What if the missing piece in your PCOS or hormone healing journey isn't your ovaries—it's your gut? In this powerful episode, I sit down with Dr. Anya Szigeti, chiropractic internist and functional medicine expert, to explore how gut health influences everything from hormone balance and inflammation to thyroid function, fertility, and PCOS symptoms. Dr. Anya shares her personal transformation from chronically ill patient to practitioner, and why conventional medicine failed to connect the dots. Together, they discuss leaky gut, estrogen detox, antibiotics, birth control, and even how your birth and breastfeeding history could shape your immune resilience. Whether you're struggling with fatigue, irregular cycles, or just want to understand your body better, this episode will open your eyes to the gut-hormone connection and help you take your healing to the next level—with compassion, clarity, and a dose of humor.
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You’re not broken. Your symptoms are a message—and your body can heal, starting with your gut.
(0:01 - 3:19) Hey there and welcome back to PCOS Unfiltered, where we ditch the fads and get real about healing with PCOS. I'm your host, Lindsie, and today's episode is extra special because I'm joined by Dr. Anya Szigeti, a chiropractic internist specializing in functional medicine and nutrition. We're diving into the role of gut health on hormones and PCOS. You're going to walk away with real world insights, a few laughs and lots of empowerment. So let's jump in. Okay, welcome, welcome. I have a very, very special guest today, a good friend of mine and special guest, Dr. Anya Szigeti. And I'm just going to let her kind of start it off. So first, can you just share about your journey and what's kind of brought you what you do and what's brought you here? I shall. Thank you so much, Lindsie, for this opportunity. So my journey actually began as a patient and I struggled for years with a laundry list of symptoms, including things like chronic fatigue, bloating, brain fog, irregular cycles. And then I was eventually diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Unfortunately, conventional medicine or allopathic medicine really only had one thing for me, and that was medication. And I didn't see that as a real solution because I felt like there was more. And so that search, that journey led me to holistic functional medicine. And through looking at the specific imbalances within my own health, my diet, my lifestyle, preparing my gut, balancing out my hormones, I was able to reclaim my energy and I was able to reverse many of my symptoms. And that journey transformed my health and my life so much. And I felt called to help others to do the same. So I actually quit my very high stress job in corporate America and went back to school, became a doctor. And now I help to guide other women who are going through their own health journeys. That's amazing. And then through some connections a long, long time ago now. It's crazy. It's been a little while, but yeah, we met and then it was very serendipitous, I think, when we met because I was struggling with a lot of those kind of similar things myself. And yeah, and then it's just gone on since then. So yeah, was there a defining moment when you realized how the gut plays such a huge role in overall health? Yes. And unfortunately for me with my journey, it was after years of trial and error, jumping from like doctor to doctor being referred to different specialists and not really getting any answers from any of them that I was connected with my holistic functional doctor.
(3:19 - 5:48) And he ordered a comprehensive diagnostic stool analysis, which revealed a lot of amazing information. It's actually one of my favorite tests that I order for my patients now. You get very up close and personal with your stool. Very true. But I was able to see that I had pretty significant imbalances called dysbiosis within my own gut and some overgrowth and also some permeability within my gut, which now that I know what I know, those can all lead to a whole host of issues and were triggering a lot of my symptoms. And then when I started on the treatments and the recommendations and my thyroid antibodies started dropping and my energy started soaring and my cycles regulated, I was like, oh my gosh, this is kind of the key here. And so when we look at the whole body and holistic functional medicine, we look at the gut as a very big piece of the puzzle. There's lots of quotes from back in the day that all disease begins in the gut, but I believe that all health begins in the gut because once we are able to bring the gut into balance, that's where the majority of our immune system is. We're consuming food multiple times a day. So all these pieces of the puzzle have to go through the gut. And once that is balanced, other things just fall into place like a beautiful domino effect of holistic functional medicine. Yeah, for sure. So what's one thing that you wish more women knew about their guts, even if they're not experiencing any obvious digestive symptoms, what would you say? I would say one of the biggest things is that just because you don't have an overt symptom doesn't mean you don't have an imbalance. So a lot of times we look at or think of the commercials where you have gas, bloating, diarrhea, gas reflux. So those you're like, oh, that's definitely something going on with my gut. But what about anxiety, brain fog, joint pain, fatigue, skin problems, thyroid imbalance, hormone imbalances, those can all stem from an imbalanced gut. So it's a very important piece of the puzzle that affects our mental health, our cognitive function, our immune system, literally everything. And so that's something that I was so thankful that my doctor, my holistic functional doctor checked for me.
(5:48 - 7:29) And that is one of the main areas that I check with the majority of my patients too, just because it can cover so many pieces of the puzzle. So just because you don't have an overt symptom that you'd say would tie right to the gut doesn't mean you don't have a gut imbalance. Yeah. That was like one big thing for me because like knowing what I know now and looking back, there were definitely some things that I'm like, yeah, like my body was trying to tell me something back then, but I just wasn't listening. But also I think because yeah, traditional medicine doesn't associate some of those symptoms. Like they just don't look at the overall picture. So I talk a lot about skin. I feel like a lot like with my clients, I've mentioned it on other podcasts and how the skin is saying so much, but when you go to a doctor, a dermatologist, whatever, because you have some little rash, they're just like, here's the cream and they don't associate with anything that could be going on inside your body. And when the skin is the largest organ, especially, and it's the outward facing organ, it's telling us so, so much. For sure. The skin is definitely an area that is going to reflect the health of the gut. And I often will share with patients that come to me with skin or even hair or nail complaints. And I have to explain to them from the very beginning, okay, that's what you see, but your body is very wise and it knows that there's imbalances going on elsewhere. This is its way of telling you something's wrong. We're going to work together.
(7:30 - 8:01) We're going to bring things back into balance, but I hate, you know, I kind of hate to tell them, but the hair, skin and nails are often the last on the priority list because your body's going to heal, you know, your kidneys and your brain and your heart and your gut. All of those are going get priority over your hair, skin and nails, but the hair, skin and nails are what we see. We start there and just fix that. I'll work on the rest of the stuff now. That's not how the body works. The body is very wise and it's going to go in the hierarchy of survival.
(8:02 - 12:02) What's vital. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's very true for sure. So how does the gut play a role with hormones? How, how can it directly affect hormones? And this could be for women in general, or, you know, specifically for women with PCOS. Yes. So the gut plays a huge role in one of the main functions of the gut with hormones is metabolization of estrogens. And we have three main estrogens. I'm sure that you educate on all of those. And so it helps to get those excess estrogens out of the body. And so, you know, when we have estrogen, obviously women, we need estrogen for sure. We want to have enough to be able to make estrogens enough of the precursors. We want to have the proper amounts and the proper time of our cycle to have it. And then we want to be able to properly metabolize it and properly detoxify it. And so the gut plays a huge role with that because otherwise we have excess estrogen hanging around and that can cause estrogen dominance and other hormone imbalances, which we don't want. The gut also plays a role with blood sugar control and inflammation. And so when our gut's imbalanced, it's going to worsen our ability to, you know, manage our estrogen. So make, or I'm sorry, our insulin, this makes us more insulin resistant. It can trigger chronic inflammation throughout the entire body, which is the foundation of literally everything that we don't want, including PCOS and Hashimoto's thyroiditis, unfortunately. And of course impairs our body's ability to properly detoxify, especially our estrogens. Yeah. Yeah. So can an unhealthy gut worsen symptoms? Like, well, I guess we kind of, we kind of answered that, but yeah. Yeah. But it definitely can. I mean, and then when the gut lining is damaged as well, taking it kind of one step further, that can increase cortisol, that can raise blood sugar, trigger the systemic inflammation, and actually can impair ovulation. And so when we look at someone with PCOS, they were already in this very delicate hormone balance. And so having an unhealthy gut is going to just really push us, or, you know, push that person really far out of balance, unfortunately. Is that kind of leaky gut? Is that what you would call that at that point? Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. So there's definitely different stages of it. And I do have some awesome testing that I use to see where we are with the stages of leaky gut. And so just to touch on that really quickly, just in case someone hasn't heard of leaky gut before, but our gut lining, and I'm going to use my hands because it's easier to see it. So our gut lining is supposed to have little gaps in it. So it's supposed to be semi permeable to allow a certain size particles to pass through, but we don't want big particles to pass through because it's basically, if you think about it, it's a tube from the beginning to the end, going all the way through. And so we want to make sure that the really small particles can get out into systemic circulation, but the bigger particles are staying in so that the body can properly break them down and absorb them. But what happens is through stress and over the counter medications or prescription meds, even birth control, alcohol use, all these different things, traumas in our life can break that lining down. And then we have big gaps in the gut lining and then larger particles can pass through into systemic circulation and cause out of just the baseline is going to cause systemic inflammation throughout the body, but it can also trigger things, unfortunately like Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So one of the tests that I use pretty commonly now looks at different proteins. Are we breaking down the lining? Are we breaking down the structure, like structural breakdown of the gut? So I can see how advanced the damage is with leaky gut.
(12:03 - 14:01) Okay. Yeah, that's great. I just felt like we were kind of like leading into that a little bit. So I wanted you to just touch on that because it's also kind of something that I feel like kind of gets tossed around a little bit, you know, maybe a doctor's mentioned it, maybe they haven't, but, or they might've described it, but she didn't kind of know what it was. So I felt like, yeah, that was good that we need to kind of talk about that. Another term that's tied with that is increased intestinal permeability. So if someone hears that term, that's leaky gut, leaky gut is kind of the shorter term for it, but increased intestinal permeability is the more clinical term for it as well. Awesome. So yeah, why this is like, this is a good one. I like this one. Why do you think so many women don't connect the dots between how they treated their bodies in the past and their current symptoms? This is like, this has been a little bit of a wake-up call recently, I think for me getting some labs and like being reminded that things I probably did, you know, in my twenties and thirties could now kind of be really, you know, coming out. Yeah. So yeah, that's, I wanted to definitely thank you for this question. This is an area that I think we've all been seriously misled, unfortunately. But dysfunctions don't happen overnight. They build up slowly over years of misguided choices and the symptoms, unfortunately, don't show up until much later, years later. So there's a lot of different research out there right now, but roughly about 10 years is the general timeline for a chronic disease to present from the time when the imbalances really started to happen until there's significant symptomology for diagnosis, which is kind of crazy to think about. So, you know, our bodies are beautiful, they're strong, they want to be balanced and they will fight for you until they just can't anymore.
(14:01 - 16:57) And so if we think about, and you know, I'm again, very thankful for a lot of the research that's being done into traumas. So adverse childhood traumas have a huge impact on our health later on in life. Things like birth control use, I know that you and I talked about that too, that I think most of us did. And we just didn't, we weren't, maybe we were told the side effects and we're like, yeah, whatever, that's not going to happen to me because I'm bulletproof. I'm 20, it doesn't matter. Nothing can touch me. And then like high stress lifestyle. Like I remember when I just, I look back and I do the timelines with my patients too, to really, you know, peel back the layers to figure out when things started to happen. But I look back at my own health and I'm like, okay, I was in a high stress job. I was training for ultra marathons and Ironman triathlons. I had been recently divorced. I'd lost my grandmother and my mother. Like I just, I'm listing all these huge things that had just happened in my life. And I'm like, oh my gosh, if one of those were going on, that's a lot for your body. And I had like six or seven massive huge life events that happened in a very short period of time. And then couple that with, you know, the ultra processed food and poor sleep and, you know, hanging out all night and drinking more than we should. And just all these things that we think, you know, aren't going to affect us. And I'm, you know, as guilty as all the others in my twenties and thirties, I thought it was invincible. But that's the beautiful thing with what, you know, you and I are doing now is that we're able to pull together these pieces and start to put it together the puzzle and say, okay, yes, we did these things, but how do we work on, I don't want to say mitigating the damage, but like, where do we start to start to rebalance the body? What do we need to, you know, what isn't serving us in this time right now? And what do we need to add in or do differently to help our bodies to heal and also give ourselves grace? Because we all have a story. We all have a life. We've all done things that, you know, knowing what we know now, we would have done differently, but we can't do that. We can say we're here in this moment right now. And how can I make the best choices for my health and my body moving forward without driving myself crazy? Exactly. Stressing your body out more. Yeah. Like you definitely don't want to, you know, you don't want the shame or the embarrassment or whatever from what you've done in the past kind of coming to a head and then just, yeah, stressing you out more. You just have to kind of, okay. Like you just said, you know, what, what can we tackle first? How can we improve, you know, what's the most important. Yeah. And, and even going back to what you were saying earlier about 10 years, because I definitely 30s, there were definitely some things like no, you know, no, again, knowing what I know now and looking back and I'm like, yeah, but you know, in my twenties, you know, like you just said, you think you're invincible.
(16:58 - 19:32) So yeah, but, but definitely started seeing a lot of it, the digestive issues. And then even the effects of the birth control now, you know, I think played a, played a role in all of that too. So yeah. I looked up some of the side effects of some of the birth control that I used and it was terrifying. Like I'm going to have black box warnings now. Yeah. And then there was like over two years and I used one of them for like nine. Oh, cool. Yeah. I was on mine for like 20 some years. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I don't think I want to look at that, but the thing was too, like my doctor was like, oh, well you actually have a reduced chance of breast cancer and all, ovarian cancer or whatever. Yeah. Because I think, yeah, I think I, she just wanted me to be on it. And then even when I've like had first talked to her about getting off of it, she kind of like shamed me into getting off of it. Yeah. Okay. So what are some ways that past gut damage or years of, of poor self-care can manifest years later as PCOS symptoms or other hormone dysfunction? Yeah. So as we kind of talked about with the damage to the gut lining, even one round of antibiotics in our lifetime, it can completely change the entire terrain of the gut, which is just like mind blowing to me, especially thinking about, you know, obviously my parents did the best that they could, but anytime we were sick, we were on antibiotic. And so now I know how damaged my gut was before, you know, I even had the choice to be able to make those decisions for myself, which is kind of unfortunate to, to see when we look back, but in empowering in a way now to say that, yes, this happened to me, but I can do something about it now. But things like chronic stress, like we talked about the adverse childhood traumas nutrient poor diets. So having the ultra processed food for sure, these all alter and damage the microbiome and damage the gut lining. And so this leads to leaky gut. This leads to inflammation, blood sugar instabilities, thyroid dysfunction, PCOS. But the kind of the big picture with this is this is, this is death by a million small cuts. So this isn't one time because one little cut, our body is brilliant. It can heal. It'll repair a hundred cuts. Our body's still doing it.
(19:32 - 24:49) A thousand cuts, our body's struggling, but it's hanging on. And then we go to college or we get our first job or we're, you know, entering into motherhood. We have relationship stress. We have, we're eating ultra processed foods. We're up all night. We're having alcohol. We're having medications. We have trauma, all this stuff piles up. Our immune system is weakened. Our response is dampened down and it, you know, reduces the resilience of our immune system. And so this becomes a huge issue because then our body isn't able to bounce back as much. And so every little assault cuts a little deeper. And then we look at things like toxic personal care products that we slather on every day and toxic food and beverage products that we're consuming multiple times a day and then toxic relationships, toxic social media and news, unachievable expectations that we put on ourselves or society puts on us. All of this is slowly reducing our resilience and allowing every single cut to penetrate a little deeper, depletes our resources more, weakens our defenses, leaves us vulnerable. And so unfortunately, chronic diseases don't happen every night, fortunately or unfortunately, but you know, the, what is misunderstood or misinformed is that this isn't, you know, this is the result of all these little choices that we've made through decades of the little cuts and little assaults. Yeah. And sometimes it just takes that one thing to just tip it right over the edge, the Campbell's back. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Cause you're like, Oh, that's one thing that caused it. And you're like, yeah, no, it was the thousands of things. And that was the one that you noticed. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I loved like when we first started working together, because you even asked about, you know, how long was I breastfed and, you know, like going back to, you know, to birth. Um, because like you just mentioned about the antibiotics. I mean, I had, I was on amoxicillin, I think like every six months for like a few years because I had strep throat. And then, and then I came to a point where they didn't even test me anywhere. They're like, well, she probably just has it. She has it all the time. So we're just going to put on another set of antibiotics and yeah. And that was probably, you know, like you said, a few of those cuts. Um, and then like, I know for me, it was, it was COVID I think was the final, like I said, looking back now, yes, there were lots of cuts, but then it was COVID because we had the gym dressed out because we had to close the gym. Nobody knew what was going on. We didn't know what this thing was. And then, yeah, that's when I had joint pain and started the gluten, you know, intolerance and all that stuff. And yeah, so definitely wasn't just that period of time, those couple of months, it was like, you know, years and years before that for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And when we look to, um, you know, how we were delivered, which again, isn't our choice, right? That's our mother's choice and our, their doctor's choice and what's the best decision in that moment of time. But if we aren't born vaginally, that is setting us up for an imbalanced immune system from birth. And so that's why I ask those questions because I need to know how far back do we have imbalances? Is this from when you were born? And then, you know, I have some patients that breastfeed their, you know, their children for a year. I have some that do two years and I know like that is a huge, again, like there's a balance with everything. That's a huge stress on the mother. I mean, yes, it's giving amazing nutrients to the, to the child, but like, that's a time stress, you know, nutrient stress, depleting the mother too. So there's like all these other factors to look at when you look at those pieces of the puzzle, but we know for a fact vaginal birth and at least six months, ideally a year of breastfeeding is the research based of having the strongest immune system. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm glad you brought up that birth part because like, I I've heard this throughout like another podcast even and stuff too. And knowing what I know from being in healthcare for as long as I was, how women schedule C-sections or their doctors want to schedule a C-section because it's convenient, you know, for them or the mother you have more control, you know, all this stuff, but you don't realize, yeah, how much more beneficial it could be just having a natural, you know, vaginal birth. But I feel like that was a big trendy thing. I mean, I haven't worked at the bedside, worked in a hospital in several years now, but, but I do remember just talking to a lot of women, seeing a lot of women that it was just the trend was kind of like, yeah, we're just going to schedule a C-section, you know, around this time. Wow. What an amazing conversation. Big thanks to Dr. Anya for sharing her time, her wisdom, and her heart with us today. I hope you're feeling as inspired and empowered as I am.
(24:49 - 25:02) If you'd like to connect with Dr. Anya, you can find all the info in the show notes. And if you loved today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, share it with a friend who needs to hear it and leave a quick review. It helps us reach even more amazing women just like you.
(25:02 - 25:09) Until next time, keep nourishing your body, healing your heart and thriving unfiltered and unstoppable.