Farrar Duro [0:01]
Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the PCOS Revolution Podcast. I am so excited today because I have a very special guest here. Her name is Mariza Snyder. Dr. Snyder is a functional practitioner and you might have recognized some of her books, the newest one being The Essential Oils Hormone Solution, which is a national bestseller. She also has several other books focused on balancing hormones with the power of essential oils. And also she has an Amazon number one bestseller called The Smart Mom’s Guide to Essential Oils. Now for the past 10 years, Dr. Snyder has lectured at wellness centers, conferences and corporations on hormone health, essential oils, nutrition and detoxification. She’s also been featured on Dr. Oz, Fox News health, Oprah Magazine, Mind Body Green and many publications. She is also the host of the Essentially You podcast, a fabulous podcast that you should all check it out and it’s designed to empower women to become the CEO of their health. And you can also check out her website, which will be listed in our show notes as well at Drmariza.com. So welcome. I’m so glad to have you here.

Dr Mariza Snyder [1:10]
Well, thank you so much. I am so happy to be here on this beautiful day.

Farrar Duro [1:14]
So tell me about what inspired you to really get into women’s health and also go into the field of essential oils?

Absolutely such a great question. My interest in women’s health really happened about 10 to 11 years ago. So funny because as the years go by, I’m like, Okay, now it’s been 10 years and 11 years. And so about 10, 11 years ago, when I was 29, 30 years old, and I basically crashed and burned, I had chronic fatigue. And it was a kind of chronic fatigue, where I could barely get up out of bed every single day. It was just enough energy to get up to go to the office and see my patients. And I remember feeling very lost and confused about what was going on with my body and didn’t really understand how I got there. I mean, I didn’t and when I went to get tested, and basically I was sure enough, my hormones were pretty whacked out, including cortisol levels, estrogen and progesterone, the whole nine. I remember the doctor handed me a prescription for birth control and for anxiety, which I wasn’t struggling with. I remember looking down at these prescriptions and thinking to myself, this is not how I’m going to get well. And luckily, well, before I was a practitioner. I was a biochemist, I had been a biochemist for many years. And the one thing that I was really, really good at was just digging into the research. And if I wasn’t going to get the answers at the typical doctor’s office, I knew that I could figure them out. I knew the one thing that I knew to be true because I had women in my practice with similar issues and concerns. But the one thing that I knew to be true was that I was not unique, that if I was doing with this, there were millions of women dealing with it as well. And I just felt like we needed more advocates, we needed women feeling more confident in knowing what was going on with their bodies. And that just became a big part of my mission. Well, it’s been my mission ever since. And I’ll tell you what this journey is so interesting. Because right when you feel you know everything and you’re doing all the right things, you’re definitely could be thrown for a loop. And we can talk a little bit about my thyroid story in a little bit. But I just can’t imagine doing anything else.

Oh, you’re helping so many women. And I think it’s so important the work that you’re doing. And there’s just not enough quality information out there sometimes to really guide women a lot of times in the autoimmune field as well. And we know that PCOS can overlap with thyroid issues as well, I just saw today actually had a patient who just found she has Hashimoto’s and for the longest time, she struggled with her weight. And she thought I cannot lose weight. I tried it everything on Earth, my hair’s falling out, it must be the PCOS. And it’s like lo and behold, she had positive anti thyroid antibodies and high TSH, and it wasn’t really ever looked at before. I think because it was just so focused on the woman’s hormones and not looking at the thyroid. So no matter what she did, she wasn’t going to get anywhere really with just diet and exercise unless you address that. So how did you find out that you had Hashimoto’s? And did you have warning signs? Or is it just something that you you discovered in bloodwork?

Dr Mariza Snyder [4:35]
Such a great question, that 10 years and I don’t know if what I had done to myself, you know, and not to say that we necessarily do things to ourselves, I don’t necessarily blame myself for being who I am. But I definitely probably set the tone for what was to come down the line. And I’ll be honest with you, I always kind of write the line of I love what I do, my passion, my mission. It’s not even a career. It’s so much more than that. And there are definitely a lot of late nights that we work in order to keep the Dr. Marisa brand running. And so I was actually…I feel like symptoms for Hashimoto’s had come on, probably about three to four years ago where I started to notice something. But I thought it was just my adrenal. It was HPA axis dysfunction. So, hypothalamic-pituitary-axis dysfunction. So I figured I was just finding myself back into the ground again, and I was like, Okay, well, I’ve been here before I know how to handle this. And so brain fog was an issue, fatigue was an issue and all of a sudden, I had put on weight, that no amount of exercise or eating, and I dialed down my nutrition in such a great way. Nutrition has been such an area of focus in terms of my research, and nothing that had worked in the past was working. I went and had a doctor run my thyroid labs. We did probably a panel of five thyroids. We did not look at antibodies. But everything looked normal. And I’ll be honest with you, I I probably was in a bit of denial. It was kind of one of those things where I just wanted to rule it out. Like Okay, well this isn’t it. Let me get back and maybe tweak, tweak the program, tweak my diet, tweak, tweak the exercise, maybe I’m over exercising, I’m burning out my adrenal, maybe that’s what’s going on here. So I kept trying to fiddle and play and I felt like I kind of plateaued the weight and in a couple of things.

But then other symptoms started coming in. My digestive system slowed down, my sex drive tanked and just all of a sudden a myriad of more symptoms came up that continue to point towards Hashimoto or hypothyroid, hypothyroid probably been driven by Hashimoto’s. So we finally did a full panel actually, when I was writing this book right here, and because I was pulling some big nights and some big weeks to get this book done. I got diagnosed about a year and a half ago with Hashimoto’s and hypothyroid. And it was it was a hard pill to swallow was actually during the time that I was writing this book. And I strongly debated whether I would address it in the book, whether I would have a big part of thyroid health in the book. I chose to stay with the outline that we originally created. But I really wanted to emphasize a lot of reducing inflammation and reducing toxicity in the book. Part three of my book has got the 14 day Hormone Rescue plan. And I was at that time I was on a Hashimoto and thyroid protocol, a food protocol, an anti inflammatory protocol. So a lot of that was influenced in part three of the book. But it wasn’t until after the book came out and I kind of wanted to get through that chapter of my life that I started talking about Hashimoto’s diagnosis. So it’s actually only been about three to four months I’ve been talking about it. But I went full tilt into having this conversation because the more and more I started talking about my thyroid diagnosis and the Hashimoto diagnosis, it was amazing to me how many women felt so dismissed. So just put to the wayside. Doctors not running tests, doctors telling women that it was all in their head. And, I knew that I needed to speak out more about it. And what I’ve been doing, I’m still far from 100%, but I’m doing much better. And it’s just one more piece of the puzzle when it comes to our hormones. Problem is, you and I both know, probably one of the most universal and important hormones in the body. I always think about those big, those big, all encapsulating hormones like cortisol, insulin and thyroid, and how they can have such a profound impact on our other hormone systems. And so I’m glad to be having this conversation.

Farrar Duro [8:57]
I was reading the introduction of your book and the first page where you say that many women find themselves in a hormonal crisis, at some point, they seek advice from medical professionals who can sometimes downplay the symptoms, like depression, anxiety, weight gain, and brain fog. So it’s like, oh, you’re just getting older? Or it’s just perimenopause.

Dr Mariza Snyder [9:21]
Yeah, exactly. It’s all all of it so downplayed, even our menstrual cramps, you know, think about, and I know, we’re not going to go down this alleyway too much. But I think about, you know, PCOS, for example, such a great example of this, how long it takes the average woman to get a full diagnosis for PCOS. After many, many years of complaining and going to the doctor and doing their best to advocate for themselves. I mean, this is such a great example. And a lot of it, I think, because we’ve normalized, the menstrual cramps, that that’s a normal process for women. That we just need to suck it up and get through it. And so I love having the conversation around PCOS, because there’s, as we know, there’s a lot of women who have PCOS right now who just haven’t been diagnosed or just don’t know what’s going on.

Farrar Duro [10:11]
Yeah, so that’s always the question we have is where do you start? Because there’s so many different starting places a lot of people say, well just lose weight and exercise. And that’s the worst ever advice sometimes, because it’s so difficult. And you have to start even beyond that, I think, at the self care level and that sort of thing. So when you talk about self care, what things can we do as women to actually start resetting our hormones and helping with our metabolism? In preparation for those things?

Dr Mariza Snyder [10:43]
Absolutely. Well, and it’s a big part of the puzzle, right, I was thinking about the three big needle movers for women, when it comes to our hormones, because hormones ultimately, at the end of the day, are chemical messengers, and they’re chemical messengers mediating some very important messages. And they’re usually the red flag, I feel like when something isn’t right in the body, our hormones are going to be one of the first flags to pull up and say, Hey, something isn’t right here. And it’s really important for us to listen to our bodies. And I think the three things that are so important for us is not only radical self care, and self love, but also what we’re eating so that we’re creating a really happy environment for our gut, our liver and decreasing inflammation. And then how do we reduce our toxic load? Because I think that toxins are actually one of the biggest reasons why we’re finding ourselves in this boat, whether it is our reproductive organs, or it’s our thyroid, or in our brain and our gut, right. But the one thing that I think is the easiest to shift is going to be the self care piece, because it’s that opportunity to really take care of ourselves and to love ourselves.

And where I started with self care is really it can be one of two things. Two things I love to start women on. And it may not feel like well, how is this going to get me to hormone balance? All of this is a journey and all of these little pieces every single day, we’re choosing in to get to that next level. So there’s two things that I love to educate about, or just inspire women to do is to 1. Have a joy list, where you have 10 things on that list that are either paid for or free, and you begin to integrate maybe two or three of those things on your joy list every single week, so that you are focusing on doing something good for you. The other thing that I feel really moves the needle, the joy list I think it’s critically important, but what I feel really moves the needle is having a morning routine, prioritizing yourself before you prioritize anything else, including Instagram and email, right? Because those things are oftentimes other people’s priorities. We call our gmail account, or email account other people’s priority, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s just emails with people needing something from you. Those first 15-20 minutes, 30 minutes of the day is just all about nourishing and loving and focusing on you and I think when we can set the tone for our day to decide the day that we want to have, we create profound changes in terms of our health, and our overall happiness.

Farrar Duro [13:11]
What are some examples that you use for your morning routines as self-care goes?

Dr Mariza Snyder [13:15]
Absolutely, one of the things that I use, no surprise at all being author of a couple essential oil books, I use essential oils, I start my day with citrus essential oils, either wild orange or tangerine or grapefruit, whatever citrus oil you love, maybe it’s bergamot, the oil of self love and self acceptance. I have it by my bedside and I just take one to two drops. Citrus oils, they’re very generous, they’re not very viscous. And so they tend to just come out two drops at a time. So take those drops, rub your palms together, take five conscious deep belly breaths, not only are you oxygenating the brain, you’re firing the brain up and you are boosting happy neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, which are great for the morning. So I start my morning immediately with citrus essential oils, I go and I do a big glass of water with apple cider vinegar and lemon juice, kind of to start the digestive system. I do a matcha green tea, and I do a green smoothie, and it doesn’t all happen at once. I’m not like chugging all these things at once. Just you could imagine, like someone in a race trying to chug these things all at once. But that’s happening in the routine. And then I have a journal called the Speed Dial the Universe Journal. And it’s gratitude. It’s my six rocks for the day. It’s what I want the universe to assist me with, whatever I got on the docket for the coming years. And it’s just a really great journal to get my mind right. And I’d love to move some way somehow, either whether it’s a yoga, like five minutes of yoga, or going outside and I live on a pretty steep hill. So I just walk that hill a couple times. Just something that just get my…focusing on my mental state, my physical state, and then making sure that I’m nourishing my body. Those are the big things. And I just feel a lot more grounded and ready to tackle the day.

Farrar Duro [15:10]
Very cool. Yeah, definitely. And that smoothie sounds nice, too, if maybe we could find a recipe for that.

Dr Mariza Snyder [15:16]
I got a ton of recipes in the book. But I can give you a recipe right here. I’ve been making green smoothies for probably 12 years now. And I will say that when I was first trying to heal my body, I had just discovered green smoothies a little bit before that. And I remember thinking to myself, because I knew how healthy green smoothies were with the fiber and the healthy fats and all the veggies that you are getting. I was like, well, this is just literally an energy, you know, gut support injection. But one of the biggest things that was keeping me and preventing me from getting well, because it took me about three, I want to say two to three years to really heal the chronic fatigue. To get to a place where I felt like I was rocking my world again. And what was happening as I kept…all of us this happens, you know, it’s no perfect science. If anything I’ve learned on this journey of wellness is that you’re just going to always have these little slip ups, these kind of slide backs where you’re kind of restarting again. So this was happening and I was like What is going on? I’m drinking all this smoothies, I’m doing all the yoga, I’m I’m doing all the things on paper, right? I’m doing the protocols. But what was happening is I had this really dominating undercurrent, this belief system undercurrent. I kept continuing to say yes to things I didn’t want to do. I kept being...