Meet Jennifer Swank, a dynamic force of nature and a beacon of vitality, dedicated to transforming the lives of exhausted women through her unique and invigorating approach to wellness. As a Biochemist and Happy Mind, Healthy Body Coach, Jennifer has mastered the art of energizing her clients, turning life’s weariness into boundless zest.
Jennifer specializes in reigniting the spark in women who once felt like energizer bunnies but now find it challenging to get off the couch. She tackles the trifecta of fatigue, weight gain, and brain fog, guiding her clients to a place where they feel great in their bodies and wake up with unstoppable energy. Imagine feeling more vibrant in your 60s than you ever did in your 20s—Jennifer’s clients do!
The role of the limbic system in thyroid health is not discussed very much. In Western medicine, when somebody presents with thyroid symptoms, like low energy, constipation, depression, dry skin, weight gain, and a lot more, they’re usually tested. They’re tested for TSH.
If the TSH is high, they’re put on synthetic T4, and they’re sent on their way. If it doesn’t test high, they’re told they’re crazy. And here’s some Prozac. And, they’re sent on their way, because, well, if the TSH isn’t elevated, and you have all these symptoms, it can’t be thyroid, it must be all in your brain.
So we’re here to talk about what’s wrong with this approach, first of all, and how we can do that differently. And what’s the role of the limbic system in thyroid health?
And today we’re going to dig into the importance of thinking outside the box when we’re talking about thyroid and the impact of the limbic system on thyroid function
with our very special guest, Jennifer Swank.
So let me tell you a little bit about Jennifer. She is a graduate of our Nutritional Endocrinology Practitioner training. So she’s a certified nutritional endocrinology practitioner. She’s a graduate of the FDN program. So she’s a certified functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. She’s dynamic. She’s passionate about what she does. And she’s really a beacon of vitality.
She’s dedicated to transitioning the lives of exhausted women through her unique and motivating and invigorating approach to wellness. And I’ve seen her in action, and she does laughter yoga. She’s really good at that. She trained in transpersonal energy healing, which is a modality to help you get the physical body working better through solving some of the energetic and emotional pieces and so much more.
Dr Ritamarie (02:20)
She’s mastered the art of energizing people and turning life’s weariness into boundless zest. And she has an online membership with her Jen twin, Jennifer Whitmire, called the Zen and Zest Zone Community. So that’s something for you to check out. She specializes in igniting people’s spark and helping them go from, I used to be an energizer bunny and now I’m exhausted. What do I do? How do I get that spark back and get rid of the weight gain and the brain fog and all the other stuff.
I like what she says. She says she likes to have people in their sixties feeling like they’re in their twenties or even better than they did in the twenties. So Jennifer, thank you so much for being here with us. Welcome.
Jennifer Swank (03:04)
Thank you so much, Dr. Ritamarie. I’m excited to be here to talk about one of my favorite topics.
Dr Ritamarie (03:11)
Well, I’m excited. We actually had you do a whole series of classes for our community, our energy recharge inner circle on the limbic system and balancing it. So I’m just so excited that we’re getting here to talk about it. So for those who maybe, you know, don’t remember what it is or haven’t heard of it, what is the limbic system?
Jennifer Swank (03:31)
So the limbic system is part of the brain, and a lot of people think of it as the lizard brain, the mammalian brain. And it’s a part of our brain that wants to keep us safe. And it does this subconsciously. Like we don’t even know that it’s trying to keep us safe.
And a lot of times it takes things that have happened in our past, traumatic things, even things that aren’t traumatic. it takes snapshots of that.
And a lot of times things happened when we were young, and we have this narrative of like, I’m not lovable.
And we believe that that’s something that happened when we were young, something happened. We didn’t feel loved at that time. So we believe the rest of our life that we’re not lovable or that we are difficult to love or whatever. And it’s not true, right? We know deep down it’s not true, but part of us really still believes that we’re not lovable or whatever the trauma might be.
Dr Ritamarie (04:30)
Whatever that emotional, limiting belief caused by an emotional trauma, right? A belief that, you know, we may not consciously in our brains, you know, our left brain believe it, but our emotional centers, our limbic system, all of that is remembering. So, we don’t hear about this a lot, right? Those who are doctors, nurses, health coaches, whatever out there, we’re not talking a lot about the limbic system in thyroid disease. So talk to us about how the limbic system affects thyroid health.
Jennifer Swank (05:04)
So I’m going to use myself as an example, because a lot of times we start with our own story, right? But there’s other people out there, other clients that have had the same issues. A lot of times when we have an autoimmune disease, so that’s what I have. I have an autoimmune thyroid disease, Hashimoto’s. And there’s other autoimmune diseases or other chronic diseases. Anyone who has chronic disease, typically can end up having limbic system dysfunction.
Jennifer Swank (05:37)
What’s happening is the body’s trying to protect you. But there’s something going on. So now it could be that you’re eating gluten, and you’re sensitive to gluten, and your body is trying to protect you. Because like for the thyroid, gluten and dairy mimic the thyroid hormone, right? And so then the body’s like, well Gluten is making me have a leaky gut, right?
So I’m going to protect you from that. But it then can’t tell the difference between the gliadin and antibodies to gliadin, which is in gluten, and the thyroid hormone that the body needs. And we need thyroid hormone in every cell of our body. And then you go to the doctor, like I was going to the doctor saying, I’m tired. I’m not just tired. I’m like, I went from an energizer bunny riding my bicycle like 200 miles a day or training for triathlons, going everywhere and people pleasing.
So this happens with people pleaser, perfectionist, type-A people, right? Or, a lot of times if we’ve had trauma in our body, we are people pleasers, because we want to be safe. Our body’s always protecting ourself.
Our brain is listening to everything that we say and do. And so when we have negative things that we stay that come out of our mouth, I’m not lovable. I’m fat or I’m, you know, or even the fact that you’re tired, and you’re saying, I’m tired, your body, your brain’s listening to that. Right? So we want to change that narrative to go from negative to positive. And sometimes, it might not be true, but it’s something we want to be true.
And if we keep saying we want to be happy, healthy, strong and energetic, right, then our body’s like, she keeps saying that, maybe she is happy, healthy, strong and energetic, right? Versus I’m tired. I can’t do this. I can’t. I don’t. I won’t. Those are all the negatives instead of I am.
Or, sometimes people just can’t believe that can happen for themselves. Sometimes it’s better to say, strong, I am. So instead of saying, I am strong, and then your brain is going, you’re not. You say what you want first, strong, then I am. That helps create a new neural pathway in the brain.
Dr Ritamarie (08:11)
Interesting. So a couple of things come out of that as you speak about that. So number one, when you say, I am tired, I’m a fan of not saying I’m tired. Every now and then I feel tired, not very often, but I feel tired. When you say I am, that tells the brain that takes it on as an identity, as a tired person. So that’s one thing. I really like what you said about that. But the other thing is, you know, the brain hearing a disconnect, I’m strong, I’m full of energy. And meanwhile, you’re laying on the couch and can’t get up.
Right? It’s like, that’s a lie. What about, and you tell me if I’m wrong, but what about if you, if instead of saying, I’m strong and energetic and all that, or reversing it, which is kind of a mismatch, you have to think about that. What if I am on the path to becoming strong and energetic and vibrant? Is that helpful?
Jennifer Swank (09:03)
That’s definitely right. Because that’s still a positive thing. It’s still a forward motion that’s occurring. So that’s a wonderful way. If you can’t believe that you’re strong or energetic or that you’re healthy, right? Then yes, I’m on the path. My journey is taking me on this healing path. Right. That’s a wonderful way.
Dr Ritamarie (09:28)
Okay, and I’m doing the work to get me there. I’m taking actions to become stronger and more vibrant and all that. Okay, so positive. It’s like the positive messages that we need.
So going back to thyroid, how did this affect, I go and hear the rest of your story. So you were exhausted. You used to be a marathoner and a heavy duty bicyclist. And suddenly you were finding yourself exhausted.
Jennifer Swank (09:54)
Right. And I found myself in the ER. So imagine you’re all vibrant. You’re ready to do this, but you now are a couch potato. You’re too tired. You’re seeing your friends go out on bike rides. You’re seeing your friends go swim in the ocean, but you’re too tired to do that. So you’re living life through the window. For one, you’re not outside doing all those things anymore. And that really takes a toll on the body and the emotional part of it.
Another thing about the thyroid and the brain is that a lot of times what we want to say about ourself doesn’t come out, and it gets stuck inside. And I was always that, because as a people pleaser, we just want everyone else around us to be happy. But when we do that, we are not making ourselves happy.
And then we end up paying the price for that. Learning to set boundaries. So I will tell people, take your hands and put them in front of you, set a boundary and then go towards you and go, this is me and push away. That is them. This is me and that is them. Sometimes even creating a whole 360 degree safety bubble around you because people need to feel safe to heal.
Jennifer Swank (11:21)
And so that’s part of working on the vagus nerve that goes from the brain and all our different organs, our heart and our digestion, it goes all the way down through our intestines and that affects how we live our life. so if we’re always in fight-or-flight, that limbic system is trying to take care of us again, right? We’re in fight-or-flight. We need to move to the rest and digest and heal in order to do that, calming down.
If we’re in a flutter, we’re running away from the tiger or all the things that are coming towards us, taking a moment, right? And putting your hands on your heart, pressing in, so your body is feeling that, taking a deep breath, right? That calms us down, that calms the limbic system down, and allows our body to go into that healing phase that we need.
Because when we do that, when we are in fight or flight, our body can’t digest our food very well. So you could have constipation. That’s a typical thing that happens with people with thyroid. You can have brain fog. That’s another typical thing. You can have blood sugar that’s not balanced. Getting your blood sugar balanced, eating nutritional foods like whole foods, right?
Jennifer Swank (12:46)
Whole food plant-based is great, even whether it’s just a whole food, so nothing packaged, right? That is so important, because our body and our brain need nutrients in order to function and to heal and to thrive. And if we’re not getting those nutrients, then the brain can’t function, right? Brain fog.
Our cells can’t get all the nutrients they need when they’re not getting enough vitamins. So eating a diet rich in rainbow colors, right? I love my rainbow salads. Like every color in the rainbow, that’s the best thing. A lot of different vegetable fibers. I try to get in like 20 different vegetable fibers a day. So whether that’s specific different vegetables, or I love Dr. Kharrazian’s mashup where you take 20 different vegetables, and you put them in the freezer and then you just blend up like a quarter size.
That feeds our microbiome. It feeds the probiotics that are in there, which then sends messages all the way up from the microbiome to the brain and then our brain is happy. Those are all things that are helpful for the thyroid.
Dr Ritamarie (14:09)
How important do you think going gluten-free is when somebody has a thyroid problem?
Jennifer Swank (14:13)
I think it’s critical.
Dr Ritamarie (14:217)
So we’re talking about the gluten-free and that’s critical. And I found that in my years of working with people that if they don’t go off of gluten, I can’t help them with their thyroid problem, because they’re so interconnected. You were talking about how the thyroid cross-reacts. There’s a couple of different phrases for that molecular mimicry cross-reactivity where the body develops antibodies to a particular food like gluten or dairy.
And then if those antibodies are floating around the body and it’s getting confused, it goes, this looks very similar. Starts attacking the thyroid.
So how did you figure out that you actually had a thyroid issue? Like, you didn’t know much about it. You don’t know. You didn’t know what you know now and didn’t know about the functional tests and you knew that you had symptoms of it, but the doctor kept saying you’re normal, which I’m guessing means that they tested your TSH and it was below 5.
It might not have even been in the ideal range of the TSH and that alone. But then how did you figure it out? Did you get the doctor to test other things related to thyroid? How did you find out you had Hashimoto’s?
Jennifer Swank (15:24)
So there were a couple things. I had gone gluten, dairy, sugar, soy free, And interestingly around this time, I was hiking with a friend in Joshua Tree, and we’d come back at night, and we were making dinner, and it was gluten free, but I felt dizzy.
And then the next day while driving home, I had stopped and was shopping. And while I was shopping, I felt dizzy again. And so I called my doctor, and I said, you know, I’m feeling dizzy. She’s like, OK, come in right now. So they ended up testing me, and I had very low blood pressure, but they did a neck CT, and they found some nodules.
So once they found the nodules, I started looking up nodules, and then I determined I probably had Hashimoto’s, and then right after that I ended up in the ER. And I was telling them, because it felt like I had an elephant on my chest, and I was telling them I think I’m undiagnosed Hashimoto’s, and literally they didn’t hear anything that I said. They just kept running all these tests, and they were all fine.
I just kept digging and digging and digging and doing my research because of those nodules. Because I was like, well, that was something that I could actually start working on before just being tired. There wasn’t a lot that was coming up in my searches. Like now I know, and now I know I would have a full thyroid panel looking at my T3 hormone, my T4 hormone, my reverse T3.
Jennifer Swank (17:12)
There’s a full thyroid panel that can be run. TSH doesn’t tell them much, right? And even they use these antiquated results like mine was maybe 2.5 and later maybe 3.5, which is not that high for TSH. There’s some people that they get into 40 and that’s a huge issue.
So mine wasn’t showing up, but I was exhausted. Like I said, I couldn’t get off the couch. So that’s where there’s so many more functional blood tests that can be run today. And I love helping clients do that.
Back to the limbic system, The brain’s always trying to keep your body safe. And so what happens a lot of times is people can be in an accident, like a car accident that can get rear ended.
Jennifer Swank (18:08)
One of the things that I have problems with is I’m very sensitive to different chemicals, right? I have multiple chemical sensitivity. I can’t walk down the soap aisle in the grocery store even when I was young, right? So that started at a young age. I felt trauma around all these chemicals. And then I worked in a lab, a chemistry lab. And I remember I used to wear perfume.
I started working in that chemistry lab and they had me in an area that wasn’t well ventilated with all these solvents. And I quickly couldn’t wear perfume anymore. My chemical bucket was full, right? And again, my body was like protecting me. Like you don’t wear perfume anymore. You don’t need any more chemicals in your body.
And so it’s the same thing, whatever that might be, whether it’s food or emotions, you could have trauma that occurred in the past. I had a lot of trauma when I was growing up. And what did I do? I stuffed it into my body. I didn’t talk about it. That’s a lot of thyroid here. I just kept stuffing it into the body. And we need to learn to let those emotions out.
So that’s where getting some trauma therapy, retraining the brain, creating new neural pathways can happen. We do that with positive emotions, with doing things like if we always do things the same every day, we put on our shirt and then we put on our pants and then we brush our hair, and we do that the same every day. That doesn’t create new neural pathways in the brain.
So putting on your pants and then brushing your hair and then maybe putting your shirt on, right? That creates new neural pathways. Laughing. I’m a huge proponent, as you know, of laughter yoga. It combines laughter exercises and breathing exercises. So we get a dose of happy neurochemicals like dopamine that helps us feel motivated, oxytocin, which makes us feel loved. Serotonin, every cell in the body needs serotonin.
Jennifer Swank (20:31)
It helps against depression and anxiety and endorphins, right? Our feel-good neurochemicals. So we get that from laughter. And then we use meditation. So meditation, again, calms that body down, calms that vagus nerve down. It helps that limbic brain calm down.
Dr Ritamarie (20:52)
Yeah, I love it. I love it. And you know, as practitioners, right? How, when somebody comes in, we obviously know how to determine, at least most of us listening here, unless you’re still entrenched in Western medicine, then this is new to you.
And this is great that it’s new to you, and it’s opening up your eyes. I’ve had a lot of medical doctors who were conventionally trained and been in practice for like decades and then said to me, my God, when I took your class, I had no idea that the thyroid actually worked that way. Why didn’t they teach us this way in medical school? I think about all the people I could have helped along the way had I known this stuff. But as practitioners and people come in, how do we know if their thyroid symptoms are related to the limbic system?
Jennifer Swank (21:36)
Well, the best thing to ask them is, you what are some of the symptoms that are going on? Then I like to test, right? To do a blood, a full panel for your thyroid. Usually people that have thyroid issues also have problems with their cholesterol. So doing a full lipid panel, vitamin D is very important. A lot of times the B vitamins are depleted.
Jennifer Swank (22:06)
So doing a full test, and I know on your site people can run testing through you or you can contact me through thejentwins.com, and we help people with that also. Like I was saying earlier, I wish I had been able to get all these blood tests, because it’s hard to look at that data and then go, there’s nothing wrong with me.
They can’t really say, now, if they look at the normal ranges, they can say, you’re fine, right? But if we’re looking at optimal ranges, we know that that’s not the case.
Other things are getting blood sugar under control. Most people, especially when they reach a certain age, are having some insulin resistance, right? So getting people wearing a continuous glucose monitor, so they can see what’s going on.
Jennifer Swank (23:00)
Because a lot of people are like, well, for one, they’ll say, I don’t eat gluten. And then they’ll have toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and pasta for dinner. But a lot of times people don’t know they’ve had trauma in their life.
Or they don’t know that they were stressed. So for me, when my signs first started coming up, I was moving from Washington to California. So my husband was already living in California, and I was commuting back and forth between Washington and California every other week. I was taking classes at the University of California at Davis and also in Seattle. I was doing a job that was both mentally and physically exhausting.
And I would wake up in the middle of the night, bolt upright. My heart was pumping with all the things that were going on in my life. And I didn’t even realize I was stressed. So because we’re just on our hamster wheel of going around and around, but really taking that time to like step back.
Jennifer Swank (24:00)
Find laughter, right? I know this is the hardest thing. Like when I talk about laughter yoga, they’re like, what? Like it’s even unfathomable. It’s one of the best things that people can do, but they’re not willing to do it. So dancing, dancing creates motion. It creates happy emotions, right? We put on a song that we like, we lift our hands up in the air and we’re dancing around.
That’s great for the body. That could be just one of the things that you need to do. finding joy, which the four components of joy are singing, dancing, laughing, and acting like small children. Clapping, which activates the acupressure points in your hands. It affects our brain, right? So it kind of all comes back down to our limbic system of our body wanting to feel safe.
And we can’t heal if we don’t feel safe. And that includes the environment around us and the people around us, the food that we’re eating, the water that we’re drinking, the air that we’re breathing, right?
Dr Ritamarie (25:13)
And how we talk to ourselves, right? Because, you know, it’s one thing to feel unsafe because you’re in an environment where there’s, you know, nasty people, and there’s physical danger and all that, but we are so much part of that making ourselves feel unsafe when we’re saying, you’re not good enough, you’re not pretty enough, your hair looks terrible, you’re too fat, you’re too thin, you’ll never make it.
Those old limiting patterns of speaking to ourselves. And I think that puts us in a state of limbic system over like, I’ve got to protect, right? And autoimmune disease is really the body attacking itself. And part of that is it’s not feeling safe. It’s just not feeling safe. Not safe from the environment, not safe from the toxins, the stressors, the foods, et cetera. And we just, the immune system goes berserk kind of thing.
Jennifer Swank (26:04)
Yes, definitely. And so I like to tell people like one of the things that you can do every morning, you can wake up, give yourself a hug, pat yourself on the back, right?
When we give ourselves a hug, it’s our cuddle chemical, happy hormone, oxytocin gets released. We look in the mirror, because we’re our worst critic, and we look in the mirror and we say, I love you, love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, right? Because we have to start loving ourselves. When we love ourselves, then we feel safe, right?
We feel safe in what’s here around us. And then other people can see that we love ourselves and whether they see it or not, you see it, so it starts with yourself.
Dr Ritamarie (27:55)
Right, self-love.
Yeah, I love it. And so let’s conclude with,we have a lot of people who listening for your own health, and you may have thyroid issues. Many of you are listening, because you’re practitioners, and you’re working with people with thyroid issues. What’s three things that you would recommend that we incorporate into our practices in terms of helping people to get the limbic system to get the body to feel safe and help heal the thyroid?
Jennifer Swank (27:24)
I would say one of my favorites is watching the sunrise. Although if you’re tired, that might be difficult. So maybe it’s watching the sunset. So whether it’s the sunrise or the sunset, going out in nature. Right. So getting out in nature, trying to get that toxin load down.
And instead of telling people you can’t don’t do this, don’t do that, get rid of the negative, add in rainbow vegetables, add in sea vegetables, add in all the nutrients that they need first before saying, you should go gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free. That is difficult for people, who are like, I’d rather die. That’s what a lot of people would rather do. So instead of taking stuff away, just adding those things in.
And then adding that component of joy, right? Singing, dancing, laughing, clapping, And meditation, because we hear laughter is the best medicine, but it’s really laughter and meditation that are the best. They like to combine and that’s the perfect thing that we really need.
Dr Ritamarie (28:44)
Wow. Well, thank you so much. I think you’ve opened up a lot of eyes and feeling safe, right? We really have to help people to feel safe. And if they come to your office, you know, and you’re the expert, and you’re not making them feel safe, you’re telling them everything’s fine, go home. You know, that’s not going to make them feel safe.
When you say, look, I know this is hard for you, but I have some things you can do. This is where I want it. I want to create your body to feel like it’s a safe haven so that the limbic system doesn’t get activated in the lizard brain, you know, trying to monkey mind you out of it.
So I think that’s such an important thing that we need to be sharing with people and helping them. So we’ll put on your, on the show notes page, you’ll have links to how to reach Jennifer and her laughter yoga class, which she does free, still free on zoom.
Jennifer Swank (29:31)
Yep, still free Monday through Friday, 7:30 AM in the morning.
Dr Ritamarie (29:36)
And that’s 7:30 Pacific time. Pacific time, so that’s not bad for us in the middle of the country. Yeah, so enjoy that. And you know, I’ll tell you, a lot of my clients who have, you know who they are, have gone to that laughter yoga and have been in a state of having previous traumas and being in a negative emotional state and have really shifted so much in their approach to life and their attitude and their joy.
So it’s definitely a thing to check out if it feels like it calls to you. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And we’re going to have people stay in touch by going to your Zen and Zest Zone membership and your laughter yoga and whatever else, we’ll have on the show notes page. So be sure to check that out.
So we’re the future of healthcare. The things that Jennifer and I have been talking about today, this is the future. It’s the now, but I see it as this is going into the future. This is going to be the only kind of approach, right?
Gone are going to be the days of the outdated symptom suppression models and put people on drugs. And just because you do functional medicine or holistic healthcare, you’ve got to change the mindset, not just the tools. So if you’re addressing somebody’s whatever symptoms with an herb or a supplement instead of a drug, it’s maybe a step in the right direction, but it’s not really there. We need to help them to balance and get the body working the way it’s supposed to, to feel safe so that all your hormones get balanced when you’re in a state of safety.
So I recommend you go out and check out INEMethod.com and that has all our resources and learn how you can become part of this movement. I see it as a movement to reinvent healthcare. So until next time, shine on.
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