Ep. 564 Exploring the Link Between Weight Gain and Sexual Health

In this episode of the Health Fix Podcast, Jannine Krause explores the intricate relationship between weight gain and sexual health. She discusses how changes in body weight can affect circulation, confidence, and libido, and emphasizes the importance of addressing these issues holistically. Drawing from her experiences and insights from Chinese medicine, she highlights the role of digestion, stress, and lifestyle habits in weight management. The episode also offers practical solutions, including dietary adjustments and herbal remedies, to help listeners regain balance and improve their overall health.

Resources From The Show:

• HCL Challenge – Get Thorne Betaine HCL + Pepsin – take one capsule with meal one and watch for any burning, no burning go for 2 capsules with the next meal and increase by one capsule till you either reach 5 capsules or you have a slight burning in the stomach. The more capsules you can tolerate without a burn the more deficient in stomach acid you are. Use 1 teaspoon of baking soda in a few ounces of water and drink it. You can repeat the baking soda drink if needed. Most people will end up taking between 2-6 HCI capsules per meal.
• Digestive Enzymes – Steven Wright’s Company “Healthy Gut” – HCL Guard + Holozymes
• Apex Energetics – Enzymix Pro
• Active Herb – herbal company
• Blue Poppy Herbs
• Herbs I mentioned in the podcast:
• Gui Pi Tang — For weak digestion and fluid retention. If you feel puffy or gain weight quickly after eating, this is your ally.
• Shan Zha Jian Zhi Pian — This one breaks down fat. It’s amazing for folks who stress eat or binge on sugar.
• Long Dan Xie Gan Wan — Helps the liver chill out, especially if you’re dealing with reflux, constipation, and bloating.
• Ba Zhen Tang — When you’re just wiped out, lacking motivation, or not even hungry, this one helps restore yang and blood to energize the body.
• Liu Wei Di Huang Wan — This is a staple for perimenopause and menopause support. It nourishes yin and helps with vaginal dryness, low libido, and overall hormone balance.
• Chinese Medicine Patterns I talk about:
  • Damp accumulation: That puffy, sluggish weight gain
  • Phlegm: Which is the Chinese term often equated to fat gain
  • Liver Qi Stagnation: When stress causes your liver to “attack” your digestion
  • Blood and Yang Deficiency: Low energy, lack of movement, low motivation

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Weight Gain and Sexual Health
04:02 Understanding Weight Gain: The Role of Lifestyle Changes
10:48 Chinese Medicine Insights on Weight Gain
13:40 The Impact of Stress on Weight and Digestion
16:54 Digestive Health: The Key to Weight Management
20:42 Chinese Herbal Remedies for Weight and Digestive Issues
24:41 Digestive Health and Its Impact on Well-being
25:59 The Connection Between Digestion and Sexual Health
27:17 Enhancing Intimacy with Natural Products
28:36 The Role of Chinese Medicine in Sexual Wellness
29:55 Balancing Yin and Yang for Better Health
31:14 Breathing Techniques for Stress Relief
32:53 Movement Practices: Tai Chi and Qi Gong
33:44 Addressing Cravings and Weight Management
35:30 Understanding Weight Gain and Hormonal Changes
37:11 The Impact of Eating Habits on Digestion
38:53 Emotional Factors Affecting Digestive Health
40:31 Holistic Approaches to Health and Weight Loss
41:43 Personalized Health Strategies for Aging
43:04 Integrating Herbal Remedies with Modern Medicine
44:41 Outro THFP 2022.mp3

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Jannine Krause (00:10.114)
Hey, health junkies, welcome to another episode of the Health Fix Podcast. On this episode, you get me. And today I’m gonna be talking about two things that are kind of, let’s say a little bit controversial, but also like hot topics when it comes to getting older. One, weight loss. And why I think that weight gain in particular isn’t so random. And I’ll explain here in a little bit, because I have quite the story.

Now the other is sexual health. Not something that a lot of people wanna talk about, but it keeps getting brought up over and over again in my office and I’m really starting to realize that I need to focus on this a little bit with folks because it is such a quality of life thing. So we’re gonna dive into two subjects that you may not think go together, but have a lot to do with each other. So let’s get into the podcast. Now, how do weight gain and

sexual health go together? Well, when we gain weight, we change our circulation in our body. And we also tend to feel a little more, let’s say, not so confident about our bodies anymore. So of course, libido might go down if you’re like, I don’t feel comfortable naked, or things are hanging over in places where they didn’t before, or I’ve got little fat pockets on my arms, I’m talking about myself, that I never had before. And it’s super weird.

Or there’s like little saddlebags on my hips that weren’t there before. My belly is a little bit bigger and it’s hanging over and I’m really self-conscious. Of course that’s gonna affect your libido and your sexual health. Same thing goes for guys too. We both, men and women, have the same concerns. I hear it on both sides like, I don’t look like I used to. Hey, circulation isn’t what it used to be. And so these things are related to health and they’re related to weight too.

Now I just had a couple podcasts ago, Dr. Anne Truong on, and we talked all about male sexual health, but it’s really the same for females. And so what am I seeing? I’m seeing vaginal dryness in ladies. I’m seeing longer times to orgasm in ladies. I’m seeing difficulty even getting into it for the ladies. For guys, I’m seeing erectile dysfunction. I’m seeing.

Jannine Krause (02:34.39)
In particular, either premature ejaculation or taking longer to ejaculate or getting soft halfway through and having no idea why. These are all signs that our blood flow is changing, things are shifting. If we gain weight, we are going to see some changes with how blood circulates in our body. Now, 10 to 20 pounds, probably not a big deal, but if we start going upwards of 50 plus, this can make a huge difference, especially if the weight is in the front half of your body.

because that is really weighing down on your organs and the more visceral fat that’s there, the more it’s cardiovascularly not healthy for you. And what’s your body gonna do? It’s gonna go on protect mode. So, you know, it’s one of those things that I don’t want anybody to necessarily give up on their sexual health and just say, I’m getting older, forget about it because it’s such a good release.

for many people, it’s a connection thing. I kind of believe that a lot of people get divorced in their later years, midlife and beyond because there are some disconnects in the bedroom. And a lot of it’s from what I see in my practice, things that we haven’t said, feeling embarrassed about our bodies, feeling embarrassed about changes and not wanting to talk with our partner about it. Let’s face it, we’re all getting older and chances are if you’re experiencing symptoms,

your partner might be too. And if they’re not willing to sit down and talk with you about it, well, then I don’t know what to say. But the truth is, is that I think most people would be willing to talk it through. So let’s take a turn for a second. We’ll come back to sexual health and let’s talk a little bit about why I’m beginning to think that weight gain isn’t so random when it comes to age and when it comes to life. So

Here’s the thing, I’ve found that as we get older, life gets busier, we change habits, we change routines, we develop new routines. This kind of stuff sneaks up on us over time and some of these habits create imbalances within the body. And what these imbalances can cause is weight gain. These imbalances can also cause trouble with sexual health. What have I seen to be the

Jannine Krause (05:01.198)
overarching thing to help both of those Chinese medicine. And for years and years, I kind of looked at Chinese herbs as being something really great to have around, but never really dove into them as much as I have lately. And what kind of got me into it is working on my own health. So I’m getting older. At the time of this recording, I’m going to be 47 in a month exactly. And hey,

things are changing. And definitely in the last year, I’ve seen my body change quite a bit with more fat pockets developing. you you want to look at your health and be like, I’m totally, I’m eating clean. I’m doing all the right things. But what’s happening in your life to throw energetics out of bounds? Now in Chinese medicine, there’s a couple of different terms that go along with weight gain.

and reasons for why we gain weight. One of them in particular is something called damp accumulation. Damp is that like puffy weight gain, not necessarily fat gain, but like puffy. We can get puffy. Say you went out to dinner and you had a really rich dinner and the next morning you notice that your rings are tighter, right? And maybe you didn’t have a whole bunch of sugar, but you had a little fattier meal that had a little more.

maybe they used in the sauce and the meat was maybe a little fattier that kind of thing is hard for your digestive system to break down and one of the biggest things I see happening as we get older is that our digestive systems do struggle to break down food and I myself started to notice that I felt bloated after meals like within you know 30 minutes to an hour after meal I felt like there was a food baby like a rock sitting in my stomach and

I was like, I guess maybe I need some digestive enzymes. And so here and there I would use them, but most of the time I would forget them because I’m human too. And, you know, I realized that on the times that periods where I would forget my digestive enzymes for longer periods, I would be more puffy and I may not have the digestive system working like I wanted it to. Most of my life I’ve had a little bit of gut issues. If you’ve listened to my previous podcast, you’ve heard me mention that.

Jannine Krause (07:24.568)
But I started to notice that in the last year or so, my gut was all over the place. I would have series of looser balls and then I’d have a of like being a little, let’s say backed up. Never for more than a day, but still annoying. And what I started to think about was like, wait a minute, what am I doing to cause trouble with my digestion? Well, one, I was eating on the go.

I wasn’t sitting down to eat. I was kind of standing at the counter trying to run out the door. Contrary to some of the advice I give, but I caught myself doing it every so often and being like, what the heck are you doing here? You know better than that. So little things that happen. Maybe not every day, but you’re seeing little tweaks. On top of that, what I was also finding is that I was rushing to try to get meals in because my day wasn’t scheduled well, where I would be seeing people

right at when I should be eating a meal. And I had to change that around because trying to get in a meal and chew, you know, like I want to 20, 25 bites per meal. I needed time to do that. And I was rushing. So I want you guys to think about that a little bit. Like if you think anyway, are you rushing with meals? Have you been by any chance, you know, eating on the go? The other biggie is gravitating towards easy to make.

foods like smoothies with frozen vegetables or frozen fruit in it. Really cold hard on the digestive system. You don’t see in Asian cultures them eating too many raw foods or too many like dairy kind of foods or too many cold types of foods. Another biggie that came in in the last couple years because I moved to Wisconsin. Theory state. What do we have here? Cobius amounts of cheese.

We have sour cream. have all these lovely, lovely, delicious things that have to do with dairy. And I found organic raw places to get them from. So I created myself a new little habit of running by a particular place to grab all this stuff when I wasn’t eating these things before. So pair that with not having my digestive enzymes as regularly noticing that.

Jannine Krause (09:46.892)
I’m eating a little bit more dairy, is damp according to Chinese medicine. Anything dairy, anything cold, anything that is harder to digest has the potential for accumulation of damp. So think fat, think rich foods, things of that nature. All of that is related to damp accumulation. And I think what a lot of us don’t realize is that life’s turns are changes in environment.

our schedules, all of these things kind of little like switches, but they can have big impacts on our life and our day to day of how we eat. And this can create a imbalance within the digestive system. So damp accumulation can also happen when we go on vacation and it’s a warm place and we start eating popsicles or fresh fruit, a lot of it, because it’s delicious.

and we’re drinking like margaritas that are frozen or cold. know, think about that kind of stuff. A lot of people will say they have a harder time getting back on balance or back on track after a vacation. Well, even in a week’s time, you can throw your balance off in your body. Same thing goes with getting an illness. This last past year, there was quite a gut thing going around. And I also caught that actually in the beginning.

of 2024 in January, my dad and got really, really sick with this gut bug. And I never quite got back in balance from that. And then from there is when the gut kind of shifted. And then it shifted again after I got back from the Cayman Islands. And well, what did I have in the Cayman Islands? I’m definitely gonna have a few rum drinks because they’re good. And then, you know, eating richer meals because we’re eating out more and then also eating ice cream while gelato at this Italian place. That’s amazing. But

Also, all cold things, yes in a warm environment, but on a gut that you’re only there for two weeks, it’s a shift and I went in February to March. So I want you to think about this a little bit, how damp accumulation can get you feeling puffy, sluggish, just weighed down, food not moving well. One of the big signs is that your tongue turns a little bit whiter. Things to look at, rings feeling tighter. Now when dampness,

Jannine Krause (12:11.242)
into something called phlegm accumulation. This is when the fat starts to build up on the body a little bit. This is cellulite. This is fat gain, so belly fat. What a lot of women will have this time in life will be a little bit more of that belly fat gain that we get annoyed with. What if this is happening because of an imbalance going from damp accumulation to phlegm? And don’t worry, I’m gonna tell you what kind of herbs I use to shift these things. Because right now I’m in the thick of

Helping a lot of people with us and myself trying to get things moving. So what happens with phlegm accumulation long term? For a lot of us, let’s put it this way, at least me, and I know a lot of people in my age range, we were kind of taught that fat was evil. And so for most of my, probably into my early 20s, I didn’t eat much fat because I was fatphobic because of all the propaganda from being younger. Now I…

Personally now I’m like, macadamia nuts. If you’ve listened to previous podcasts, you’ve heard me say I’m part squirrel. This is what’s going on there. I love nuts. They’re easy. You can stick your hand in the bag and eat them and you don’t have to cook them. Convenience. A lot of the things we eat for convenience can cause trouble down the road because we don’t realize the compounded effect of eating macadamia nuts every day.

plus butter, plus maybe avocado. I mean, all my favorite things. Cheese, sour cream. Good stuff there. But think about it. You know, throughout the course of the day, if you’ve never wrote down like how many grams of fat you eat in a day, how many grams of protein, how many grams of carbohydrates you eat in a day, I highly encourage it, because you gotta know where you’re at for baseline. Because if you don’t, then you have no idea what you’re working with and how to tweak it from where you’re at.

When I finally wrote down how much fat I was eating a day, I was kind of horrified. It was like 150 to almost 200 grams of fat a day. No wonder I started taking fat. It was because I had my hand in like the pecan bag or the macadamia nut bag and I wasn’t really paying attention to how much because I was like, fat’s good, just won’t eat that many carbs today.

Jannine Krause (14:30.062)
pitfalls. And for a lot of people like me included, I didn’t want to realize that, holy cow, I was causing my own issue. So the more fat you eat that your body is having trouble to digest, meaning not having the digestive enzymes and the amount of food being over consumed, this creates a digestive deficiency. And when this happens in the Chinese world, we are looking at phlegm accumulation. This is where fat goes onto the body.

Now we could take this to other degrees. I’m not gonna get super complicated with the whole damp heat, this and that. I’m just going with damp and phlegm. We’re gonna get the basics here. You want more Chinese medicine? Hit me up, make comments, let me know. I will give more. I’m gonna keep it simple for this podcast. Now another thing that we throw into weight gain, and it’s not so random, is back to the stress. We…

as humans have more stress in our lives right now, just in general. There’s not very many people on this planet that can tell me that they have no stress. And if they say they have no stress, I’m still like, okay, but your body’s showing me something. So what is this? In Chinese medicine, we call stress liver-cheese stagnation. Your liver is what processes your hormones, but it also processes your emotions. And when we’re stressed, we will slow the liver down.

The Chinese see the liver as the big circulation organ. So stress can attack your digestive system, meaning overact on your digestive system, back up your gut and cause liver and even gallbladder issues. What is happening here? Well, if we’re stressed, we put blood into our arms and legs. We’re not gonna put as much blood as we could into our digestive system to break down foods. Foods sit longer so that can create damp.

They don’t transform, meaning they don’t get digested fully. So you don’t get your nutrients, your body holds on to the weight because it thinks you’re not getting nutrients even though you’re overfed and undernourished. The other thing with stress is we’re often triggered to overeat or binge eat or stress eat. This beats up your digestive chi, your digestive energy, making it harder for your digestive system to break down food. So we’ve got stress on the liver. We’ve got

Jannine Krause (16:54.124)
what we call liver cheese stagnation there and then we have something called digestive deficiencies. In the Chinese world it’s called sling-cheat efficiency. The longer you beat up on your gut by overeating, stress eating, eating too much of fats or things of that nature that you don’t have the resources to digest, meaning the enzymes to digest or the energy per se because your digestive system is weak, the weaker it’s going to become the more you’re going to build up damp or phlegm. So

This might sound kind of crazy, but it’s not random weight gain. There are habits that we are engaging in that are creating imbalance that are causing the weight to come on. And so for folks who are really struggling with their weight, one of the things I’ve overlooked, and I fully, fully admit not to, not putting it together, and I don’t know why, why wouldn’t I look at the digestive system? Why?

Wouldn’t I look at it in terms of its energies and take it to the Chinese medicine side of things? Because Chinese herbs are put together to help put you back into balance. You gain weight because you lose balance within the energetics of how you digest food, what goes on with your liver, what goes on with your gallbladder, yes, your microbiome, but also the energy in the digestive system. And last but not least, I’ve got to talk about the energy in the digestive system.

So we can have blood deficiency, we can have yang, which is the fiery energy is gone. This is a gut that’s like chronically having diarrhea. It’s someone that’s going to be weak, fatigued, and really carbohydrates, sugars, those kind of foods just sound good. They sound better. Oftentimes it’s someone who’s really depleted on their estrogen, maybe even testosterone because the energy is so down that they’re having trouble getting out of bed.

This kind of weight gain situation is kind of like a revolving door of trouble because you’re so fatigued, of course you’re not gonna work out. You’re not able to get out of bed, of course you’re not gonna have extra energy to work out because your body’s not getting the nutrients into the system for you to have the energy in the first place. So it holds on to everything.

Jannine Krause (19:08.75)
All of these conditions, damp, phlegm, liver cheese stagnation, blood and young deficiency types of conditions for the gut mean we need to help the gut do its job. So doc, does this mean eat more probiotics, take more enzymes and work on eating copious amounts of ginger and turmeric? It could, but like I said, different types of Chinese herbals can actually help with these patterns. So

I had mentioned for a weak digestive system, especially one that is causing fluid retention. So puffiness. There is a Chinese herbal formula that’s been around for thousands of years called Gui Pei Tong. It’s a great one for puffiness, just a weak gut, meaning like you eat something, but you don’t feel like it’s going anywhere. Would I pair this with digestive enzymes? Absolutely. And when I say digestive enzymes, what do I mean?

Two things we gotta be thinking about. One, do you have enough hydrochloric acid to break down things when it gets to the stomach? So hydrochloric acid is stomach acid. You can test this using something called the HCL challenge. And so, what is this? This is hydrochloric acid, so betaine hydrochloric acid from Beats. And you can get a betaine HCL supplement and you take one capsule with each meal.

And you, and literally, let me say that little differently, one with the first meal, two with the second, third, three with the third, until you get a burn. If you get a burn in the stomach with one meal, and by the way, you gotta have at least 10 grams of protein in that meal, you don’t need any more stomach acid. It’s like a $22 trial here, and you can use Thorne Betaine HCL, and I’ll give you that in the podcast notes at drjcrossnd.com. But here’s the thing, if you do that,

and you don’t have a burn and you go to two capsules with a meal, no burn, three capsules with a meal, you go up to five capsules with a meal and no burn, you have low stomach acid. So digestive enzyme with hydrochloric acid would be highly indicated. I love HCL Guard by Steven Wright, he’s the owner of the company, it’s healthy gut. And I pair it oftentimes with this holozymes which are the pancreatic enzymes.

Jannine Krause (21:35.638)
So say you don’t need a stomach acid, like you took one, you don’t need any more stomach acid, you took one capsule, you had it with your meal, you’re like burning, you had to take some baking soda to quell it. Okay, great, you don’t need that, but you may need pancreatic enzymes. You can also use holozymes by Steven Wright, which is Healthy Gut, or you could use anything from form that is related to the pancreatic enzymes. And they just changed their…

their names of their digestive enzymes. So forgive me, I am not even going to try to confuse you. I will put it in my podcast notes at drjcrossnd.com as to what they are, because I’m not going to try to confuse you guys at this moment. And unfortunately, I didn’t write them down. So if you need, pancreatic enzymes and the stomach acid, what’s going to happen? So usually, if you need more stomach acid, you’re going to feel food sitting in your stomach for,

anywhere from like a half an hour to an hour after meal, you can feel it’s still there. That means you need stomach acid, especially if the meat or the fats feel like they’re sitting like a rock. Now for pancreatic enzymes, this is more where you have more bloating, where you have just more like problems with your digestive system two to three plus hours after your meal. Then you’re looking at maybe I need some pancreatic enzymes. What’s really cool is like I mentioned, Steven writes,

products from Healthy Gut can help the HCl guard and the whole enzymes paired. Or you could do both together in something called Enzymex Pro from Apex. That’s a great well-rounded blend of digestive enzymes. So something to think about. And especially if you have gallbladder issues, you want something that’s got ox bile in it to help you.

to break down fats just a little bit more. If you don’t have a gallbladder, you want ox bile to help you out. Now, all right, I’m saying you want, everyone wants it. You gotta test this all out and see if it works for you. But it’s indicated to help people, let’s put it that way. And from what I’ve seen, having ox bile really does help anyone that doesn’t have a gallbladder. So, enzymes like I mentioned with guai pitong, if you’re having that like puffy.

Jannine Krause (23:55.788)
Your digestive system doesn’t really work, but you feel puffy in the morning. You’re not gaining cellulite, but you’re just feeling just a little overweight in that your digestive system isn’t so great. And you are prone to diarrhea, looser stools. That’s guay piton. Now, also, I will have all this in my podcast notes too for you guys at drjcrossnd.com. Now, another one that helps us to break down fat is Sean Shaw. Sometimes can’t say these ones very good.

Shan Sha Xian Qi Pian. my goodness. This one is one that you can find with a company called Active Herb and it helps to break down fat in your gut. It also helps you if you have the phlegm type of digestive deficiency imbalance going on, meaning you are gaining fat, you can actually see the cellulite, you have fat deposits. I will tend to use this one paired with digestive enzymes to help fire up the digestive system.

and get it going. Now, another Chinese formula I use is Longdan Shigan Wan. This is for what’s known as damp heat in the liver and liver cheese stagnation. This one is constipation. It goes with acid reflux. It goes with like burning stomach, not feeling so great. Someone that doesn’t want stomach acid in their stomach, but maybe would do okay with digestive enzymes. This one’s really good for constipation, bloating, and acid reflux when they all kind of come together.

It is for liver damp heat and damp heat in the body. So I love this one, especially if you had a gut bug and you couldn’t quite clear it. This one’s great for that one too, just kind of cleaning everything up. Now, for those who are feeling just weak and the digestive system isn’t necessarily moving so well, maybe there’s diarrhea, maybe there’s no bowels going, like it’s constipation, but nevertheless, there’s the component of fatigue.

So wiped out, lacking motivation, not feeling hungry. This one helps you restore your young energy and helps you just energize yourself, but also will revitalize some of that blood deficiency I was mentioning. By the way, what is blood deficiency? It’s not getting your nutrients across into the digestive system, into your bloodstream. So from digestive system to the bloodstream. So that can help there.

Jannine Krause (26:23.488)
Then another one that’s very fascinating is something called Lui Wei Di Huang Guan. This is a staple Chinese herbal for perimenopause and menopause. And it has a lot to do with when you have constipation, but you also have low libido, you have just feeling inflamed, you just don’t feel great. You have dryness in the body, have vaginal dryness. This all can be helped with Lui Wei Di Huang Guan.

And so that one’s one of my favorites to pair. If I see someone that’s got some of the perimenopause symptoms, but also some of the gut stuff, I will pair that with digestive enzymes or stomach enzymes, on stomach acids, sorry, depending on what we need to do there. And by the way, when I say stomach acid, I’m meaning betaine hydrochloric acid, which is basically what the stomach is making there. But instead of like actual stomach acid that we’re throwing at it, this is betaine hydrochloric acid from Beats. That’s what the supplements are.

coming from beets. So what does this tell us about beets? We could eat beets also to help boost our digestion. You could sip on ginger tea to help boost your digestion. You can watch how much raw food you eat because a lot of women will tell me, raw food, I struggle with this as I get older. I just feel like I don’t digest it well. Yeah, that’s a huge clue your digestive system’s weak. Huge clue.

That is probably one of the bounces that happened along the way while you gained weight. Same thing goes with over drinking of iced drinks. If you find that one, you’re not like drawn towards ice drinks and you want hotter drinks, that’s a clue. That’s a big clue. Watch your preferences of what you prefer, hot food versus cool food or cold food or raw food. Now the Chinese definitely will eat according to seasons in terms of temperatures.

Like cold weather, you are eating warm foods. Hot, hot weather, like in the 80s, 90s plus, that’s cooler foods that make sense. But if you have digestive imbalances that are showing dampness or phlegm accumulation, you probably want to lay off the foods that would be cold, that would be damp, that would be damaging to your digestive system. So something to think about there.

Jannine Krause (28:46.208)
Now, how does this tie into sexual health and energy flow? Well, when your liver chi is not moving well, so that stuck liver chi, you’re inflamed, you’re tired, your sexual health is gonna take a back seat because your body’s in survival mode. It’s like trying to figure things out. Same thing goes with like damp accumulation, flum accumulation. If your gut’s weak, you are not getting your nutrients to where they need to be. You need nutrients circulating in your blood, including iron,

carry oxygen. You need oxygen and good circulation to get to your sexual organs to have one a pleasurable time but two for the guy to have an erection and the lady to also. Our clitoris is like four inches long ladies that fills with blood. If it’s not filling with blood and and here’s the thing it takes us longer to fill with blood that’s why orgasms do take longer that’s why it does take longer to get in the mood for us as we get older. So guys

Gotta help us out. Help a sister out here. And ladies, teach your men how to help you out. It’s not like it was in the 20s where we were like, we’re ready to go. We need a little play around here, which is where I bring in some of my fun discussion today. Now, Foria is a company, it’s a sexual wellness company, and they have this great intimacy oil with CBD in it.

Now before you’re like CBD never works for me. Okay great there’s no THC above 0.03 % in any of these products because that’s the legal amount so there’s no high amounts of THC where you’re gonna get your vagina high or any of that stuff or your sexual organs high. It’s just like calming let’s say that for your system but the intimacy oil is coconut oil and CBD.

And they also have one that’s got a little bit of peppermint and a little bit of mint menthol in there along with a little cinnamon essential oil. Now, before you’re like, my God, what is going on? Isn’t it’s not a crazy like fire and ice experience if anyone’s ever seen fire and ice on the market. This is not toxic, by the way. It is essential oils that can be put on topically and it’s suspended in coconut oil. So you have a buffer of oil there.

Jannine Krause (31:08.91)
but the tingly sensations can help with circulation. That’s what mentally mint kind of stuff does and that’s what cinnamon does. It brings blood flow to the area. So I wouldn’t be afraid of these things at all. And so since I was turned on to totally pun intended, um, for you from Susan Bratton, Oh gosh, we did a podcast probably almost a year and a half ago. I have used for you at home and recommended it to a lot of patients.

and nobody has said that they have not liked it. Everyone’s like, yeah, things are going better at home. That’s what I like to hear. so bringing in these things to your home environment can really help you to not have to take one for the team or feel like it’s sandpaper down there. You don’t want pain. Not cool. So for you is something that I highly recommend. And they even have little melts that you can insert like suppositories to help and get it going a little bit sooner.

than time in the bedroom. So something to think about and along the same lines, the same company has some really cool stuff for period cramps and pain. They have a kava product and a mint oral like soothing product for cramping. Super cool. I highly recommend looking into them and the way you can test it is they have something called the Quickie Kit. Totally funny. It’s a kit where you can test out the intimacy products or you could test out the PMS Crampy.

products too. I’ll put the link in the podcast notes at drjcrossnd.com. Cool stuff. So that all being said, how does this bring us back into Chinese medicine? Well, if the digestive system, like I said, is depleted, we don’t get nutrients to where they need to be in the body. And we can impede blood flow. Why? Because we’re not getting iron from the meat or the vegetables that have iron in them. We need this stuff to help us out.

The other big thing is if we’re super stressed out, we are going to have a heck of a time thinking about libido because the body thinks there are some bear after you. Same thing goes if the body is completely deficient in yin. Yin energy is our cooling, it’s our circulating, it’s our very calm, chill energy. If we’re way over here with like so much yang and fire, we’re not and we’re just burning that out. Guess what’s going to happen?

Jannine Krause (33:35.818)
Our body, young energy is like fire in the body. It goes up to the heart. The heart is an emotional center, but not only that, it is the organ that goes with fire. Your kidneys are your batteries. These guys are connected with water. Our kidneys are our foundation. They’re also our libido, because the adrenal glands sit on there too, where all of our fight or flight hormones come from. That being your water element.

and your fire element being up here and this is all fiery and yang and heated energy going upwards. If we don’t have enough cooling water to put out fires, we are not going to have anything but fire in the body. And when we have a lot of fire like that in the body, we can’t perform like we want to. We’re spinning in so many different directions. We’re anxious. We’re on fire. Let’s call it that. So this is where the nervous system really needs some chill to help with libido, but also weight.

So my favorite, favorite thing I talk about a lot is something called positional parasympathetic breathing, where you lay down, you put your legs up and you just breathe. Now, wanna make a bonus point to it? You stick your thumbs in your ears here, there’s an ear hole and then there’s that ridge above, you stick your thumbs in there and you press backwards. I call it moose ears, you can wiggle your moose ears, I’m doing it if you’re looking at the video right now. Laying down, legs up like that, that will bring your heart rate down. It’ll help you to chill. Some people…

just need to be in a little bit more chill safe mode. And by that I mean feeling safe in their body, feeling safe in their environment before the libido comes back. If you’ve had any sexual trauma, if you’ve had anything where even your partner’s great, but sex hurt, of course you’re not gonna wanna do it. And so the libido is gonna tank because the body’s gonna be like, if it’s gonna hurt again, this isn’t that much fun, I really don’t wanna do it and I’m already stressed. Of course, think about these things.

Now another really big thing that I’ve been getting into lately and highly highly recommend is using the benefits of Chinese medicines Tai Chi and Qi Gong. These are circulation movers. And in particular Qi Gong. Because Qi Gong was designed to move energy within the body locally and throughout the entire body. And there are some really great exercises with Qi Gong of moving energy towards your pelvis.

Jannine Krause (35:56.044)
moving energy towards your core. You can see me with my hands, I’m kind of bringing them together like in a ball. In this world of Chinese medicine, we often think about energy being between our hands in a ball. I want you guys to take your hands up for a second. As long as you’re not driving, take your hands and pretend you’ve got a ball between them. Like a smaller sized ball, but like maybe something like a double size softball. And feel your energy between your hands. Feel that your fingers kind of.

trying to pull towards each other. You can take this ball of energy and put it right over your pelvis and do that same thing and hold it there. And you can move it up and you can move it back down. You can take that energy ball and move it all around and breathe into it and imagining the area below the belly button, the pelvis. There are even types of Qigong sessions you can do following people on YouTube.

Acupuncture is another really great thing that can help you in this case as well. And even with weight loss, now is it like you put the needles and you lose weight tomorrow? Heck no, it’s not like that. I wish, I wish. We have the ability to access certain points within the ear that correlate with craving, with overeating, with stress eating. Super cool, but we can also access points within the ear to help boost

our ability to break down the food that we eat. And I used to have this little, well, I still have it, I just don’t use it as much, this little electrical point finder that would be like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, it beeped faster when there was a point that was out of balance. And I would go around and put little ear seeds on those points that were out of balance for folks and they’d press them throughout the day, throughout, they were good for about three to five days in terms of these little ear seeds and they would press on them and a lot of people would swear that it helped with cravings.

that it helped quite a bit with their desire to overeat, with their cravings for certain foods. And let’s face it, when we go into perimenopause or andropause for guys, and we’re losing testosterone, we’re losing estrogen, we will be craving sugars and sweets like we never did before. And these are subtle little things that a lot of people who ate like super impeccable before are like, I don’t know why I don’t have willpower anymore. This is what’s happening.

Jannine Krause (38:17.902)
It happened to me to the point where I was literally I never did this in my life. I would drive to the store just to chocolate. Like what the hell? Like I felt like in the last probably three years a lot of my wiring around healthy and healthy living like went out the window because my brain would be like overriding on me and it’s embarrassing to admit it. But at the same time I had to do this podcast to talk to people about like wait.

We blame so much weight gain on hormones, hormones, hormones, but the freaking truth is it’s the little habits and the little things that happen as our hormones are going out of balance that get us to where we’re at. It’s energetic stuff, like digestive system imbalances, stress imbalances, that stuff. We have to be thinking about weight loss holistically, not just like let’s use those zempics and semiglutides and terzepatides. Zempic and semiglutide are the same thing, but…

Anyway, forgive me, I’m a naturopath, that’s my excuse. But do I prescribe these things? Absolutely. But the thing is, we have to be thinking holistically. And this is something that I haven’t done as much. Because let’s face it, a lot of people are burnt out on trying to get healthy and do the healthy routines. They want the quick fix. I get it, I freaking get it. Believe me, now that I’m seeing changes in my body, I’ve also been like, my God, make it stop, where’s the liposuction?

It’s, but we have to think about where’s the root. It is an imbalance that starts the whole cascade and it’s little things that we are not picking up on. And if we can catch them and like be honest with ourselves about them, then we’re like, that’s what happened. So many women I’m noticing at this stage of life end up with diverticulitis. What is diverticulitis? It is the bowels not moving effectively.

ending up with constipation over and over again, or we have bouts of diarrhea, constipation, and we’re just not getting enough fiber because we’re rush, rush, rush. Go, go, go. Probably for a lot of women, it’s popcorn dinners. Popcorn is one of the biggest things that can mess with diverticulitis. Seats can too, but chances are most people, it’s popcorn and quick foods and constipation. This is a liver cheese stagnation issue and it is a damp.

Jannine Krause (40:40.812)
heat issue as much as is a phlegm accumulation issue. It’s multiple things that sent the digestive system out of balance. And the way to go after it is sequentially like I was talking about with pairing the enzymes with the Chinese herbs and working on yes, diet, of course, but these are little things that happen in response to life stressors. We gotta look back at our habits, routines, behaviors. What threw us off? How can we regain balance? So skipping meals.

Overeating. One of the biggest things that these are one of really big habits that we have to look at. I used to skip meals because I’d be like, I’m fasting. And I would fast. I was like a champion faster because it was easier to fast than cook. And that’s so stupid. But what did that do to me? It slowed my metabolism down and mess with me. Now, am I saying don’t fast? No, I think 14 to 16 hours between dinner and breakfast, actually good. Once we go over that, it can get a little bit wonky.

I’m not a fan of one meal a day unless you’re someone that’s not gonna overload your gut. Because what I see in the one meal a day situation is people are overloading their gut causing digestive deficiency and creating a problem for imbalance that’s gonna lead to weight gain. And then they’re gonna be upset that the fasting didn’t work for them. It the fasting didn’t work, it caused you to overeat and beat up your digestive system. And for many women, this is our problem, it’s mine. I will fully tell you, I stress ate over and over again.

for years. I still catch myself. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but I’m catching myself now. That beats your digestive system up. So same with too much cold foods, same with eating too fast, eating stress. All of these things beat your digestive system up over time and it can only take so much. Then pair it with your hormones declining, your digestive enzymes declining over time. And we’ve got a pattern here.

Alright, another big thing is sugar and caffeine reliance. definitely, sugar is the number one drug for reason, caffeine is number two. It’s America’s best laxative. mean, we’ve got things that we’re addicted to that create more stress on the body. Too much sugar in an excessive amount, of course, leads to diabetes, right? What is diabetes in Chinese medicine? It is damp accumulation and phlegm accumulation, depending on where

Jannine Krause (43:07.512)
how severe the diabetes is. So basically the beginning stages are weight gain and all that. The end stages end up being digestive deficiencies that go too far. Spleen, young, spleen, you know, I could go into different trajectories here. I’m simplifying it so if someone is an herbalist and has studied all this, I’m simplifying it here. But this digestive deficiencies are what cause diabetes.

And it happens because of food choices and stress. Staying up too late, eating too late, also hard on the gut. Why? Because if you’re already stressed and you eat too late and your liver is trying to process all that overnight, it’s got a lot to do because it’s stressed out, it’s slow. So you might not process it all overnight. What happens? Stored as fat, that’s what happens. Same thing with emotional reactivity and tension. Having hormones decline causes

Emotional reactivity low estrogen will have you dry dry dry cry at the drop of the hat It will also have you feeling depressed teary all those things low progesterone has you angry your bitch switch comes out your claws come out you are wanting to be left alone like agitation anger all come out at that time frame and so all of this messes with liver energy and what does that do it beats up on your digestive system

So if you have had none of the other stuff I’ve described, but you had emotional frustration, anger, long-term anger, totally beats up on the digestive system. These kind of imbalances are what are contributing to our weight gain. Yeah, processed food can be a problem. Yeah, those things are there, but I think we’ve, you know, I…

I just didn’t realize how much the balance and how much the Chinese principles really did make sense. So there you have it. every single stressor on the body takes a toll on the gut, the liver, the gallbladder, and then your nervous system. And they all play together and they can all snowball just like I’ve described. So if you’ve been feeling like your body is working against you, you’re just not feeling right in your body. It is not betraying you. It’s asking for help to get some balance back.

Jannine Krause (45:26.74)
And yes, microbiome is part of the picture here, but there’s so much more than just the microbiome that we’re not thinking about. Treating your gut, yes, it’s your first brain. Your brain’s your second brain. Your nervous system, I guess you could say, is your second brain. These need to be treated together and worked together. And the liver and the gallbladder just are part of it. And yes, we can go down the lymphatic system, all those things. Where does damp?

Inflammate, humiliate in your lymphatic system and then spills over into your tissues to get the cellulite and the weight gain. So we have to be thinking about aging and how it impacts our guts. Sure, we are prone to gain more weight as we go through perimenopause and amenopause because the body knows if it stores fat, it stores estrogens. But what happens when you supplement with hormones and you don’t lose weight and you gain instead? We got an issue. We didn’t deal with the beginning stuff.

the gut, the liver, all of that. So if you’re looking to personalize your herbal and nervous system support, you want to check out more of my podcast coming soon where I’ll talk more in depth on certain Chinese herbals, how these things can help what I’m seeing with clients. And soon I will have a Vitality Sleuth. This is my new new project coming out membership where

you can meet with me twice a year and we go over your labs. We meet up to talk about the labs, what are we gonna order, what do we wanna assess, what do we wanna see. And then twice a year we meet up and review and get you a plan.

That’s my next thing. It’s called Vitality Sleuth. It won’t be coming out for another probably 30 to 60 days. So stay tuned on that. aging isn’t about fighting your body. It’s about understanding what it needs and what is out of balance and how to put things back into balance as quick as possible to avoid issues down the road. And I really want to nail it down if I haven’t already that.

Jannine Krause (47:37.238)
libido seems mysterious. Where did it go? Gaining weight seems mysterious. Why does it happen? I think they’re both really intricately connected when it comes down to digestive system, nutrients and nervous system, as well as what’s going on with the liver and how it not only processes what you eat and all the chemicals and all the hormones and all the different things.

but also what it does with circulation and distribution of those items. All of this is an intricate play. And oddly enough, I think we might be over-complicating it, but at the same time, I think for all the folks out there who are using GLP-1s and different medications to help them try to lose weight, I think we have an ability to be able to use these meds.

alongside of Chinese herbs, alongside of digestive enzymes, yeah, maybe some probiotics, but maybe fermented foods, maybe even colostrum, I think we have the ability to be able to keep the progress going without having to be on these meds for life. And I think we have the ability for those of you who haven’t taken any of these meds to be able to get ahead of the imbalances, call yourself out on like, okay, this is what it seems. And…

step in and try different herbal formulas and see how goes for you. Everything I mentioned today, you can get online. You do not have to have an herbalist. You do not need a naturopathic doctor who happens to also be a acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist. You can use your own intuition and trace it back. There’s a company called Active Herb. have great formulas there too. So.

We have lot of abilities to help ourselves out in this case, and I am happy to help as well. I have a $49 intro clarity session on my website. It’s 15 minutes, 49 bucks. You tell me what you want to talk about. We get you some answers. And quite possibly, if you’re struggling in this case, we could really nail down some directions for you in that time frame. So, a lot of deep thoughts here. Hope you guys enjoy.

Jannine Krause (49:52.61)
this connection that I’m kind of starting to see and I look forward to carrying more info on this and bringing it to you as I really start to dive into how Chinese medicine can overlap and help people to regain balance in their body and help with the weight, help with the libido, help with some of the things that go along with aging. All right guys, well you have survived another episode of the Health Fix Podcast. Until next time, hey.

Never stop sleuthing. It’s my new one. All right, have a great day, whatever you’re doing.