Health & Longevity Without Expensive Biohacks | Dr. Kristin Oja, Ep 229

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. I wonder if you've ever had this experience. You don't feel like yourself. You're exhausted even after a full night's sleep. Your brain feels foggy. Your energy isn't what it used to be. Maybe your hormones feel out of balance. Your digestion is off, or you just don't feel as vibrant as you once did.

Jennifer Norman:
So you go to the doctor. Your labs come back and you're told everything looks normal, but you know something isn't right. What if normal Isn't the same as optimal? What if those symptoms aren't random inconveniences, but your body's way of asking for help? Today's guest believes we need to stop asking, what pill fixes this symptom, and start asking a much better question: why is this happening in the first place? Joining me today is Dr. Kristin Oja, a Doctor of Nursing Practice, an IFM Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, and the founder and CEO of STAT Wellness.

Jennifer Norman:
one of the nation's pioneering practices integrating functional medicine, movement, nutrition, and lifestyle medicine into one model of care. Kristin has spent her career helping people uncover the root causes of disease, optimize longevity, and create sustainable habits that allow them to truly thrive, not just survive. But what I love most about her philosophy is that extraordinary health isn't built through extreme diets, expensive biohacks, or chasing the latest wellness trend. It's built One small decision at a time. Today we're exploring how to listen to your body, why our current healthcare system often waits until we're already sick, what women need to know about hormones and healthy aging, and how simple daily habits can completely transform the way we feel. You'll want to stick around for this. Kristin, hello. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Thank you so much for having me, Jennifer.

Jennifer Norman:
Now I'd love to begin with your own story. You started your career in emergency medicine, a world that's often about responding to crises. What led you toward functional medicine and where is the focus on preventing illness instead?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
So even before working in the ER, I was a personal trainer. And I always say that's where my love for encouraging people, empowering them, seeing them accomplish things they didn't think possible came from. So even, you know, a silly example of being able to do one pushup on their toes, I got to see what impact that made in their life to get stronger and feel better. And I was going to quit college. I was like, I want to be a personal trainer forever. And everybody told me to get a degree. My parents were like, we don't care what it is, just get a degree. So I went nursing because I could fall back on it.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And my first rotation was in the dialysis unit. And in the dialysis unit, you've got bright fluorescent lights and people are there getting their blood filtered for 4 hours. It's a very difficult space. And I was like, oh man, we're so good at sick care. Through my different rotations, I was like, we are good at keeping people alive. We're really good at finding the right medication for the disease state. We've made so many medical advancements in the United States. And for that, I'm so grateful for.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Whether you need open heart surgery, a knee replacement, you get diagnosed with cancer. But there's this whole side of what we refer to as healthcare, right? Versus sick care where we're really lacking.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
We are waiting till people are sick enough to respond and to figure out what the right treatment for their disease or symptom is. And so when I found the emergency room as an adrenaline junkie, I loved it. I got 13 miles in a shift. I got to treat and street everyone. But after I was there for a year, I started recognizing that 80% of the people I was seeing there were there for modifiable conditions.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Whether it was their blood pressure, their diabetes, their cardiovascular disease. something that could have been prevented through our lifestyle, how we were eating, how we were moving, how we were exercising. A lot of it we did see, of course, the car accidents and things like that, but a lot of it was modifiable. The strokes, the heart attacks, the diabetes complications.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And so I went back and got my master's and then I went back and got my doctorate. And as you mentioned, my training through the Institute of Functional Medicine and A4M, and I just kept digging and being curious. And I thought becoming a nurse practitioner and going in primary care was going to fix a lot of the things I felt. In the emergency room. I wasn't gonna be able to sit down with my patients and spend time with them and talk about their lifestyle. And what you quickly learn in our traditional model with primary care is you get 7 to 10 minutes. You cannot address the whole person in 7 to 10 minutes. And so, you know, I'd be trained to, okay, what is their complaint? What is the right treatment? Okay, we do their annual labs, we're checking their kidney function, their liver function, a TSH by itself, and cholesterol.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
You're healthy. Right? But the person's hair's falling out, they're bloated, they're tired, and we're kind of trained to be like, well, your labs look great. Would you like a medication? Here's some options we have. And you send them on their way. And the curious person I am, I kept wanting to be like, well, why are they bloated? Why are they having a second sinus infection? Well, why is their hair falling out? And the model didn't support the digging and the exploration it takes to personalize a plan for the person in front of you. And so I blended my background as a personal trainer and then my nursing, my master's, my doctorate, my functional medicine training to create what I really felt was a much more collaborative team-based approach in lifestyle medicine. And so we were the nation's first medicine and movement practice. And so it really came out of curiosity and it came out of seeing how sick in America we are, even if we're living longer.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And so I wanted to put the emphasis back on our healthspan and the root cause and really focus on muscle being our greatest asset as we age.

Jennifer Norman:
Now you've said some mind-blowing things already, so I just want to take this piece by piece because you are saying that the current healthcare system, which is really mostly about sick care, frankly, and just how many people can you treat in a day, and the more people that you treat and get out the door is a win, and that's considered more successful. And frankly, I think that the incentives are built that way in the traditional healthcare system. Now, what you're talking about bucks that trend pretty significantly.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Right.

Jennifer Norman:
Because when people are well and healthy and they're staying out of the hospitals, they're staying out of the ERs. There's not as much money to be made that way, is there?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Mm-mm.

Jennifer Norman:
And so there comes to be a point where you're really bucking the trend and you're really trying to turn the model on its head so that we can be more empowered in our own lifestyles, making these right choices and staying out of the hospitals to begin with. And then you can have all of the wonderful sit-downs about what's going on in your life, not necessarily with a nurse, but with your friends and family and the people that you really should I'd be having relationships with. So that is really interesting. And functional medicine is such a pivotal thing and it's very on trend now. I think people are really starting to wake up to the fact that diagnosing symptoms is not the way to optimal health.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Norman:
Getting to the root cause is more the way that we want to really live our lives. One thing that I think that struck me so differently is how functional medicine works, I would love to hear what your definition is of functional medicine and what it is that you are ultimately trying to achieve.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yes, absolutely. So functional medicine in the most simple way, as you've said too, is it's root cause medicine. So we're looking at really having a deep understanding of anatomy and physiology. How does our body actually work and how does it work as one unit? So it's very biology heavy and to help uncover where the root imbalances are. And how to heal those so that we're not relying on a treatment or a medication. Like, it's the opposite of a Band-Aid approach.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I think what's interesting in functional medicine is, I'm sure you can understand and the listeners too, is it's a challenging form of medicine because there's not normally just one cause, right? It's not normally we just have one food sensitivity to gluten. We're usually stressed, not sleeping as well, don't have enough muscle mass on our body. Having inflammation from the gluten, maybe some vitamin D deficiencies too. So with functional medicine, there can be multiple root causes. And I think that's what makes it challenging. And we always love those quick wins. Sometimes it really is just one thing and someone feels better than they've ever felt, but we are very unique and differently made. Every single one of us, our gut microbiomes are different.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Our oral microbiomes are different. Our genetics are different. Our methylation pathways are different. Our environment's different. Our diet is different. So for us, there is no one-size-fits-all ever because we are very unique and different. But I also challenge people to think about their health holistically and peel back the onion of all the different layers of those root causes, because it's not often just one thing and it's a journey.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And you said the word holistic, which I think is really a fundamental difference to where the trend in medicine had been going, because I feel like we've become such a society of specialists.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Norman:
They always say like, if you niche down, then people are gonna come to you for that specific thing and you will be the, the quote unquote expert in that thing. And we forget about the whole body, the whole human being, mind, body, soul, and even just the physical aspect, let alone mind, body, soul. But it's as if we're just like a whole string of parts. And a lot of times the specialists may come in and try to laser focus on one area and it may have an impact on everything else and they don't even know about it.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Norman:
And then you go to a different specialist and they're not communicating with the other specialist. And then you start getting disconnection and with all of these treatments of symptoms that could be just really throwing everything else out of whack. Can you speak a little bit more about how functional medicine does approach root cause and the holistic aspect? You're going in and you're talking about fitness, which is revolutionary too, not just the functional medicine part, but it's really much more holistic than even I think other functional medicine clinics go. Yes.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yes, we're a really big collaborative team, so we can get into like our model with all the different specialties under one roof. But when you think about just our functional medicine side, what's really important in our initial visit is what we call a good health timeline. And I always tell everybody when I train them, they go through our residency, I'm like, I hope you never wanna do another form of medicine. Cuz once you go functional medicine, you can't go back. Like there is, you cannot go back to 5-minute visits, 10-minute visits. Your brain is like, well, I've gotta know about your mom's pregnancy and I've gotta know about your birth. And I have to know about your stress levels and how you ate as a kid. And so this, what we call health timeline, is really foundational.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And people think, they're like, wow, did I just go through therapy? Nobody's ever asked me if I felt loved growing up. Nobody's ever asked me about how I was raised in my medical appointments.

Jennifer Norman:
You ask people if they felt loved growing up?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yes. And you know what? I had this one patient, she just started crying. It would never have come up if I didn't ask her that specific question. She started crying and she goes, How did you know? My mom, she was like, she didn't tell me she loved me until I was 13 years old. I never heard the words from my mom, I love you. And, you know, to us, your nervous system in the first 5 years of life is getting developed. It's learning about the world. It's learning, are you safe or not safe? And that stays with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And of course we can change it. There's a lot of ways to rewire that and neurofeedback and all of these different things. But I think it's very important for us, for me, if I'm going to treat any condition or if I'm even going to talk about a treatment plan, whether it's lifestyle things, their sleep, their nutrition, their relationships, I have to understand the backstory because I tell patients, I'm like, your health today is a picture of the past, right? Your health today is not just what you ate for lunch or you changed your health in the last week. That's not what's going on in your health when I meet with you. It's your whole life. It's your birth. It's your mom's pregnancy. It's if you were breastfed or not.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
It's how many antibiotics you were on. It's— I always say knowledge is power. There is nothing in someone's timeline they should ever feel bad about or feel guilty sharing. Like, it's your journey, it's your life. I want people to feel comfortable talking about all of it. That helps us better provide care to you when we know those things, right? And we— the only thing in our practice we don't have that I wish we did is we don't have therapy. So we refer out a lot for true therapy, um, because we talk about little t's and big T's. When it comes to trauma.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And I think this is where so many of our patients, they just fall through the cracks. They feel gaslit by medicine.

Jennifer Norman:
Can you describe what you would consider a little t versus a big T? Because I hear that a lot on my podcast and I've never asked the question. I just had perhaps assumed that people listening knew what that meant, but I would love if you could explain in your words what little t trauma is versus big T trauma.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
So big T is what people think about, like really bad. Like I was abused as a kid. I was raped. These are these like traumatic things. I went through a horrible divorce. My ex-husband tried to take everything, right? These are like big, big, big things, right?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
But I would argue a lot of us have like little t, and like an example of a little t could be subtle comments that your parents made growing up symbolizing that you weren't enough. So getting an A minus wasn't enough. You should have got an A plus. Maybe they were kind about it, but it, to you, the message was you're not enough over and over again. That's what you heard. That's little traumas throughout your life where you believe it's been wired in you that you aren't enough. So you are going to go out in the world and view yourself very differently than somebody that maybe had cheerleader parents that, hey, you got a B+, but you tried your best. Like, that's amazing.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And high-fiving you, right? Like, those experiences can really shape who you are as a person, and they may not even be obvious to you. And so a lot of these little T's, they come up either in our visits, we're able to identify some of them and get them in with a therapist. Or if you're curious, you're like, I wanna go see a therapist. They can help you identify some of those little Ts. Sometimes it's, people will talk about like, my dad was never present growing up. Like he just was never at the dinner table. He was never at my baseball game. He was never at whatever it may be.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
That could be a little T for someone like that really impacted their trust, their relationship, right? And the goal in these is not that the parent did anything wrong, right? I know I gave you 2 examples of the parent, right?

Jennifer Norman:
Right.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
But it's how did they perceive that situation in their body?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I was just going to say that because the same situation can happen with, let's say, 2 people. One person, it could be a little T. The other person, it could be motivating and inspiring and be like, yeah, I'm gonna strive for something better. And it really depends on your perception of how you're carrying that message.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yes.

Jennifer Norman:
Is it that I wasn't good enough or that I know that I'm the best and I can, yeah, and I, I have more in me. And so it really is not just that one specific example. I think it has to do with the gestalt of the messaging and how that influences or impacts or harms you potentially over time. So that's a really important nuance there. How interesting. And getting to the point of the fact that we don't get enough time and doctors frankly see so many patients and so they are not trained to be as empathetic, frankly. If they did, they would probably just lose their minds if they had to like sit down and really psychoanalyze everybody that came into their office and get into their childhoods. And so not that I necessarily blame the doctors, it's really the way that the system is built.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Thank you.

Jennifer Norman:
And a lot of times I will actually do things because I am in health and wellness. I want to test the model. I want to see what's happening. And so, for example, I actually recently went to a doctor's office and I had a specific complaint. I found a little lump and I wanted to see what it was. And I probably spent all of 10 minutes in the office. And as she was going through the checklist of questions, do you drink? Do you smoke? And she was already checking no, no, no, no before I even answered anything. I was waiting to hear her like literally stop and look at me to see if I would like, do you have any new sexual partners? Do you have history of— and it was all like, she was practically going through the list as, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Jennifer Norman:
Like, oh, yeah, you're normal. And so this is an abnorm— this is an anomaly. We should send you down for some more tests. And the other thing that I think is even wilder is the fact that people can just go online and not even meet their doctor. And so I was like, oh, I've been getting all of these advertisements for GLPs, and now, frankly, I'm what, 105 pounds? Like, I do not need GLPs. But I was like, what happened? if somebody like me sees an Ariana Grande and says, you know what, I think I need a Wegovy, or something like that. And so I went on, and I wanted to see how difficult it was to get a prescription. A few questions, and you can change your answers, like, what is your weight? And instead of 105, if I put 125, it was like, sorry, you're not qualified.

Jennifer Norman:
And then I put 135, and they were like, congratulations, we think that you're qualified. And then a doctor comes back and says, I'm going to guide— quote unquote, guide you on your journey. But you know that it's just automated stuff. And they're preparing this Wegovy pill for me. And I was like, wow, this is really becoming a bit of a problem because they don't really care. They don't really care about what the actual condition is. They just care about pushing, you know, products, I think.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And I would argue even in the wellness space too, there's a lot of this. It's a trillion-dollar industry right now. Like the same thing can happen. Like maybe even some people would think of like peptides as a more natural, like BPC-157 or some of these healing peptides. Like, yeah, you can just go on, do a 4-minute visit and be prescribed peptides to someone that lives who knows where. And I think it's on both sides. It's every— it's like we are people. And I think we think of some of these as, as cherries on top.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Like, I don't want people to think we don't use peptides or don't use these things cuz we do.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
But we spend a lot of time to understand our patient's history. What is the root cause of it? What lifestyle variables do they need to work on to optimize their health long-term? And then we think about some of these other modalities as like the cherry on top. For some models, that is their base, that is their moneymaker, and that's what they're gonna push. And you probably saw this article, but they had some people that worked with the FDA being secret shoppers and going to those platforms that said you got a telemedicine appointment. And it was not, it was just checking things in a text and they got prescriptions and they're shutting down a lot of these places that are saying that they're doing telemedicine and they're not.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
So I'm like, man, those secret shoppers are, we're gonna see a shift with all of the, um, kind of craziness in the wellness industry right now.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay. Well, I guess that's good because that is what they're for. I mean, they're supposed to regulate these sorts of things from happening and protecting the consumer. So something good is happening there. Now, why do you think it is that we've become so accepting of feeling tired, stressed, inflamed, disconnected, all of those things? At what point did we begin believing that feeling this like mediocre was simply part of getting older adulthood?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Well, I think there's kind of a twofold there. One, things that are common. we are saying are normal, right? So if it's common to be tired in America, we're now saying it's normal to be tired in America, right? Common symptoms don't mean they're normal. So I think as a culture, we normalize a lot.

Jennifer Norman:
Uh-huh.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I also think we've been told by people we trust, our primary cares or OB-GYN, when we go in and maybe we're feeling a little down, well, it's normal to be depressed, you're postpartum. Or, oh yeah, it's normal to have this. Like, you have 3 kids and you work, like, of course you're tired. I feel like we have On both levels. Medically, we've normalized it. In the community, we've normalized it. And common symptoms are not normal. There is a reason.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
One of my favorite sayings is, your body's talking, you just need the right person to listen. Everything that you feel is a symptom and a sign of something else going on.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Maybe the root is stress. Like maybe we aren't recovering well and we aren't managing our stress, but it could also be something else. And you wanna work with someone that is listening to your health timeline, digging deeper, pulling back those layers of the onion and getting to the root and the core of what's going on, or the multiple things, as I pointed out earlier.

Jennifer Norman:
Over the course of your career, are there newer, or shall I say uptrending situations, circumstances, quote unquote symptoms that you are seeing that you hadn't seen earlier in your career?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Man, I think a lot of it. So I've been doing functional medicine for 13 years, and I think most are pretty similar. Like we have very common things in the US. We're very inflamed. We have gut microbiome imbalances. We have hormonal imbalances. We don't manage stress effectively. We really have no idea, like our quality of our sleep.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
There's a lot of undiagnosed sleep apnea. Like I think a lot of those things are persistent over the last 13 years and not new. I would say we're learning a lot more and seeing a lot of shifts as post-2020 with the pandemic and the mast cell activation space, the histamine intolerance space.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I would say we're seeing a lot more of that now. But as I think back to early years, I think we just didn't know the degree of mast cell and histamine. And I think about some of my patients that I couldn't get better and I didn't understand what was going on. I was like, no, they had mast cell activation back then. So I don't think it's new. I think we just have more research around it. We have more people talking about it. We have more people believing in this condition.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And I have such a soft spot for people with mast cell activation syndrome because their labs actually look really optimal, even from a functional medicine perspective, and they feel very bad. So they've even been kind of gaslit in the functional medicine space because they're like, well, we're going to do whole panels. We're going to look at everything. We want your CRP to be less than 1. We want your TSH to be between 1 and 2. We want these optimal vitamin D. You're hitting all of these things, right? But you're like, here's my symptoms. And I feel like for a while, even in the functional medicine space, people thought that, well, maybe you're just really anxious or maybe you're just really depressed.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And I feel like the last 6 years, a lot more has come to light of what mast cell activation syndrome is and histamine intolerance. And I think that's the place I've been the most excited and been very interested in over the last 5 years. But the foundations are very similar. Living in America, we always say standard American diet, standard American diseases, even when we try to be better, because cane sugar is in everything. Plastics are going up.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
We have a lot of EMFs, like a lot of these things that are just the way of America, and they create dysfunction in our bodies.

Jennifer Norman:
Can you talk a little bit more about mast cell activation? I'm not familiar with that, and so I'm curious. I would imagine that if I'm not, then a lot of listeners probably aren't either. Could you describe that?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yeah, so mast cell activation syndrome is going to be a more severe— I like to describe it as a more severe histamine intolerance. What a lot of the listeners will probably resonate with is the histamine intolerance. And what's interesting about it is you have 4 histamine receptors in the body, and a lot of us think about The like allergy symptoms with histamine, right? If you're allergic to almonds and you eat almonds and you break out in hives, you're like, well, that's an allergy response. If you have seasonal allergies, but these histamine intolerant patients, it's much more than just seasonal allergies or hives. They deal with things from head to toe, and I can go through what some of the symptoms are, but they usually have some dizziness. They have some ringing in their ears. They have some sinus headaches. Maybe they have some heartburn or reflux.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Maybe they have some looser stool. Maybe they get flush when they drink wine, or maybe they break out in hives when they do a speaking engagement. They have really painful menstrual periods. They have a lot of that, like, estrogen-dominant type symptoms. They have more anxiety. They feel like their body inside is buzzing. They have insomnia. So when I started to talk to my patients, I'm like connecting all these dots.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I'm like, your histamine receptors— like, this is a histamine intolerance. And what's interesting is there was a TikTok that went really viral, and a lot of people with PMS, they are starting to take Pepcid and Zyrtec. They're starting to take these H1, H2 blockers, and they're noticing their PMS symptoms are getting better. And so we're seeing it come out in a lot more ways. But the reason I brought up the pandemic and mast cell is COVID, the virus created a lot of immune dysfunction in some people, and they developed a lot of what you probably have heard of like long-haul COVID. It started creating a lot of brain fog and dizziness and What you may have heard of before called dysautonomia. They started having POTS symptoms, so they would stand up and their heart would be pounding. A lot of those patients, when you dig deeper into the pathophysiology, they have a mast cell activation or a histamine intolerance.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
So it's a very, very complex condition, but their labs look really normal and they don't feel good. And what I tell people, when you get a good functional medicine provider, nothing is just in your head. Like even depression is not just in your head, right? So for any listeners dealing with any symptom, I really encourage people not to normalize it and to dig deeper and find someone that's listening and cares because labs are only one piece of the puzzle. A good history, a good timeline, digging, asking the right questions is equally as important, especially with some of these like trickier conditions like mast cell activation and histamine intolerance.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I think a lot of times when we're not feeling well, the common thing to do is to talk to friends and family or the internet about what's going on. And I often will think about like my parents, which were the war generation where you could have an arm fall off and they were like, you're fine, you're fine. You know, like there was never a need to go to the doctor for anything because you were just a wimp and a baby if anything was a problem. And they would make you feel bad if you actually felt Like you needed to go to the doctor. And then fast forward to Gen Xers like myself, and then the Baby Boomers and the Gen Xers. And then I think that the generations today are almost like over-aware and like almost paralyzed by how much information that there is out there. And they're looking to others for those answers about what they're feeling inside. And maybe part of it is because they don't know how to articulate what it is, and they're just so curious about how to get solutions.

Jennifer Norman:
And AI is so relatively available that some are even using AI as their doctors now. And so I think part of it it is we've, we've lost connection to how we are feeling about ourselves. And we don't really take the time to really say, this is making me feel da da da da da da da. And then how best to describe what that is. I think a lot of times we just like Google symptoms or things, and then we get these disparate things. Oh, well, it must be this. And it takes you down a lane which may have nothing to do with, as you were saying, this underlying root cause condition that could be the problem for anything.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Norman:
And so sitting down with a good functional medicine practitioner, I think, is really, really priceless in many cases, rather than just relying on your parents, relying on friends, relying on the internet. In some cases, there is really nothing like a human connection.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Well, I'm glad you brought some of the new generations and just with the wellness trends too, and the wearable data. Like we do have a lot, I'm seeing a lot more health anxiety than I've ever seen.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I also, like, I love data. We have a whole business around it.

Jennifer Norman:
I was gonna ask you, Mark Hyman and Function, obviously. I mean, that you can get labs for everything. And I think to myself, I almost signed up, but I was like, do I wanna know all of that? Will it just drive me crazy? Like if I see one blip out of line and will I just hyperfocus on that? And will it be something that would cause me anxiety to try to get that one lab corrected or something?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yes. Well, and it does, like there's multiple types of patients, but I have a big handful of patients that I actually have them throw away their wearable. I would tell them never do a Prenuvo full body MRI. Just, we don't need to do it. You know, and I think we have to, the intention behind wellness, I think is what's really important. As you're mentioning, like you don't want to wake up and your watch tells you you got poor sleep, but you wake up and you feel amazing. And then that dictated your entire day.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
You felt on fire until you saw it.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Same thing, like, with our weight on a scale, right? It, like, dictates how you feel about your body, you know, all of these things. And so I always talk about, like, when you think about the lifestyle pillars, we have to remember one of the most important pillars to me, and based on a 100-year-old Harvard study, is connection and happiness. And so I tell people, on your quest to health, if it's creating stress and unhappiness and depleting you of joy, you need to veer a different direction, right? If you have 7 foods you're allowed to eat because some functional medicine provider told you you were allergic or sensitive to 30 foods. You know, like we need to think about that in a different way, right? Because that's going to create a lot of unhappiness. It's going to deplete you of joy. It's going to create a lot of stress when you go out to eat. Why don't we change that language and why don't we get your gut as healthy as possible? Why don't we heal the gut lining? Why don't we work on reintroducing foods? I think you, we have to remember, and I, this day and age and all of the data we have, the full body MRIs, the labs, the wearables, the everything. Just remember that pillar of happiness.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Like, is your quest of health creating a full and healthy and abundant life with like-minded people? You feel connected, you are happy, you're laughing, you're smiling. Or is it like isolating you and you're eating every meal at home because you're worried about a seed oil? Like, what— we have to think about this full picture. And I live in this, and I always tell people, like, 80, 90% of the time I eat really, really well. I stay well hydrated. I sweat. I exercise.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
But like, I live in a community where I see a lot of my patients. You might see me out to eat eating a burger. I do not eat a burger every single week, but you might catch me eating a burger and drinking a beer. I know neither of those things are healthy for me, right? But I'm with friends and I'm having fun, and that was my time to laugh. And I feel like we swing in one of two directions. And I just think that point that you made is so important because you have one life to live.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Depending on your religious beliefs, you have one life to live in one body. Right? And it's like, what do we want out of this at the end of the day? And are you looking back and the things you're doing bringing you joy or not?

Jennifer Norman:
Oh my gosh. Yes. So important.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Hell to the yes.

Jennifer Norman:
Hell to the yes. And it's so important. I'm such a fundamental believer in balance and saying like too far to one extreme or, or the other. I mean, I don't know if happiness necessarily for me lives in those extremes. I love being able to say, yeah, I'm gonna live healthy, but I'm okay having a glass of wine. I'm okay having the burger or the beer. I'm okay. And I love that you are giving permission for people to do the same because it shows that there are tolerances because it does have such an important enriching aspect to your life and lifestyle and overall wellbeing.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
It's so funny because I had started dating this wonderful person. He's from Paris and I was eating more cheese and meat and drinking more wine than I ever had before. And I gained like 8 pounds. And of course I'm like, Oh no. And afterwards I'm like, oh no, I gained so much weight. And then my friend was like, but you had such a blast gaining that weight. I was like, you're right.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I did.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yes.

Jennifer Norman:
You had, you loved every calorie that you consumed. I was like, you're right.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I did.

Jennifer Norman:
I did. And now I can actually be cognizant of it and not go overboard. But yes, true. It's so true.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And I think everybody, what brings them happiness and joy is different. Like I talked to some of my patients. That they are way more strict about every single thing than I am, but they feel really good and they're happy doing that. So I think we have to just like, again, focus on us as people and not compare to others and think about all of the elements. How are you sleeping? How's your energy? How's your digestion? How's your relationships? How's your happiness? All of these different variables impact your health. It's not just one.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And I mean, we all know, we all have seen the person that has done every single thing perfectly right. All the time, they can still get diagnoses that are not optimal, right? Like it's—

Jennifer Norman:
Bryan Johnson.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yes. Yes. I mean, that's one of the big examples that we're all talking about right now. You know, it's, and that's where it's like, we've got to remember all elements, but the healthiest people I know are the ones that have a consistent, they're very consistent in their behaviors when it comes to their like window of tolerance for fun meals and going on vacation and not beating themselves up. They have been consistent for years and years and years. Right. So consistency is key, not perfection. And the healthiest people I've seen.

Jennifer Norman:
I want to talk about exercise for a moment because we want to treat exercise not like punishment. And part of that is changing the vernacular. So instead of saying exercise or fitness, we talk about movement, which I think is so beautiful. And because people like to move and however you wish to move is the way you move. And then it becomes almost like a medicine. What do you think changes when people begin thinking about movement this way?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Well, movement should be fun. Like, it's going to create consistency, right? I think that's anything that's negative or disciplinary, anything that we're dreading doing, you're not going to be consistent long term. So I think it goes back to like what we're talking about with the consistency, what works for you. And then also a little caveat here, you've got to evaluate what's going on in your life at the moment, and you have to be okay with changing these lifestyle things or the movement patterns you're doing based on where you're at in life. So I had some seasons in life where I was running marathons and I loved it. That was like the right thing for me at the time. I think people could argue running a marathon, 26.2 miles, is probably not good on our knees, our joints, all of those things. But there were seasons where mentally I loved it.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
It was— now I have a 6-month-old at home, I'm postpartum. Like, this season of life is not the season for marathon running. It's the season for more stretching and yoga and breathwork. He doesn't sleep through the night. I'm not as rested, right? And I think I think being okay with tweaking your own lifestyle, your own movement patterns during different seasons of life goes back to pay attention, listen to your body, pay attention. Like, we have some patients, for example, one of my favorite stories is I had 2 patients that lived on the same street. One of my patients, they both wanted to intermittent fast. One of the patients, I was like, hey, I actually think you could intermittent fast a little bit.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I still want you to eat. I gave her a modest window and I was like, but I think intermittent fasting, it could lower your insulin. It could help with some of the metabolic resistance you have.

Jennifer Norman:
Can explain intermittent fasting, for those that might not be familiar.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Yes. So intermittent fasting is basically where you set some guardrails about when you eat and when you don't. So like it could be a 16:8, so you eat for 8 hours a day. So maybe you eat between 10 AM and 6 PM, and then you don't eat from 6 PM to 10 AM the next day. There's so many different ways you could technically call intermittent fasting 12:12, like you eat 12 hours a day, you don't eat for 12 hours. So intermittent fasting and its term Really applies to all of us that sleep, but in the sense of people that come to our practice when they're talking about intermittent fasting, they're wanting to tighten their eating window to get into a little gentle fast to lower their insulin, lower their glucose. And there is good research on it. So I always say like, there is research on intermittent fasting, but is it the right thing for you as a person in front of me? So one of my patients, I did feel like it would be okay for her to eat from 10 to 6.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
She was very sedentary. She was under— she was getting good sleep. She was under less stress. She was more insulin resistant. She had a little bit of extra body fat percent. My other patient was like running on coffee, sleep deprived, working out every day at 5:00 AM, like hyper-aware of her health. And she came in and wanted to intermittent fast. And I told her not to intermittent fast.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
The two of them are neighbors. So they were talking with each other and they got like upset that I told one of them they could intermittent fast and the other one they couldn't. And so they both came in and they're like, why did you tell her she could intermittent fast? And you told me I couldn't. Are you the same person? Is your lifestyle the same? Is your sleep the same? Is your recovery the same? So I think we all have a tendency to look at social media, look at what our best friend's doing, look at what our family's doing, and wanna do what they're doing.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Even if it's not the right thing for us. And I would argue sometimes people feel worse when they do it, but they ignore it because they think it's what they should do from a society perspective. So I've seen this nutritionally with patients have come in and been like, I feel so much better when I'm vegan. Well, that's great. I love that you're vegan and you feel so much better. Let's keep doing it. Let's make sure you're getting enough diversity, you're getting good protein, you're getting good healthy fats, fiber. Let's make sure your nutrients look great.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Then I have someone else that comes in that's like, hey, I really feel better on a paleo diet. Like, my bloating is gone. Okay, well, that's great. Let's make sure you're getting enough protein. Let's make sure you're getting enough fiber. Let's make sure you're getting these things. There is not a one-size-fits-all. There is so many variations and so many variables.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Even in my own life, my needs have changed during different seasons of life.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And we need to be okay with that. I know I veered us off from the movement conversation, but I think You want to move in ways that you can be consistent with. And we know that we need to move. In some seasons, it could be stretching and yoga and zone 2 power walking. In other seasons, it could be strength training, high rocks competitions. It could be everything and anything. It very rarely is in isolation, the training alone that leads to burnout. It's usually our underfueling and lack of recovery.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
So we, again, holistic, holistically evaluating what's best for us.

Jennifer Norman:
Very, very good point. Yes. No, thank you very much for that. I wanna talk specifically about women for a bit because a lot of women spend years assuming that their fatigue, these weight changes, mood swings, brain fog are simply part of getting older, or like you, as we were just talking about, a phase of life. And so how do we know when something deserves a closer look?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
So I would argue, even if you feel like amazing and never have felt better, you wanna take a closer look. And I'll tell you why. So when you are on the side where you've never felt better in your entire life, I always suggest that's a great time to get a full panel of labs, star that labs, use that as your reference ranges, your north star. When there are seasons you don't feel as good, we can compare and be like, this is when you felt incredible. So we wanna see you even when you're feeling incredible.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I'm sure you're probably gonna guess what I'd say, but like no matter what the symptom is, big or small, I wanna understand why. I'm always curious. So if you are slightly tired in the afternoon, I wanna— some people use the term biohack, but I wanna go through your day and I wanna figure out how do we improve your energy so you don't hit that wall at 3 o'clock and reach for caffeine, right? To me, any symptom at all is a sign that there's something going on in your body. It could be very small.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
It could be very big. And these are warning signs for other things that could happen. So for us, even like postpartum shedding, even though it's very common, It's not always normal. There is sometimes a sluggish thyroid, or our iron stores like ferritin aren't coming up, our vitamin D is too low, right? We have some postpartum thyroiditis. So my answer to you is, no matter how good or bad you feel, it's worth knowing your body. It's worth having the conversation. Don't normalize any symptom. It's information.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And work with someone that's curious to help you figure out, even if it's a small tweak, like examples I have some patients that fatigue in the afternoon. I've changed their morning routine. This sounds so small, but I'm like, hey, you're waking up and you're going straight to coffee. How about we delay the coffee a little bit? We eat a good breakfast, we drink some water and get some electrolytes, and then have our coffee. Let's just try it for 2 weeks. I've had so many patients that even take the time to message me in the portal and been like, hey, I was really against switching my morning routine, but like my energy's amazing. I haven't had a single second cup of coffee in the afternoon since I made that change.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
That's so small, but it's because of that cortisol awakening response and what's happening throughout the day that that change could be very significant for someone. So no matter how good or bad, get labs.

Jennifer Norman:
Excellent.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Understand your body. Dig deeper.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. What is one myth about hormones that you wish that more women would stop believing?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Well, I think this is in conventional medicine that they believe this more so than my patients, cuz it brings them in, but that there's no point in testing hormones. I get so frustrated when my patients come in and they were told by their OB-GYN that there is no point in testing hormones. That I'm always like, that frustrates me. It drives me crazy. I know, it really frustrates me. So I'd say that's huge. And I also think that the— there is some truth in the fact that hormones are so dynamic. And if you're a female and you're a menstruating female, every single day of the month you're chemically different.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I could check your labs 5 days in a row, first thing in the morning, we will get different results. results because we should. If you're a menstruating female, your hormones are going up and down all month long. So, I think that's what makes it complex in conventional medicine. But, I think number one, test your hormones, know what your hormones are doing throughout the month. There's now technologies that are direct-to-consumer like Mira. I don't know if you've heard of Mira.

Jennifer Norman:
No.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
But, it's a urine test. So, you can see your hormones at home all month long and see what's happening, what's normal, what's abnormal. We didn't used to have that data. So when people argue, well, it's just a snapshot on that one day, I agree with them. Like it is, it's a snapshot on this one day, but we've been doing this for decades and we know midluteal gives us a really good picture of your estrogen and progesterone at the same time. But if you wanna see throughout the month what's going on and how your hormones are impacting how you're feeling, let's get you to do a Mira test at home and track those hormone changes with your symptoms. Mm-hmm. So I think the biggest misconception is I shouldn't test my hormones.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
They change all the time. There's no point.

Jennifer Norman:
Interesting. Interesting. What do you think about testosterone for women in general? I know that everybody is different. Everybody has different needs. And certainly I don't want anybody on this podcast to think that this is just a blanket statement, but I'm just curious in general about the trend of women taking testosterone.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Well, if they're really low, I think women feel a lot better with testosterone, but if you have optimal testosterone, getting more testosterone is going to create negative symptoms over time, whether it's oily skin, acne, hair loss, body odor, unwanted dark hairs.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
For us, when we think about hormones, we think about a hormone cascade. And so balancing your blood sugar is actually one of the first things that we wanna make sure is optimal with our patients. Then we really wanna look at the thyroid and adrenals. And adrenal dysfunction is one of the biggest reasons we see low testosterone in women. So if your DHEA is really low, which is an adrenal hormone, I'm gonna wanna work on your adrenals before I even talk about testosterone. So for us, there's like a hierarchy, and we do use testosterone, but it's kind of like the last thing. Like, I want to make sure you're strength training. I want to make sure your adrenals look good, your thyroid looks good, your blood sugar is balanced.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Then I want to start you on some testosterone if you still need it. But we do see some moms that— I bring up moms because we see a lot of women that have had big hormone shifts, whether it's menopause, perimenopause, pregnancy, postpartum, stopping nursing. These are some— like, all of those Pretty big hormone shifts. Postpartum, I would argue, is the biggest, cuz you go from the highest hormones you've ever had in your life to the lowest hormones the moment you give birth. But some of those females, their testosterone never comes back up. Mm-hmm. And they normalize a lot of things like, I can't build muscle, I have no libido, I have pain with intercourse. A lot of these things as women that were just like, I thought everybody was exhausted when they became a mom.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
I thought everybody had no libido. And I'll look at their labs and their testosterone's like 8. We don't really ever want it below 25. That's like the low end of our normal.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
And I'm like, you know, that's going to present itself with low motivation, depression, difficulty building muscle, libido going down. Doesn't mean we need to go on testosterone therapy. We need to figure out why is your testosterone 8, right? What is the root cause of that? But sometimes we do use testosterone if we're doing all the right things and the adrenals look great, the blood sugar looks great, your strength training, your diet's pretty good, and your testosterone went from 8 to 10 and you're having symptoms. We might put you on some testosterone and watch your levels.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay. No, that is absolutely a wonderful example of how to think about testosterone. Thank you so much. My gosh, I think that if somebody is listening today and they might be exhausted, they feel like they've tried everything, they don't know where to begin, what do you recommend as the very first step that you would encourage them to take?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
So I know this is gonna sound really silly, but I would say my 2 favorite things to just start with is really create a good morning routine. I know I know this is really small, but like wake up and start your day in a very grounded space. I really find you can handle so much more chaos in your day, so many things to go awry if you start your day in a grounded, balanced state. So to me, that's doing some breathwork first thing in the morning and hydrating yourself first thing in the morning. You're waking up dehydrated, and you may know this, but they did a study where 60% of people with fatigue were just dehydrated throughout the day. So it's like, let's take away some of those like common things. Let's do some breathwork. Your cortisol is rising.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Let's calm our system down. Let's hydrate ourselves. I think that's a really, really great starting place. And then the other thing I would just encourage all the listeners, especially female listeners, is really work to keep muscle on your body because muscle is the greatest asset as you age. It's going to help with your blood sugar. It's going to allow you to be able to eat more versus less. It's going to increase your reaction time. It's going to increase your ability to live independent.

Dr. Kristin Oja:
It's going to strengthen your bones. support your heart health, your blood sugar, Alzheimer's. So some good breathwork in the morning, hydrating, and then some sort of strength training that feels good. I think those are gonna really set you up for success, and it's good for everybody.

Jennifer Norman:
So practical. Thank you so much, Kristin. This has been such a great conversation. I feel like I can talk to you for hours, but I'm gonna wrap up. And at the end of my podcast, I always ask my guests these same 3 common questions. It's so wonderful to hear the responses. My first question to you is, what do you think makes you beautiful?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Being a mom. Yes.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes. What a beautiful part of life I think that it is that we get to be moms. Lovely. What do you think that it means to be human?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Being able to experience all the emotions, the whole emotional continuum, the really dark moments and the really happy moments and like everything in between, like the The bandwidth of emotion and connection we could experience as humans.

Jennifer Norman:
That's a gift. And my last question, what is one truth that you live by?

Dr. Kristin Oja:
Everything is figureoutable.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay, everybody, you can figure out your situation with your health to get to an optimal place. Kristin, this has been such an encouraging conversation. I think that it's so amazing that you take something that could be so complex as healthcare and make it feel tangible, digestible, easy to understand. So thank you for that. You have reminded us that our bodies aren't working against us. They are simply communicating with us. And when we learn to listen instead of silencing those symptoms, then we create the opportunity to not just live longer, but actually live better. And I also love the idea that transformation doesn't require massive change all at once.

Jennifer Norman:
It really does begin with these small choices. These things that we can create healthy habits and then repeat with intention, and also being able to know where we are as our starting place with data and track that over time. I think over time, these little choices become the life that we experience. For everybody listening, I really appreciate you so much. If this conversation inspired you, then share it with somebody who needs the reminder that feeling good isn't something that we should settle for someday. It's something that we can begin creating today. Until next time, remember that beauty is not about perfection. It's about living with health, compassion, purpose, and authenticity. I'm Jennifer Norman, and this is the Human Beauty Movement Podcast. I'll see you in the next episode.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate, and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us Follow us on social media and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.