Endocrine Wellness

08/31/2026

Be strong. Be brave. Do hard things. That was my mantra Saturday morning as I headed to the Missouri River to do a 20 mile river race ON an iSUP. (Inflatable stand up paddleboard…little slower than a hard board!)Race for the Rivers is a fundraiser to help keep our rivers clean and this was their 20th year!

Most of my friends, patients and colleagues know I love to paddleboard! But what most people don’t know is what it took to get me to race day…. A year ago my left knee hurt so bad it hurt to walk. Hurt to paddleboard. It even hurt to dance! 😔My feet hurt everyday getting out of bed and I woke up most mornings with mid back pain. (I was a MESS!) I had massive shoulder restriction from an old injury and menopause wasn’t exactly kind in the weight department as I had gained a significant amount of weight. There was a whole lot of stuff going on in my life that culminated to where I was a year ago. And to be honest, some of those issues went even further back. I would say it all came to a head a year ago. All the supplements and decent/clean eating (because I’m not perfect) were not enough. I wanted to lose weight but what I really wanted was to be able to move easily and to be strong. Because if I’m honest, I was never happy with my weight. No matter how thin I was in the past, I would still pick my body a part. I am and will always be my worse critic. (Something else I’m working on!) I decided to focus on creating a body that could do hard things and NOT the size inside my clothes.

I came across Moves Method and decided I would give another workout/app a try. Part of it included a one on one call to see if you wanted to upgrade to having a personal online coach. I was skeptical. 🧐 Yet, I have signed up for many others, that I believe were great, but I didn’t stick with them long term. I bit the bullet and got a coach for the next 6 months. It has been hard. Like really hard! But the 6 months ended and I decided to sign up for another year because I still had a ways to go. Well now I needed some goals! I did a 3 mile lake race in 2023 and I planned to repeat that one but couldn’t due to a schedule conflict. And that is how I landed on a 20 mile river race. (Which by the way was technically 21.1 miles! 🥴😭). My coach worked with me by creating routines that would support my goal.

Here’s the crazy part…I had only paddled a max of about two miles and maybe about 90 minutes total paddle time. But hey, I only need to go 10x further and 4-5x longer!!! I really wasn’t sure what to expect because I had only paddled on lakes. Turns out I’m stronger and braver than I imagined and finished the race in 3 hours and 39 minutes!!!

I loaded up on supplements the morning of the race. If you are familiar with Standard Process and MediHerb you will recognize what I took. (SP Red Food, Vascular Care Complex, Rhodiola & Ginseng and Drenamin along with Possible Whole Food Electrolytes. After the race I took a lot of Nervagesic!!!! Oh, did I mention I broke my pinky toe one month before the race?? 🙄

Race day comes and I am NERVOUS! When I walked down the boat ramp and saw the Missouri River moving…I had a mental freak out. 😬. Like I have to be slightly crazy to do this! Heather Alderton, my niece, was there to cheer me on…take pictures and whatever else I needed. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear her voice until about 15 miles in when I heard her! Somehow she found a bridge to watch from. So thank you Heather…there are no words to express how much that meant to me. ♥️

So why the long and personal post? I guess I’m hoping it will reach the right person who needs to remember that they can be brave and do hard things too and then do them! Enjoy the pictures that I am bravely sharing. Maybe next year I will do a side by side!!!

08/26/2026

Reposting here!

08/16/2026

https://www.secretsinhealthcare.com/microsmacros

Join Dr. Steve Hughlett, Dr. Ann Hines, and Dr. Annette Schippel on August 22, 2026, for a practical conversation on nutrition, hormonal wellness, and sexual health. Seating is limited to 70 guests. Reserve your seat today.

08/14/2026

Hey! If you’d like to hear Dr. Annette teach, she’ll be speaking on sexual health, hormone balancing, and overall wellness at the Micros, Macros & Sexual Health Seminar!

📅 Saturday, August 22nd
⏰ 9:00 AM–1:00 PM
💵 $40 online or at the door
📍 Still Waters International Ministries
5400 US Hwy 160, Walnut Shade, MO 65771

🎟️ Get your tickets at SecretsInHealthcare.com/MicrosMacros or pay cash at the door.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn foundational wellness strategies for living your best life! 🌿

08/14/2026

Ferritin... it's a word we've been hearing a lot lately. Whether it's high or low, it's definitely a hot topic! Check out Dr. Annette's new video to learn all about ferritin and how she looks at an iron panel through a functional lens.
https://youtu.be/2XeFXJrxYQo?si=MALqJt9xaifVQ58q

08/11/2026

Join me and the other great speakers for an amazing weekend!!!

08/10/2026

I talk a lot about sleep and if we are getting ENOUGH…but this is about the KIND of sleep we get…mainly deep sleep. And that’s what we need to make sure we are getting. I love the tie into our HRV. It is the main reason I purchased an Oura ring years ago. I can easily see how my day, food, drink and exercise affect my HRV. 😴

What if the single most effective thing we can do to reduce the risk of dementia was not a drug, a supplement, a herb, or even a brain-training program, but instead was getting the right kind of sleep? A growing body of research suggests that during deep, uninterrupted non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep the brain performs one of its most important jobs: flushing away toxic waste products that accumulate during the day. A major new review argues that disruption of this nightly cleaning process may be the common pathway that links ageing, chronic stress, depression, cardiovascular disease, toxins and poor sleep to an increased risk of dementia.

The review proposes that while we sleep, the brain switches into a remarkable "housekeeping mode." During wakefulness, neuromodulators operate largely independently to support behavior and cognition. By contrast, sleep reorganises their activity into a coordinated brain rhythm. Every 50 seconds or so, key brain chemicals, including noradrenaline, serotonin, dopamine and acetylcholine, begin pulsing together in a perfectly coordinated rhythm. These waves gently expand and contract tiny blood vessels, creating a pumping action that flushes cerebrospinal fluid through the brain and removes toxic waste, including the Alzheimer proteins amyloid-beta and tau. In other words, these neuromodulators become vasoactive agents that drive a slow vasomotion, providing the mechanical force that supports glymphatic clearance of metabolic waste.

The dual roles of neuromodulators—as regulators of behavior and mental state during wakefulness and as organisers of sleep architecture and glymphatic clearance during sleep—define a vulnerable system in which imbalance may impair both sleep and brain clearance. This framework may provide a unifying explanation for several long-standing observations. For example, psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression, are characterised by disruptions in neuromodulator signaling and sleep architecture, which are predicted to alter slow vasomotion during sleep. Such changes may impair glymphatic clearance, thereby promoting the accumulation of pathological proteins and thus contributing to the increased risk of neurodegenerative disease that has been observed with these conditions.

As noted above, a key point of the article is that many of the things already known to increase dementia risk disrupt this nightly cleaning cycle. This could explain why so many seemingly unrelated conditions end up increasing the risk of Alzheimer disease. Moreover, an extensive body of literature has implicated age-related decline in glymphatic clearance as a driver of proteinopathies and dementia.

Sleep architecture is the carefully organised cycling between different sleep stages that allows the brain to carry out its essential maintenance functions. Healthy sleep architecture ensures repeated episodes of deep NREM sleep, allowing the cleansing cycles to occur throughout the night. Fragmented sleep, reduced deep sleep, frequent arousals or disrupted transitions between sleep stages may all compromise this process.

So perhaps the most exciting implication is that sleep architecture might become an important target for protecting long-term brain health. Instead of simply asking whether people sleep enough, researchers are now investigating whether they are getting the right kind of sleep, including the deep, rhythmic sleep that allows the brain's cleaning system to work at full capacity.

This intriguing idea remains an emerging hypothesis. The review pulls together a large body of animal and human research, but there is not enough evidence yet to prove the mechanism directly in people. Even so, it offers one of the most compelling explanations yet for why protecting healthy sleep may become the best investments we can make for future brain health.

Another fascinating observation by the authors is that heart rate variability (HRV) may provide a simple, non-invasive window into the brain's nightly cleaning system, because the same neuromodulator oscillations that drive glymphatic clearance during deep NREM sleep also regulate heart rate. Reduced HRV is already associated with ageing, chronic stress, depression, cardiovascular disease and an increased risk of dementia, suggesting it may reflect the disruption of this fundamental sleep rhythm. If confirmed, HRV could become a practical biomarker for identifying individuals at increased dementia risk and for monitoring whether interventions restore healthy sleep physiology and brain clearance.

What about the role of herbs? Very few herbs have been investigated in clinical trials in terms of a specific increase in NREM (especially N3 slow-wave sleep), as measured by polysomnography (EEG). Most herbal sleep studies have instead measured subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, total sleep time or actigraphy, rather than sleep architecture itself.

One of the most fascinating findings in herbal sleep research comes from a small double blind polysomnography study comparing European valerian (Valeriana officinalis) with Mexican valerian (Valeriana edulis) in patients with insomnia. This study measured sleep architecture directly using overnight EEG recordings. Both herbs increased delta (slow-wave, N3) sleep, the deepest and most restorative stage of NREM sleep, while reducing lighter stages of NREM sleep. Mexican valerian also reduced the number of nocturnal awakenings, whereas European valerian produced a somewhat greater increase in REM sleep.

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) has probably the best clinical evidence overall for insomnia. Repeated RCTs and a meta-analysis show improvements in sleep efficiency, sleep duration, wake after sleep onset and sleep quality. However, there is no evidence yet that it specifically increases N3 sleep. Its benefits may result from reducing hyperarousal and stress, allowing more normal sleep architecture to emerge, but this remains to be proven in clinical trials.

For more information see: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42166599/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11731907/

07/15/2026

I love this!!!! So many great points! ♥️♥️♥️

07/13/2026

Jessica here, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday!!!