I’m going to be really honest, we’re here for repeat podcasts. Now, I don’t mean that we have a returning guest I mean that me and today’s guests. We already recorded a podcast episode late last night. I was doing work on my phone and it disappeared. I’m not going to take full accountability because I don’t know for sure. And in typical Regina fashion, this is the podcast with my best friend, Kiki Shiple, who is a PA who is brilliant. But you guys probably see the other side of an on my Instagram where we’re being silly, and we’re doing funny things. But the truth of it is that Kiki is a brilliant PA, and she has a passion for female hormones and, you know, really being trained in a Western medical system. Kiki has embraced Eastern medical traditions with her Western medical background and is creating and has created a new way of training and coaching women around their hormones and around the way their bodies work. So welcome back. 

Kiki: That was a way better intro than the first one. I just feel like everything’s gonna be better about this episode.

Regina: This morning. I told Kiki I said Listen, I’ve got bad news and I’ve got good news. And she was like what? And I was like bad news. Your podcast episode is gone. Good news. This next one is gonna be even better. And he just looked at me and was like, “Okay, sounds good.” which was kind of how at one o’clock in the morning when I realized the episode was gone. My response was like, Alright, let’s just do it again.

Kiki: We’re all good. I can talk for hours.

Regina:  I know. I know you know I live with you.

Regina: So something that you are working really heavily on right now is educating women on what is actually going on in their bodies. And you talk a lot about the fact that they are not being given the right information. They’re being told they’re crazy, or their hormone levels are fine. Why are you so passionate about educating women in this way?

Kiki: Because I’ve been on the side of it as the patient and I understand how frustrating it is to feel totally hopeless and to be suffering so severely that it’s affecting your everyday life. And I was lucky enough to have someone to turn to my dad had been trained in this work for a few years by the time I was diagnosed, so I knew that he would know what to do. Now, whether or not that worked for me is another story. But I know what it’s like. And so I’ve been there I’ve done that. And I mean I was diagnosed with PCOS immediately when my career started when I first started working with my dad. And after I went through that period of time where I was really struggling and really suffering. I knew like this was my journey because I’m supposed to help women in that same position.

Regina: What is the problem with the way that Western medicine traditionally diagnosis women with PCOS?

Kiki: So there are really strict criteria that we’re all trained in medical school and PA school to diagnose women with PCOS, there are the Rotterdam criteria, and there’s another set of criteria, but the specifics of it are women are supposed to have three things, irregular periods, signs, and symptoms of androgen excess, meaning high levels of male hormones in their body. So testosterone da ga DHT. So that would be like pimples on your face, chest, or back hair loss on your head, hair growth on your face, and body. And then you also so the name Polycystic means you have multiple cysts on your ovaries, and multiple I want to say it’s not like you can have 10 it’s like you have to have 27 or more something insane like that. Like if you have one, you don’t necessarily have PCOS according to that criteria. So for example, I mean, my first inclination of having anything even remotely close to PCOS was when I was 15. I had a hemorrhagic ovarian cyst, meaning the cyst had blood in it, I had a rupture, and it released the blood into my abdomen and irritated the lining of my abdominal cavity so badly that the Children’s Hospital I went to thought I had appendicitis. And they took me in for surgery to remove my appendix even though it looked normal on a CAT scan. And so they cut into me blood came out, they realized what it was they looked with the camera, they were like, Oh, it was just a cyst. Sew me up, brought me out of surgery within like five minutes. And they were like, okay, you’re going on birth control, there was no conversation about hey, you might have PCOS, hey, like this might be a problem for the rest of your life. Now, here’s, here’s some birth control, put a bandaid on it. And like let’s never talk about it again, because we don’t really know what to do for you So that is why so many women who have PCOS who I diagnosed with it are missed. They’re missed because there are such strict criteria for it when you go to a conventional doctor who follows that. 

Regina: What are your criteria for diagnosing somebody with PCOS?

Kiki: Like I do all things, my criteria are very loose. So I mean, symptoms of PCOS are, you know, having pimples having acne, having adult acne, having irregular periods, having no period, not being able to get pregnant hair loss on your head, hair growth on your face, and body trouble with weight, brain fog, trouble with sleep like all the above. So if you come to me and you have one of those symptoms, and I suspect you have PCOS, I’m treating you as such, I’m diagnosing you with it. There is a test that I do. Basically what I do is look at your FSH and LH which are fertility hormones that fluctuate depending on where you are in your cycle. They stand for your follicle-stimulating hormone and your luteinizing hormone. I look at the ratio of them and so at any point in your cycle, your FSH should be higher but if your LH is higher, it’s a diagnosis of PCOS for me and the way that I’m trained. I don’t necessarily need that to diagnose a woman with PCOS but um, and the reason I say that is because it can be hard to catch that ratio flip. For example, one of my sisters was really hard to catch that. We had to check serial FSH and LH ratios weekly for four weeks, and we didn’t catch it till the fourth time. So like, it’s not necessary for someone to go have their blood work done weekly as I can say, you will you have adult acne, you probably have PCOS, we’re going to treat the insulin resistance, and if it gets better, Case in point. So that’s really how I approach it in my practice. 

Regina: How have you learned to look at one of the symptoms like what has taught you to consider one thing versus all the things? 

Kiki: Um, experience. So, you know, in my training, I mean, I’ve received really different specific training to address hormones the way that I do. And over time, I’ve really, I’m utilizing what I’ve learned, but I’ve also put my own spin on it because of my own personal experience and my experience with my patients. So the bottom line is, I mean, we all suffer from insulin resistance. And that’s because we’re exposed to so much shit on a daily basis. There are chemicals and literally, everything, all the foods that we, you know, I literally like, Don’t keep things in the house that has like any chemicals in it. Like I’m very strict about the food that Regina and I keep in our apartment. Yeah, nothing was citric acid. citric acid is not citric acid from citrus fruit. It is a multi genetic genetically modified corn that is used as a preservative in a lot of food. Start looking at your food labels, you will see it on almost everything processed, even some things that you wouldn’t expect that don’t seem like they would be that processed. For example, salsa, hummus, like a lot of dips. were big dip people. 

Yeah, like it’s in so many things that you wouldn’t expect. So anyway, we’re exposed to so much crap, that we all have an underlying level of insulin resistance in our bodies because the chemicals we’re exposed to mess with our endocrine systems they’re called these chemicals are called endocrine modulators or endocrine disruptors for a reason, meaning they mess with the systems in our bodies that regulate our hormones. So PCOS  is a condition fueled by insulin resistance. So it’s like what’s the harm in treating you for insulin resistance? You have it whether you have PCOS or not. But in women with PCOS, I see a really big difference in the symptoms when I treat their PCOS. So the acne clears up, you know, the hair growth on the face is better. The hair loss can slow. I mean, it helps with energy, it helps with weight, it helps with everything. So it’s kind of getting to be like, Well, why not? And then even men who come to me in my medical practice, I do treat men’s hormones and I have all along. But men have been coming to me with acne too. And I treat I never used to do this I just started doing this recently, treating their insulin resistance and their acne is getting better too. So the assumption by a lot of doctors is that acne is coming from high testosterone. But I see low testosterone in men and women all the time. So where’s the acne coming from? It’s insulin resistance.

Regina: Interesting. Something else that you have said is a huge culprit for sickness and illness and people is untreated Epstein Barr disease. Yes. Tell listeners a little bit about Epstein Barr. 

Kiki: So,  Epstein Barr virus is the virus that causes mono. So they even taught us in school. You’re not supposed to be able to get mono a second time, which is so interesting. So I became hyper-obsessed with Epstein Barr because… I always like to tell this story because it’s a great story. And the time he went to the valley, yeah, of course.

So Regina and I were in Santa Monica for New Year from 2018 to 2019. Like New Year’s time. And yes, I was hanging out in the valley a lot. 

Regina: And we were making fun of her because the valley is like, people that live in LA are like oh my god, valleys, trash. It’s really not like the valley is a beautiful place but we just like to give her a hard time and she kept going back to the valley. 

Kiki:  I met a guy, you know. 

Regina:  We always make fun of her because of that. 

Kiki: So I ended up getting like, deathly ill like, deathly. And they kept making fun of me like, of course, you got sick, you were hanging out in the valley. But I ended up missing my flight because we were having way too much fun on New Year’s Eve, and then I took a red-eye home that night, and I woke up on the plane and I was like, Oh my god, I cannot move. I’m in so much pain. And I was exhausted. My throat was killing me. I had horrible body aches. My back was killing me. I somehow made it home pass out for literally like two days straight. Woke up so dehydrated with a raging kidney infection, strep infection, and wasn’t sure what else was wrong. 

Regina: So your mom was at your bedside tapping on her phone? 

Kiki:  Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, the sound turned on, and was texting on her. You know her iPhone, and it was making that sound and I was trying to sleep

Regina: Could you imagine being so ill and like your mom is in she was in your bedroom in our Philly house. Right? Yeah. It’s like sitting in Kiki’s bedroom, just like texting with the text sound. And then she’d send the message. Here we go.

Kiki: I was so annoyed. So anyway, my mom took me to their local urgent care, they sent me to the ER, the ER did everything under the sun. They checked me for like blood clots in my legs, like all kinds of shit. And they had no idea what was going on, aside from the kidney infection and strep infection, and they’re like, we’re not we don’t know why you’re in so much pain. We don’t know why your lymph nodes are so swollen. Like, we don’t know why you can’t walk. But like, we’re gonna send you home now. And I’m like, Great. Okay, so we’re sitting in the ER, and my mom says to me, I feel like this Mono. Like, could you have Monoagain? And I was like, I guess I could, but like now that’s not it. Well, you know, a mother’s intuition is always right. 

So a few weeks later, I was better. And I was like, let me look into this. Maybe it was. And so when you have Mono, your Epstein Barr antibodies will always be elevated. But you can look at like three different levels. And if they’re over, like 600 or something, it’s a diagnosis of a recurrence. And so mine came back, like, off the charts, like couldn’t even be measured so high. So it was a flare of Epstein Barr, I had heard about that. But like, I didn’t really know that was like a thing that affected people. And so I started throughout the year 2019 one week a month I was so I was that deathly ill for a full week, seven days in bed, raging strep infection and a flare of Epstein Barr. And I was like, Okay, I’m a PA like I can figure this out. I know what to do. 

I was so sick. It was like every time I traveled every time I did anything, It just puts so much stress on my body, I shouldn’t have been drinking but of course, I was you know anytime I would eat McDonald’s,  guys I’m such a hypocrite but I’m such a McDonald’s fan. Although I haven’t had a few in a few weeks. I’ve been pretty good lately. That’s a topic for a different day. The trashy eating ways of Kelly Shiple? 

Regina: Well, it’s trauma-related. 

Kiki: Yeah, for sure. Anyways, so anytime I did anything I was just like deathly ill and so um, I started you know, trying to eat better I was taking all my supplements I was actually still on hormones at the time. So I was like taking my hormones to try to support my body from that aspect. And like nothing was working I was still getting sick. And so six months of this went by and I was finally like, oh my god fuck this I’m so over it. I’m so over being in bed for what out of four weeks a month like and missing work and like missing my whole life. It was just crazy. And so I started doing a lot of research. And I’m just thinking how funny is it? It took me six months of doing that for me to actually start researching what to do like that’s how stubborn I am. I was like, I can do this. I can do this on my own. No, I could not. I needed help. So anyway, I immediately came across the Medical Medium when I started researching chronic Epstein Barr because that’s what he is all about. And so basically, a lot of people actually think he’s a quack which is fine. Those are my people. People that don’t follow, you know that goes against the grain. Yeah. So he and this is why they think he’s a quack which I think your community will appreciate. He when he was a kid had an angel appear to him and tell him that he had a special gift, where this angel would tell him when he was looking at someone, what was going on in that person’s body and how to treat it. And so, to this day, Anthony Williams in the Medical Medium does that. And has helped a lot of people I mean, he’s, he’s famous like he’s helped celebrities, he was on the Kardashians, there’s a lot of people who have really bought into what he preaches. And I am definitely one of those people. But basically, his whole philosophy and this is why I have bought into it because it does make sense to me is that Epstein Barr lives in all of our bodies and kind of hides out. And it’s just a matter of it becoming activated or us creating an environment where it can really thrive and grow and mutate is what contributes to making a lot of us really sick and causing a lot of symptoms. So he even says that we don’t know enough about autoimmune conditions to treat them. But he says that chronic viruses like Epstein Barr, the Herpes virus, chronic strep, strep goes hand in hand with Epstein Barr, which makes sense because that’s what I was experiencing at the same time. That all is what is contributing to autoimmune conditions, and that it’s not our body attacking itself. It’s our body attacking those viruses or bacteria, which like, that makes so much sense to me. 

So he has, you know, a lot of like really natural treatment that he recommends to address the different like chronic viruses and bacteria in our bodies that can like wreak havoc. So one is celery juice. Regina and I have celery juice, yeah, most mornings. Um, you know he I mean he basically advocates for like, filling your diet with as many fruits and vegetables as you can. He talks so much about fruit and what great powerful antioxidants they are, how they’re actually a stronger antioxidant than vegetables. So what’s the harm in drinking some celery juice? Taking dome-like natural, you know, herbal tinctures. And in filling your diet with fruits and vegetables, like nothing. So like, we all should be eating like that. And like taking care of ourselves like that. So I see no harm in, subscribing to everything he preaches. And it’s I mean, it changed my life. That’s when I finally started, making a recovery and like getting better and going longer between getting sick. And now I mean, I get sick, maybe knock on wood, like once or twice a year at this point, like a normal human. Yeah.

Regina: I also think too, like medicine changes, right? Like medicine changes over time, things that we thought were a thing before, even the way that like food allergies, happen in the body, like 10 years ago, versus now it’s very different. The way that they recommend for us to eat now, has changed every five years. Like it’s a different recommendation based on your studies. So I think if it’s something like I always am defensive of celery juice, yeah. Because people will be like, Oh my god, like, why are you doing such a fad? And I’m like, well, it’s not hurting me. Yeah, and I see the benefits of it. So like, who cares, right?

Kiki: Like, a doctor can even tell you till they’re blue in the face to do something. But if you try it and it doesn’t work for you, or you don’t feel good doing it, you shouldn’t be doing it, you should be listening to your body and that doctor should respect that. So like with anything, you have to kind of do a little experiment on yourself to see how your body tolerates what you’re doing. So if you’re drinking celery juice, and it’s working for you, great if you’re drinking celery juice and it’s making you vomit every day, then you know maybe you need to start like low and slow with like a small amount of it or just incorporating more vegetables into your diet because your body is clearly so toxic, you can’t even handle it.

Regina: Well and I think that also goes to the point that everybody is so different, which is also why you are a student of Ayurveda medicine right? What is that?

Kiki: So Ayurveda medicine is like an ancient Eastern Indian way of approaching medicine.

It’s been around for freakin ever. Which, I just think is so cool and so underutilized like why would we not rely on an ancient form of medicine that works. That is like a natural approach to healing the body well, another soapbox, but of course, we don’t because there’s no money in it.

That’s a whole nother topic to get into that really grinds my gears.

I got a nerd hat right on right now. Anyways, so yeah, I decided, you know, I’m a PA I like to know everything about something before I’m teaching about it. And so I figured what better way to do that than to go through an IRB-like health counselor program. So I started about a year ago, I’m halfway through, I finished the classroom portion. And we’re starting the clinical part actually next week. But that has been really fascinating. So one of the basic concepts of Ayurveda is your Dosha, which is your mind-body type. And so, you depending on your dosha, your dosha is made up of different gunas or qualities, and you are supposed to actually eat and act and live your life in the opposite way of the gunas that are contributing to a doshic imbalance. 

So basically, Ayurveda is breaking down different people into different components of each dosha. So we all have all three. Right? So we all have a little bit of all three, but the question is, which one is totally out of balance, and sometimes it’s two. Usually, it’s not three that are completely out of whack. Usually, like the most it’ll be is two unless you’re really out of balance, like, more often than not, it’s one big one that we can focus on. And so, for example, I have a Kafka, dosha imbalance. And I, so I have trouble with Kafka, Kafka is like heavy. Like, dense, cold, so like, eating cold foods for me, doesn’t help me like eating a salad can like really fuck my gut up? When you know, you think like, Okay, if you need to lose weight, like the go-to is okay, yeah, salad. So I have had to learn to like incorporate more cooked vegetables and like, even cooked fruits into my diet, especially at times when I’ve really been struggling with my weight and bloating and gut health, and all of that. So I definitely think like a missing piece that like Western medicine overlooks like, Western medicine treats everybody as the same, like, okay, your blood pressure’s high, we don’t care why we’re gonna put you on this medication. And we don’t care how your body processes medication. Like, we’re just going to put you on this dose because everybody gets that. Yeah. Whereas I mean, on that topic, I’ve had periods of time in my practice, where I’ve gone into different genetic testing. And I’ve seen that like, everybody processes everything differently. Everybody has these different genetic mutations that affect the way we process things. And that’s what contributes to whether or not you tolerate a medication, you can tolerate a higher dose, lower dose, you know, all the above. I mean, that should be done in western medicine, like, as just as a standard of care, before you’re putting a person on any medication. But why would we do that? So anyways, Ayurvedic medicine is really just like addressing the individual as an individual and acknowledging that, like, everybody’s different. And here’s why, because we all have these different mind-body types. And we can have varying percentage percentages of all three, depending on the person, and like you have to address all the ins and outs of all of those imbalances in order to get it right and to get the body back into balance. So that’s why I was really interested in learning about that.

Regina: I’m just thinking about Ayurvedic medicine and how it’s very specific to the individual. And most Eastern medicine is specific to the individual. And I’m thinking about in western medicine, how it’s just not. Yeah. And like, the whole system is kind of been set up in a way to like, provide medicine, medical treatment to the masses, and in the quickest, most efficient way. And so like, when you go to see your primary care doctor, you only usually spend like five to 10 minutes max with your PCP. Everything else is done by a nurse that comes in and gets the information from you. Yeah. And I feel like it’s all for the sake of, what’s the most efficient way to deal with the symptoms presented? Not with the depth of what’s actually going on, right?

Kiki: Like, how many people can we jam-pack into a day? And how can we see them as quickly as possible, it makes the most money. And that leaves no room for getting to the root of the cause, you know, and like, you could probably track most things back to like, underlying insulin resistance from or what chemicals we’re exposed to. And then that leads to the high blood pressure, the high cholesterol, the heart disease, the heart attack, you know, the Arteriosclerosis, the plaque build-up in the vessels in the heart, and then, you know, like it just Yes, on and on dementia, like that. Down the road, like, it’s just one to the next to the next. But nobody addresses the root cause so it just progresses.

Regina: And it’s also like, it’s the system in which doctors are trained. So you can’t even really get mad at Western doctors for like, how they’re trained. Like, that’s the system we have, that’s our system, they’ve bought into that, and like, they don’t really know, you know, doctors I’ve spoken to will be like, I had, like one course on nutrition, right? in medical school, our PCOS lecture,

I did my, I guess it would be like a dissertation or whatever. We didn’t really like have to do that in our program. But we had a presentation we had to give at the end before we could graduate as part of our research course that we did. And mine was on PCOS. And I mean, my lecture was way longer and more thorough than our lecture on PCOS in PA school. Yeah, it was like, you know, we may have talked about it for 10 minutes during an OB-GYN class lecture. Like, we barely talked about it. But now I’ve attended, you know, I mean, God, countless weekend-long courses, where we’re in, we’re in a lecture hall for 30 hours over a weekend. And, you know, I mean, we’re talking about PCOS and hormones the whole time. Yeah. And so I laugh when I hear, you know, primary doctors and gynecologists and endocrinologists telling my patients that I don’t know what I’m talking about. And then I’m causing harm. Because I’m like, show me the literature. Show me the research study that says that I’m causing harm, because actually, most of the research studies done on hormones, show support on what I’m doing? Yeah. This is why I do what I do I have evidence-based medicine to back it up. The problem is the big pharma companies and you know, whatever money is invested by whatever company to fund the research study. They’re dictating what the conclusion is that’s drawn. Yeah. And if you actually read recent research, study, start to finish. The body of the research study proves one thing and the conclusion says another. And it’s, I mean, I tell my patients all the time, Western medicine is all money, money in politics. Yeah. Nobody cares about your health. Nobody cares about you getting better. They’re trying to mask whatever’s going on because keeping you on medication for the rest of your life is what’s you know, it’s worth buying their private jets. I mean, it is what it is. 

Regina: With your background, your new karma, and training, the Ayurvedic training you’re going through, and then everything we talked about with the Medical Medium, what does that make coaching with you look like?

Kiki: So, I really, again, try to tailor whatever I’m doing to the person. So it definitely depends on you know, your history, what you’ve been through the symptoms you’re experiencing, all the above and I mean, hormone optimization is what that’s my sweet spot that’s what I’ve been doing forever and you know, throughout my whole career as a PA, so that always plays a part in how I’m addressing my clients, but you know, the Ayurvedic medicine piece, gets Added to that the Medical Medium piece gets added to that too because I mean if you’re having hormone issues, then you’re absolutely struggling with some kind of chronic viral infection that causes the hormone issues likely as a result of things you’ve been eating and you know, things you’ve been exposed to. And then we also need to address the way you’re eating and the way you know your daily routine is and the way you’re living your life. And make sure that it is in alignment with what your dosha is, and what your dosha imbalance is. Okay? So it all gets incorporated into what I’m doing in the coaching realm.

Regina: And what type of coaching containers are you’re working with people in right now.

Kiki: So I am launching next Tuesday, a well I already launched it, but we’re starting next Tuesday, a small group coaching container called “Love Your Hormones, Love Yourself.”. And we are going to be making meetings weekly virtually for group calls and then it’s also going to include a one on one call with me. And then I also offer one on one coaching container so we can do a one-time deep dive. We can do a monthly container where we’re meeting one on one weekly, over the course of a month. And or I have a three-month coaching container as well. 

Regina: Where do people find information out about your different offerings?

Kiki: I’m on Instagram under @kikishiple, and www.KellyShiple.com.

Regina Lawrence Esq. is a former trial attorney and law school professor turned soulful business & life strategist. She has found that so many entrepreneurs have these brilliant ideas and dreams but don’t know how to take the dream and create a system or structure to make that dream & idea profitable.  That is where Regina comes in.  With discipline, consistency, systems & structure, we can’t help but create profit & fulfillment from our soul-driven business ideas.

Regina’s approach to coaching marries her background in legal analysis, spirituality, mindset coaching, holistic nutrition, and neuroscience to create an experience that will assist you in getting into alignment, get clear on what you are here to do and what steps and systems to implement to make that dream a profitable reality.

You can find Regina on Instagram @reginaalawrence.