Latest / The Lauren Castle Show / What If All Your Symptoms Have the Same Root Cause? Dr. Izabella Wentz's Hashimoto's Story
Transcript
- speaker-0: And so I went gluten-free and dairy free. Within three days, my acid reflux, carpal tunnel, IBS vanished. And I was like, wow. This whole time, I didn't think food mattered at all. Like no difference in any symptoms. Like you would only need to diet if you were trying to lose weight or if you had celiac disease. I didn't have celiac disease. I was tested negative. And then all of a sudden my symptoms are vanishing. I'm like, this is crazy. What is happening here? And then I got onto selenium. I found research with how selenium can reduce thyroid antibodies. And I was like, my hair is not falling out anymore. I'm not anxious anymore. And my thyroid antibodies have reduced. speaker-1: Welcome to the Loren Castle Show, a podcast for people on a path to well-being, body, mind, heart, and soul. Join us for conversations at the intersection of pharmacy, functional medicine, and psychedelics. My hope is that each episode will leave you feeling inspired to step into your power, speak your truth, and live your most authentic life. Let's begin. Welcome to another episode of the Loren Castle Show. Today's episode is really special. You're going to see my very first live onset interview that was recorded at the MindShare Summit in San Diego, California with the one and only Dr. Isabella Wentz. Now, I just have to pause and give you guys a little backstory on how this dream finally came into reality. My first MindShare Summit was back in 2023. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But I had been referred to this community by a fellow medical practitioner. I knew that Isabella had attended the summit and done the mastermind and grown her brand through this community. So I went with an open mind, and what I found was something that completely changed my life. Now That first summit, I was really just feeling like a tiny fish in a big ocean, being in the room with people like Dr. Jeffrey Bland, Vincent Pedre, Dave Asprey, Sachin Patel, and so many more. People who I've gotten to know now from attending this event for f over four years, and just building relationships and realizing that at the end of the day, we're all just humans who are trying to make the world a better place. My second MindShare Summit was in 2024. And at that one, I got my chance to actually step on stage as a speaker. I gave a 10-minute mic drop presentation, sort of like a TED Talk style of format, on the main stage on the topic of why every care team needs a functional medicine pharmacist. It was such a surreal moment to finally give a speech like that, one that I truly spoke from my heart. I didn't use slides or anything like that. It was truly just everything that I believe in and telling my story. I also got to be featured on Bestsellers Row for the book that I was part of writing called Quantum Holistic Healing. And you can download a free copy of the book, my chapter specifically, if you go to the link in the show notes. After 2024, I came back for my third mind share. And brought my good friend Dr. Veronica Gilly with me. We got to lead a pharmacist roundtable at that summit and really just focus on expanding our partnerships. That was where we got the idea to do our book club that we do every month for F and PHA, important point that we'll come back to, and meet so many of the authors who write these incredible books on health and wellness and functional medicine. So that brings us to 2026. This year, I had obviously launched my podcast, The Lauren Castle Show, and they were going to be hosting live podcast recordings at the summit. I put my name in the hat to be a podcast host, and to my delight, I was selected. Now, who I was going to get to interview, I didn't know, but I found out just a few days before the summit began that I was in fact going to be interviewing my number one dream guest for the show. All the way back in 2018, whenever I first had started my Facebook group in 2017, and I had a running list of functional medicine pharmacist. And the very first name on that list was Isabella Wentz. Getting to interview her truly felt like such a full circle moment. And I am so honored to get to share this interview with you guys, to get to know Isabella, who's been an inspiration for so many of us in the profession of pharmacy, but also all over the world. For patients who are struggling with thyroid conditions, for other medical practitioners to see what's possible when we think beyond the pills. And so I'm gonna go ahead and share a little bit about Isabella. And then at the end of our interview, I'm gonna come back here and give you guys a little bit more information on how you can actually be in the same Zoom room as Dr. Isabella. On our next FMPHA community call. So stay tuned for the full interview, and you'll come back here and I'll share more information about how to connect. So Dr. Isabella Wentz is a compassionate, innovative, solution-focused integrative pharmacist dedicated to finding the root causes of chronic health conditions. Her passion stems from her own diagnosis with Hashimoto's thyroiditis in 2009 following a decade of debilitating symptoms. As an accomplished author, Dr. Wentz has written several bestselling books, including The New York Times bestseller, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, and the Protocol-based number one New York Times bestseller, Hashimoto's Protocol. She's also written the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Hashimoto's Food Pharmacology. Her last book, Adrenal Transformation Protocol, focuses on resetting the body's stress response through targeted safety signals. It's based on her successful four-week program, which has helped over 3,500 people reduce symptoms like brain fog, anxiety, fatigue, sleep issues, and libido. And her latest book, IBS: Finding and Treating the Root Cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, explores a root cause perspective on gut health. While IBS is often treated as a standalone diagnosis, an IBS diagnosis is Often a sign of deeper, unaddressed imbalances for those with autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto's. Drawing on professional insight, current research, and real-world strategies, the IBS book outlines clear practical steps to help readers identify the drivers of gut dysfunction, follow gentle healing protocols, and finally feel better from the inside out. So please join me for my interview with Dr. Isabella Wentz. Welcome Isabella to the Loren Castle Show. speaker-0: Lauren, so great to be here with you. I love your work and love what you're doing for the pharmacy and functional medicine community. speaker-1: Thank you so much. So for everyone who is not familiar with your work, you were one of my first inspirations whenever I first started going down the research rabbit holes, trying to figure out how to do functional medicine as a pharmacist and Googling, right? Functional medicine for pharmacists. There were two people whose names came up, yours and Rob Cress. That was it. There was nothing else out there. In terms of pharmacists who were practicing functional medicine or even talking about it in general. And so I quietly just watched from afar and tried to study, you know, what were you doing? How did you get into this path? And so let's take people back a little bit. Obviously, you're a pharmacist. So I love to ask people, what inspired you to become a pharmacist? speaker-0: Hmm, I would say had to be my mom. My mom was a physician in Poland and when I remember I was a little girl, she would take me to the pharmacy with her sometimes, and I just thought, wow, there's so many different medications here, and they all do something different for the human body. And when I was in pharmaci when I was in high school, I really became fascinated with pharmacology. I was like, how does one little tiny molecule change the physiology of a 200-pound person, whether that's dropping somebody's blood pressure or somebody dropping LSD and starting to hallucinate. So at that point, I started working as a pharmacy technician at Walgreens in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and got to meet a lot of pharmacists, got to really get an appreciation and an idea Of what pharmacists in retail did. And I thought to myself, I really want to help people with their health. I didn't like needles. I didn't like blood, right? Like many of us don't. Same, same. but I was like, I think medications can cure people, and I want to be a part of that. I want to help people heal, perhaps maybe invent a medication one day that can cure a disease. So That's what really got me into pharmacy school was just these tiny molecules were fascinating and I thought they had the potential to heal. Yeah. speaker-1: That's incredible. So you went to pharmacy school. I'm guessing, did you discover functional medicine in pharmacy school? Because I know I certainly didn't. I mean, we talked about integrative medicine like very briefly. You know, I was kind of the same way. My mom was very holistic. And, you know, I remember learning about herbs and plants growing up, but it wasn't really a huge part of my pharmacy curriculum. So what was that bridge from pharmacy to functional medicine for you? speaker-0: I was never really interested in functional medicine, in thyroid health during pharmacy school. What I was basically taught in my in my class classes was that supplements didn't work and there were certain conditions that were not maybe real, like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Did they actually exist? They probably did not exist. They seem to be conditions that affluent women suffered from. And perhaps it was all in their heads. And that was kind of the messaging that I got during pharmacy school, unfortunately. Times have changed now. I'm very grateful for that. But I really did not believe in integrative medicine. But there was a little part of me that thought to myself, okay, diabetes, such a huge, huge issue in American society. And we had Dr. Sukornel, excellent professor, taught us about. medications and also all the lifestyle changes that people with diabetes need to do to take charge of their health to help reverse the condition. And it dawned on me that as a pharmacist, I was oftentimes meeting people when they had these habits and lifestyle things that they were doing for many, many years. And I was giving them medications, sort of like as a last resort for a lot of the chronic illnesses. And At a certain point, I was like, what if I can just reach people a little bit earlier in their lives and talk to them about how to be healthy? Like that sounds more interesting to me than giving somebody whose body has been broken down and attacked for so many years, like medications, right? So that was my thought process in pharmacy school. During pharmacy school, and actually started in undergrad, I also had dealt with my own issues. One of them was chronic fatigue, which I was like, okay, I guess it's all in my head because this doesn't really exist. Then I got IBS during pharmacy school, which was not fun. Imagine going to pharmacotherapeutics and running out to have about some diarrhea. That was that was my life for a few months. I ended up learning that the insure drinks I was drinking In the morning, we got them free at like the science or the the health fair, right? So I was like, this is gonna be my new breakfast. Those were causing me diarrhea and those were causing really big symptoms for me and potentially soy was an a a protein that I was reacting to. So I was kind of like, uh-huh, this is interesting, but I didn't really do much with it until I had been a practicing pharmacist for a few years and my started with carpal tunnel syndrome. I had panic attacks and all kinds of allergies and acid reflux. And it was like every few months I'm getting a new condition, getting a new diagnosis, I'm getting a new medication, right? And I think what really got to me was hair loss. I'm a Leo and speaker-1: I'm a Leo rising. speaker-0: I was like, I'm losing my hair, right? This what is happening? I have been going to doctors and pharmacists and, you know, all kinds of healthcare professionals saying, I'm tired. I'm having digestive issues. I'm having anxiety and panic attacks. And they were like, Of course you're tired. You're getting older. Of course you have IBS. You're stressed out. You work at a stressful job. And of course this is all happening. This is what happens when you're older. And of course I was 25 at the time. And I'm like, what? What were these people thinking? And I got offered all kinds of medications, psychiatric medications, proton pump inhibitors, you you know, ProVigil was one of the medications I was offered, like just a whole host of medications. And the hair loss was like, okay, what is happening? And I figured I would figure it out at that point that not all doctors were created equally. I got additional tests done, which found I had elevated Hashimoto's. antibodies, right? And at that point I was like, I have an autoimmune condition. Why did I develop this in my twenties? And I'm pharmacy school, I learned about thyroid conditions, but I thought this was like s something that old women got. And I thought they got it like around menopause. Like I'm not that age. What what is happening? And I'm I'm healthy. I exercise. I eat whole wheat. I eat low fat dairy. And I was doing all the things that I thought were important for my health. And yet here I was like in my twenties with my health breaking down, exhausted, cold, having panic attacks, right? And I was like, on the couch. I'm this super motivated person and I can't do anything that I want to do because I'm stuck on my couch. Every day after work I'm exhausted. I'm watching Law and Order SVU in front of my TV, like every day in my twenties, right? So at that point I was like, what is happening? I got thyroid medications. I was like, yes, medications are going to help me so much. And they didn't. I was like, thyroid hormone. I went from sleeping 12 hours to 11 hours a night. And then instead of wearing two sweaters in Southern California, I think I was only wearing one sweater after that. But I was like, I'm still having acid reflux carpal tunnel. I'm still having IBS. I'm still having all of these panic attacks. And I was like, I feel so old. I'm in my twenties and I feel like a 70 year old. My body's just falling apart. Maybe an eighty-year-old, right? An eighty year old without functional medicine. And at that point I started to think about like, well, what is causing me to have a thyroid issues? What is causing me to have IBS? What's causing me to have acid reflux? And I had palpitations at the time and a mitral valve prolapse. I'm going to all these different doctors. I'm going to a dermatologist for hair loss. I'm going to somebody for the carpal tunnel. Somebody else for the acid reflux, gastroenterologist, endocrinologist for my thyroid. And it's all like all these different things. And then I'm like, well, what if they're all caused by the same thing? Like, cause I feel like, I don't know, whenever I eat a certain food and I get more bloated, that kind of causes the acid reflux and whatnot. And so I started to get into PubMed. I started to get into patient forums. I started to look into integrative medicine. And I was like, well, what can I do to feel better with a thyroid condition? Jim Pelletti from ZRT Lab at the time, he had a PowerPoint presentation about thyroid optimization, right? And I was like, I ate it up. I was like, wow, there's more than just synthroid. And there's more than just basically like you wait for your thyrogland to burn out. There are things that I can utilize. So I got into natural desiccated thyroid. I then learned through PubMed about the gluten and Hashimoto's and celiac connection. And so I went gluten-free and dairy-free within three days. My Acid reflux, carpal tunnel, IBS vanished. And I was like, wow. This whole time, I didn't think food mattered at all. Like, no difference in any symptoms. Like you would only need to diet if you were trying to lose weight or if you had celiac disease. I didn't have celiac disease. I was tested negative. And then all of a sudden, my symptoms are vanishing. I'm like, this is crazy. What is happening here? And then I got onto Selenium. I found research with How selenium can produce thyroid antibodies. And I was like, my hair is not falling out anymore. I'm not anxious anymore. And my thyroid antibodies have reduced. And so I kind of just kept going down this rabbit hole. I started going to functional medicine trainings. I actually downloaded a lot of stuff online. I was able to like watch different webinars and PowerPoints and PubMed and just started studying as much as I could and trying different things on myself. Eventually I got myself into remission. I had a ton of energy. After somebody, you know, you give somebody with a with chronic fatigue of almost 10 years their energy back. And I was like, wow, I'm gonna take over the world. Yeah. Right. And at that point I was like, I can't hide this information. I need to shout it from the rooftops because people need to know that there are things they could do to get their health back. And I was working in a pharmaceutical sales at the time, right? I was like, Wow, this doesn't feel authentic anymore. Like here I am talking about medications where I'm really passionate about lifestyle. And I just got off of my eight medications through lifestyle, right? And so this is really, I guess, the bridge was figuring out my own health issues. And I know a lot of people say say the same thing. They find that conventional medicine just doesn't, doesn't fix them, right? And then you're like, all of these women that were coming to my pharmacy and I was like, Well, you're already taken Centroid, what are you complaining about, right? Mm-hmm. And yeah, I was like, Wow, I had no idea. I had no idea that there were so many things people can do and I could had no idea that this one condition could make people so miserable. And that's that's how I became the thyroid pharmacist. speaker-1: That's so amazing. And there's so many parts of your journey that I feel like overlapped with my husband's health issues, same thing, gluten and dairy, right? And thinking that we're doing all the right things by eating the whole wheat and skim milk, right? And following the dietary guidelines. And, you know, it can be so challenging as healthcare providers and, you know, whether you're a student pharmacist and you're learning all of these things in pharmacy school, right? It's it's not something that we're always questioning. Like we're we're just assuming that what we're learning is the end all be all. But as we know, the science is always changing and evolving. And yeah, like getting into PubMed and doing your own research, it's so surprising the things that you'll find. And I've actually even found as I've gone back through old pharmacy school notes, like I remember learning about thy word conditions too, but I didn't really remember like, yeah Like 80 or 90% of thyroid issues are Hashimoto's. It's autoimmune. You can treat it. So tell me a little bit more about you know, you healed yourself from all of these conditions and kind of found your own root causes across all of these seemingly separate issues. But then how did you actually make that transition then from being in, you know, the pharmaceutical industry and you know being in truly like in the industry? to branching out, right? I'm sure that was a big leap. And I'm curious if there were little steps or did you just like quit the job and all of a sudden overnight success, right? speaker-0: Yeah, I actually transitioned to public health initially and medication safety, where my job was optimizing like medications. And I was like, I could get behind getting people off of antipsychotic medications. Absolutely. I can get behind people getting educated about their diabetes. So I was one of my goals was to help clinics establish diabetes self-management training programs to educate and empower patients. And I can get behind better therapeutic monitoring for people who take warfarin, right? And I felt like that was more authentic working in that public health arena than in pharmaceutical sales for me. And it was also a job that gave me an opportunity to learn about the root cause analysis. So the focus was on healthcare quality improvement. And I was like, this is so interesting, root cause, right? And that helped me further figure out and dial in, well, I have these symptoms. And what's underneath these symptoms? So an example would be I have bloating and digestive issues. So what's underneath that? Well, I could eliminate foods. Okay. I've eliminated foods, but now I'm becoming sensitive to more foods. Do I eliminate more foods or do I look for something deeper? And it was like digestive, Enzyme deficiencies. Okay, great. So we address that, but do I have to take those forever? Is there something underneath that? And it was like, an H. pylori infection can suppress your stomach acid and it can be cross-react with thyroid antibodies and an another kind of infection can. So I kind of peeled back the layers and I really credit my public health job, healthcare quality improvement, for thinking about root cause in that regard before, you know, before it was trendy. And I started writing. I just was like, okay, I'm gonna write down everything. I had brain fog at the time. I was like, I need to write these things down because I'm spending all this time researching and I'm forgetting, right? And I have cousin in Poland who had been diagnosed. My mom's like, why don't you write it all down and we're gonna translate it and we're gonna send it to your cousin. So that was like a mission that I had: just put this information out there, heal myself, document what I'm doing, and potentially share it with my cousin. I think the catalyst in all of this was I was published, I created this book, I'm gonna publish it. And I was interviewing for a medical science liaison position. I was went through like seven interviews, right? And it was like it would have been a conflict of interest for me to write a paper on thyroid related issues because thyroid meds were in their portfolio. I was the Number two candidate, right? So I scored like a 98% on all of my interviews, and somebody else scored 100% and they got the job, right? So I was like, okay, this this path, this door just closed, right? So then I'm sitting on this manuscript. So I was like, okay, I could publish this. And I ended up publishing that. Nobody bought any of my books. And then a week goes by and I'm like, ooh, 10 sales. So I'm like telling my husband, I sold 10 books. This is amazing. And then I find his backpack and he had 10 books in his backpack. So he had them shift to his work, right? So he was like trying to be supportive or whatever. I'm like, okay, this is okay, this is not working. And at that point, my husband got a job promotion to go to Amsterdam to work in Europe. And I looked into the pharmacy licensure. in Amsterdam. And I was like, huh, this is not happening. So if we're gonna move to Europe, I can't work as a pharmacist. So here's here's where it's at, right? Yep. So this is a door. You can walk through it. And at that point I started to really try to network. So talking to other pharmacists about Hashimoto's in my book, I was able to connect with a compounding pharmacist who was doing some integrative work out of the compounding pharmacy and he was like, Hey, I have this client with Hashimoto's and I, you know, we're stuck. We've got her hormones dialed in. Can you talk to her? So I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this consultation here. I would be people at Whole Foods for consultations. Initially it was like referral. I was like, I had worked in pharmac pharmaceutical sales, so I was used to like knocking on people's doors and having doors slammed in my face. So I would go to different pharmacies or go to different conventions practitioners and I'd like literally knock on people's doors and say, Hey, I think I figured out how to get Hashimoto's into remission. Here's my book. And here's a few books if you have patients, like hand them out to your patients. And it was more of a grassroots effort where I was just like knocking on doors. And the one, I guess, key component was like I had, I figured out how many books I needed to sell to replace a day to replace my salary as a pharmacist. Yep. And it ended up being like, I don't know, 23 books a day or something like that. And so once I got to that 23 books a day, at that point I was like, okay, I I'm gonna do this full time. It was scary. It was so scary. But I also was leaving for Amsterdam. So there was like I I think I was so nervous. Like, I'm gonna sabotage my career. If I'm gonna talk about this woo-woo weird, you know, diet stuff, nobody's gonna wanna. Hire me to be a medical science liaison, which was sort of my career trajectory with, you know, you you kind of get the resume, you got your pharmaceutical sales, you have your public health job, you've got your consulting job, and that's that's the next level of that's the next career move, right? Yeah. And so that was a huge fear of mine. But I also was like, Well, I'm gonna go to Amsterdam and I can work for myself or just not work. And yep. Yeah. speaker-1: Amazing. There's so many similarities in our stories too. I actually learned about root cause analysis by working in a nuclear power like plant. And they're outside of pharmacy, they're one of the most tightly regulated industries. And so much of, you know, the culture there around safety comes back to understanding like what is the root cause underneath any incidents that happen. So I actually brought that into my own, you know, practice as a pharmacist and when just culture kind of became a thing around medication safety and understanding, right? Like we're human, we're not perfect. And the systems that we all work within certainly are not perfect. And so how can we reduce harm by, you know, looking deeper and questioning, you know, what is truly underneath? So I love that shared kind of commonality and same thing, right? Like, Whenever I was working for my employer and getting into functional medicine, I got to a certain point where one, I was also not picked for certain interview positions. Like I wanted to be a recruiter for this company. And had I gotten that role, I think I interviewed three times. Like I would have been in a totally different place than I am now. So you just never know. Like whenever a door closes, that it could be a blessing in disguise. And same thing. Like I got, you know, all the way. to like my dream job and what seemed like the pinnacle of a pharmacy career. And then realized like, now they're saying I can't do functional medicine. I can't be talking about this. And I have to choose. Right. So it's like you eventually the universe will put you on the path that you're meant to be on. And it can certainly feel scary and intimidating, but whenever you've got pharmacists that are out there doing the thing and mentors and people that you can really get to know and, you know, have that faith that like everything's working out, then it's just exciting to finally follow your passion. So obviously we're here at Mind Share, the Health Business Growth Collective, which I think has been a really big part of, you know, both of our stories and obviously bringing us together is like so exciting. So if you had one piece of advice to give to a fellow pharmacist, What would it be? speaker-0: I would say don't be afraid for from coming out from behind the counter. Definitely think about getting a mentor. I know when I was talking to my friends about how I was gonna write a book and I was gonna do functional medicine, my friends for pharmacy school were like, That's cool. Yeah, good for you. We'll see how that works out because they didn't know anybody that had written a book. And when I came to Mind Share, hosted by JJ Virgin, I was like, wow, this person has a supplement line. I've always wanted to do a supplement line. I never knew you could do that. Or this person has a virtual practice. I can have a virtual practice too. And so having a mentor can be very, very helpful in bridging that gap. Because I mean, you know, if you want to work in the same place that you are, then keep talking to the same people, right? Because like a lot of our friends from pharmacy school, from Our hometown may just not be doing the things that we're hoping to do. They haven't they haven't discovered how to do it and they're not going to be able to give you advice on how to do so. And so you need to figure out how to connect with with other people that can. Yeah. speaker-1: Absolutely. Well, it's been such an honor to connect with you here and over the years. So again, thank you so much for being such an inspiration and such a role model for our whole profession, honestly. and it's just been amazing to get to have this opportunity to chat and hopefully we'll have many more. speaker-0: Thank you so much. Such an honor and a pleasure to be here. And thank you so much for everything you're doing for the profession of pharmacy and functional medicine. So you're impacting so many lives and helping so many people heal. Thank you. speaker-1: Amazing. Thanks, Isabella. That's it for this episode of the Lauren Castle Show. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I hope you'll join us for the next one where you'll hear more stories from me and some of my amazing guests. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast no matter where you watch or listen, and check out our website, drlorincastle.com and fmpha.org. We'll see you next time.