy acres.

DOMINIKA: I’m writing this down for myself.

JANNINE: And they will deliver within a certain range.

So you might be in their range.

You might be in their range to be able to get it in the Chicagoland area.

DOMINIKA: So with this, gliadin is one big portion of what’s happening, right?

Have you noticed when you fly abroad to, like all European Union countries pretty much

have pretty strict rules on GMOs and what you can and cannot put in your bread?

Here in the States, if I eat a good yummy delicious pasta, I feel hungover the next day.

When I traveled to Europe, I was in Greece not that long ago.

I kid you’re not all I ate was bread, bread, bread, bread.

And I felt fantastic.

Maybe the stress reduction.

and the amazing.

wheat.

JANNINE: Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it’s true.

People say it over and over again, I felt it myself, you know, in any trip overseas, I’ve

always felt better.

you know, of course, there’s no way I’m going to France and not having a baguette.

And there’s no way I’m going to, you know, turkey and not having baklava. I mean, and

in Greece, you know, it’s going to happen. So it’s, it’s different, right? It’s different

because of the regulations. And so when I’m looking at diets for folks and especially

perimenopausal women, we’re like, what are all the things we can do to decrease inflammation,

right? Like every single thing we can do to make things better, especially for the gut, because

Most of us have leaky gut because we’re stressed and we eat on the go. We don’t sit down. So

that’s also part of my thing for folks is like you got to focus on eating and eating only sitting

down chewing your food, take your time. You know, am I perfect at it all the time? Absolutely not.

But I do try to prioritize now. I’ve learned in the past, you know, hard way.

that doesn’t work, you get bloated, you don’t feel good. But yeah.

DOMINIKA: You don’t. One of our good friends, Rick Bayless, who is a pretty famous chef,

he said that in his restaurants, all the staff members, all the, you know,

servers, whomever, when they are eating, he tells them, “You have got to sit down.”

So that’s the best policy. Also, when you put this mindfulness, especially for our perimenopausal

females, we tend to– we’re busy,

just like you said, we’re very busy.

So to be able to sit down and look at your food,

smell it, even enjoy it and see how beautiful it is,

that’s already solving a lot of problems

because this way you will eliminate

mindless snacking on things that don’t bring you joy

and don’t bring you enough nourishment.

The croissant or the baggette you mentioned, it’s fantastic,

but not all the time.

When you really sit down and you get to look at it,

how beautiful it is and how much labor went into it

and then enjoy it, I guarantee you’ll only eat half of it.

JANNINE: It’s true.

There’s an art, I think, to being able to approach each meal

much like you are on a river having dinner in France

or somewhere just glorious on the,

I think of a place in Turkey on the Bosphorus.

you know, just wherever anyone could imagine, you know, having their most glorious, like,

chill dinner. Try to.

imagine

that environment.

DOMINIKA: Totally. And when you say organic, I could not agree more. When I was younger, I didn’t

understand as much about the science and why it matters. All I knew is that it cost a dollar or

two more. But now I know what I’m paying for. There is, I was reading about this in the

economist few weeks ago, 2% decrease in our bug population in United States year after

year after year.

And that’s because of the use of pesticides.

Now one would ask, why the heck do we care?

It shockingly, they’re doing studies on this right now, but it’s shockingly correlated

with the rates of inflammation and infertility as well, because every year we drop by about

2% in the wrong direction.

JANNINE: Oh wow.

DOMINIKA: So if there’s no, if there’s obviously correlation

right now, is it a causation?

Well, time will tell, but it’s pretty obvious.

So why wouldn’t you spend a dollar more

to really have a beautiful, good wholesome food?

If you can, I know there’s food deserts,

I know sometimes you can’t,

and there’s really no bad food.

There’s just, there’s food and there’s better food.

so you can afford better food, get better food.

JANNINE: Whole– wholeheartedly, yeah.

Up level your food, up level your food.

And really– I- 

DOMINIKA: Up level your food.

JANNINE: You know, kind of going down those lines

of the insulin resistance and what I see for a lot of women,

you know, two things.

One, there’s a lot of women that are snacking

on their kid food that their kids have.

And now they’ve got processed stuff going in

with weird colors and dyes.

And there’s that side.

but then there’s also the, yes, cravings and needing

to get something quick ’cause they don’t have enough time.

And then they’re going towards the processed foods

and junk foods and, you know,

sitting in the line at McDonald’s or somewhere of that nature.

And so this is where I also am like,

try to carve out time to meal prep,

even if say you don’t do 100% organic,

at least trying to make your own food.

DOMINIKA: Totally.

When I tell my patients,

when you come from a grocery store,

you have to unpack everything.

So might as well cut up your fruits and vegetables.

So these vegetables fruits are usually easier to eat,

but if you cut them up and put them in the fridge,

then it’s just a matter of grabbing this with your hand

and not going through this whole 15 minute ordeal.

So yes, meal prep.

And Harvard plate is the easiest thing.

That’s my easy trick for my women friends with children

or without as well.

You can buy on Amazon for like $12.

There’s little kiddo plates.

They’re medium size and they have three little dividers.

So the way I structure meals is the big one

is for fruits and vegetables.

One of the small ones is for what we traditionally

describe as protein.

So nuts and meats and eggs, whatever it might be.

And the last little one is for what we traditionally

define as carbs.

You and I know that carbs is a huge term, but whatever.

Let’s just call them carbs for the purposes

this conversation where you can put your noodles and your grains, maybe the little baguette.

And that’s one portion control and be it’s just healthy and beautiful.

And of course, a glass of water with it.

JANNINE: Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

Those are great.

Those are great tools to help folks really realize, um, you know, kind of train your

brain basically to know what should be on a plate.

Let’s put it that way.

Because I think, yeah, we get so far off.

DOMINIKA: And I know that we should really be able to learn a new behavior, but sometimes it’s tricky.

So a small thing, like avoid junk food in your house.

Put only the junk food that’s really not that junky.

JANNINE: Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

My junk food still is my nuts, but I am not.

DOMINIKA: The one.

JANNINE: Not any pounds of them anymore.

And I think that’s a really smart idea.

You know, one of the things I was curious about because you have a background in chiropractic

medicine and a lot of women will start to experience, you know, yes, there’s inflammation,

the puffy kind of feelings and the bloating feelings, but there’s also the pain that

does seem to come along and you were describing a little bit of the EMS, you know, using those

types of treatments for pain.

Have you found any other correlations to pain in women and maybe pelvic floor in addition

or anything else, emotional etc.

DOMINIKA: Yes, yes, when it comes to the crease again in those darn hormones,

testosterone is definitely a huge one as well as estrogen. They are going to cause us to feel

more discomfort, more pain, more inflammation. Things to do outside of hormone supplementation

would be to stick with the guidelines of exercise regularly.

But we now know that women who, because usually women

who have hypomyalgia, women with fibromyalgia,

who start to exercise any exercise regimen,

including walking, are going to experience

the creams of their pain symptoms.

We also know that people who don’t exercise at all

are going to exhibit the same pain symptoms and pain map

that people with fibromyalgia. So just movement is incredibly powerful. Movement is not going to

make you lose weight, but it’s going to make you feel good. It’s all about your longevity,

morbidity, mortality. And then we go back to our food. Having thanks for preaching to the choir

here and repeating ourselves, but non-GMO as organic as you can as close to Mother Nature as

slow process as you can. And that helps tremendously. Lastly, it’s going to be this

mind-body connection. If one can establish a breathing meditation mindfulness

practice, that has been shown by a plethora of research. It is also going to

impact your pain in a very positive way where you won’t be experiencing that

high levels of pain anymore. So those are little tricks that people can try to

I could wonder, you know, my, my husband just recently started his meditation practice.

He took him a long time.

Yes.

You know, he’s like this bro.

He joined a message group, which is a group for entrepreneurs.

And that’s when he learned that all of his CEO and entrepreneur friends are meditating

like, I got to do it.

What a difference.

What are the guy has more energy and he’s not complaining about pain anymore.

JANNINE: Hmm. Hmm. 

DOMINIKA: We can do the same thing for us, for us, for beautiful women who just are more open to that knowledge.

JANNINE: Huh. Interesting. You say that because I think a lot of women, one of the things all here, you know, kind of the same as the exercise,

kind of the same as the food is, I don’t know, no time, I don’t know if time. And, and you know, this is probably a speech that you make a lot.

And with your clients too is like, okay, well,

do you have enough time to get really sick

and not be able to do anything?

What’s your– – 

DOMINIKA: Ouch right?

JANNINE: Yeah, yeah, what’s your statement for folks?

What’s kind of your inspiration to be like,

you don’t have the time, but…

DOMINIKA: I dig into what is most important to you.

Is that your dog, is that your significant other,

is it trouble? And then there’s a quote that I read a while back and I’m probably going

to butcher it right now. But it’s, if you, if you have your health, you have 1 million

dreams. If you don’t have your health, you only have one dream. So which one is it? Is it

five minutes of meditation and 20 minutes of Miha a week? Or are we giving up on all the

the things that you love and moving into that state of this is disease.

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you mentioned going after what someone loves or a passion that someone

has. And I think for a lot of women who do have more time and prioritize a little

bit, a lot of us do have our volunteer opportunities and the things that kind

of light us up and help with lifting the mood up a little bit too.

And one of the things I’ve kind of learned over the years is that being able to give back helps you to feel good, but it also seems to help you step out of the woe is me a little bit too.

And I noticed that you have some some projects you’ve worked on over the years, like the salt and light coalition also see a couple of other things in there in terms of the autism speaks groups and things of that nature.

Can you talk a little bit about your experience with these groups and especially the Salt and Light coalition because I think that speaks to where a lot of women.

Let’s say are at because there is a lot of.

For lack of a better term, a lot of us going through menopause not feeling great about ourselves and we’re stuck in relationships that are not great, but there’s also, you know, still this.

maybe overarching of, of, we all know about it.

We know that there’s slavery, we know that there’s things going on.

We know that there’s, you know, trafficking.

It explain to folks a little bit about your work there and how that helps impact you,

but help, you know, you to help other women to see that even if you’ve been through all

of these different things, you can still take care of you and, and help yourself as you get older.

DOMINIKA: I, that’s awesome.

It’s my hugest passion.

I love it so much.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Such a great question.

Salt and Light Coalition is an organization

that was started by my friend Isabel Olsen.

She started it because she’s very–

she’s just the nicest, warmest, wonderful person.

She has her PhD, and she’s a therapist.

She’s just brilliant.

And she saw a need, especially here in Chicago,

to find a home and help for women who are victims

of sex abuse, trafficking, modern slavery.

So she brings this cohort of women together.

And what we do together is guide them,

not only through the legal, the buckles

that a lot of them are faced with, you know,

losing their children, having a criminal record,

but then to help them heal their own bodies.

My job for a while there was to teach them anatomy and physiology.

And it sounds so silly, but the more you know about your own body, the more confident you

feel.

For a lot of these women, because of the way they grew up, where they were from, their

development, emotional development ended at 12, 13 years old.

And then they were dragged into this horrible life.

And as a 12, 13 year old girl, you think you have nothing

to give to this world other than how you look at your body,

this external surface of your body.

And that drags on for years and years

and sometimes generations, which is awful.

So here, when you’re learning about how things work,

where your muscles are, how cool it is when you’re breathing,

that your diaphragm is moving, your legs are expanding,

It gives them more power.

And after that training,

some of them are choosing to become yoga instructors

and they become trauma certified.

And then they teach other women

how to get out of their situations

and how to heal their own bodies.

I also mentor them now

and help to find them employment, et cetera.

But what’s really cool is the story of one woman.

I met her about six years ago now.

And when I met her, she unfortunately lost her leg

due to heavy drug use.

And she was just in the beginning of her journey.

She was trying to get a custody of her child.

I saw her again last year.

She works for Salt and Light now.

She never finished high school.

Not only she got her GED me, she was entering her,

she was in the middle of her master’s program

in psychology.

Her kid is back with her.

she’s in a happy relationship and she bought her own house.

I mean, that’s huge transformation.

And to know that I played a tiny, tiny part in helping her

to then help so many others is just thrilling.

It’s the best feeling ever.

JANNINE: That’s beautiful.

And I think, you know, what you’re describing

is probably one of the things that yes,

younger women can glean some experience from, but also some of the empty nester women, because

I’m also finding that some of the, some of the women that are really struggling the most

in my practice are the ones whose kids went off to college. They’re on their own now.

They’re still in the, and mom’s still in that perimenopausal age. She’s not gotten into

menopause yet. And all these symptoms are flying and she’s like, I have no purpose.

I have no purpose. These are things to look for, looking for somewhere.

DOMINIKA: That’s what I told my mom when she was entering the stage.

When I left her and she stayed in Poland all by herself, I told her mom, you have to

volunteer, you have to do something.

And whether it’s if you are a part of a church, you can always reach out to your church, your

synagogue, whatever your affiliation is, there is going to be work for you.

There are so just find something that you are passionate about, maybe a well-being of

children, whatever it is, there’s so many organizations out there that will take either your time,

or if you don’t have that much time, your money, but will send you updates to show you

where that monetary contribution is going. And again, I know I go back to things that are backed

by science, but being altruistic helps you to feel better about yourself and to be

all disjointed in your perimetapolical age. And then find that one thing, it helps to bring

hold all of those inwards, makes you feel better. So why not do it?

JANNINE: Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s really one of the things that I’ve kind of looked for in my

new transition, right, from being out of in the office practice all the time into my next

level in life to figure out like, okay, where can I give back? Because I do believe that this

energetic flow of coming in and giving back, it keeps, it keeps the circle going just like you said,

and you do feel better with that. Because I think so, so much of the time we can get really lost

in all these symptoms. And like, what is happening to me? It’s all coming down, you know,

DOMINIKA: Totally. And in a lot of, uh,

base, the overarching kind of theme is that a quarter of what you have,

you should give back. So if you don’t have the money, the quarter of your,

it sounds like a lot, I know, but the quarter of your time, your money,

your efforts, if you give back, it is going to come back yielding more than you

ever thought was possible. I’m going to like the secret right now.

Remember the Oprah Winfrey book, The Secret.

Maybe that is The Secret, I don’t know.

But if you create abundance around yourself,

it really does come back to you.

JANNINE: I wholeheartedly–

DOMINIKA: Freedom profound.

JANNINE: I wholeheartedly agree.

I think for so many women at this stage in life,

it’s really rethinking perhaps all the things we’ve been told

and really starting to rediscover our own way of thinking.

And maybe–

DOMINIKA: Heck yeah.

JANNINE: Maybe you believe in the secret stuff or law of attraction or all that, you know, if you

know, thinking, you know, like, what is she talking about? You know, maybe you do. Maybe

you don’t. It’s, it’s all finding, finding your passion, finding you again. Because I

don’t know how you feel about this, Dominica, but there’s, there’s that concept that term

that’s used all the time, midlife crisis. And I’m like, you know, I think it’s a midlife

blessing. Really.

DOMINIKA: I never heard that expression and I love it so much. I’m going to use it all the time.

You can have it.

JANNINE: You can have it because I think I truly believe like we’ve been labeled this thing like mid

like crisis women, you know, do they do this, they do that the guys do this, they do that.

Well, maybe it’s just exploration of who you really were in the first place before you

decided to take one pattern, you know, one direction and now you’re coming back to who

you really are.

I don’t know.

DOMINIKA: Totally.

Because the beauty of being in that stage of life of being in your late 30s, 40s, early

50s is that you don’t really have to prove anything to anyone. You don’t. So now you can be yourself

and whatever other people just be kind. Be kind is my only rule. Other than that, you do you and

just live it up. You don’t even have to worry about your period anymore, in theory. How cool is that?

JANNINE: Oh boy, I’m counting the days.

I’m counting the days, Donnie.

But never the– in-between, you know what?

We have folks like you that are out there helping us

to really see what’s out there that we can do

in terms of solutions and just really have a sense of,

Hey, someone’s got my back

and there are things out there.

So let’s tell everybody about Balance Flow Wellness.

Let’s tell them how they can find you,

where they can find you online, all the things.

so that they can hone in on what you’re up to and find out if you’re a good fit for them.

DOMINIKA: Well, thank you so much for this endorsement here.

Balance Flow Wellness. The website is balancedflow.today. So not come, not yesterday,

tomorrow, today. That’s a weird one. We are located in a back down neighborhood of Chicago

and looking at a location in Highland Park, Illinois as well.

JANNINE: Yes.

DOMINIKA: Just going closer and closer and closer.

We do everything from accelerated physical therapy to health optimization.

And we love working with women.

Because guess what?

I’m a woman.

JANNINE: We know ourselves best.

We know ourselves best.

Boy, I hope you can get the Highland Park on coming up soon because that is a quick trainer

I down for my dad’s house. So no traffic right on that line right there on the mattress.

Super easy. Super. 

DOMINIKA: Oh, and that’s 90-94 is killing my patients. So yes. Yeah. So construction.

JANNINE: Everybody north of Highland Park, Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, all of you guys, Libertyville,

you can come in on a different direction. But hey, everybody up there, we can, we can

get in to see you guys. Because I think this, you know, you have what I don’t see, right?

We have the aesthetics people, we have this people,

we have that people and you guys have like really

the holistic approach for the foundation of health

when it comes to Perry Menopause.

And even into Menopause, you know?

DOMINIKA: Oh yeah.

JANNINE: I mean, like you said before we hit record

is what is it gonna be like when we’re in our 80s

and we have this conversation?

I’m like, we keep the trajectory going

of balance flow wellness into our 80s.

DOMINIKA: Absolutely, absolutely.

Let’s feel the best we can for as long as variable.

JANNINE: I’m gonna a mic shop on that one, Dominika.

You hit it right.

on the head. Done.

Thank you for coming on.

I sincerely appreciate it.

Such good stuff.

I hope folks really enjoy this podcast.

DOMINIKA: Thank you so much.

Hey, fellow health junkie.

Thanks for listening to the health fix podcast.

If you enjoy tuning in, please help support me to get the word out about the podcast.

Subscribe, rate and review, and just get that word out.

Thanks again for listening.

(upbeat music)