Managing Sobriety Through Nutrition and Supplements with Dr. Brooke Scheller
episode #275
Whether you are sober curious or already sober like myself, today’s guest, Dr. Brooke Scheller is going to help you feel better through her functional medicine approach.
I reached out to Dr. Brooke after seeing her talk about her new book, How to Eat to Change How You Drink: Heal Your Gut, Mend Your Mind, and Improve Nutrition to Change Your Relationship with Alcohol because I was fascinated by the topic.
Dr. Brooke Scheller is a doctor of clinical nutrition, the founder of Functional Sobriety and she is a fellow sober woman who, you will hear, knows, and loves the work that she does, which you will hear about.
Sober wellness starts from within and is influenced by what we consume. Nourish your body to heal your mind. Dr. Brooke Scheller
In this episode, you’ll hear:
How alcohol impacted Brooke’s life and what led her to stop drinking.
Dr. Brooke explains the three different drinking archetypes and gives us the characteristics of each
How short-term and long-term alcohol use creates nutrient deficiencies which can lead to fatigue, anxiety, hormone imbalances, and low moods.
The importance of adding more protein and eating more frequently to manage your cravings and stabilize your blood sugar
Why Dr. Brooke doesn’t recommend Intermittent Fasting in early sobriety and as we age.
Supplement suggestions for nutrient deficiencies.
I appreciate Dr. Brooke’s mission, her knowledge, and her book. I wish I had it in my hands when I first stopped drinking.
Also mentioned in this episode, is Clare Pooley’s book, The Sober Diaries.
Check out Clare’s interview on the podcast here.
Find Dr. Brooke here:
-
[00:00:00] Lori: Hi, Dr. Brooke.
[00:00:02] Lori: Hi Lori. I'm so excited to be here with you today.
[00:00:05] Lori Massicot: I'm excited to have you, and I am so excited for your book that came out December 26th, 2023, and it is called How to Eat to Change How You Drink Heal. Yes, we both have copies. We're holding them up. I, I just love it. Heal your gut, mend your
[00:00:20] Lori Massicot: mind and improve nutrition to change your relationship with alcohol. It's a big deal.
[00:00:28] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's a big deal. It's my life's work and I'm, I'm so excited to share more with you and your audience about, about the book and about the inspiration behind it and where it all came from, and I, I'm so excited to just get this information into the hands of more people.
[00:00:47] Lori Massicot: Yeah, I'm excited for you. Honestly, I am.
[00:00:49] Lori Massicot: fired up for you to get this book out there. First of all, I want to ask you, as a doctor of nutrition, what is it that you help your clients with?[00:01:00]
[00:01:01] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah, so I work mostly now with clients who are either alcohol free or are looking to become alcohol free and are struggling on that journey. And my background in training is all in functional medicine or functional nutrition, which is where we do a really deep dive analysis. In the body to start to understand more about the root cause of our symptoms or what we're experiencing.
[00:01:25] Dr. Brooke Sheller: So for example, I might work with a client who has gastrointestinal issues, who is looking to understand why that's happening. Maybe they've tried different supplements, they've tried different diets, and they're not really sure what's going on. So a lot of the clients that I historically have worked with have some level of
[00:01:43] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Health goal or health concern that they're looking for more support on. When I started moving more of my work toward the alcohol free space. The majority of my clients that I work with now have oftentimes still these health [00:02:00] goals or health concerns that they want help and support with. But they also have that extra level, which is that they have maybe a history of alcohol use that's quite heavy.
[00:02:10] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I. They also maybe want that additional support, and so I provide this kind of complimentary approach where they're getting this deeper health and nutrition support in addition to alcohol free coaching and lifestyle changes.
[00:02:24] Lori Massicot: Fantastic.
[00:02:26] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah,
[00:02:26] Lori Massicot: I wanna ask you before we move on, do you work with folks virtually?
[00:02:31] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I do. I do.
[00:02:32] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I work with clients virtually around the world. Actually. I have clients that are on, I think we're on almost . Most of the continents now. And I do work with clients one-on-one, but I also have several online programs. So I have an online network and community, which is all focused on the alcohol free conversation from a health and nutrition perspective.
[00:02:52] Dr. Brooke Sheller: But I also have online courses where people can come in. Take a course, learn more about how to set up a nutrition plan [00:03:00] to support their alcohol free goals, or how to start looking into some of these areas that we talk about in the book, like the gut or the liver, or nutrient deficiencies, for example.
[00:03:09] Lori Massicot: Wow. It's the whole package.
[00:03:10] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's the whole package. Yeah.
[00:03:13] Lori Massicot: It is what we need. We honestly need that. We need more because I know for me, I mean it's, it's very rare where I go to my doctor and they'll say, she does a little bit, but it's like, what's your nutrition? What is, what supplements are you taking? I mean, it, there's not that deep dive into anything that's going on with me.
[00:03:29] Lori Massicot: And that's been happening since I hit perimenopause, changed my doctors a few times and, we're not getting that deep dive that we need. And I believe, especially At this stage of life.
[00:03:39] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's so important, and you're right that in, in my experience, I've been working with clients for over 10 years now, and oftentimes what happens is people come in and they say, well, I'm not feeling right. I'm, maybe it's fatigue, maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's digestive issues, maybe it's an autoimmune disease.
[00:03:57] Dr. Brooke Sheller:. They don't really know, they can't [00:04:00] really figure out what's wrong, but they know that something has changed. And what Hap has typically happened is they've gone to their doctor, their doctor has run three blood panels and said, you're fine. It's, it's age or it's, hormonal changes in the perimenopause menopausal arena.
[00:04:16] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And it's, it's really this. This writing off of any of these symptoms. But what I do and what we do in the functional medicine approach is we go, I don't buy that. I wanna know what's going on. Right. And and there's typically almost always something, right? Whether it is simple nutrient deficiencies, there's deficiencies in things like iron or zinc or vitamin D for example.
[00:04:42] Dr. Brooke Sheller: A lot of people, especially with alcohol use history, are going to have some effects on . Some pretty de, again, depending on how extensive the alcohol use was, there's oftentimes a lot of nutrient deficiencies, and those are really important to understand and investigate because they can be [00:05:00] major contributors to things like energy, low energy to hormone imbalances, to anxiety and mood issues, which is of course a huge concern for those of us who have an alcohol use history.
[00:05:12] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And oftentimes part of the reason why we use alcohol, right? We're . Anxious and depressed, we drink because we need to cope. And what that does is it further depletes out those important nutrients that help to produce things like serotonin and dopamine, right? So we're always talking about how there's a dopamine deficiency in this scenario, but what we're not talking about is, well, how do we get more dopamine?
[00:05:34] Dr. Brooke Sheller: We get more dopamine through certain nutrients, through proteins that provide amino acids, and that's really where nutrition is key. In this situation. I.
[00:05:44] Lori Massicot: Wow. Yeah. We're gonna talk some more about that. That's fantastic
[00:05:47] Lori Massicot: and I know that it, it is so helpful to have you here and just have this conversation. There are so many women out there who are listening who have had that same experience as me going to the doctor, especially during perimenopause and they did [00:06:00] those blood work.
[00:06:00] Lori Massicot: It was like three things. Nope. You're good.
[00:06:03] Lori Massicot: And I would leave there every time. Like something's wrong with me there. There. I'm not good. I am not good, and I was drinking very heavily at the time, so this is an important conversation. Talk about the inspiration for writing the book.
[00:06:17] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah. So, of course I'm a doctor of nutrition by trade, and I was a doctor of nutrition even when I was a heavy drinker. Ironically, I had the . Opportunity to author a textbook chapter in a textbook on integrative approaches to substance use disorders. And I authored a chapter on nutrition and supplements to support substance use disorders.
[00:06:39] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And I did this in the last nine months of my drinking. So
[00:06:44] Dr. Brooke Sheller: ironically, ,I am writing this chapter for this textbook, and I was given the opportunity. And at the time I had never really, I had never published anything in . Formal publication style. And so I took this opportunity not because I felt very aligned [00:07:00] with it, in fact, I felt
[00:07:02] Dr. Brooke Sheller: A little unaligned with it because of how much I was drinking. And so throughout the process, I'm, I'm in pulling together a lot of research to support, well, how, how would I, if I was going to be working with a client, for example, with a substance use disorder, how would I be? Looking at this. So ironically, that book chapter published the same month that I got sober, and I don't think that that was intentional.
[00:07:30] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I, I didn't set out and say, well, now this is out there and it's time for me to quit drinking. That just happened to be the same month where things, I really hit my, what I consider my rock bottom, which was really just, I didn't . And I talk about it in the book. I didn't lose a job. I didn't get a DUI, I didn't have those, traditional quote unquote, what we might
[00:07:52] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Envision someone might have when they hit a rock bottom moment. For me, it was a culmination of a lot of self-pity, [00:08:00] a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression. I was starting to have health issues and my drinking had really escalated. I had been a pretty heavy drinker. All the way back through my teenage years, but by the time I quit drinking, I was drinking most days of the week.
[00:08:14] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And that's a very common thing that happened during the pandemic, especially to women. There's some research that shows a 41% increase in women who drank on a regular basis, and that statistic doesn't lie. Right? We were home. We were working from home, we were . Isolated. Our environments were different. Our stress was very different, and so I don't think I'm alone in that.
[00:08:38] Dr. Brooke Sheller: The pandemic probably pushed me to the end of my rope, maybe sooner than I would have gotten to it without it. And probably took about three months for the fog to clear from my mind where I was heavily focused in the beginning on just making it through the day without taking a drink. And. And I [00:09:00] had started following Instagram accounts and started getting more involved in the the sober and sober curious space.
[00:09:06] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And I'm looking around and I'm going, no one's talking about nutrition. And my background is in the biochemistry, right? It's looking into these more of the physiological side of things, and I believe we're doing an amazing job. In how we think of this from a mental health perspective, how we address traumas, how we start to look at behavioral evaluations and behavioral change.
[00:09:29] Dr. Brooke Sheller: But there's very little conversation until now around the physiological side, what is going on in my body that might make me more inclined to have a. A difficult time eliminating alcohol, and if I can understand that better and I can use things like foods and supplements to support that, then I might have more success in my alcohol-free journey.
[00:09:52] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Right. So I started asking that question, well, like, why, it doesn't serve me well enough. Just be like, well, I ended up this way. [00:10:00] I'm a scientist. I wanted to know more. So I had like a light bulb moment one night at 9:30 PM that I needed to write a book on this, and I ended up getting a book deal and an agent and all of these things just really
[00:10:15] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Fell together in a way that I can only believe was because of my sobriety. And it's a huge part of why I keep going because I really feel like my life fell into ultimate alignment once I eliminated alcohol.
[00:10:29] Lori Massicot: So awesome, and I know this book is going to change a lot of people's view of alcohol and their own nutrition.
[00:10:39] Lori Massicot: Looking at it this way, and like I told you before we started recording, there's nothing else out there like this. And you're right. So. Badass. It is
[00:10:48] Lori Massicot: badass. Congratulations. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I, I think it's fantastic and when I got it, I started to look through it.
[00:10:55] Lori Massicot: I'm like, this is very interesting, I cannot wait to dive [00:11:00] into this topic because how to eat to change how you drink. Like, I like the name of it for one thing that, that's, that just says it right there. When was your sobriety date?
[00:11:11] Dr. Brooke Sheller: June 14th, 2021.
[00:11:14] Lori Massicot: Hmm. Congratulations
[00:11:15] Lori Massicot: on that as well. Yeah. How long did it take to write the book?
[00:11:20] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It took about nine months to write the book. I started writing the book in March of 2022. And it didn't publish until December 26th. And so you can imagine these are, it's a long timeline, right?
[00:11:34] Dr. Brooke Sheller: So even when I had started, I was still pretty early in my sobriety journey.
[00:11:38] Dr. Brooke Sheller: So this book is also kind of like me going through my sobriety journey too, right alongside you as the reader. And it's interesting because it is framed how to eat to change how you drink. So when you look at it, you might think, well, I've already . Quit drinking or I've already changed how I drink. I've already stopped.
[00:11:58] Dr. Brooke Sheller: D does this book, [00:12:00] qual, do I qualify as a reader of this book? And the answer is yes. Because what really we're doing through this is setting you up with a plan to heal your body. It's setting you up with the foods and the nutritional tools and understanding more about supplements and lifestyle so that you can start to implement these tools to recover your body from long-term alcohol use.
[00:12:21] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And that's the other core piece of it that that is included in the book.
[00:12:26] Lori Massicot: Yeah. Is this for people in early sobriety and, 'cause I know that you had mentioned like, can I be like the, the person that is reading this book as well, is this for early sobriety or would you say this could be for anybody who has gotten sober?
[00:12:41] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It is for anybody who has gotten sober or wants to consider getting sober,
[00:12:45] Dr. Brooke Sheller: and my goal when writing it was . To make it very open and encompassing for all, because we all come into this at different stages in our journey. Even if I am two and a half years sober and someone else is two and a half years [00:13:00] sober, that journey still looks very different across the board.
[00:13:02] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Right? And so the. It was very important for me when writing the book that it wasn't just speaking to an audience of people that was either sober or not sober. I also wanted to make it something that you might just be . Like really early on your journey and starting to think maybe I, I need to quit or maybe I need to cut back.
[00:13:24] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And you might read this and you might say, this is how I'm gonna do that. Right. So I really believe that it can reach people across the board because it's not just, it is a quit lit book, but it's also a health book. Right. So anyone who's interested in health and nutrition and functional practices would be interested in reading it.
[00:13:44] Lori Massicot: . I agree. At the beginning of your book, you talk about the three different drinking archetypes.
[00:13:49] Lori Massicot: Can you share just a little bit of those archetypes with us?
[00:13:52] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah, so I created these three drinking archetypes, and there's actually a fourth one too, which is not necessarily [00:14:00] one that we speak about in the book. The the fourth archetype is someone who really doesn't drink, who doesn't have much of a desire. I call them the nonchalant drinker. There's someone who can really, truly take it or leave it.
[00:14:10] Dr. Brooke Sheller: They maybe have a glass of wine here and there. They're the kind of person that may . The glass sits there and isn't even finished by the time they leave the table. But really what I started experiencing when I started working with clients in the alcohol free space was that there's such a variety of experiences that we all have now just to share in, in my experience, by the time I quit drinking, I was someone who was drinking most days of the week.
[00:14:39] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I was a pretty heavy drinker. I was fairly dependent on it. Habitually and environmentally right, and probably physiologically as well. But one thing that I started to realize when I started working with others in the space was that there were other people who were interested in getting sober or [00:15:00] exploring sobriety who only drank twice a week, but when they drank.
[00:15:07] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It still got outta control, right? They had trouble moderating, even though it was a couple of times a week or a few times a month, and so when I started, thinking about my recommendations for, for clients, depending on where they're at in their journey, it felt very important for me to be able to speak to people.
[00:15:29] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Really where they're at. Right? Because my experience might be different than someone who is maybe just a weekend drinker, but wants to cut back. And I think that's the person who truly sits in that gray area of drinking, which is, they're unlikely probably to explore true, true sobriety because they, they don't really identify or categorize themselves in that class of
[00:15:55] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I don't need to drink every single day, so, so I'm not gonna stop drinking. But [00:16:00] why is it that once I start, I can't stop? So that's where, again, the scientist in me starts going, okay, well what's going on in that person's body, in that person's brain and that person's hormones that is driving them to have that experience?
[00:16:14] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Whereas again, someone else can take it or leave it, or someone else might be a daily drinker. So the drinking archetypes really came together to. Help bring together some of the science and understanding as to why we may be fitting into each different archetype and what kind of happens. And what I've often seen and felt in my own experience is someone who's more of a social drinker drinks.
[00:16:41] Dr. Brooke Sheller: A few times a week or a few times a month, oftentimes that can evolve into someone who's maybe more of a stress drinker, which is our second archetype, which is someone who's drinking a little bit more often. They're drinking because of stress, but that might be a. Three days a week, it might be four days a week.
[00:16:59] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It might [00:17:00] be more based on stressful situations or stressful scenarios going on. But oftentimes if we continue down in that phase, what happens is we become this habitual drinker and we kind of evolve through these phases. So I've seen this happen in myself. I've seen it happen with other clients. So just by understanding, and categorizing ourself into one of these archetypes, we can take some of the recommendations and implement them based on where we're at in our alcohol journey.
[00:17:29] Lori Massicot: Let's say I came to you and I said
[00:17:31] Lori Massicot: . I'm a stress drinker.
[00:17:32] Lori Massicot: What would you recommend?
[00:17:34] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah. So that's, it's a matter of looking at that from a habitual standpoint, but also physiological standpoint. So for someone who's a stress drinker, they are someone who is likely experiencing very real stress in their life. But what does that do? It changes the physiology of the body.
[00:17:52] Dr. Brooke Sheller: That means that your cortisol levels might be very high. You might have a need for an evaluation of . [00:18:00] Cortisol. Maybe that means we need to use some herbs or some supplements that can help to normalize cortisol so that we can support the reason and the the rationale, the justification, if you will, of why we previously have drank.
[00:18:14] Dr. Brooke Sheller: If we can start to balance and manage your stress a little bit, we can also take away that trigger.
[00:18:22] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And that's another, it's a, honestly, a topic that people love to hear about and, and somewhat because in the Huberman Labs podcast that came out, I think it was last year, which everybody talks about the alcohol podcast, he talks a little bit about cortisol, but it was really one of the first times on a broader stage someone had spoken about.
[00:18:43] Dr. Brooke Sheller: How alcohol affects cortisol. And there's a lot of research on this that, we often think alcohol is lowering our stress, right? It gives a, it provides this illusion that it's lowering our stress, but what it's actually doing is it's making our cortisol levels higher over time. So we are [00:19:00] actually more stressed than when we started because now we have this excess production of cortisol.
[00:19:06] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It can take the body. Seven days. So for someone who just goes out and has a couple of drinks, it could take seven days just for the cortisol alone to normalize itself. So we think maybe a hangover lasts a day. Well, if we're experiencing symptoms of anxiety or high heightened stress, that might be an ongoing effect that's happening from the alcohol from the weekend.
[00:19:31] Dr. Brooke Sheller: But what do we do? We drink again. Continue kind of down this cycle and through this pattern. So the science is really interesting because it gives us something really tangible that we can do and that we can focus on that helps us move forward through these challenging times.
[00:19:47] Lori Massicot: Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating to me. That was the cycle.
[00:19:51] Lori Massicot: Oh my gosh, I'm anxious the next day. I'm tired, I'm
[00:19:54] Lori Massicot: not gonna drink. I'd say it in the morning and then by the evening, that's all that I could turn to because that's where I got [00:20:00] that relief that hit,
[00:20:01] Dr. Brooke Sheller: yeah. So for someone like you, if you were a client of mine and you came in and you were struggling, my dog is going to pop in in the corner
[00:20:08] Lori Massicot: Hello Puppy.
[00:20:11] Dr. Brooke Sheller: If, if you were someone who came in and you were struggling, what we would do is we would put you on a supplemental protocol that would really help to.
[00:20:19] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Relieve stress, lower cortisol support, normalizing or provide you with nutrients and amino acids that can help balance anxiety. It can help you kind of feel a little bit more even keel so that you're not feeling such a strong, strong desire to reach for a drink to cope with it.
[00:20:38] Lori Massicot: WE need more of that.
[00:20:39] Lori Massicot: Definitely. Let me ask you, what was your nutrition like when you were drinking? I.
[00:20:45] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It was not great. But I will tell you that, and another thing I just was was posting about on Instagram the other day is . So many people, and I, I did this, but I know I'm not alone in this. People who are [00:21:00] interested in health and wellness but are big drinkers. What we do is we drink a bunch of alcohol and then we drink a green juice, and then we do a detox, and then we exercise and we
[00:21:09] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Hope for the best that that has erased all of the damage that we've done with alcohol. And unfortunately, that isn't necessarily the case. Alcohol is very, very disruptive to the body, very disruptive to the brain, to the gut microbiome that we are hardly breaking even. When we're doing all of those things, because really it's the alcohol that's so disruptive, so we might think we're doing a lot of good things and making a lot of progress, but it's really only hardly kind of keeping us in that, in the straight and narrow in that the alcohol is the, the bigger piece there, right?
[00:21:47] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's not about how do we squelch the damage that we've done with alcohol. The question is how do we stop the alcohol so that we're not putting all of this major, major stress on our body?
[00:21:59] Lori Massicot: I [00:22:00] definitely, I was trying to skate around the alcohol for a couple of years. Like, let me join the gym. Let me get into a consistent exercise. Let me get all the lotions and potions and slap 'em on my face. Let me go on a diet, all of those things. And then I came to the realization at 45 that it's the alcohol, it's the alcohol.
[00:22:19] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's the alcohol and we don't wanna look at it because it's tough. It is. One of the hardest things I think most of us can say that we've ever done is, is eliminating alcohol. It was harder for me than getting multiple graduate degrees. I would do those. Three times over than getting sober again, because it's freaking hard, especially if we're bigger drinkers and we're more attached to it, and it's more integrated into our lifestyles and our relationships and our friendships and our jobs and all of these things.
[00:22:50] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's a major feat to make these changes. It's easier to start sprinkling in the gym and the juices and those things, and it's not that those aren't helpful [00:23:00] or that they aren't . Important to incorporate. It's just that we would make more progress with our health and healing by focusing on alcohol first.
[00:23:11] Lori Massicot: And then we're seeing it from, the media and the health and wellness companies that Promote drinking you go and you run a marathon and you go out and you have drinks afterwards. We're seeing it all around and we've grown up with it.
[00:23:23] Lori Massicot: And so at this stage of life, we think, well, everybody's been doing this. This is what we do. But I never realized how detrimental it was to my mental health, my physical health, my emotional health, all of it. I never realized because I didn't want to know.
[00:23:38] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Mm-Hmm.
[00:23:39] Lori Massicot: Yeah.
[00:23:40] Dr. Brooke Sheller: and I think that until very recently we lived in a world that didn't talk about it. We lived in a world where if you have a problem, you go to AA and you remain anonymous and you never talk about it. Right. It wasn't something that I. We were speaking about in the media. It wasn't [00:24:00] something that celebrities were talking about.
[00:24:02] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It wasn't something that there were books written about unless you were in a rehab situation or you were again in Alcoholics Anonymous, right? So we live in this era now. The sober curious era where we can talk about it more and we can educate each other and we can start to make real true tra changes in our environment and the world that we live in.
[00:24:27] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Because prior to that, we just, we really didn't know we
[00:24:31] Lori Massicot: Yeah. 10
[00:24:33] Lori Massicot: years ago when I got sober, 2013, this wasn't happening
[00:24:36] Lori Massicot: and that's why I thought I'm all alone on this
[00:24:39] Lori Massicot: this road the road less travel, I called it. But now it's just like so many cool people are on it and you're here and you're teaching us about this, and it's time for us to stop avoiding the things you know, that we
[00:24:52] Lori Massicot: don't wanna look at and really take a look at 'em and, and realize, that it. It's not that hard, it's not that bad to look at it. You could start there. [00:25:00] It's, it's gonna be okay. Everybody is gonna be okay. And then to really create a plan that works for you, because
[00:25:06] Lori Massicot: I know so many women struggle with giving it up, and that first week is always the hardest, that first month. It's brutal.
[00:25:15] Lori Massicot: It's brutal.
[00:25:16] Dr. Brooke Sheller: that first week and first month are the absolute hardest. And the one thing I'll say about that, and I just read this again to my online group. We had a holiday seminar where we talked about just surviving the holidays and things like that. And there is a book called. The Sober Diaries by Claire Pooley.
[00:25:36] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I'm not sure if you've read it,
[00:25:38] Dr. Brooke Sheller: but there's one part where she talks about the obstacle course, and she talks about how if you do the first, the hardest part over and over again, the first week, the first month, you get a couple of days, you go back to the beginning, you get a week, you go back to the beginning, you go back, you go to a month, you go back to the beginning.
[00:25:57] Dr. Brooke Sheller: When you continue to go through the [00:26:00] hardest part again and again and again, you're reinforcing that this is a negative experience and a negative journey. Right? After we get through some of those hardest parts, like those early obstacles, right? She talks about like, well, maybe there's a 12 foot wall, and then you've got a, army crawl through the, the trenches.
[00:26:20] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Right.
[00:26:21] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And, but the obstacles get a little bit easier as you go through, right? You don't have to climb another 12 foot wall. You don't have to get down and do the army crawl again, right? But when we keep going back to the beginning, we have to go back to the 12 foot wall, right? And so this is the kind of stuff when it comes to the biochemistry and it comes to the nutrition and the supplementation.
[00:26:44] Dr. Brooke Sheller: foR me, and one of the big things I share with my clients is. This takes away a lot of the need for willpower. Like we are constantly worried, like, and maybe we've beat ourselves up. Like I just don't have the willpower to do it. I don't have the willpower [00:27:00] to do it. What that tells me if you're struggling is that there's something else going on.
[00:27:05] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It tells me that, well, why is this change? What do we, what tweak do we need to make in the system? Is it something nutritionally supplementally? Is it something environmentally? Because it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's always biochemical, right? But there's something that's not fine tuned, right?
[00:27:24] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Because we shouldn't, shouldn't have to feel that hard if we have all of the right things in place. So that just tells me that there's something else that's missing. And all you need to do if you're listening and you're struggling is stay curious to find what that thing is that missing is. Missing is
[00:27:43] Lori Massicot: definitely, because
[00:27:43] Lori Massicot: we all think it. Like, what? What else? What else can I do? Why is this so hard? What's missing? What am I not doing? What am I doing too much of? And yeah, we just have to be curious. We have to ask those questions. Constantly and keep at it. I wanna ask you before I forget, as far [00:28:00] as like long-term alcohol use, can we still have the deficiencies, the nutrient deficiencies with short-term alcohol use?
[00:28:10] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah, so any time any even short term consumption of alcohol is going to have . Impacts on the body. Everybody's body's a little bit different. We all have different genetic makeup. We all have different microbiomes. We have different diets. We have different standard levels of certain nutrients, for example, right?
[00:28:30] Dr. Brooke Sheller: So that's why one person might feel the effects of short-term drinking worse than another person, right? So everybody's body is a little bit different in that regard. But that's not to say that short-term doesn't necessarily have an impact. If you drink on a short-term basis and you feel okay, that still doesn't mean that that alcohol isn't having some other type of impact on your body.
[00:28:59] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And I'll, [00:29:00] I'll use an example of this. One of the areas that I talk a lot about in the book is the gut microbiome. And one of the things that we are learning and we're seeing in the research over the last several years is we're hearing all about the gut. How important it is not just for digestion, but for things like our brain and the production of serotonin and dopamine and these important neurotransmitters, but also things like autoimmune diseases and skin issues and hormone balance, and a whole slew of other things because.
[00:29:33] Dr. Brooke Sheller: The gut is really impacting every area of our body. When we drink even a single drink, it has an impact on the health of our intestinal lining because alcohol is one of the very disruptive things we think about. If we take a shot of alcohol, right, it burns going down our esophagus. Well, that sensation, that burning is happening through our entire digestive tract.
[00:29:56] Dr. Brooke Sheller: right? So it's, what it's actually doing is it's a toxin. [00:30:00] It's breaking down the lining of the gut. The more we drink, the more impacts that we're likely going to have from alcohol, but even smaller amounts can be impactful. So what I share with people is if you have more severe health concerns or if you have health goals.
[00:30:20] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's probably going to be more important for you to fully eliminate or eliminate as much as possible maybe than someone else who doesn't necessarily have a diagnosed health condition, if that
[00:30:31] Lori Massicot: Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. And like we talked about earlier, adding in the, the green juice and going to the gym, I think it starts with the awareness that alcohol is no longer working for me. I need to do something about it. And so either start to reduce, and, and taper off a little bit while you're taking care of yourself a little bit better, adding in some more self-care and, but To get curious about it and cont continue to learn about it 'cause it's so important.
[00:30:59] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah, [00:31:00] and I think the more that we learn and we understand how impactful it is in our body, it helps us make that change. It helps us be a little bit more rigorous, I think with screening it out and making decisions around, well, am I gonna have that drinker? Am I not gonna have that drink? Because if I know that again, I have a specific health condition, let's just say I have an autoimmune disease.
[00:31:25] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I'm really trying to manage those symptoms or that condition. If I'm gonna have a drink, it's gonna set me back, right? So then I get to make that decision looking at that very tangibly instead of saying well, am I gonna feel a hangover tomorrow or not? Yes or no? But really it's impacting our longevity, our long, long-term health, not just what we're feeling the next day.
[00:31:48] Lori Massicot: The listener out there is listening,
[00:31:51] Lori Massicot: she's midlife gal and she's really not feeling that great.
[00:31:56] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Mm-Hmm.
[00:31:56] Lori Massicot: what are some thoughts that you have for her?
[00:31:59] Dr. Brooke Sheller: [00:32:00] Yeah, so one of the first things that I would say I like to focus on in my alcohol free clients in my groups is putting an importance on protein and increasing protein in the diet. And that's for multiple reasons. I mean, we, we often hear that in terms of weight management or in terms of satiety for eating, or we hear it for muscle building purposes, right?
[00:32:25] Dr. Brooke Sheller: One thing that we don't talk enough about when it comes to protein is its importance for our brain and that amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins are important for the production of, again, our healthy brain neurotransmitters. So things like serotonin and dopamine and gaba, which is our relaxing neurotransmitter.
[00:32:46] Dr. Brooke Sheller: When we don't have enough protein in the diet, it can affect how much protein is going to the brain. But also one of the key elements in the book I talk about is blood sugar and the importance of regulating blood [00:33:00] sugar. Because those of us who have a history of alcohol use intake oftentimes tend toward having some level of hypoglycemia or low blood sugar.
[00:33:10] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I. . And because of that, anytime we get into a low blood sugar state, it can cause us to crave sugar or carbs, which is what most of us hear about. But for those of us who have a drinking history, a low blood sugar is also gonna cause us to crave alcohol. So one of the things, especially early in sobriety that I have all of my clients do is ramp up their protein intake.
[00:33:33] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And that is really going to ensure that they have a bit more even keel blood sugar throughout the day. It's going to help with satiety, it's going to help with mood, it's going to help with energy. All of those things that we, all of us want more of. Right.
[00:33:48] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Or better improvement in. So that is one thing that if you're listening.
[00:33:54] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I always recommend. Increasing protein. So every meal and every snack should be [00:34:00] protein focused, at least 25 or 30 grams of protein at a meal, and at least fif ideally 15 or more grams per snack. The other thing that goes along with that is ensuring that you're eating every three or four hours or so.
[00:34:15] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Which is also important for that stabilization of blood sugar. Now, I will share that that is different from what some people hear when they hear about intermittent fasting, that you should maybe be taking those longer periods of time without eating. I advise against that, especially in early recovery because it's a little bit more to focus on the blood sugar regulation and ensuring that you're getting enough, you're not hitting those low blood sugar.
[00:34:44] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Moments. I Have really, really seen this make an impact with my clients and it continues to be something that people really see success from. So if you're listening and you're in those kind of earlier stages and you're struggling, this is one [00:35:00] super simple tool that you can start doing now at home.
[00:35:03] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's also going to help with sugar cravings, which is the other big one.
[00:35:07] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yes.
[00:35:08] Lori Massicot: Adding in the protein. I used to intermittent fast like 16, eight, whatever. And now it's more like, maybe I'm good with 12, 13, because I just feel like, oh my gosh, my blood sugar feels so low. Why? Why am I doing this to myself?
[00:35:22] Lori Massicot: So I appreciated reading that in your book. That was very
[00:35:26] Lori Massicot: helpful. Yeah.
[00:35:27] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And women have a lot harder of a time with intermittent fasting period just because of hormonal fluctuations, right. And so men do really well with intermittent fasting and it's very frustrating to hear. I. Men on podcasts talking about everyone should be doing intermittent fasting, you're gonna lose weight.
[00:35:46] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And women go, yes, weight loss, that's what I want. And actually what it does is it causes more stress, it causes worsening cortisol levels, right? If we have this inance cortisol like we're talking about.
[00:35:57] Lori Massicot: Mm-Hmm.
[00:35:58] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Or very high levels of [00:36:00] cortisol, it's actually going to put more stress on our body. So if you're listening and you've tried intermittent fasting and it hasn't worked for you, please know that you're not alone, and please know that that just means you are someone that right now would benefit more from having more consistent meals rather than going long periods of time without eating.
[00:36:18] Lori Massicot: Thank you for sharing that.
[00:36:20] Lori Massicot: I feel like I received that completely.
[00:36:22] Lori Massicot: Let's talk about your program, functional sobriety. How does it work?
[00:36:26] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah, so functional sobriety is what I created based off of my approach, which really looks at, again, a functional medicine based approach to an alcohol free lifestyle. So on online, I have multiple offerings. I have an online community, which is again, a community of women all focused on sober, sober, curious, through a nutrition or health.
[00:36:50] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And so it's kind of a combination of a group that is focused on nutrition and alcohol, which I think is really, really awesome. We also have an online course, so if you are [00:37:00] someone who wants to start implementing those tools right away, it's a self-guided course, so you can put together your own nutrition and supplement.
[00:37:08] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Protocol based off of that. When you sign up for that online course, you get free access to the group, which is a really great tool to have so that we kind of keep you on your journey and and really functional sobriety is how I really . Help to get the message out. So we also have a supplement program
[00:37:28] Dr. Brooke Sheller: too, which you can go on and order supplements based on your level of sobriety.
[00:37:33] Dr. Brooke Sheller: So if you're less than six months, we have a pack for you. If you're six plus months, we have a pack for you. If you're sober, curious, there's a special pack for you. And then we also have booster packs. So there's one called Craving Crusher, which is an additional booster pack that you can use if you're experiencing a lot of cravings for alcohol or sugar.
[00:37:52] Dr. Brooke Sheller: It's really helpful in those early days, so a lot of times I have people taking that in addition to the pack for six months [00:38:00] or less than six months. And then we also have a mood booster pack as well, because that is another goal that so many people have is boosting mood and reducing anxiety. And so that pack or that booster pack can also help with supporting those goals as well.
[00:38:14] Dr. Brooke Sheller: So my purpose with functional sobriety is really to help people integrate these tools as easy as they possibly can. I do work with some clients, one-on-one, but most of the time I have my clients in groups because it's helpful not only for them, but for everyone else involved because we're all learning from each other.
[00:38:33] Lori Massicot: I agree. I agree with the community aspect as well, which I know you talk about in your book. It's,
[00:38:38] Lori Massicot: it's really important and you do, you have everything in one place, and congratulations on all of your work, those supplements.
[00:38:45] Lori Massicot: That is fantastic too. What would you like to leave our listener with today?
[00:38:50] Lori Massicot: Some final words for someone out there who may be a little bit unsure of sobriety or in early sobriety and they're just feeling like, I don't know if this is even helping [00:39:00] me right now, if, if, I just don't feel good because it is that thing that we keep going back to
[00:39:05] Lori Massicot: when we wanna go back and forth with drinking.
[00:39:06] Lori Massicot: It didn't help. I don't feel that great.
[00:39:10] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Yeah. And I hear that a lot and I get that frustration a lot from clients because, there's some people that change their alcohol behaviors and they feel great. They instantly are on the pink cloud, they're floating along. Everything is great, life is perfect easy. They make it look easy.
[00:39:27] Dr. Brooke Sheller: And there are other people. Who go through those first 30 days, they're really hard. They're really struggling. Maybe they've backslid a little bit or they haven't stayed consistent, and they're really feeling like, well, what am I even doing this for? I don't feel any better. I'm not feeling any progress.
[00:39:45] Dr. Brooke Sheller: How do I know that this is the right thing for me? And. What I always tell people is that just tells me that there's something else that we need to address, right? So if you are someone that's in that place, exploring some of these [00:40:00] tools like nutrition, like supplementation, can be really the thing that pushes you to the next level.
[00:40:07] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I've seen it happen time and time again that once we start to make some tweaks in that person's lifestyle, we again bring in some supplements. That's what really brings them to that next place of, of their recovery journey. And so if you're listening and you're struggling, what I would love for you to know is that you are not alone.
[00:40:29] Dr. Brooke Sheller: That this is the hardest thing that any of us who have done it have ever done. And in the same sentence tell you that it is the most rewarding thing that any of us have ever done, and that in my experience, and I've seen it happen with so many other people, the opportunities and the avenues that are sobriety opens up is
[00:40:59] Dr. Brooke Sheller: [00:41:00] Something that you can't even imagine, right? I can say that as a child, I wanted to write a book as a 20 something. I wanted to write a book. I had no idea what I was gonna write a book on. I was always just like, ah, it'll come to me someday. Right? I got sober and the, the walls that felt like 12 foot walls became two foot walls and.
[00:41:26] Dr. Brooke Sheller: I've seen that happen over and over and over again with my clients and the people that I've met and loved in sobriety, and it's such a valuable experience. Just keep going, stay curious, and check out the book because I think that there's gonna be something in there that will help you get to the next level.
[00:41:47] Lori Massicot: That was a beautiful final message for our friends out there, how to eat to change how. How you drink. I'm gonna have it of course, linked in the show notes. And again, congratulations on everything and I definitely [00:42:00] feel like I will have you back if you'll come back, because
[00:42:02] Lori Massicot: I do want you to share more of your story.
[00:42:04] Lori Massicot: And there's so much of it in the book. So like you said, it's not, it's kind of a quit-lit but it's a health book. But there's a lot of your story in there and I relate it to a lot of it as well. So thank you for being here, Dr. Brooke.
[00:42:16] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Thank you so much for having me, Laura. I'd love to come back
[00:42:19] Lori Massicot: Yay, .Okay.
[00:42:21] Dr. Brooke Sheller: Thank you.
[00:42:22]
Hey, there! I’m Lori, the host of the To 50 and Beyond podcast.
Where aging and living alcohol-free are celebrated.
To 50 and Beyond is about self-discovery, living for today, and designing an alcohol-free life that alcohol can’t compete with.
I’m with you.
Did you enjoy the episode?
If you found this episode helpful, I’d love it if you’d take a minute to leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
Your review is greatly appreciated and helps another woman who is searching for support in living alcohol-free later in life.
Make sure to follow along on Apple and Spotify so you can listen to new episodes coming your way.
Thank you! ✌🏻
.
Another way to share support for me and the podcast.