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Hey, I’m Dr. Kyrin and I totally get it! I’ve been where you are, suffering with the symptoms of Midlife Metabolic Mayhem, worrying about disease and early demise, not realizing I was in hormonal poverty or what to do about it. Surviving life at midlife with no gas and no joy, overweight, tired, sexless and confused about what to do to fix it and finding NO answers in my mainstream medical profession as a Board Certified OBGYN. Everything changed when I discovered ALL the root causes of the hormonal poverty that we women experience at midlife as the cause of the 60+ symptoms of Midlife Metabolic Mayhem, disease and early demise and followed the reqrding path back to hormonal prosperity and successful weight loss, energy, libido, hair and so much more! I share these truths with you here so that you too can get off the couch, into your jeans and back into your joy filled life!
Episodes
Tuesday May 10, 2022
Tuesday May 10, 2022
Are you struggling with hormonal imbalances and health issues? Are you ready to feel better but not sure where to turn?
If so, this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast is for you!
In this episode, host Dr. Kyrin Dunston welcomes Dr. Carolyn Messere, a former colon and rectal surgeon who had a drastic awakening about the truth of her role as a physician that transformed her health, her life, and career. Her journey speaks volumes about essential tasks in life that women must overcome to heal and achieve the brilliant health that is their birthright. She supports busy professionals to help them have energy, and better moods at a healthy body. In addition, in 2015, she became aware of the healing power of indigenous plant and animal medicines and psychedelics and became the medical director for a plant medicine group in Peru.
In this episode, you will learn about:
-What could indigenous plant and animal medicines and psychedelics do for you and your health in midlife?
-How can psychedelics help heal hormonal imbalances?
-What are the risks and benefits of using psychedelics?
-Where to find more info about psychedelics
If you are struggling with hormonal imbalances or other health issues and are interested in exploring psychedelics as a treatment option, this episode is for you!
So grab a cup of tea and join us for this enlightening conversation with Dr. Carolyn Messere.
[01:05] Back to another episode of the hormone prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I'm so grateful that you are choosing to spend this time with me. I have something very interesting for you today. Some of you have reached out on social media with questions about plant and animal medicines, indigenous ones, and psychedelics. You've heard about all the research that's being done and the new indications for plant and animal medicines and some psychedelics. And you're wanting to know my opinion and experience, and I'm wanting to share that with you today. So that's exactly what we're gonna dive into my guest today is a, a colleague and friend who has a lot of experience in this realm. She actually was the medical director, a plant medicine group in Peru, where they had healing retreats for people with autoimmune and other diseases, and she saw some miraculous things happen. And so it's become a part of the practice that she personally uses and uses with her patients.
[02:07] I'll tell you a little bit about her and then will get started. Dr. Carolyn Messere is a former colon and rectal surgeon who had a drastic awakening about the truth of her role as a physician that transformed her health, her life and career. Her journey speaks volumes about essential tasks in life that women must overcome to heal and achieve the brilliant health that is their birthright. She supports busy professionals to help them have energy, better moods at a healthy body. In addition, in 2015, she became aware of the healing power of indigenous plant and animal medicines and psychedelics and became the medical director for a plant medicine group in Peru. There, she organized healing retreats for people with autoimmune diseases, Crohn's disease, autoimmune thyroiditis, and chronic fatigue, and working with a group of Chappo Eros who specialized in plant medicines from the jungles. She witnessed people with miraculous changes and some got better in just six weeks. Welcome Dr. Carolyn Messere.
[03:07] Thank you very excited to be here. It's not often I get the opportunity to talk about this. You know, almost every time we have any kind of get together with the, the mastermind. We always try to, I always try to talk about this kind of stuff, because it is the cutting edge right now with medicine. When you really look at it, and we've been looking at jungle medicine for a really long time, you know, we've tried to find cancer, cures, and all sorts of things like that with jungle medicine. But what we haven't really looked at is the fact that in virtually every advanced society that has ever existed in the world, going all the way back to the beginning, there has been a role for psychedelics. And we are the only ones that don't do it. Americans, you know, really when it comes down to it, the Europeans knew about it.
[03:55] For sure. The Celts knew about it. Certainly the south Americans know about it. The central Americans know about it. The Russians were have, you know, the, the word shaman comes from Russian. So there's been a psychedelic factor in pretty much every religion and every society that has existed. And we are the only ones that have been missing it. And it's not a big surprise that we're depressed. We're anxious, we're sick, we're not healthy. We have autoimmune diseases. You know, all of these things are going on in our, in our society. And it's not that surprising because we're really missing out on that opportunity to have a true spiritual connection.
[04:33] It's amazing. I don't think most people realize that a lot of the medicines that are now commercially available and made by big pharma actually come from plant and animals like anesthesia comes from toad venom.
[05:03] And a lot of medicines came from herbs too, like aspirin.
[05:05] Right. And so big farmers always looking to exploit if you will. Nature's remedies. My question kind of is why don't we just use the natural substances
[06:03] I do. I mean, I think what it really comes down to is that there's really no healing without spiritual healing, you know, when it really comes down to it. And I wanna make sure that people understand that psychedelics aren't only spiritual. I mean there's definite medicinal qualities to them, but the whole point of, of having a relationship with psychedelics is to have a spiritual awakening when it really comes down to it.
[06:30] CA talk a little bit about that because you know, historically, and there really was a, a definite separation of church and state and science and religion several hundred years ago. And how does that affect us? Why, you know, most people who are listening probably haven't don't hear about spirituality and medicine at all ever.
[06:50] Right, right.
[06:51] And it's taboo for some people. So can you help them understand why this is and why you think it's essential?
[06:58] Because I feel like when you look at getting to the root cause of something, there's definitely physical, you know, that's a big part of things and lots of people get exposed to things like toxins. And a lot of these psychedelics can help you to clear toxins out of the system. There's no question that, you know, Iowa does that combo does that. And I began several of them really do help to clear the, to clear that out. So there's no question, I have a physical remedy in these things. However, what we don't have for most of us is we don't really have a true spiritual connection.
[07:49] And if we don't have a connection with some higher power and everybody gets to define to me, personally, everybody gets to define their higher power. I spend some time in 12 step programs. And I would say that one of the things that makes, makes or breaks you in this 12 step program is having a belief in something that is higher than you because let's face it. We're very imperfect as human beings, we're, we're imperfect. And we struggle and get frustrated with our imperfection and having that higher power allows us to see that there's a quote by the Buddha that basically says you can search the entire world over and not find somebody more worthy of love than you yourself.
[08:56] Yeah. That's a beautiful quote. And you know, I think some people hear this and they think, oh, well, you know, I'm this religion, I have a, a connection to something greater than myself. Can you just explain what's the difference between religion and spirituality and right. Yeah.
[09:13] Yeah. I'm not here to convince somebody that not be, you know, not to follow their religion. Absolutely not. I'm here. I think more for the people who are seekers, you know, and many of us are seekers when it really comes down to it. I spent much of my life seeking. I started out Catholic and went through almost every other religion.
[10:08] Okay. And so back to the psychedelic medicines, mm-hmm
[10:29] Well, psychedelic basically disconnects you from your brain in some way or another, so that your brain kind of is allowed to imagine greater than what we normally will allow it to do. Cause we, again, we, we're very imperfect and we have a lot of emotions and we have a lot of places in ourselves that we have developed a certain way that we do things right. And we mm-hmm
[11:28] Do you think it's fair to say that it's basically telling your conscious mind your ego to go sit in a chair and be quiet and letting your subconscious, that really runs the show. Yep. Reveal itself. Do you think that's fair?
[11:42] Well, I think that's a fair thing to say. And you know, I, I think, you know, that's definitely a topic to get into is, is what runs the show. Exactly. And a lot of people spend time trying to figure out how to get rid of your ego. Mm-hmm
[12:28] So it's a little bit, it's maybe sometimes a little over rational or over worried about things. But if you learn to have a relationship with your ego, that allows it to be there when it needs to be there and you don't pay attention to it all the time, that's gonna be a happier life. Mm-hmm
[13:21] And also it depends on what those other people are doing. For the most part. I would say that I think there's something that's even deeper. That's like this, I don't know what you would call it. Maybe it's the spiritual mind. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm,
[14:09] I don't think you have to take AUC agenda, have an experience mm-hmm
[15:10] Why do you think that plant medicines and psychedelics could be particularly used for, for women at midlife?
[15:18] I think that's a big change in our lives because we go from being fertile and moms and you know, there's a certain expectation of us in our fertile years. That changes when we get into more of that, that menopausal postmenopausal hair, menopausal stage in life. One of the things that happens too, is that, you know, we've spent most of our lives for good or ill being victims to our ho hormones as women, people make jokes about it, right? Oh, she's on her period. Don't go near her, you know? Oh, she's got PMs. Yeah. We'll just, we'll deal with her next week. You know? And men definitely make fun of us for it, you know? Oh, oh, oh, oh, I saw the tampons in the bathroom. I'm just gonna like go somewhere else for a week. And then we get to this place where we're no longer doing that.
[16:09] Mm-hmm,
[16:51] Because like I said, I was no longer like in that position of having to worry about, did I get my period this month? Is it late? Is it early? Am I having symptoms? Is it, should I worry about that? It's longer than usual or shorter than usual? Or is there some possibility I got pregnant and didn't plan it? You know, like all of that stuff went away and in the beginning it was unpleasant. You know, I'm not gonna say it wasn't unpleasant when, before I figured out how to balance my hormones out and get my, you know, my progesterone levels at an, at a place where I could actually like, not feel too angry all the time.
[17:39] Yeah. The other thing about menopause and midlife is that I don't know, I kind of got to this place. Oprah calls it the it fifties. It's like, you just don't care what people think you're say anymore. And you're like, I'm gonna be myself. I'm gonna do what I wanna do. I'm gonna be who I came here to be. Cuz you know, you don't have forever.
[17:59] Right. And it is kind of a liberating time. But the other thing that I came up against was, well, what is it that you wanna accomplish in this life and why aren't you doing it? What's stopping you. And so that's kind of the other appeal to me of plant medicines. And one of the reasons I decided to start talking about it publicly is because if you go online, I think that there are lots of people interested in these types of technologies, including women at midlife. But if you go online, you think it's all like tech guys in Silicon valley and young people doing it. And all the podcasts that talk about it is like it's guys and young guys and techy guys, and you don't see women at midlife talking about this, but there are lots of us out there using these technologies.
[18:59] Oh absolutely. Yeah. I'm not sure where I would be right now if I hadn't, you know, one of the opportunities that I had when I was in Peru was I got to sit in ceremony every night with a shaman and I didn't drink every night. I didn't take iowaska every night, but I probably did. I probably sat in 20 ceremonies where I drank. And so, and when you do it day after day after day after day, it's a different experience than just coming into it and going, you know, like the first time I did it, it's kind of funny that you say that the first time I did it, I did it with a bunch of Silicon valley guys.
[19:38] It was me and one other woman who wasn't techy from Silicon valley and then the rest of them were guys and they had all done, you know, LSD. And they were like microdosing, which I had never heard of. I didn't even know what microdosing was and you know, so I did, that was my first experience was to spend 10 days in Peru with a bunch of, of Silicon valley guys. And, and it was an interesting experience, but I was definitely the oldest woman there. I was the only person, you know, who was postmenopausal. It was a different experience than I kind of thought it would be.
[20:36] San Pedro. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think is important? Maybe you could name some of the, talk a little bit about the research that's being done and some of the things the FDA's
[20:46] Getting ready to approve and a little bit about that. So one of the first things is that we now have approval to do research with SIC Ibin, which is the main ingredient in mushrooms. So that's one of the biggest things. If you go back, it's interesting. If you go back to the sixties, they did a lot of research with LSD, LSD, just, you know, it is a psychedelic, but it's not a natural, it was made in a lab. So it's a little bit different than using something that's naturally grown. So, but there was lots and lots and lots of research done.
[21:38] The federal government decided to make psychedelic research illegal. So we went many, many, many, many years before we were allowed to really do anything. And then one of the first ones that was available for research was MDMA. It's also, I think it's XTA C or it's it's at least one of the components in ectasy. So that was one that was allowed to be used in the research laboratories, but only in very distinct places with very, you know, a lot of pre-planning and a lot of approval from the government and all of that kind of stuff. And then now we've got a lot of places that are doing suicide and research.
[22:37] It's not legal. One thing that's also happened is that the, a lot of people have made it a religious requirement for them to be able to do mushrooms or to be able to do peyote mm-hmm
[23:44] Lots intertwining and references that are veiled and not direct in a lot of religious texts about these medicines.
[23:52] There's a guy, I can't remember the name of the book. I'll, I'll send it to you. There's a guy wrote a whole book about how the Catholic church initially did use psychedelics and then they scrubbed the whole thing clean. They took every reference to it and put it in a vault. And that was the end of it. But the vault is still there and he got access to it cuz it's in the Vatican.
[24:13] Interesting.
[24:14] So pretty interesting.
[24:15] Definitely share that book. All right. And so the average person, you know, we've got our wonderful midlife women listen to this podcast. They wanna know about balancing their hormone. So I definitely wanna touch on, do these psychedelic medicines relate to hormone balance at all? Is there any benefit to be had regarding hormone balance with psychedelics?
[24:37] I think the answer to that is still to be determined if you look at when, when we were in Peru, it's not just the psychedelics, but there's a lot of other medications and there also there's in Peru. It's interesting. There's way more psychedelics than just iowaska. But very few of them get talked about because iowaska kind of, I think it, it, it got picked up by the, the Silicon valley guys and they made a big thing about it.
[25:265] Any in particular that relate to hormones that you wanna mention. I'm just curious,
[25:30] Not that I really am familiar with. I haven't really seen it. I mean, I do think, I think, again, any of these things that are gonna support your emotional balance and your spiritual balance are gonna support your hormone balance because ultimately the biggest thing that happens to us that can cause real problems with hormone balance is stress and overproduction of cortisol. So anything that's gonna lower your stress make you less worried every day. My sister finds it amusing. Cuz I joke about the fact that many of my patients are what you call the worried well, right? But they are the worried, well, you know, it's a little bit maybe dismissive because their worry is what's contributing to their medical problems. And so when we teach people, you are connected. There is a power higher than you. You are loved, you are taken care of. There is hope for you. There's yeah. Then I think that's the biggest thing is if you get that cortisol level balanced and you start to understand that you don't have to worry about everything, you really don't have to worry about anything. Right. It'd be, if I remember that every single day and I don't right, we don't
[26:46] Right. I think you're so right about the cortisol. And that's what I was thinking. That's how these relate and also giving you this experience of being connected to everyone and everything and something greater than yourself. Mm-hmm
[28:05] And what I think is interesting about that is that we think that the thing that happens to us at midlife is we lose our, our estrogen.
[28:14] For most of us, we had way too much estrogen to begin with
[28:26] So, and testosterone is like, you're like, go, go, go. I'm the hero. Like I can do this. You know, we can't live without it. And it doesn't occur to us as women. That testosterone is that important to us. But you know, I remember you sitting down and saying to me, I, you know, to me, I just can't even imagine not giving somebody testosterone. If they, you know, if, if their levels are low, just doesn't make sense.
[29:30] Right. I'm just thinking, what do women listening wanna know? Probably some people never even are unaware of the changes that are happening with research and approval and medical indications for these medications. And now that maybe their interest is a little peak. Well, I wonder if any of these could help me or would I get that Dr. Carolyn, how do I find out more? Where would you direct them to find out and get more information on this?
[29:56] So the people who have been doing this kind of stuff for the longest was probably maps and you can look them up pretty easily on the internet and they are training more and more and more people in, in how to work with psychedelics. They started out with MDMA, like I said, that was, you know, kind of the big, that was one of the things that you were allowed to do. And now they're shifting so that they're starting to do some psilocybin, which is like I said, the active ingredient and mushrooms, because what psilocybin has been shown is to help people with depression and anxiety.
[30:45] Yeah. And then also for addiction, some incredible IGA IO, cocaine, and methamphetamine one trip, and they're healed
[30:59] And you know, I do wanna caution people though that it doesn't always happen that way. Mm-hmm
[31:44]
[32:05] I still don't have a website. I'm gonna get that set up really soon. So the best way to find me, I think a lot of times I'm on Facebook, I can be found there. And the other place that you can find me is I'll send you a link from the page for my, um, practice better page, and they can get more information about it there.
[32:30] All right, there you go. Thank you, Dr. Carolyn. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the hormone prescription podcast with Dr. Kirin. I hope you found this information important and interesting, and maybe your interest is Pete. I would definitely check out maps.org for the latest information on these medications, the trials that are underway and, and really the state of the yard of the data on the plant and some animal medicines. And I look forward to seeing you next week and until then peace, love and hormones.
[33:09] Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40. When we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it. If you give me a review and subscribe, it really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com, where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.
You can follow Dr. Carolyn Messere on her Facebook account for updates and learn more about alternative and holistic health.
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Tuesday May 03, 2022
Tuesday May 03, 2022
Are you looking for a natural way to beat autoimmune diseases? If so, then listen in to this exciting new episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, where we're joined by Palmer Kippola - an expert on beating autoimmune conditions naturally.
Palmer is a certified Functional Medicine Health Coach and the author of the best-selling book, Beat Autoimmune. She has helped countless women overcome their autoimmune diseases and regain control over their health. In this episode, she shares her best tips and secrets for naturally healing from these chronic conditions and getting your life back on track. Palmer also reveals her story of how she became so passionate and such an expert at helping people reverse autoimmune disease.
In this episode, you will learn about:
- The key signs and symptoms of autoimmune diseases and how to recognize them.
- How does autoimmune relate to food toxins, gut health, and hormone balance
- The importance of paying attention to your body's signals, and the techniques you can use to listen better.
- How a healthy diet, exercise, stress management, and other lifestyle habits play an important role in healing from these conditions.
- Palmer's holistic framework for complete autoimmune recovery called F.I.G.H.T.S.™
If you're struggling with an autoimmune disease, or know someone who is, then this episode is a must-listen! Tune in now and start your journey to wellness today.
[00:57] Some of you may remember her from the stop, the menopause Manness summit. She was very popular, cuz she's talking about a popular women's health topic, autoimmune disease, and her name is Palmer Kippola. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her, but she healed herself from multiple sclerosis, which is really unheard of in corporate medicine. If you ask corporate medical doctors, can you heal yourself from multiple sclerosis or autoimmune disease? They will flat out tell you that you're gonna have that for your, the rest of your life. And what I'm gonna tell you is I know far too many people who actually have reversed these diseases and are incomplete remission.
[01:53] Palmer is a certified functional medicine health coach and the author of the bestselling book beat autoimmune Palmer has helped thousands of people reverse autoimmune conditions after struggling to heal herself from multiple sclerosis and succeeding Palmer will share her holy framework for a complete autoimmune recovery called fights. The fights protocol offers transformational health recovery. For those with autoimmune conditions seeking to avoid the harms of immunosuppressant medications and optimize their health. Welcome Palmer.
[02:43] Am delighted to be thank you so much for having me, Dr. Kyrin.
[02:46] Yes. I loved having you on the stop. The menopause madness summit, everyone loved your segments. And I thought we need to bring you out from the summit from behind the summit curtain and into the light of day so that you can share your information expertise, inspiration around autoimmune disease, huge problem for women at midlife and beyond which we'll get into. But first I want was wondering if you could share your story of how you became so passionate and such an expert at helping people reverse autoimmune disease.
[03:27] I would be delighted to, uh, I have to take you back in time a little bit to the pre-internet days because I was 19 years old and up until I turned 19 is a happy, healthy well-adjusted young woman. And this particular moment I was home from my freshman year of college and just work in a summer job. And one morning I woke up and the souls of my feet were all tingling. That feeling like you've slept on a limb all night and it just won't wake up. So I thought, oh, it'll just go away, but it didn't just go away. So I got to work by noon. It, the symptoms had really, really crept up my, my legs, like a vine. I called my mom and dad and who called the family doctor who said get her over to the neurologist at UCLA today. So that's what we did.
[04:19] I had a very quick exam. As in five minutes, she had me walk across the floor, do the heel toe heel toe, touch my fingers to my nose. And she pronounced I'm 99% certain that you have Ms. Multiple sclerosis. And if I'm right, there's nothing you can do except take medication. And later I actually learned that she had pulled my parents aside and told them to prepare for my life in a wheelchair because that's where I was heading. So we had never heard of Ms. This is now in the mid eighties. This was no one had heard of autoimmune conditions. 50 years ago. It was so rare to, you know, no of one that had anything like this. So we left, terrified, went home by nightfall. The tingling had crept under my neck. And by the time I went to sleep, I had gone completely numb neck down and I would stay completely numb for a full six weeks.
[05:17] So it was an absolutely terrifying and we had no hope we had no information on what you could do. There was no Dr. Google. And so all I could do was lay on the couch. And so that's what I did to wait. And I'm very fortunate that I had loving parents who were there.
[06:04] So I pondered and puzzled and reflected. Why did I get the Ms. I wonder, I wonder. And it came to me as a flash of insight. And I need to just go back a little bit farther in time because I had been adopted as a baby by very loving parents, but my dad had been a fighter pilot whose way was the right way. And we butted heads quite a lot. And Dr. Kara, I have to tell you that my earliest childhood memory is actually of me somewhere between the ages of three and five.
[06:58] I was hypervigilant. I was always on, and I don't have any idea how I knew at the time. And I just envisioned my immune system as PAC men that were going around and gobbling up the bad guys. Right. I, I didn't know anything further than that, but I had this insight that I had become hypervigilant and therefore my immune system was in overdrive. It too had become hypervigilant. And I learned years later, of course, that that is the autoimmune attack. It's an over vigilant immune system that starts attacking your body's own self tissues.
[07:58] And again, there's nothing you can do except take medication. You're gonna go downhill. You'll be in a wheelchair, possibly have a shortened life. I never gave up searching for answers. And I finally found functional medicine in the year 2010. And that's when I found out that I had non celiac, gluten sensitivity, I removed the gluten, did a whole host of other things, but that was my biggest baddest root cause of all. And now we know that gluten creates a leaky gut in anyone who eats it and that's research from 2015. So that is my story.
[08:33] Yeah. It's such a powerful story. You know, I've known people, who've had Ms. I one friend who actually died from it at a very early age, it's a highly debilitating disease and certainly can shorten your lifespan. And there are lots of other autoimmune diseases that similarly cause disability and premature death. So it's a very serious problem. And the incidence is higher among women and particularly women at midlife and beyond. So I think it's a very serious topic and you're a Testament to the fact of what can happen.
[09:37] And just telling it shut up and stop talking to me is never the answer you really wanna ask. I love that that woman asked you, why do you think you have this? And it took a long time, sounds like decades to unravel, but ultimately that became your life purpose. And so I'm gonna end invite everyone to lean into the symptoms you're having and ask, why do you have it instead of taking a drug to shut that symptom up? So Palmer, then you've got a protocol called F I G H T S that you use, it's a holistic framework for complete autoimmune.
[10:35] Oh, I love it. It's a such a powerful invitation. And I wanna say to start with that auto immunity is now affecting children. This is not just women in midlife anymore. So there's a real opportunity to, to address this proactively as early as we can there, it's now, uh, juvenile, rheumatoid arthritis is a thing, right? So we must to get on this immediately. And so after I healed, I decided to study this full time auto immunity, why we develop auto immunity and what we can do to reverse it. And I quit my day job to study this full time. And I just lived on PubMed and anybody who has any curiosity about how to do this can find the same information it's all there. So I was just wanting to share the truth and what I found. And I also, at the same time decided to become a functional medicine, health coach.
[11:29] And so I studied auto immunity. I became a functional medicine, certified health coach, and I that time and time again, as we helped our clients heal, they got better as they addressed these factors. So I sat down after I was, it was suggested to me by a leading immunologist, Dr. Ariso VO Donny, that I consider writing a book about this because too many people are being affected by auto immunity. And not enough doctors are trained in actually how to treat people. I mean, to your point, it's all about immune suppression instead of addressing the root causes.
[12:22] It stands for food infections, gut health, hormone, balance, toxins, and stress. And I lamented that it did not spell peace, but in fact,
[13:20] Yes, I think it's such a great book. It really, it's kind of like the Bible on how to reverse autoimmune naturally. So I encourage anyone suffering with autoimmune to get it and read it. Don't have contemporary investigation. I actually get it and look at it. I love this other quote you shared with me from James Baldwin, not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced. And I think part of the problem with our current corporate medical system is that we're not really facing our health challenges.
[14:20] What is wrong in my body? What are you showing me? And I love that, you know, it's telling you food. So fights food. Food is a problem. It's telling you, excuse me. Infections are a problem. Gut health is a problem. Hormone bounce is a problem. Toxins are a problem. Stress is a problem. And so then you have the opportunity. Uh, knowledge is power, cuz then once you have the knowledge, you can do something about it.
[14:53] Absolutely. And before I delve into that, I just wanna say how much I agree with what you're saying, the symptoms I encourage clients to thank them. They are messengers from your body, letting you know that something is outta balance. And it's kind of like, you know, the engine light on your dashboard of your car. You get outta hammer and start smashing your dashboard. No, you'd go get it checked out to see what's wrong with your engine, but we don't treat our bodies this way. Right? We just shove it under the rug and this is an opportunity to really empower yourself.
{15:37] Let's go into each one. And so food is really the highest leverage category. People heal 60 to 80% of the way and sometimes a hundred percent of the way just addressing foods. I got an email last week from someone who read my book. And she, you said, I just followed your food plan, which is the autoimmune paleo program. I just call it a 30 day food vacation. It's a positive spin on the classic elimination diet, take out the inflammatory foods. And she said, my symptoms 95% better just by addressing food. So number one, and that's why start with food is the first chapter in the book. We gotta start there.
[16:36] And that is how the whole autoimmune cascade starts. When you start creating holes in your gut, it allows, you know, good and bad things to get into your bloodstream. And that's when your immune system just takes off, starts attacking those things. And then you get the molecular mimicry, oh, by the way that gluten particle in your bloodstream looks a lot like your thyroid tissue, which is just absolutely crazy to me, but it's a thing. So you gotta stop eating gluten full stop.
[17:11] If you're listening to us now and you've been listening to my podcast and you are still eating gluten, you are not paying attention.
[17:32] All right. All right. Shall we move on? Because I don't do fights in the book as it's spelled, because the next step is to look at your gut health and okay, this is a really important one, too. We treat our guts like garbage disposals. We are just throwing in food, you know, of any kind of variety and much of our food. The conventionally grown food is actually genetically modified to contain a product that is Roundup resistant. And glyphosate is one of the biggest batty chemicals that we're facing in our environment today. And if you're eating conventionally grown meat in particular, you gotta pay attention. And see if you can turn that around to be eating grass fed 100% wild meat. Why? Because we're not just what, whatever we eat. We're whatever we eat ate and you wanna be eating and that eat what they're supposed to be eating, which is cows graze on grass.
[18:51] For everybody listening. So they might say, so what it's farmed, can you explain why that's a problem?
[18:57] Well, when it's farmed, there are going to be fed things that they're not supposed to be eating. So it is not in a fish's nature to, you know, wanna feast on soy and wheat, but that's what they're actually being fed. So oftentimes farmers and fish farmers, they want the best price and they wanna sell their stuff. And you know what? Corned meat tastes good, cuz it's really fatty, but it's not good for the cows and it's not good for the fish. So, you know, sometimes getting used to grass fed meat can be a little more challenging because it's not necessarily as fatty delicious as what you've been used to eating your smoked s
[19:51] That's a great point. There is no middle point. It's either making you healthier or making you sicker. There is no in between. So ask yourself before you lift your fork and stick it inside your mouth as this promoting health or promoting disease. So what would we look at with gut health?
[20:13] Offender. It really is because it's, it's kind of like sidestream, you're not aware that you're doing it. And this, what we're doing here is to create awareness about everything that we can be doing so that we can be in control of our health outcomes. So it's just super important that every little thing you do at the end of your fork matters. And if organic is an issue in terms of cost for people, you know, consider, I'm sure you've talked about the environmental working group, they have their clean 15 and the dirty dozen, just make sure you know, that you're following those guidelines so that you at least are taking the best care.
[21:07] So that's why I talk about it here. Super important to make sure that we're treating our guts. Well, the other thing that I'll add to gut health while we're on the topic is mm-hmm,
[22:06] Yeah, absolutely. That should be last resort. Yep. Okay, great. So gut health and then what would come next? So we've got food and gut health.
[22:15] Then we wanna move on to infections because this is super, super important. If you have already cleaned up your diet, you've addressed your food sensitivities and you're doing really well. You are, are, you know, taking care of your gut and you're still not getting better. It's time to consider infections. And this is something that we see in our practice. So I collaborate with a couple of natural paths and we help people who are not getting better after doing the diet changes. And we find time and time again, a collection of infection that include yeast and parasites and chronic Lyme and on and on. But there's so many things that people can do on their own in the infections category. And I would say overall to consider this category, it's not the bug, it's the terrain. So how you are treating yourself, your gut health, your life.
[23:11] We have to unburden our immune systems. And that is the best way I know of to help really make us Bulletproof against infections. The current one like coronavirus and these chronic infections that are in us that we may not know about because they're stealth and they're hidden. So what can you do to unburden your immune system? Step one, you gotta remove the sugar. You gotta remove the sugar. Another thing that I am super in favor of is moving. We were built to move. So move your body, stop eating the sugar and set a bedtime.
[24:16] Right. You know, it's such a, a great point and everybody knows probably people were going, yeah, I know Palmer. I'm supposed to go to bed at a certain time. And I know, I know these things, but the thing is that we don't do it.
[25:06] So if your terrain is kind of crappy, let's say, and you stay up late, you don't really tend to your gut health, you eat sugar, which feeds most of these ball. Then your terrain is terrible and you're like that dead tree in the forest. And you're gonna be riddled with these chronic infections that are hard to diagnose, right? Palmer
[26:07] Oh, I, that was so beautifully said, I love the metaphor of the trees. I think that's perfect. I don't need to say anything else about it. It's um, beautiful.
[26:20] Then we gotta get to toxins and this is considered to be the biggest driver of autoimmune conditions are toxins. And Donna Jack is Jackson. NAZA's beautiful book. The autoimmune epidemic, which came out in the early two thousands was really a spotlight on the reason for the increase in auto immunity. Today, I already shared that when I was diagnosed at age 19, no one had heard of these autoimmune conditions. And today there are 150 known autoimmune conditions. And maybe one in three, one in five people are dealing with autoimmune symptoms, whether they have a formal diagnosis or not. So why is that? There are so many more chemicals in our environment is a huge driving factor.
[27:45] But there's more to it than that because we are sometimes victims of the things that are in our environment. We are seeing more and more BPA in people that we're testing. We're seeing more and more glyphosate. We're seeing more and more of these pesticides and herbicides. And there's some things that are harder to get out than others. But this is where knowledge is power. Just learning about what you're putting on your face and your body and your self care and your home care and what you're cleaning with. It all matters. And we talked about, you know, you're either building health, creating health, or you're moving against it. It's, it's really binary in that way. And every little bit it matters.
[28:42] It does. And I have a pet peeve in this category. I wondering if you could speak to it, which is the artificial scented candles and the plugins.
[28:52] So many people don't get that. Your, your scented laundry detergent, that they've got all these commercials with people smelling and they're so happy and the dryer sheets and the fabric softeners and the, the plugins and the centered candles and the air sprays. And can you talk a little bit about that?
[29:12] I can, it is a shared pet peeve and I haven't been in an Uber in a really long time, but without getting in an Uber with the guy, who's got four of those
[29:28]
[30:10] Yeah. It's a thing. It's a gross thing. Just know that your products and what you're eating and what you're drinking and any body care product, if it says fragrance or perfume or scent or anything like that, manufacturers are allowed to put whatever they want into that product or perfume or sent a dryer sheets. So that's part of the plan to remove the toxic load, to remove anything with those words.
[30:43] Yeah. So just stop using the sense y'all,
[31:10] Stress is the elephant in the room and stress is the elephant in the room because it is so insidious pervasive. We are all more stressed than we've ever been. We are just always on. And I know you talk a lot about high cortisol and the setting, the stage for any kind of health problem in your life. Auto immunity is usually triggered by some shocking event, some major stress in life, but it can be perpetuated by ongoing stress by chronic stress. Mm-hmm,
[32:18] And there is proof and studies that point to the fact that if you've experienced neglect abuse had a family member imprisoned, or your parents were divorced, or the death of a loved one as a child, that there is a greater likelihood that you will experience auto immunity and other chronic disease later in life. It is, it's both shocking and empowering. And I love talking about this because there's so much that people can do. This is your childhood does not determine who you are, but this is going back to the James Baldwin quote of not everything is face can be changed, but nothing that is not faced or, you know what I'm saying,
[33:04] Face. Exactly. And if you're not facing the fact that you had trauma, if you're not addressing it, if you're not releasing the emotions that happened in childhood and taking responsibility for it, you may be perpetuating health issues.
[33:23] Right? And I think this is super important too. And I know we're getting short on time, but I think people are really getting it, that I had overwhelming experiences as a child, and it's affecting my health. They get that. Can you just name some of the things that people can start doing to start working through that? Cuz I think that's what P people are really hungry for. Well, what do I do about it? I get it. But what do I do about.
[33:47] I'm actually creating a course around this first and foremost is awareness. Just being really true to yourself that something hap or something may have happened is step one that self-awareness and sometimes to access that even the act of journaling of writing things down is super powerful and freeing. Get it on the page. If you don't like to write, draw, paint, whatever you can do to get it out of you and onto the page, you don't have to share it with anybody unless you want to, but get it out for you.
[34:51] And he offers some excellent ways to do that. So get it on the page. Number two, learn how to breathe properly. He talks about soft belly breathing and some of this stuff sounds so simple and how can this really help? But actually what happens when we have trauma that we're just stuck in that overdrive in that chronic fight flight, we've got to regulate our nervous systems. And the biggest regulator that we have for our nervous system is right under our nose. In fact, it is our nose. So taking big, deep belly breaths into our belly all the way and letting it out, letting it all go doing that proactively, maybe 10 soft belly breaths a day can be so soothing and helpful and just getting us out of that fight flight and into that rest and digest. So that's another access point. And another thing that I'll mention is the concept of shaking and dancing.
[35:48] So if you've ever watched an animal like a dog, if you take a dog to a park and it gets into a thing with another dog and they start going at it, you'll notice it afterwards, the dog shakes mm-hmm,
[36:51] Oh, those are some great pointers Palmer. Thank you for those. And before we wrap up the name of the podcast is the hormone prescription because all roads lead to hormones and hormone balance is, uh, one of your fights components. So how does autoimmune relate to hormone balance? How what's the connection there for everybody listening?
[37:165] I know you talk a lot about these on your podcast, low vitamin D. Number one is something that we can can control. It's the easiest hormone imbalance to correct. So know your levels and get your vitamin D levels up. This is vitamin D three, make sure you take it with K2. Another one that's low across the board is thyroid. This is a huge factor in the autoimmune equation. In fact, hypothyroid, most women in particular have an autoimmune thyroid condition Hashimotos which you know of. So low thyroid, we also have low D H E a, and that is quite common across the board in people with auto immunity.
[38:11] So again, know your numbers, get tested, do what you can do to, to raise those three. Then there are three that are excessively high across the board in people with autoimmune issues. One is estrogen dominance and that's not just estrogen being high. It's estrogen high in relation to progesterone, which I know you talk about a lot and that's super important and it doesn't just affect women. This is affecting men too. Another one that is high is cortisol. This is the dark Lord or you call queen cortisol. You gotta lower your cortisol and be in control of that. And finally, we have high insulin.
[39:25] Thank you so much Palmer for sharing your journey and your expertise. I love it when people's pain become their purpose. And that certainly is true for you. And this other quote you shared from RS gray, she believes she could. So she did, you did right? You believed that you could. And I wanna give a shout out for everybody who's listening. Who's struggling maybe with autoimmune or some other health problem.
[40:25]I do. I do. So the biggest question I get from people is what do I eat to beat an autoimmune condition? What do I eat? I hear different things from different people, and I believe that you're in the best position to figure that out for your yourself. So this is a little ebook that goes into all of the things that you need to consider taking out of your diet for about a month. I call this the 30 day food vacation and then tell you what you can eat so that you can eat to beat auto immunity. And you can find that@palmerkipp.com slash gift.
[41:04] If I can do it, you can do it. This is not just my story. This is the story of every single human being who takes the, the first step and then the next towards their optimal health. And so many people have recovered from auto immunity. And that's why in the book, I didn't just share my story. I tell the story of a dozen doctors who had been medically conventionally trained medical doctors. Mm-hmm
{41:47] It's so true. So don't give up, keep looking, finding answers. Hopefully you've got gotten some here. Thank you, Palmer so much for joining us today.
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Tuesday Apr 26, 2022
Tuesday Apr 26, 2022
Are you in your midlife years and feel like you've lost your youthful glow? You're not alone! Many women reach a point in their lives when they feel like their hormones are out of whack, their energy levels are low, and their skin isn't as radiant as it used to be.
If you're looking for ways to naturally reset your hormones and reclaim your health and beauty, this episode is for you! In the latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Dr. Trevor Cates shares her expertise on how to achieve hormonal balance and beautiful skin from the inside out.
You'll learn about:
- The importance of hormones in overall health and beauty
- Facts about hormones and how they affect the body
- Common myths about hormones and hormone replacement therapy
- Skin - hormones connection and the aging process
- Beauty myths and secrets for ageless skin
- And much more!
So, tune in and learn how you can reset your hormones for health and harmony - and natural beauty!
[00:51] Welcome back to another episode of the hormone prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I'm super glad that you are joining me and my guest today. She has an amazing docu-series coming up called hormones, health and harmony, as well as a new book, the natural beauty reset. We're gonna dive into those. There's a link in the show notes to sign up for the hormones, health and harmony docu-series that's coming up.
[01:48] So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about Dr. Trevor CAS and then we'll get started. Dr. Trevor CAS is author of the USA today, bestselling book, clean skin from within the upcoming natural beauty reset, the seven day program to harmonize hormones and restore radiance and founder of the spa doctor natural skincare line. She was the first licensed female naturopathic doctor in California, and she served at several world renowned spas in park city. Utah goal is to inspire and empower women to find the keys, to harmonize their hormones and open their eyes to their natural beauty and to be a guide to help illuminate their path. She has been featured on various TV shows, including the doctors and extra TV. Dr. Kates is host of the hormones, health, and harmony docus series, the woman's doctor podcast and the public television special younger skin from within welcome Dr. Trevor Kates.
[03:11] Thank you. It's so great to be here with you.
[03:14] I had so much fun taping your docus series, hormones, health, and harmony with your team amazing team. And I am so excited for the world to hear what 50 experts have to say about hormone's health and harmony. And I know they're excited to hear about it too, or, and I don't wanna make the whole podcast about the docus, even though I think it's amazing, but I wanna give people a little highlight about what are they gonna learn there? Why should they show up? Who is this for?
[03:44] So I'm so excited to share this with everyone. And really, and I know you talk a lot about hormones and women's health, so your people are used to this, but so many women out there think that symptoms like PMs and, and fertility and insomnia and unexplained weight gain, and hormonal acne are just like just regular parts of being a woman mm-hmm
[04:42] And I really am excited for people to see you, but it's busting myths, getting real information about how we can balance our hormones. And it is a nine part documentary series. So there's a lot and it's launching May 10th and we have each episode goes live for a day for 24 hours. People can watch it for free.
[05:20] Combating is the substandard quality of life that we've accepted as women because our, the dogma current doesn't have answers for the problems that plague us, that have to do with our hormones and the rest of our health. And so we think there's something wrong with us or that we have to put up with it and that it's normal, cuz all our friends have it and that's just not true. So we're gonna, we debunk a lot of myths in this docuseries and really show the pathway forward.
[06:24] Well, I, gosh, there was so much, and I would have to say that some of the intricacies of lab testing and so I, so one of the experts we had to is a lot of lab testing and she dove deep into that. And some of that technology is fascinating of what we can learn and all the different ways that we can test, not only our hormone levels, but the metabolites of our hormones and also the toxicity level levels.
[07:23] it sure is. I used to have a friend who was a physician. He said, you know what? They call the physician who treats herself. I said, no, he's like an idiot.
[07:50] I can't begin to tell you how many tears we shed listening to people's stories. And these are experts that were sharing their stories. I'm sorry, I'm just getting Terry, just thinking about some of the stories. These are experts, right? But they've all been on their own journey, including you and for them to be so open and vulnerable and share what they went through and how they came out on, on the other side, better for it. And they're so, so inspiration and that when, you know, sometimes we just feel so beaten down and we feel so lost without answers. And yet hearing these stories is just reminds us of there's hope and that we can get through this.
[09:09] And so the words of wisdom and the stories were actually, I think my, my favorite part, and then of course, some of my favorite episodes are the two toxic episode. Four is two toxic and it talks about, we talk about toxins in the environment and how that plays a role in our health. But we don't just dwell on that. We actually talk about the solutions to getting through that. And then of course I love episode six on sex and romance and episode eight on honor, your lady parts. Those are all fun ones. So there's so much great information in there.
[09:47] Yes. I know. I cried a couple times doing them, the interviews, cuz I'm so passionate about the topic and I know that you are too, and I think it's so important. If you can share with everyone, why do this? It was a huge investment of your time, your passion, your money. I mean, I can't even begin to fathom the huge investment you've put into this. So why?
[10:14] Yeah. Well, I certainly had my struggles as well. My struggles started off more with skin issues and that's what led me to become a naturopathic doctor. And I could tell you, or for anyone who struggled with skin issues, it's one of those things it's hard to hide. You can hide other symptoms, but you can, it's hard high skin problems. So it was such so embarrassing as a child to go through that, which is what put me on the path become a naturopathic doctor. But also throughout my life personally had struggles with poor model imbalances.
[11:11] So it's harder to be thin. And so putting on a little extra weight is normal at 30 years sold. And I remember leaving her office being so mad and I was already an naturopathic doctor, so I knew better, but I was, I thought, there's no way. This is true. And so of course I balanced, I got outta the off that hormonal birth control. I balanced my hormones and I got back into shape and I am certainly fitter.
[11:49]But yeah, you know, I have my own personal stories. We all do. Right. We have our hormonal stories and I just, over the years, seeing patients I've been seeing patients for 22 years is the biggest thing that women talk to me about hormonal struggles. And a lot of times women don't even realize that their symptoms are related to hormonal imbalances. That's why I wanted to get this out there because like my weight gain at 30, it was, my hormones were out of balance, but most people would've just said to me, well, you just need to exercise more and eat better.
[12:56] It's so true. Women say that to me all the time that I didn't even know that that problem was related to my hormones with, with the depression, with the, I can't sleep with the, you put, fill in the blank. And I say, honey, that's why the name of my podcast is the hormone prescription. It's like every pro, if you're female and you have a health problem, hormones are the foundation of your health as a woman. Part of that is a hormone problem. So I love that you're really people are gonna get that insight in this docu-series I think it's phenomenal.
[13:57] Yeah, well our skin is our outer reflection of our overall health. And as you know, it's our largest organ it's right on the surface of our bodies. And I think a lot of times we forget that, of that connection. So I started focusing on skin when I was working at the Waltor spa in park city and I was doing a two week weight loss program and my patients would come in at the end of the two weeks and they'd say, Dr. Kates, I lost all this weight felt great, but what surprises me is my skin. I didn't know, my skin could look this good.
[15:18] Yeah. Like what kinds of myths?
[15:22] We look in the mirror at ourselves, we look at other people to help us feel beautiful or for a validation of that. But I think it's important for people to realize that true connection of when we feel healthy. And part of that is when our hormones are balanced, when we feel healthy, we can feel more beautiful and really that a lot of that comes from within. But when our hormones are out of balance and we're feeling when we're not sleeping well, when our mood is all over the place, we'll look in the mirror at ourselves and beat ourselves up and we'll look at other women and we'll say, oh, I wish I was young.
[16:48] I love that movie with the comedian where she hits her head and then cuz she has low self-esteem and then she hits her head and then she thinks she's beautiful. Society's definition of beautiful. And she behaves that way and her whole life changes because she believes it. It doesn't have anything to do with what you actually look like, but we as women and as you were talking, I'm thinking no men look in the mirror and compare themselves to other men, oh, he's got better packs and biceps. And like men don't do this, but we really are socialized that our value has so much to do with our appearance.
[17:39] Thank you for that, that we delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. So along those lines, what, what about what we're thinking? Yeah,
[18:08] So absolutely the way that we think can be very toxic to our bodies and actually impact our hormonal balance as well because when we're stressed out, we're beatings ourselves up that impacts our adrenal function, which then can affect many other hormones in the body and affects our nervous system, our stress. And so it's heightened. So really we want to realize and recognize. I think the first thing is to just recognize when you have, when you're starting to beat yourself up, like, wow, that's really not a good thing for me. And that negative thought or that negative thing that I'm thinking or saying to myself is really beneficial and that's really the first step in it. And I think then there are lots of different ways that you can process through and help heal old patterns and wounds and things like that. But being able to shift that is really crucial.
[19:05] We don't just born beautiful. And some people might think, oh well she's just naturally beautiful or whatever, but really so much of beauty comes from life experience. And so, especially as we get older, it gives us an opportunity to be beautiful in other ways. And the experience that we have in life can make us more beautiful. I think that some of the most beautiful women I've ever known are in their seventies and eighties and nineties, I feel very blessed that I have some really great role models
[20:12] You know, you look so healthy and vital and alive and your doctors and you're so accomplished. And so they discount what's possible for them. They say, I can't do, I can't have the health that you guys have. I can't have the skin that you have. And so one thing that I've been really focusing on is pulling back and telling the hard stuff about admitting the changes that, you know, I've gone through from being a caterpillar, to being a butterfly. And I'm wondering if you would be willing to pull back the curtain a little and share some things that you've had to overcome on you, your journey.
[21:08] Yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned, I struggle with my skin as a child and I, it was more eczema and hives and bumps and itchy rash, so appear. But I was, I did not feel like a normal kid and I had a really low self-esteem as a kid. And yet I, I was in the that's. I grew up in this family of what society really considers as beautiful people. And I thought I was the ugly duckling. I grew up this way.
[22:03] I will sometimes get rosacea if I don't, you know, stick with my eating plant and all of that. I understand the struggles with that, but I think that this time in my life, so I'm 49 years old and it's funny a couple years ago, I said, okay, before I turn 50, I wanna make some big, more changes in my life. It's never stopped for me. There's all else. And so one of the biggest things that's happened for me lately is that I was going from one relationship to another after my divorce 10 years ago. And so a year ago, by the time I'm 50, I'm gonna meet, meet the man of my dreams and I'm gonna be married. And so Karen, I just got married.
[23:10] What? Congratulations.
[23:18] so I think, and I had to dig deep and do a lot of work on myself and emotionally kind of unravel some of the things and the patterns that I had around relations ships, the way that I thought of myself, the way I was showing up. And I did a lot of that hard work. And then all of a sudden, he just showed up in my life.
[23:39] That's amazing. And you know, I just wanna highlight for everyone listening. Everybody has their stuff. Everybody's got struggles, physical struggles, relationship struggles, life struggles. I don't care how good you think the package looks on the outside. Right. And if you've seen some of these models that do the shots, what it looked like before, they got their makeup and hair done. And then after, you know, you'll know it's true. All these, the photoshopped end product is what you're seeing and comparing yourself to, but we've all got struggles and we are no different than you.
[24:47] Yeah, I think it is important to realize, especially for those of us tend to be a little bit of perfectionist or type a personalities is that failure can feel like so devastating and we can feel like we've made the biggest mistakes, but if we don't fail, that means that we're not really putting ourselves out there and it doesn't give us that opportunity to really grow.
[25:39] And I think that so often we're in the middle of what we consider to be a failure and we can't see the other side of it. So I just wanna tell people, if you feel like you're in that place right now, just keep going. And there is light on the other side thing. There is hope. And especially if you're listening to Dr. Dunston's podcast, which has a lot of great opportunities and information and, and resources for you, the hormone's health and harmony dokey series does as well to reach out to people and get help and get through that time.
[26:22] Yes. Then your pain becomes your purpose. I have another mentor. He always says, there's no such thing as failure when you're doing something you think is failing, it's working on you. It might not be working externally, but it's working on you to help you to become the person who can do the thing and be successful at it on the outside. And you have to go through that in order to be successful on the outside.
[27:09] Yeah. It's free May 10th each episode, we'll start with episode one, it'll be live for 24 hours. People can watch it and then we'll switch to the next episode, the following day. So we can get through all nine episodes by the 18th. And so it's important to watch it when it goes live mm-hmm
[27:30] Awesome. Thank you so much for that wonderful resource. We'll have more information on Dr. Kate's book, natural beauty reset. That's coming out in the fall when it gets a little bit closer. So state tuned for that. And what any parting words that you would like to leave everyone with?
[27:50] Yeah, I think that we've, you know, we've covered a lot here and I really think about the daily choices that we make are really what helps us move forward. And I think about him in, in four different areas. And I talk about them in my book and those are around food movement, mindset, and also skincare, if you wanna talk about skin. And so I think it's, if you can do things within each of those category every day, even if there's small steps, like just start choosing switch over to a and some natural skin care products.
[28:41] I love that simple, easy, powerful Dr. Trevor, Kate, thanks so much for joining us and thank you for this incredible resource that you are sharing with the world. Can't wait.
[28:52] And thank you all for joining me for another episode of the hormone prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I hope that you learned something today that can impact your life. You should, for sure. Wanna check out the docu series. So click the link in the show notes, go and sign up, and then set aside time in your calendar. Now to watch each episode, when it goes live each day, you could even do a watch party with some girlfriends and watch it together and have a discussion afterwards around what you've learned. And what's inspired you. I look forward to joining the conversation with you on my Facebook FA page or Instagram. So jump over there and we'll have a conversation about it. And I will see you next week until then peace, love and hormones. Y'all thank you so much for listening.
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Tuesday Apr 19, 2022
Tuesday Apr 19, 2022
Do you know what the number one killer of women is in midlife? If you said heart disease, you’re right!
In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Dr. Beverly Yates joins us to share her knowledge of how to prevent and reverse heart disease.
Dr. Yates is a leading expert in natural hormone replacement therapy and has helped countless women achieve optimum health and well-being. In this conversation, she shares her insights on how the menopause transition can impact heart health and what steps we can take to protect ourselves.
You’ll learn about:
-The link between hormones and heart health
-The impact of the menopause transition on heart health
-How to prevent and reverse heart disease
-And much more!
If you’re concerned about your heart health or want to learn how to protect yourself from this deadly disease, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in now!
[01:03] So without further ado, I will tell you a little bit about Dr. Beverly Yates, and then we will started, she's done a lot of stuff ladies. So her bio is very substantial. So here we go. Dr. Beverly Yates, naturopathic doctors, a diabetes expert, an author who has over 28 years of experience of working with those who struggle with blood sugar issues related to type two diabetes and pre-diabetes and feel like nothing works for them.
[02:03] Dr. Yates creates breakthrough changes in the habits that cause blood sugar issues. This allows her clients to finally get off of the blood sugar roller coaster, have more energy and create the level of health that lets them live the life of their dreams. She is the creator of the Ys protocol, a simple and effective lifestyle - based program for people who have type two diabetes or pre-diabetes to lower blood sugar levels, achieve healthy A1C and fasting blood sugar levels and have more energy to live life the way they want to. She's worked with thousands of people, helping them to lower their blood sugar levels to a healthy range and get control over their health.
[03:29] Yep. The summer is at the end of July. That's right.
[03: 31] End of July that you don't want to miss. She was chosen as the lead doctor for a new three - doctor panel TV show on ABC CT. And they did not green light the series, but I know another TV show is in your future. Dr. Bev
[04:05] Wow. What a lovely intro. Thank you so much, Dr. Karen, for your invitation to be a part of here with your group and also to, you know, explore a topic that is just, it really just needs to be on everyone's mind, frankly. There's other, um, illnesses that people are far more aware of, and they don't know, understand that heart disease is still far away.
[04:28] Yeah. Particularly in women and you find all kinds of information about other issues, you know? And when I ask myself why that is, this is what I think. Tell me what you think that people really think, oh, my doctor's got that covered. I don't need to worry about that. I don't need to look for that on social media. Yeah. And it's also silent, and you know, I've diagnosed so many women probably like you have, you know, coronary artery blockage from a coronary calcium scan. So can you talk a little about that a little bit more?
[05:18] Yeah. That's a great intro. Let's take back the covers here and have a heart disease is one of those silent processes whereby the time it's clear and someone's symptomatic. The process has been in place for years, if not decades, right? Just like diabetes. It tends to sneak up on people. And unless they have clear testing, clear assessment, you know, some kind of a, a rational testing process, diagnostic imaging, looking at blood markers, et cetera.
[06:02] A lot of people have this misperception and I really want to make this point clear for women, men, anyone people has this misperception that if you lead a healthy lifestyle, you will avoid problems. It's not true. It's not that simple. Don't we wish. And if you have a genetic risk from your family, if you have a lifestyle or a past set of chronic stresses or traumas, they can all set you up for heart disease that could potentially be lethal.
[06:50] There's some good news to be had around this too, especially for women. But meanwhile, we all have to do what we can. And I think one of the reasons we don't have about this is that selling you the solution after the problem for really expensive heart surgery, to have your chest cracked open and have your heart re plummed and other things like that is just worth so much more money than the things that you could do well before that's ever needed. It will never ever have that huge expense.
[07:36] But when I started on this path and I learned about some options that aren't standard of care, like coronary calcium scanning, I started sending all my at-risk women for it. And I literally would have some women, they would call from the center and say, she, you know, almost had a complete blockage in all three arteries. And we would send her to the ER, and she ended out with a stent or a bypass. Right. And her life was saved, but it's not even recognized in mainstream medicine. So because it's this silent killer and women don't even know how they can protect themselves?
[08:37] Yeah. That's a great question. You know, even today in 2022, it is not necessarily the standard of care that insurance companies will pay for a coronary calcium scan. Right? And any, depending on where you live, that scan could cost you somewhere between $75 to $300. And for some people it can be lifesaving. If it determines that there's a blockage, you know, off to the cath lab, you go, or maybe it's time to have your chest cracked, but at least it was before you had that coronary failure, that myocardial infarction a heart attack that can drop you like a rock and potentially kill you.
[09:19] So when we go through menopause, obviously a lot of our hormone shift in change, right? As much of that conversation starts though before the time of actual menopause aging of all kinds, that conversation in your body really starts to shift somewhere between the ages of 38 to 42. And at that point somewhere between age 38 to age 42, about 1% to 4% shift per year. Now, if you are comfortable with money and finances, think about it.
[10: 07] So you wanna then start to manage and maintain and boost your aging conversation, so you can live long and live well when it comes to cardiovascular health and making sure that your heart has what it needs and the rest of your cardiovascular system. It's just so, so important to have a healthy lipid profile, to have the fractions be at a good ratio to each other and to not have issues with the blood vessels that feed the heart. Those are called the coronary vessels, coronary meaning heart vessels, right?
[11:01] And you can call around and shop around. You know, when you call hospitals and outpatient centers, et cetera, probably less expensive in an outpatient center compared to hospital has much bigger overhead as you might expect, but it's worth making that call to find out. It would be lovely if we had almost like a door dash of equivalent for health. So we can just look it up on an app and know how much it will cost me.
[11:41] I really can't. And today it's so true. It couldn't be easier, right. To make this transparent. Why is it so hard? You know, I've had times like, uh, I remember once when one of my kids needed surgery for something and I called around, get an idea, what would the out-of-pocket cost be? The time they were much younger, you know, we're trying to pay for school, this other thing. And I could not get anything on anybody. And it was really crazy. I mean, I knew all the ICD codes, the CPT code, I had all the numbers. Right. All the big words and, and the people who ran through the phone were like, I have no idea. I
[12:22] I mean, but you're right. It's like shopping on canal street in New York. It's like, no prices on anything. How much is that bag? And they'll be they'll, they'll kind of size you up and go for you $375.
[12:40] You are a tourist anywhere in the world. They think you might be from the US, you know, the price went up. So yeah, I got that.
[12:46] Right. So just as a public PSA, we might save some women's lives today. Can you tell everyone what a calcium scan is and that their doctor's not going to order this for them. And you can maybe help me understand why that is. Um,
[13:14] Yeah. So a coronary calcium scan is an imaging, a simple imaging where your body scans specifically your chest to capture your heart. And it's looking at your heart, it's looking at the chambers of the heart. And it's looking at the blood vessels that feed the heart, particularly the ones that sit right on the top surface here, the coronary arteries, right? Those are the blood vessels that are dedicated to the heart. They're going nowhere else. They're simple.
[13:55] This is why blood pressure is lower. Other things. This gives the heart a way to rest that lower blood pressure number. For instance, the diastolic numbers. Like if your blood pressure is one 20 over 80, that 80, the lower number is critical. That's your heart at rest. Again, it never really stops. So I was able to relax. You can't relax.
[14:43] That's what the compromise is about. And after a certain amount of blockage, that's usually when people become symptomatic, maybe they're short of breath for no particular reason. Any exertion at all is exhausting. They might find that they have chest pains. Yes or no. And for women, the presentation of chest pains is very different from it is for men. Frequently.
[15:26] Maybe she's got pain in her shoulder. It might be on the left side. It might not. It might be on the right side. It can be very confusing almost all the time. When women have heart attacks, they'll say, I didn't feel well. I felt profoundly unwell. That's usually the most presenting symptom. And so it's kind of easy to get that overlooked.
[16:12] It's still considered perspective or experimental or research controversial, whatever. It's not condoned in terms of conventional medicine. And as such insurance companies do not feel required to pay for it. It hasn't yet gotten to that status of being part of the standard of care. And so people will look at you often with a side eye, and they will not prescribe it or recommend it. You can go and get these things yourself.
[17:09] O C C L U S I O N occlusion in the absence of a blockage or occlusion. Right then you're good in terms of whether or not the heart is getting what it needs for blood flow. Now, can we talk about another aspect of this that usually isn't put together? Is that okay, please? Absolutely. There's stress echocardiograms. Now, from the point of view of a cardiologist, this is something I happen to agree with them on a stress echo, as it's called more, you know, familiarly, a stress echocardiogram, in my opinion, is a gold standard.
[18:03] If you are a woman with larger breast masks, this could be one of the most awkward tests you will have in your life, worse than a mammogram in some ways to be clear but worth it. Okay. All right, wait a minute. I'm just, I'll talk about it right now.
[18:46] You'll see whether all the valves are flapping or not. And you also see one of the most critical, sensitive measures you can ever imagine for the function of your heart called L V E F left ventricular ejection fraction in plain language, how much blood that has now just been oxygenated from your lungs and has come back to the heart is actually going to go out of that sucker and around the rest of the body to deliver that oxygen. You don't wanna, it all stick in there. So when that ejection fraction gets lower, like significantly under 50, say it's 30%, 25%, 20%, 14%, et cetera. That's where congestive heart failure happens.
[19:43] So the stress echo you like as the gold standard for diagnosing coronary artery disease or looking for function of the heart, or what do you like that for
[19:54] The heart function is the heart functioning well, okay. Make sure it's getting blood in. And the blood is getting back out because it's not doing us any good. If the blood's going in, and it's not leaving, that's why people have these problems with clots. You see all these medications being promoted for lowering clots, blood thinners, et cetera. This is what's. This is why, right? Heart disease.
[20:15] Right? But I know there's some people listening, going, Dr. Bev, do I need to ask for a stress echo
[20:22] Think it's a great baseline test. I do, especially in your middle life years. I think it's a great baseline. And if you have a history of being an athlete, if you've been athletic, if you are a big a person who was huge on dancing, anything that was aerobics in nature, some of the more vigorous things I've seen for cheerleading, absolutely qualify as far as I'm concerned, their athletes do as well as the individual and team sports. Anything that involved running, lifting resistance or weight training. I think it's a good idea for you to get that test. Here's why you will have a natural increased growth called a hypertrophy of that left ventricle wall.
[21:38] Yes, absolutely. All right. So that's another test. Let's back up a little and talk about the risk factors. Mm-hmm
[22:01] Sure, sure. So risk factors. One of them is something that's affecting many people right now, as we work our way through this pandemic situ and that is sitting too much sitting throughout the day, sitting on an airplane or a bus or a train or whatever it is, right? Extended periods of sitting are a real risk factor. So that's one, another issue is a complete lack of exercise and any kind of exercise. It could be dancing to your favorite music. It doesn't mean you have to go to the gym and do some, some specific, right it's simply movement.
[22:45] Your blood lipids love that fiber, the healthier ones are more likely to be pronounced when you've got plenty of fiber on board. So green leafy vegetables are a great way to get fiber. You can have ground FLA seeds, a few nuts and seeds. Those have fiber in them, fruits, fresh fruits, absolutely other kinds of vegetables, not necessarily green ones. All of those food groups have fiber naturally in them, can take fiber as supplements.
[23:22] Smoking's another risk factor. Smoking basically sets your blood vessels on, on fire. If you will, it's a kind of inflammation and the sort of damage that smoking those blood vessels makes it far more likely that the unfriendly lipids will park in the blood vessels and turn into those Velcro balls. I talked about it. So their Velcro balls happen.
[23:51] Yes. And the sitting the smoking. And I know you're gonna talk about blood sugar and diabetes, right?
[24:01] Absolutely. Blood sugar, um, problems where blood sugar rises chronically high and doesn't come back down or the blood sugar roller coaster for people who go from super high to really low, super high, to really low experience, to hang, reach phenomenon, hungry and angry who have first too much blood sugar. And then not enough, it just plummets like a rock off a cliff. This is a problem, right? It's another risk factor.
[24:34] That blood sugar wants to hang onto the proteins in your blood. The proteins belong there, but too much blood sugar does not. And you have extra blood sugar. It hangs on those proteins to create big old honk and molecules called protein glycan.
[24:52] Tries to get through your tiny little capillaries. Well, it doesn't fit.
[25:13] Yeah. So let, so the blood, sugar's a problem. Definitely gotta get that under control. Yep. And let's segue into the lipids. So let's talk about that. How does that contribute and what testing do people have? And let's dive into that.
[25:30] Lipid fractions that we care about, here are the ones that should be on most lab tests. They are HDL, which stands for high density, lip protein; there's LDL, which is low density, lip protein. Then there's V LDL, which stands for very low density like protein. There are some other fractions as well. One of them that is super helpful to know about is called lipoprotein little a right. So lipoprotein little a it's either shown as a lowercase, a or in parentheses an after the word lipoprotein, depending on the lab, the lab, company's way of doing that call out.
[26:20] Think of it as like beach balls in your blood. It's good. It's not thick into anything. It's kind of natural. Telon it's not toxic at all. In this case, it's just good for you. It doesn't cause problems and cholesterol as a large category is the building block a substrate for all the sex hormones. We actually want cholesterol in the body. What we care about is what the body is doing to the cholesterol or interacting with it. So if you have the presence of other kinds of inflammation, which we'll talk about later, this is where lipid pro profiles and fractions matter a lot.
[27:08] Same is true for V LDL, a very low density lipoprotein in the presence of inflammation. It too can be troublesome. LDL is more likely to take people out compared to V LDL triglycerides.They, too, are another fraction of lipid, and they can definitely be problematic. And it's all about inflammation. So back to where we talked about the biggest loser in one of their trainers, Bob Harper, who you know, seemed to be amazingly fit and in shape and blah, blah, blah, and still dropped like a rock from a heart attack. Well, it turned out he hadn't unfriendly cholesterol profile, a very unfriendly one. And again, if he hadn't been in a place where people saw him drop over from a heart attack, he probably would've died because he wouldn't have gotten help fast enough.
[28:11] No, I do. And I'm trying to think of the name of that famous marathon runner who also dropped dead from a heart attack. So just because you're physically, you look physically fit doesn't mean that you are. Yeah. So when people get a regular lipid profile from their doctors, they usually get what total cholesterol, LDL VDL chide and HDL, correct.
[28:39] Right. And so I also gonna say is that sufficient, and I just want to let everybody listening in the podcast know that Dr. Bev is getting ready to give a master class to the women in my midlife mastery program. And so that's who she's talking to.
[29:09] And the course of now 30 years of, of clinical practice and growing where they'll come in, their total cholesterol number will be higher than 200. So it's considered L of or high, right. It automatically falls into the category of at risk. However, a lot of times for these women, especially in midlife and older it's because their HGL fraction has gone up the protective good gal, good girl, kind of cholesterol.
[29:50] They've been told, oh, it's high cholesterol. It's time to put you on a statin as a reflexive response, irrespective of anything else about their lifestyle. And it's not, in my opinion, in a scientific, clinically measured way to go. It doesn't make sense. If your cholesterol profile is dominant with HDL high density protein, you have an unusual amount of protection and that's good. And if you don't have inflammation, it's even better because now it is highly unlikely. You'd be is such a low risk category for a heart attack, right? You just are. Now the other way, this could go HDL is low and V LDL or more likely LDL, usually LDL and triglycerides will elevate more so than V LDL.
[30:52] And when it comes to lip profile, we care a lot because stress at the moment for a reason that you burn it off with activity, like you literally had to lift the car off a loved one, you were literal, really running from a bear for instance is okay, it's good for us. It keeps us safe. It can save lives. The problem with stress is when it's chronic, and it runs away with us, and we are trapped, we feel overwhelmed. And those chemicals surge throughout our body, whether it's cortisol, the primary stress, chemical adrenaline, some other things, right, neurotransmitters, they all get in the mix.
[31:52] And if enough of it builds up, it creates what's called those Atheros or those fattythis fatty buildup, those fatty plaques on the walls of the blood vessels. That's where the word athero sclerosis will come from where it's this process where, because the blood vessels been damaged now, the fats are trying to patch it. And the fat's really hard to sign to patch. It that's just a bad patch.
[32:26] You know, this is super important. What you just said about chronic stress. And this is what gets back to the hormones. Ladies. I always say everything leads to hormones
[33:45] I'd like to leave everyone with this. Please take action. Most of these processes are silent and invisible. And by the time you start to develop symptoms, you know, you're well on the way to some serious outcomes. So being proactive, this is one of those times when you are so richly rewarded and don't let someone Buffalo you into ignoring something that's important for your health. So if you have a family history of heart disease, you really need to be particularly vigilant because you may have a genetic predisposition to it, but please understand how you live your life, your lifestyle and the environment you're in and how many tox exposed to like you live near a factory or a source of diesel fumes, et cetera, all these things accumulate and make that difference for your health. Please be proactive. Clearly if you're here, if you're listening to Dr. Kirin and the good, wonderful work she's doing the great stuff she does with the hormone club, then you're probably really dialed in and tuned in to continue to take action because the person has to live with the problem.
[35:34] Yes. So well said, I love this quote that you shared with me from Maya Angelou. We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but really admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. I don't think I've heard that quote from her before and it's fabulous. And I think it speaks to this situation because so many women want to transform their health. And they're looking for the one thing, the one super supplement, the one diet that's gonna fix everything. And it really is a labor of love and very intensive, right?
[35:57] Yes. Thank you so much. I know you have the guide on how to improve your hemoglobin A1C and fasting blood sugar numbers and beyond for those people who are wanting to improve their blood sugar and decrease their risk for heart attack, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, including strokes. And we will have the link in the show notes. Do you wanna tell them a little bit about that?
[36:20] Yeah, sure. So in that guide, you know, I, the information there is clear and we talk about the big topics that affect it. Some of it would be things you would expect like around nutrition. All, some might be some things you may not know that some aspects of gut health, other things interact to really make that difference.
[36:59] Great. Well, thank you so much for that wonderful resource and thank you for the work that you do and for sharing this important, very important information with us today.
[37:08] You're welcome. Thank you for letting me be a part of your mission here. Um, I really love that we are so aligned with helping people live their best lives.
[37:15] And thank you all for listening to another episode of the whole hormone prescription podcast with Dr. Kyrin. I'm very grateful that you've taken time out of your precious day to spend it with us. Hopefully you have learned some information that's going to impact your life in a positive way. And I hope that you share that information with your loved ones.
Get this for FREE: How to Improve Your A1C and Fasting (Morning) Blood Sugar Numbers (and Beyond) by Dr. Beverly Yates
https://bit.ly/blueprint-diabetes-nutrition-secrets
Q & A Episode each month
Submit your questions here (leave me a voicemail):
Join The Hormone Bliss Challenge
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Tuesday Apr 12, 2022
Tuesday Apr 12, 2022
Have you ever wondered why you are prone to hormone problems?
In this episode of the Hormone Prescription Podcast, we talk with Dr. Aviva Romm about why women are more likely to experience hormone imbalances and what we can do to prevent them.
Dr. Aviva Romm is a leading authority on natural health and holistic medicine, and her insights will help you understand your own body better. She is a midwife, Yale-trained MD and Board Certified Family Physician who specializes in Integrative Gynecology, Obstetrics, and Pediatrics, with a focus on women's endocrinology. She's also a world-renown herbalist, and author of the textbook, Botanical Medicines for Women's Health, as well as 7 other books, including The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution and her new book, Hormone Intelligence, an instant New York Time Bestseller, which explores the impact of the world we live in on women's hormones and health, and brings us a new medicine for women that is holistic and natural, while being grounded in the best science and medicine, have to offer. A practitioner, teacher, activist, and advocate of both environmental health and women's reproductive rights and health, she has been bridging traditional medicine, total health ecology, and good science for over three decades.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of listening to your "hormone intelligence" and how it can guide you to making better choices for your health.
You will learn:
-Why women are more prone to hormone problems
-What you can do to prevent hormone imbalances
-How to listen to your "hormone intelligence"
-The importance of making choices for your health
And much more!
[01:01] Welcome back to another episode of the hormone prescription podcast with Dr. Kirin. Thank you so much for joining me today. We are going to jump into some hormone deliciousness today with Dr. Aviva Ram. Some of you probably already know her because she is one of the queen bees of hormones. She's a medical doctor. She's also a nurse midwife. Her background is in nurse midwifery. We actually found out that we went to the same high school in New York City, Bronx science.
[01:56] So maybe you will learn some tips on how to tune back into what she's telling you and transform your hormones and your health. I think that that quote really exemplifies what Dr. Aviva Ram is all about. She shared this quote with me before we met for her interview. And it's really what she wants for you. It's what I want you. I think that you will get lots of information that can help you to thrive and not just survive in this life. Cause if you're just surviving, you're not doing it right.
[02:55] So Dr. Aviva Ram is a medical doctor and a midwife. She's Yale trained for her medical degree and she's a board certified family physician who specializes in integrative gynecology, obstetrics and pediatrics with a focus on women's endocrinology. She's also a world renowned herbalist and author of the textbook botanical medicines for women's health as well as seven other books, including the adrenal thyroid revolution and her new book, hormone intelligence and instant, New York times bestseller, which explores the impact of the world. We live in on women's hormones and health and bring us a new medicine for women that is holistic and natural while being grounded in the best science and medicine have to offer a practitioner, teacher, activist and advocate of both environmental health and women's reproductive rights and health.
[04:16] I am super excited to talk to you about hormones in, oh my gosh. I freaking love your book and agree with really everything that you say. And I love how honest you are and you're honest. I mean, it's unfortunate, but we've gotta face some hard truths right now about the care that we are giving women or should I say not giving women. And I love that you are honest and that you really stop the medical gas lighting that's going on. And you say women, you are right. You are not being taken care of. You're not being nurtured. So talk about how you became so passionate about women's health.
[04:56] Well, it started out really early for me. I, as we were chatting about before, um, Karen and I, you all, we, we both went to the same geeky science high school in New York. We both went to Bronx high school of science and I knew I wanted to be a physician even as early as ninth grade, but I wanted to get out of New York and I was living in a housing project.
[05:53] And we're talking back to 1981. So this was a long time ago. And when I started to look at the history of women's health, the fact that at that time in 81, the C-section rate was already becoming a concerning issue, how high it was getting. And at that point, it hadn't even hit 19% yet. Now we're at like 34% nationally in 1981, it was still legal for black and brown women to be sterilized at childbirth without their consent in California, for example.
[06:57] So it kind of goes pretty far back deep in my roots of the things that I was just very blessed and ballsy enough to like that combination of like stepping out there to dare, to take some chances. And then those people were in my path to help me understand. So that really kind of just pushed me to a whole new commit, to deeply understanding healthcare. And I became a home birth midwife.
[07:49] And at that time too, you know, we're talking like 81 all the way into the mid two thousands. Believe it or not things like herbal medicine, nutrition, midwifery, these were really fringe. I mean, really, really fringe. The medical model was not giving any of these things, even lip service at that time. It was like you were either in the system or you were out of the system.
[08:52] So I also wanted to be a voice and an advocate for people needing it, but like increasingly my mission is now to also just be a voice and an advocate for changing healthcare because healthcare providers are getting burned out on how healthcare is too. So that's kind of, you know, in a nutshell, the journey and where I've come through and come to. And then, you know, I was part of that. I went to medical school. I mean, I went to Yale, I got my MD and did my internship in internal medicine, women's health. And I did my residency in family medicine, cuz I wanted to add in the OB and the pediatrics, which most internal medicine docs don't do. I couldn't do the OB. I started the interview, no like I to interview in OB programs. And I actually withdraw my applications because I was like, I am gonna be so unhappy as a midwife doing OB in that system. So I really give you credit for doing that. For me, family medicine was a softer way to be able to stay aligned with what I, who I was and where I was going.
[09:56] You know, it's interesting that, you know, you point out that a lot of herbal medicine was on the fringe home. Midwifery was fringe. When I came out of residency in 96, a couple years later, I actually started being the backup for the midwives locally. And they had applied for privileges at the hospital to do liver decades before and been blocked repetitively.
[10:37] And that's for the nurse midwives. Right. So that was for CMS. It wasn't even like the traditional direct entry midwives. And they had the CMS had an obstacle and they're trained in the medical model.
[10:50] Right. And even after the commission and the suit, they say the hospital has to entertain their application. When they reapply, they would always lose their application and bottom line, they weren't gonna let them in. And then I came and the tides had turned politically and it was then in Vogue to have birthing suites yeah. And allow the family in and have midwives.
[11:22] Yeah. That's amazing. You know, in Georgia, there are over 90 countries that have no OBGYN at all, no hospital access at all. So we were really trying to advocate. In fact, I just spoke this past year to the, um, Georgia state legislature. And we did a lunchtime hour for them still trying to get a home birth midwives licensed. It's very difficult for nurse midwives to attend home births because they're under the auspices of the OB GYN. So if the OB GYN don't approve it, they can't do it or they'll lose their licenses and privileges. So they can't do it.
[12:18] It is insanity. And I may be a little liberal on this, but I really think that it doesn't take all the training that we OB GYNs have to deliver a baby. And this medicalization of the process, really, I think the majority of births would be handled by midwives.
[12:35] That's my, yeah. I mean, we've seen that in every, I mean, we're not talking, you know, in the middle of the Outback somewhere and you know, Australia, we're talking about the middle of like the Congo. We're talking about Western nations that have demonstrated that year after year after decade, after decade, Canada, Germany, UK, Sweden, et cetera, et cetera, that home birth is optimal for otherwise healthy women.
[13:31] And I think like, you know, along with the medicalization that you mentioned an overmedicalization, we see this incredible and infantilization as if adult women should have to be told what we're allowed to as opposed to like, may I, or is it okay if I do this procedure or check you? And it's not just in birth, it's pelvic exams, breast exams, how we're talked to in the doctor's office.
[14:24] It is, you are so right. It is so true. And I really think it's time for a complete revamping of women's healthcare, really a revolution. And I think your book is a great place to start because you cover a lot of these kinds of sociopolitical issues in there. So can you tell everyone what hormonal intelligence means?
[14:46] Yeah. So to me it means a couple of things. So one this idea that we have actually an innate biological blueprint that really hasn't changed over eons of time when women menstruate, the same way we get pregnant, the same way we give birth the same way internationally. We go into menopause basically at the same age that may have changed a little bit historically over time, the age that we did, what these processes repeat over and over and over same hormones, the hormones haven't changed, you know, since we first started walking on two feet and actually even before.
[15:39] We can't just say, oh, well, that's because you're a woman or that's because you have estrogens because you have a uterus. We haven't always had all of these problems. And certainly not at the scope and magnitude and amount of women that and people with a womb that experience them now. So hormone intelligence on the one hand is understanding that we have this innate biological blueprint, hormone intelligence is also having the intelligence or wisdom to understand that blueprint.
[17:05] It's so true. In my medical training, I really was taught and got the impression that we were little men and, and that we had this little extra accessory pack, like a little black bag you might wear to a black tie event. That was our female hormone pack that conferred oh, interesting. The ability to reproduce. And that was like a separate department and it really didn't affect who we are foundationally. And you know, in my journey I've learned that nothing could be further from the truth we are.
[17:46] Totally. And I think sometimes too, because as women, you know, we all know the statements. What are you on your period? I mean, we had a president that said to a reporter, is that you're, you know, is that blood coming out of your hoots or whatever right now, you know, it's like the, to admit that our hormones have an impact on our life and our actions and thoughts and behaviors.
[18:32] Yeah. And you know, I love how you talk about just the words that we use to describe our anatomy. Can you talk a little bit about that and kind of moving towards a less violent nomenclature that is more nurturing and supportive of us.
[18:49] Yeah. We tend to have a very male centered and militaristic approach to health in general. I mean, we all hear, you know, in this moment of the pandemic, right? Like your immune system fighting and battling, and we're very keyed into this war mentality and with, with women's bodies, I mean, all the parts are named after men, even pelvic floor exercises were for women were originally named after Dr. Keel. You know, we have our Bartels glands, we have all these pouches of Douglas.
[19:45] So I really like to reclaim body parts whenever we can use an Ana correct name. That's great. But I do think we need to rethink some of those names and maybe rename things. But you know, when we can just call things what they are pelvic floor instead, you know, pelvic floor exercises, instead of Kas, you can say birth canal, if you want to, instead of vagina and not everyone who has one wants to get birth. So how do we rethink it? It's so funny, but because my oldest daughter is here visiting me right now and she's 33 and she was saying how funny it was.
[20:30] And my daughter was like, it's so funny, mom. Whenever I hear it, she's like I cringe cuz it was so embarrassing when I was a kid. But she's like, it's so popular now. And it's not necessarily the perfect word, but it is at least a respectful term for women's really means the VVA. That's another thing too.
[21:25] It's so true. Ava and I used to, when I practiced basic OB GYN, which I don't do anymore, I used to keep a mirror in my exam rooms and I would show everyone when we would have the speculum exam, this is what your cervix is and show them their anatomy. And I was surprised how many women had never looked yes. At their anatomy.
[21:47] And when do they're like, oh, that's amazing. Or that's really cool or wow, that's not what I thought. Yeah.
[21:54] I am for anatomy and biology education, age appropriate all the way through our training. Just so I think we'd have a lot fewer health problems. I love how you explain cuz this is so I harp on and I love how you describe this. Hormones are messengers, symptoms are messages. So I don't think a lot of people understand what is the role of hormones? What are they doing? Can you talk a little bit about that as messengers and then symptoms?
[22:38] Yeah. For sure. Well, as you and I both know, I mean even in basic medical school, basic endocrinology, we learn that hormones are chemical messengers and that's what they literally are. They are produced in one part of the body, in a gland. So that could be your hypothalamus, your pituitary, your thyroid, your adrenals, your ovaries, and then those chemicals are released. And usually like when we're talking about female hormones, we're talking about estrogen or progesterone testosterone, but many others play an important role like cortisol on thyroid, hormone and insulin. And so they're released from wherever their origin place is.
[23:38] And then they rip in one and they cause it to mature and it releases and then that place that's left over produces hormones. So they're just these beautiful signaling molecules. And really, they shouldn't make too much noise. I mean, we shouldn't really be that aware of their presence in any significantly UN uncomfortable way. They should just do their job. But some of the jobs that they do, for example, estrogen does make our breasts get fuller each month.
[24:35] But the kind of crossing over into the line of where a, now it becomes a symptom is when it's causing you discomfort in your life. So your breasts are killing you. Like you can't even put your bra on premenstrually. That may be a symptom of too much estrogen. And for some women that can be a risk factor for fibro cystic, uh, for cystic breast disease, but also for breast cancer, having too much estrogen that causes you to have a lot of really heavy periods of really a lot of pelvic discomfort may be also a risk factor for uterine fibroids because of that too much estrogen we've been taught as women that all of these signs that we get each month, you know, restfulness PMs, heavy periods, late periods, cravings, incredible mood swings are just kind of par for the course of being women.
[25:41] They actually tell us when things aren't going quite according to that hormone, an intelligent blueprint. So if we ignore or suppress those little symptoms and signs, even if they're just causing us, you know, minor discomfort, but definitely discomfort, we're potentially suppressing opportunities, stall other problems later on. So that's why it's so important to listen to these little symptoms and these little messages and take them seriously often when we don't listen to them. When they're small, they start getting louder and louder and louder until they're in full, full blown condition. So that's why I say that symptoms are important messages from our hormones.
[26:24] Yes, absolutely. And you know, I love how you say don't care. Know the messenger.
[26:31] Because the symptom is there to tell you something, you know, I always, I call our body, she and she's telling you.
[26:44] Right. And Tylenol may be great for the moment, right. But if we're doing that day in and day out, we are missing an opportunity. And a lot of the gynecologic conditions that are very common, whether it be PMs or whether it be menstrual cramps or polycystic ovary syndrome, or a lot of breast tension, you know, cyclically, skipped, irregular, all those things are harbingers of later conditions in the sense that many of them are triggered by excessive inflammation or insulin resistance or blood, blood sugar. I balance.
[27:47] Great. Well, and I know everyone should get the book, but can you give them a little kind of overview of wherever they are at whatever stage of life, whatever they're dealing with, maybe heavy irregular, painful periods, P C O S whatever it is, what kind of would be a general overview of the path that they should take to start addressing these problems?
[28:11] Yeah. So I think the first thing is really just to acknowledge that you're having them and then be forgiving of yourself. I know we both love quotes. And one of my favorite quotes is Maya Angelus. Like the font of she's the quote goddess. So she really is my source of often my favorite quotes, but she says, I'm gonna paraphrase. But you know, we do what we can with the information we have when we have it. And when we know better, we do better. So the first thing is just to be really honest with yourself about the symptoms you're having, cuz as women, we are taught to ignore them, suppress them, pretend they're not happening to gloss right over them.
[28:56] So if you don't know your body parts, if you don't know what your uterus is, your bladder is your intestines. The difference between your vagina and your VVA, where your ovaries are. Look at a good image, go to my book, go online and start to identify, you know, what are those symptoms? What are they associated with? And if you can find a wonderful provider, that's always a great step to have someone you can really partner with in exploring what's going on.
[29:48] And then, so with my book, for example, and in my medical practice, I help women identify not just what the medical symptoms are and the medical condition is. But what are the things that we know that may be contributing to those that we can do something about? So for example, we know that women who have really painful periods often have more inflammation and we know that movement, some dietary changes like reducing red meat, reducing dairy, increasing fruits and vegetables, not even rocket rocket science can really make, really make a difference.
[30:55] So for example, one study that I thought was really interesting, looked at a group of teenage girls who were using body products that were very high in S which is a form of plasticizer. It makes plastics soft and they were also drinking out of plastic, water bottles and plastic cups. So the researchers measured their blood level of thas had them go. I think it was one week only of no body products that had added those in it. So like clean body products or no body products and just no more drinking out of plastic. And within that week period of time, their th levels plummeted. Well, we also know those fallates and many environmental chemicals act as what are called endocrine disruptors.
[32:03] But I love and often repeat to my patients. And in, when I teach is your body has the capacity to heal beyond anything you've ever been led to believe. And I don't mean that just, you know, if you just change your thoughts, your fibroids are gonna go away or you're not gonna get breast cancer. Health is much more complicated than that. And disease is much more complicated than that. But in conventional medicine, we're taught that our medical conditions are basically genetically programmed and they're fixed and they're inevitable.
[32:59] But then of course, you know, sometimes it does need a little bit more. So that's where partnering with a good integrative practitioner, your conventional practitioner who knows integrative therapies may help you. And of course that's where my book and articles that I have. I'm sure you have articles too. Can really come in handy to learn from people that you trust. What supplements, what specific foods, what specific, you know, we know that there are a few specific yoga postures that really have been found in research to help with menstrual cramps as an example. And this is so with my book, but also, you know, when we think about women's reproductive health, my book covers the first time you have a period all the way till through Perry menopause.
[33:57] It is. Thank you for outlining. All of that. I know when I was reading the book and you told you have a section called women, women unseen and unheard, and you quoted if just one doctor had listened to me, I wouldn't have lost years of my life to this end quote. And I talk to women every day. I know you do too, who they're just so there's so much frustration. They're not being heard. They read your book, they hear us talking online and they know that a higher standard of care is available for them, but they're really having trouble accessing it.
[35:05] Yes. And you have to, I mean, it's so hard because we're so taught to be polite and not question authority, but it's your body, you know, your body best. If you're really, if you're experiencing something, don't let someone else Gaslight you and tell you you're not, or dismiss it as just stress. I mean, stress may play a part in what's going on, but if you're experiencing anxiety, depression, period problems, fertility challenges, heavy periods, menopausal symptoms. Don't just let somebody tell you, that's just normal.
[36:02] Like being more bold or being more sexualized or like a, you know, in an empowered way. And so I always, I say to women, I even have an article about this on my website, learn to channel your Sasha fierce, like whatever that is for you, it can be any name. You, it can be a wonder woman. It can be Sasha fierce, whoever you, it is for you, but channel her when you go into a physician's office and hold your power. And there's so many things you can do to make notes about what your questions are.
[36:46] I mean, you are sometimes vulnerable when you go into a system and your doctor has seven or 10 minutes to see you amongst the 50 patients. He or she may be seeing that day and is trained in a system to dismiss women and absolutely not trained at all to recognize that there's more to healing and health and wellness than just, you know, here's a pill. Here's that pill here is a surgery or whatever, whatever.
[37:25] Yeah. I love that. Channel. Your inner Sasha fierce, put your big girl panties on and yep. And just do it. One of the things that I really work with, all the women I work with on with their health is their energy body, I and their story and their hi her story. And I love how Carolyn me says that your biography becomes your biology. And so it's really an integral part of the work I do with women. I love this quote you shared from Clarissa Pinola, Estees the doors to the world of the wild self.
[38:30] Couldn't agree more about our stories and how we think of our stories and how we tell our stories. And in fact, in hormone intelligence, in my medical practice, the book and, and what I do with my patients, one on one, one of the things that I do share is a practice on writing your story, reading your story, and rewriting your story so that you are the heroine of your, so many of us have stories that include mistreatment or trauma or being in the dark about something that was going on in our bodies.
[39:25] And nobody said, uh, you could have endometriosis, no matter what, that's not normal. You shouldn't suffer like that. So astonishing. So really writing your story, whether that is your life story and how you are, where you are right now, or just your gynecologic and reproductive health story. And the other thing, and the reason I ask women to read that and rewrite our story is that very few of us are ever taught that we can be the author of our story.
[40:14] You know, if you had a gynecologic variant that was victimizing, for example, 7% of women now report birth trauma. There's a percentage of women in the United States now having such significant birth trauma, that it is diagnosed as PTs D women who struggle horribly with endometriosis or P C O S who become so identified with the trauma are so identified with the diagnosis that they feel victimized by their own bodies or by the health system.
[41:29] And rather than seeing them as a deficit, how can we see them as our superpower? And it's a little bit like that Japanese artist, I think it's called Kenui where you take the wounds of a broken piece of pottery and you paint them with gold so that they're like they're actually sealed back together with gold so that the broken vessel becomes even more of you beautiful and more of an art piece than maybe even the original one as it was sort of created to be.
[42:28] And so for me, I'm very, very alert to my environment. I'm also incredibly about what's going on in my environment. I had to learn to read faces and expressions easily as a child for my own physical and emotional safety. But I'm also deeply aware of the facial expressions and sense of safety of my patients and others, and able to just read subtle nuance. So how can you reframe so that those parts of you are now a gift that you can bring forward to the world and also recognize when you're activated. So those parts are driving you in a not healthful way.
[43:33] I love that. Thank you so much for sharing it. You're welcome. And I could just go on talking, talking, talking to you, but I do wanna be respectful of our listeners' time and attention. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Aviva Romm, do you have any, where can people find you? Where can they find out more? I know they can get the book, hormone intelligence, wherever books are sold, but tell the 'em all the places that they can find
[43:57] You. Okay. So I love hanging out on my Instagram. I am one of those weird people. I don't love social media in general and all the bad things about it, but I do love connecting with my community. So if you go to Dr. Aviva RO on Instagram, you will find me. And that's really me and the comments and DMS. So, you know, it's just quick, like little tips and, and things I'm thinking about and a little glimpse into my life. That's a great place. And then if you want tons of articles, podcasts, videos, eBooks information, my website is the place to go. It's just Aviva rom.com and it's very easy to navigate.
[44:38] Awesome. Thank you so much for those great resources. Thank you for the work you do. Thanks for helping with the revolution when it comes to women's health. I have to ask you this one last question. Yeah. What is it gonna take for us to really overhaul the way women's health is handled, uh, in the mainstream,
[44:56] You know, it's already happening, you know, when you talked about mid, you talked about midwives, right. And midwives create a presence. I mean, it was really women in a sea change kind of way speaking up for and demanding what they want. And sadly, the medical system is also a, it is an industry and it's driven by consumer demand. So the more we all actually channel our Sasha fierce, the more we actually do say to our providers.
[45:40] We, we, we actually can change it with where we are, where we put our money in healthcare. You know, the more we're going to get other forms, the nutritionist that we're seeing, the health coaches that we're seeing that creates that sea change also.
[45:53] Right. Great. Thank you so much for that. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Aviva Romm,
[45:57] You are so welcome. Thank you for having me.
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Tuesday Apr 05, 2022
Tuesday Apr 05, 2022
In today's episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, we're joined by Dr. Keesha Ewers to discuss how energy healing can impact your hormones. We'll be discussing how past childhood trauma can have a lasting impact on your health as an adult, as well as the benefits of energy healing modalities such as yoga and meditation to hormone balance.
Dr. Keesha Ewers is board certified in functional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, a Doctor of Sexology, trauma-informed psychotherapist, family practice ARNP with a specialty in integrative medicine, a conscious dying doula, and the founder and medical director of the Academy for Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certification Program.
Keesha has been in the medical field for over 30 years. After conducting the HURT Study in 2013 (Healing Un-Resolved Trauma), she developed the HURT Model for understanding how past childhood trauma impacts adult health. This led to the creation of the Healing Trauma Through the Chakra System online program and the You Unbroken online program for patients to heal their trauma and the Mystic Medicine deep immersion healing retreats she leads at her home on San Juan Island, WA.
In this episode you'll learn:
-How trauma can impact your hormones
-The benefits of energy healing for hormone-related issues
-How yoga and meditation can help to heal trauma
-What you can do to start healing your own trauma
We hope you enjoy this episode! Be sure to subscribe to The Hormone Prescription Podcast. And don't forget to leave us a rating and review if you enjoyed it!
[00:54] We are gonna talk about something today that you might think doesn't have anything to do with hormones, but it does. And we're going to draw the line between the two for you and help you understand why vibration has so much to do with your hormones and vice versa.
[01:50] Dr. Keisha Ewers is a board certified in functional medicine and IIC medicine. She's a doctor of sexology trauma informed psychotherapist family practice, a N R P with a specialty in integrative medicine. Also a conscious dying doula and the founder and medical director of the academy for integrative medicine, health coach certification program. Keisha has been in the medical field for over 30 years. And after conducting the hurt study in 2013, Hurtt stands for healing, unresolved trauma.
[03:05] She's also hosting the upcoming summit on vibrational medicine, which we'll have links to in the show notes, healing with vibration summit, and she's got special interest in expertise as well. In fact, I was thinking of all the things I know you've done since that bio was written.
[03:36] We are made up of energy sound travels, you know, in waveforms, light travels in wave forms. The way that our heartbeat is in the form, our E EEG from our brain waves forms, the ocean comes in and waves and goes out and tides, right?
{04:33] And so everything's vibrations, we're we as our human organism in the context of the earthly environments that we're in, it's all vibrations. And so how those vibrations impact each other is going to really have a lot to do with our health, our mood, our longevity, like all of it is affected with how we're vibrating.
[05:45] The perception of fear will start to set off a whole cascade of hormone messenger chemicals in your body that alert the body, how to vibrate, right? So those adrenals need to get to work. Cortisol goes through, this is a vibratory quality. So vibrational medicine is really becoming aware of how you're vibrating. Like every thought, every feeling has its own vibration.
[07:09] Yes. Thank you for that explanation. And yeah, I think as you were talking, I was thinking, I think everybody's familiar with, well, radio waves, the, if that's a wave form, right. But I don't think they think of us as human.
[08:02] And then right when I turned 30, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and it was this fascinating sort of overnight change. That's how my patients describe it too. Like all of a sudden I'm sick, which actually isn't accurate. The body's been trying to get your attention for a long, long time, but how we are with ourselves, you know, it's, it's like we definitely have to kind of all into the pothole before we wake up.
[08:57] And, and the doctor that was seeing me asked, you know, do you have a family history of autoimmune disease? And I remember thinking about that and saying, yeah, I think, I think my grandfather had it and had rheumatoid arthritis and was in a wheelchair at the end of his life with it. He died before I ever knew him, his fifties, which is where I am right now is in my fifties. And she said, well, that's what you have.
[09:43] And I just remember saying, well, hang on, hang on. I'm very, very disciplined. I make my own food. I'm very healthy, you know, is there anything else? And she just said, no, it's genetic. You know, just kinda like closing the book, putting it on the shelf. That's the end of the discussion.
[10:31] And what I just read was so interesting and revolutionary to me, you know, it was like, we're not all the same. We have different ways. We're supposed to feed in water and take care of ourselves. There's no one dietary protocol that's right for everybody. And that, by the way, autoimmune disease is undigested anger.
[11:27] I am attacking myself. And so I thought, when was the first time I wanted to die? I don't have any clear cognition about wanting to die right now. You know, I don't want to die. So I started going backwards asking that question and I found this little 10 - year old girl version of myself who was being sexually abused by the vice principal of the elementary school that I was attending.
[12:16] I have a stomach ache, you know, and, but I didn't know the word sex, you know, I didn't know the word molest or abuse. Like I didn't know any of the language that was attached to this. And really, I thought it must be because there was something inherently wrong with me. And so when I started looking at that version of myself from this 30 - year old perspective, I went, oh this has to be connected. Like it has to be.
[13:35] Yeah. Thank you for sharing all of that. And um, you know, I know I share part of your story and a lot of women listening do and a lot of women, you know, it's not okay for us to be angry. We're told.
[14:04] At some point that has to be digested. Right. And then digested, and we're taught that anger is bad. It's a negative emotion as a vibrational quality in the whole law of attraction world too. Right. And that's another one that I go, oh no, like you have to let your emotions digest properly and not judge them. And then they can move through.
[14:38] And so the entire idea of emotions being their vibrational energies, they are right. And so they have to be digested. So what modalities might you have used, or you've used with clients or might be talked about in the vibrational health summit?
[15:17] So in the hurt model, healing, unresolved trauma model that emerged from my work, I show, you know, first you have this event and, and we have capital T trauma have lower case T trauma and everybody's had trauma. So not everybody's had capital T trauma. The kind that we're talking about when we're talking about sexual abuse, but you can have trauma that is like tripping in front of the entire class in the cafeteria and, and everyone laughs at you or missing the spelling word and the, or not being able to get to the top of the rope and the presidential challenge in front of everyone. Like all of these.
[16:32] So, you know, it's this really interesting experience to be a child and to have all these little, little tiny experiences throughout the, the jungle of childhood where you didn't have maybe a well attuned, securely attached caregiver who was attuned to you and help you, you navigate. So our brains are not fully developed till we're 26 years old and we don't have our prefrontal cortex online yet.
[17:29] So it's going to be like, everyone's so different and how you create the belief and the behavior pattern that goes with whatever your capital T your lower case T traumas are. Then that's how we lock it. It really does. Like, so sometimes energy workers will do like chakra work with somebody, and they'll feel really good, but then they still have the button that gets pushed. Right.
[18:20] Then they're back to the races again, that just the next time. And so with the hurt model, what I show is, you know, how that button gets created, that get pushed all the way through your adult life, where at first you have the event, then you have a feeling, okay. So if we use my sexual abuse, it's an easy one to track.
[19:10] So you make up a meaning to whatever it is that is happening. Right. And for me, the meaning was people that say, they're in charge and want to protect children, probably can't be trusted. You know, like it's a lie. And so I have to, my belief was I am going to have to be perfect to survive this.
[20:03] I actually have never met anyone with an autoimmune disease that does not have perfectionism in there. And so that's a very untenable way to live your life, to think you always have to be perfect. I was on that road until I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, because it was governing everything. I drove myself so hard. So, and it came from sitting in that little desk.
[20:58] And we have to learn how to do that internally. So I start there because if you feel like your safety or survival is constantly on the line, subconsciously nothing else you do is ever going to work. Like you can fix your microbiome until the cows come home and keep going back to those adrenals, and they'll keep turning over, right? Your hormones will never get balanced because you keep having this survival issue.
[22:19] And what, what happens is if you think someone's going to come, if you just care enough, then someone will pay attention to you. That's how we get connected to narcissists. That's how we get into codependent relationships like that does not work. You have to become the parent to you that you always needed. And so I will teach you how to do that. Like how to repair that attachment, how to attach to yourself, how to become grounded, safe, and secure inside your own system. So then you're resonating a vibration that magnetizes others like that to you, right then you're at a higher level of relating. It's not need based.
[23:04] Yeah. So your vibe shifts your vibration and then the law of attraction can bring you what you want. Not what you don't want for a lot of us who say it doesn't work. It's because we have undigested anger.
[23:23] There's a child part in there that's resentful and frustrated and disempowered and angry and your adult self, maybe have the spiritual, the bypass part, right. That can radiate out love and compassion and want to attract with the adult part once. But you have to actually heal that child part because she's in the background screaming.
[23:52] Yeah. It's a really interesting dynamic for people that have been doing a lot of work and are waking up and exploring consciousness and maybe are, you know, into yoga, action, prayer. And they, they forgive, and they go into the law of attraction from their adult brain. But they've bypassed it. It's like building a school on a trash heap. Right?
[24:55] You know what you're talking about so much reminds me of a lot of the 12-step work, which is kind of the first level of addiction recovery, whether it's Overeaters anonymous, alcoholics and anonymous, whatever your thing is anonymous. And basically it is fake till you make it behavior change.
[25:38] One of the things I love about summits is connecting to people and, and the interviews, right. It's just so amazing. So I loved rolling MCRA interview. He's the researcher that for heart math, and you know, really talking about this entrainment that we have with each other and ourselves, you know, vibrationally that we're all in like what Rupert Shere calls the morphogenetic field, and we're influencing it.
[26:20] So you guys are going to have to go look at the summit, and you can see that we will have the links in the show notes. And I also wanted to ask you because since the last time you were on the podcast, didn't you haven't you completed or in the process of doing your ministerial training?
[26:49] Yeah. I've been doing a master's in divinity. Yeah.
[26:52] Yeah. How has that changed or informed the work that you do?
[26:57] Went into it because I was starting to notice an up and what a couple of Princeton researchers have called deaths of despair in our culture and deaths of despair are overdoses suicides from a variety of different ways and means, and non-alcoholic catty liver disease. And you know, we do have a lot of that and this was pre-pandemic when I started and this was on. Right. And what I started noticing is as this uptick is going up, we also have an uptick in narcissistic personality disorder diagnoses.
[28:04] Right. And at that time again, pre-pandemic, I was a little worried about the lack of community. Maybe people were experiencing it when they didn't have a synagogue or a mosque or a church or a temple, you know? And I thought, where is that getting replaced? Is that why there's so much of this increase in narcissism, an increase. And so I was looking at, at the research of the narcissistic epidemic and what was being shown to be at the root of that.
[28:53] So I went in wanting to really explore that, like what's the role of divinity in this? How do we help people reattach again, it's attachment trauma in my mind to source to their own divine source, you know? And instead of needing it from out here, can they find it here? Can they reconnect to that? That has been my interest in what I was up to. And so I think it informs my work.
[29:48] Yeah. So I have to ask you on this topic or your thoughts on the use of psychedelic and other medicines that may not be mainstream for people to heal these really core, like you said, existential attachment wounds.
[30:04] Right? Yeah. So we tend to like to start and stop the conversation with parents and parent-child bonding. And you know, like it's much bigger than that, right. As I just mentioned, right. And now post pandemic, there's also the bond of the community broken in the way. Right? And so I am an M DMA certified AED psychotherapist. I've trained for 10 years in the use of wa Huma with a teacher in Peru, initiated wa Humira or medicine woman.
[31:11] And so I looked at so many studies from different religions, and it turns out that plant, the use of plant medicine is head and shoulders above anything in efficacy for reducing gut anxiety and to reattaching us to source like we get our left brain out of the way that says that everything has to be proven. We have to see it, feel it, touch it, smell it, taste it, or it doesn't exist and allow the right brain to come forward with the opposite of that.
[32:08] Now take a little nap. You'll be required later when it's time to balance the checkbook. So, you know, uh, you're not going to be killed. You're not going to go anywhere for good, but just, just come to sleep for a little while, you know, and it, and it allows you to get in touch with a lot of its dead. After you go through childhood with your imagination, like the right brain, the ability to be able to get into energy flow, to feel vibratory changes too, you know, so plant medicine assists in that.
[33:01] But if you are not integrating, which takes a skilled therapist to work with you to do this, you know, to give you how to integrate that, then all it is a cool experience. That then means nothing. And I, it doesn't heal you, it doesn't help change anything. So you have to go through like that hurt model and be able to apply it, you know, to helping with attachment trauma, whether it's you feel like you've been betrayed by life or God or the culture or the government or your parents or your spouse, you know, or yourself, and, you know, really heal that and integrate what comes through
[34:24] Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. I would, I agree with that. The integration is everything. Yeah. And it's often missing. Yeah. With the way we've, McDonaldized a lot of these medicines.
[34:38] I mean, I'm seeing on Facebook now that you can actually order a ketamine box and just do home therapy. Right. Where, so you're taking the substance by yourself.
[35:15] How does somebody find someone who's expert at being an integration coach? Cause that's not a skill set that most standard therapists, psychotherapists or family therapists have, how do they find someone?
[35:30] I was certified through maps, a similar disciplinary approach to psychedelic research and studies, and they emphasized most of the training was integration. So it's not like, um, so if you get certified with maps, that's a good one because it's all about the integration. So I would say that's probably a good place. You know, these things aren't legalized yet. Right?
[35:57] So people can't advertise. I mean, I've come out, and I've been talking on summits and saying, yeah, like I run groups, right. So people can contact me, but it's not something where the California C I S is, you know, has a psychedelics research program. Like I said, John's Hopkins has tons of money now that they have allocated toward this research. So we're still in that research stage of bringing out enough science to sink a ship many times over for the FDA to finally go, oh, you know, so MDMA is in its third round of FDA trials.
[36:58] Yeah. So eventually you know I have been legalized in the state of Oregon, but right now they're in this, the position of creating oversight, you know, like pulling all of like, what's the infrastructure going to look like?
[37:30] Great. Well, thank you so much for sharing that and for your transparency, I think that it's, it speaks a lot to, people need to hear this, that practitioners who are credentialed, use these things help with these things and that they are available.
[37:55] Yeah. So let's dive back to the summit, and then we're going to wrap up the podcast, but I just will have the link in the show notes where you can find out more, you can see all the experts, what they're talking about, any last words about the summit that you wanna share,
[38:11] That this is an innovative and unique way of opening up a perspective. A lot of people haven't maybe spent too much time in. And so I would just really encourage you to listen to, it goes from like the vibration is how to organize your home environment. I did a talk on boss, which is the sister science of yoga and IIC medicine, which is where I came from. And you know, like what are some very easy things you can do inside your office and home to have, do the energy move in a way that helps you be healthy and abundant and happy, right?
[39:11] Thank you so much. And as you're talking, I'm realizing, I promised at the beginning name, we were gonna talk about vibration and hormones, which we didn't get to, but everybody listening, Dr. Keisha is doing a masterclass with participants in one of my programs when we get done. So we will talk about that.
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Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
Is it Too Late for Natural Hormone Therapy?
This is a question that I get all the time from midlife women. And it's a great question because, as we age, our bodies go through so many changes.
One of the most common changes is a decline in hormone production. This can lead to all sorts of problems, like hot flashes, night sweats, weight gain, mood swings, and more.
Fortunately, there's a way to combat these changes: natural hormone therapy.
Natural hormone therapy can help to restore your body's hormone levels back to where they were when you were younger. This can help to alleviate all sorts of symptoms and make you feel like yourself again.
However, some women worry that it's too late for them to start natural hormone therapy. They think that their bodies have already changed too much and that it's too late to make a difference.
In this episode, we discuss the topic of natural hormone therapy and whether it is too late for midlife women to benefit from this type of treatment. We also cover the following topics:
-Taking estrogen if you have osteoporosis
-The benefits of natural hormone therapy for midlife women
-The risks associated with hormone replacement therapy
-How to know if natural hormone therapy is right for you
And much more!
If you are a woman in midlife who is struggling with hormone imbalances, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in now and learn everything you need to know about natural hormone therapy and how it can help you feel your best.
[00:59] Thanks so much for joining me today for our special monthly Q and A episode. Thank you to those of you who submitted questions on my website, KyrinDunstonmd.com. You can go to the podcast page, and you'll see the section with a microphone, and you can click it, and you can talk to me.
[01:52] Mary left this message. And I think that it probably speaks to what a lot of you are dealing with right now. She is apparently a former patient from when I practiced basic corporate OB GYN. And you can hear in her message about what I was dealing with and she sees the transformation and what I'm doing now.
[02:49] Hello, Dr. Dunston. My name is Mary Brown. I was a former patient of yours in Savannah. And actually I saw your PA and I have to say every time I saw you in your office, you looked so stressed out and so burned out and so exhausted. And I'm glad that you found a new vocation.
[03:33] And if you're a woman at midlife, and you sound like how I used to be just a hot mess and really not thriving, then listen up because I help women now undergo the exact same transformation that I underwent. Not necessarily with your career, but with your health. And if your career is stuck, then maybe it has to do with your health. Because you have to get it unstuck first.
[04:31] . But Catrina said she was on a low dose of estrogen until age 56. And she's had none for two years. She's 58 and she is not on any med, other medications she says, and she says, can I re-start?
[05:29] She said my doctor gave me prescriptions for Gabapentin and Vagifem at 53. Is that right? But no estrogen. And she says that she has been diagnosed with osteoporosis already at 53. And all she was given was GA Pentin and Vagifem is that right? And she says, I think I'm, I should have estrogen. And I don't. So that's another question, a little different from Catrina's question, but there's a little overlap there.
[06:36] And she wants to know if that's a wise thing to do. And she's also been in menopause for a while. So that's the similarity with all these questions. And maybe you have this question too. You've been in menopause for a while. Maybe you have been diagnosed with osteopenia, which is bone thinning to a certain degree. And then once it passes this certain degree, it becomes osteoporosis or maybe you're having other adverse health consequences from hormonal poverty and menopause.
[07:35] So you have hormone sex, hormone receptors all over your body. They help all systems in your body stay healthy. They're not just about your sex drive and your reproduction. They're about your overall functioning. They're anti-inflammatory so most women function better when they're not in hormonal poverty and they feel better and function better.
[08:38] You roll out the red carpet for her, because she's a loyal friend, right? She comes every week. She brings treats. She brings pictures. She brings great conversation and connection, and you really look forward to her visits, and you roll out the red carpet. Every time she comes, she's welcome.
[09:28] Let's have a quick cup of coffee, but you don't really roll out the red carpet like you used to. Well, it's kind of the same with the hormone receptors on your cells. When these hormones are not around, it takes a lot of energy for you to roll out the red carpet for your friend, right?
[10:23] It costs me a lot of time, energy, and money to do it and I'm not gonna do it. So it starts taking off the receptors and the receptors start going away. And that's where this five year window comes from at the end of five years. It's thought that you really don't have the number of receptors in order to receive the information from these hormones.
[11:20] And then maybe you don't go all out like you used to, but you get some things ready, refreshments, and you get your house prepped, and you clear your schedule. Well, your body is the same. It will start putting an effort back into rolling out the red carpet when these hormones come knocking. So your body has the flexibility, the ability to adapt. And when the hormones are available, it can make receptors.
[12:25] So I kind of like Karen, that you and your doctor decided you didn't want the bisphosphate. You didn't say why in your message and that would've been a treatment for osteoporosis, but I'm thinking it has something to do with the fact that there's some data on bisphosphonate that shows that yes, it increases bone density, but the quality of bone is not that good.
[13:19] So I like this approach. I will say most corporate doctors are not really willing to put any woman on hormone therapy. Who's had a D V T because it does increase the viscosity and coagulability meaning clothing ability of your blood. And so if you've had a clothing event, a lot of corporate doctors will say, you can't try hormone bones
[14:22] How does your brain function improve? How does your sleep improve? How does your weight improve? How do all the things that hormones benefit improve. So thank you so much for that question, Karen, and then this relates to Ruth's question two.
[15:25] And they consider the only two symptoms, urogenital, atrophy, vaginal dryness, and hot flashes. And they do put osteoporosis in there, but you won't find most corporate doctors going there first because they're afraid. Why are they afraid? That's a whole other discussion, but most of them don't understand the data. And the difference between synthetic hormones and biologically identical hormones and tic hormones do have a lot of risk and do increase your risk for breast cancer. Things like medroxyprogesterone, acetate and Equiline, which is horse estrogen. And, that medroxyprogesterone acetate is progestin.
[16:29] If estrogen causes breast cancer, everybody with estrogen would get breast cancer, and they don't have estrogen. Can they get breast cancer? Yes, but it's about one, 100, the rate of women. So that right there to tell you, it's not estrogen itself that causes breast cancer.
[17:24] So nothing wrong with VA fem at 53. But if you have a diagnosis of osteoporosis, the osteoporosis absolutely needs to be treated hands down. Most people are not aware. Osteoporosis takes decades to develop. We start losing bone mass at the age of 30. And if we do nothing to counteract this, it just progresses annually.
[18:37] And unfortunately, a third of women who have a hip fracture will die from that hip fracture. And a third will become disabled where they can no longer live independently and that can make 80 look like something you wouldn't ever want, right? Living in assisted living out of your own home with people, you don't know how to eat food, you wouldn't choose to eat right and lose your independence. So osteoporosis is not a joke.
[19:51] My experience from being a board certified OB GYN for almost well since 1998, is that the corporate doctrine is their concern with what, what is the diagnosis? What drug do I need to give? What surgery do I need to do? And so they're not as concerned with what's causing your osteoporosis, and they don't really, and aren't trained in the art and science of deciphering, why you're losing bone mass.
[20:59] You can still access it at stopthemenopausemadness.com. I highly recommend that you watch both part one and part two, and that you start doing the things that she's talking about to help reverse your bone loss. In addition to addressing it with bio identical hormones and possibly other medications
[22:16] Your cardiovascular endurance is probably pretty poor, right? Because the activity that keeps these things vital and upgraded hasn't been happening. And so they might say, well, yeah, you can do it, but it's going to take you a while to see results, and you have to be consistent, and you got to commit to a program of action, but you should start noticing something a little something maybe in a few months and then a few months later something else.
[23:21] The pros outweigh the cons of it. So how long should you commit? I mean, I definitely would say six months, if not 12 months, because it takes time for your body to realize what's happening and up regulate the receptors.
[24:24] And I invite everybody else to listen. What questions do you have about your hormones and your health as a midlife woman? Tony Robbins said it, the quality of the questions you ask determines the quality of your life. It's true in every area. It's true for your finances. It's true for your career, your creativity, your relationships, and no more true than with your hormones and your health.
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Tuesday Mar 22, 2022
Tuesday Mar 22, 2022
In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Lara Briden - a world-renowned hormone expert. She's here to share her expertise on how to repair your hormones and your period.
Dr. Lara Briden is a naturopathic doctor and author of the bestselling books Period Repair Manual and Hormone Repair Manual. She has more than 20 years of experience in women's health and currently has consulting rooms in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she treats women with PCOS, PMS, endometriosis, perimenopause, and many other hormones and period-related health problems.
Whether you're struggling with PMS, menopause, or any other hormonal issue, this episode is a must-listen! Dr. Briden shares her top tips for balancing your hormones naturally, as well as what to do if you're dealing with a more serious hormone issue.
If you're ready to get your hormones back on track, tune in now! You won't regret it.
You'll learn:
- How to repair your hormones and your period naturally
- What to do if you're struggling with a hormone issue
- The top tips for balancing your hormones naturally
- How to get your hormones back on track
- Types of treatments might be offered to women in traditional and modern medicine and naturopathic medicine
So what are you waiting for? Press play and join us on this exciting episode of the Hormone Prescription Podcast!
[01:14] She has a very kind of global evolutionary view of hormonal function, which really matches mine. So I love talking to her. She's a big thinker and she likes to help women to understand what their hormones mean on a bigger picture than just every day, regulating their period and, uh, producing reproduction.
[02:15] We met recently when we did the event with Dr. Cabeca and I have looked at your beautiful book, hormone repair manual, which I love, and you have some really unique concepts that I know everybody's gonna really appreciate hearing about.
[03:12] I came to just discover that women's bodies and women's hormones respond so well to nutritional interventions, even more so than I had been taught to expect when I went through naturopathic college. So out of that, well, some of my first work was in Canada.
[04:38] And you call Perimenopause the second puberty.
[04:58] If you're 41, 42, 43, you are in the territory of perimenopausal second puberty, and it's the, our hormones winding down, although as we'll talk about they don't do so in a, you know, quiet quietly kind of way.
[05:56] Very off the early phases of per menopause is actually high levels of estrogen spiking up to three times higher than we had in our twenties and thirties. And that's that kind of high estrogen exposure combined with low progesterone.
[07:09] When you say primarily neurological, what kinds of things would women be experiencing?
[07:19] Other neurological symptoms include sleep disturbance. That's a big one in our forties for some women and migraines.
[08:38] And that kind of lack of stress tolerance and stress resilience I find is so subtle and so pervasive. And that we, women, tend to blame ourselves. It's almost like the price that men go through where they kind of lose their edge, but we go through it usually a decade or even more, but ahead of time.
[09:16] So there's a lot going on, and it's understandable that you might think I've just, I'm doing too much and that's, that's a factor, but there is also this hormonal factor and this brain rewiring factor.
[10:04] Can you talk a little bit about what types of treatments might be offered to women in a traditional medical practice for this time of life or these symptoms we've just talked about and why that might be a good idea or a bad idea?
[10:32] So, you know, the conventional approach is just to shut that down. I would argue, and I know you and I are on the same page about a lot of things like this is not the time to be shutting down the ovaries.
[11:17] You're including bone health and brain because our female hormones are quite beneficial for lots of different systems. And so, yeah, I would say there's a lot more to do acknowledging that sometimes symptoms can, can seem quite strong or be, be quite strong.
[12:24] And so that could be a nice treatment, especially in the earlier phases of perimenopause when there's still quite a lot of estrogen, but very little progesterone that in fact, that the fact that we lose progesterone before we lose estrogen, is where a lot of the symptoms early symptoms come from.
[12:55] So can you talk about how vital these menstrual cycles are for us to create this reserve? Because once we stop cycling, yeah. We don't have it anymore. So what are we building up?
[13:34] Estrogen is also this, we're talking about estradiol now, which is our main estrogen that the ovaries make. It's also very good for the cardiovascular system. It's excellent for the brain.
[14:39] Estradiol is anabolic and helps to build muscle. So these are all, you know, strong benefits and there's evidence, several lines of evidence that con the contraceptive, you know, the estrogen and the contraceptive drugs in the pill does not have the same benefits. And then there's the progesterone that we've just talked about.
[15:32] And then, and actually losing progesterone, as I mentioned, is one of the reasons the neurological symptom's startup in our early forties, but the other couple benefits of real progesterone for general health is that it modulates immune functions so can help to reduce the risk of autoimmune disease.
[16:34] 35 to 40 years of menstrual cycles is important, not just for making a baby, but also to help to reduce the risk of dementia, cardio, heart disease, diabetes, and breast cancer and osteoporosis sorry, and breast cancer.
[17:45] And the concept that a man only needs, uh, testosterone for reproduction, nobody would buy that. No, but I really feel like as women, we are reduced in our reproductive capacity when it comes to our hormones and, you know, really that's how I was taught in medical school and residency. It's like, we're just little men.
[19:12] And actually we know from some of the research that, that deposit, the pregnancy hormone deposit into the bank account of long term health is also very good. I think you get a big dose of estrogen and progesterone with pregnancy.
[19:52] I'm envisioning, you know, it's like getting an inheritance from your ancestors only it's your kids. So don't see your kids never, ever, never give you anything. Yeah. They gave you the opportunity to build hormonal reserves.
[10:09] I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that you have in the book, the meaning of menopause through an evolutionary lens, which probably everybody, most people listening haven't heard.
[20:22] So, you know, I've been looking at health and biology through the lens of evolution for a long time and researching the book and reading about this aspect of menopause was quite meaningful for me, both kind of intellectually, but also personally, because I'm now I'm about to, I think I have graduated to menopause.
[21:12] And part of that from me is the meaning through an evolutionary lens, which just means the most, a lot of there's several lines of evidence to suggest that menopause is not new menopause is not an accident of living too long that our ancestors should they be lucky enough to survive childhood and young adults, hood and childbirth and all the hazards that our ancestors faced, should they be lucky enough to survive all those things?
[22:07] And I just love this, that a longer human lifespan may have evolved or been selected for because of how advantageous or beneficial post reproductive women were to their groups, to their family groups.
[23:05] We tend to think of our shift in metabolism with menopause as a, you know, a bad thing that creates weight gain. But I do also like to reframe it for our ancestors, that would've been a good thing that we could get away with fewer calories potentially.
[23:51] And yes, we also have, we have accumulated wisdom, but we also have this emotional equanimity, and we have gifts that we need to give.
[24:28] it obviously works from a survival standpoint to, in certain, you know, species to have older females around and just, this is where I sort of mean by the meaning of menopause, you know, it's um, yeah, it's important. It's been important for humans
[25:13] Perimenopause can be so hellacious that by the time it's over, you're like, please just stop. That was me just stop. But I went through that phase kind of before I knew what I knew.
[25:50] So it's important that women don't fear unnecessarily at the same time. It's not your, you know, if you do encounter symptoms, it doesn't mean you've done something wrong necessarily. Like there's a lot of variability, both genetically and for different reasons of who experiences were symptoms versus not so bad.
[26:36] You know, once you get true into your potentially, you know, mid fifties and beyond, there's still a few things to keep track of with your health, but overall things should be a lot more stable.
{27:26] I think this is a critical window for health. It's also a window of opportunity to do something about that and feel better.
[28:05] What are some of your favorite actions to help your patients at that time so that they really can protect their brain?
[28:13] We'll just let's list it in quick, like just obvious things like moving your body, cuz actually movement and building muscle is really good for the brain, which seems a little counterintuitive, but the research is very solid on that. I talk about magnesium, which is a simple supplement, but the brain loves it.
[29:03] Estrogen supports the brain in lots of different ways. I think women can get a, can survive that drop in estrogen if they don't have insulin resistance or if their brain is healthy in other ways.
[29:55] There's been some new research that one of, one of the proposed mechanisms that estrogen is good for the brain. And I'm sure it's just one of many, but one is that estrogen helps.
{31:36] Like there could be a problem with insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome even years before blood sugar blood glucose goes high into the diabetes range. So there's different ways to test it.
[33:05] I mean screening tests, fasting glucose and fasting insulin. If they're elevated, then you kind of know, you know, and the A1C, but if not, you can do the tolerance test just like when you are pregnant.
[33:43] But it also, as we've been talking about, impacts the brain. It has a big risk factor for cardiovascular risk, even to some extent for breast cancer and osteoporosis, like all the risks, all the things that we're worried about. And it's common as you, I don't know if you said this statistic already, but for people over 40 or 50, especially like this is about one and two people, probably about one and two of your listeners or like definitely have insulin resistance.
[34:30] And also as you know, like a lot of environmental toxins increase risk of insulin resistance. So there are things working against us, especially for anyone with a genetic predisposition.
[35:22] Would've been actually a superpower for those women because they could have, they had a, they were like lean. They didn't, you know, they could just sort of survive on less basically cuz they, we had have a, you know, reduced requirement for calories with menopause, arguably.
[36:12] My first step is satiety. So this often involves pro well not often. This is about protein. Protein is our primary appetite from a biology perspective.
[37:06] So actually what happens is our appetite is geared such that we will keep eating until we get enough amino acids that day, every single day and, and the body is so full of protein that it doesn't care.
[37:56] I mean a hundred calories snack, snack bags, you know, they'll be like only a hundred calories in this bag, but your body will not be satisfied.
[38:17] So step one for my patients is to reach that protein requirement. It's a lot higher for people than they realize. I think especially women tend to under protein, maybe not always, but also this is a cruel irony, but insulin resistance increases the requirement for proteins.
[39:08] Like wait until your stomach acid kicks in. Like you're actually hungry, which I think for a healthy person is going to be around nine or 10:00 AM.
[40:28] Magnesium actually just helps with sugar cravings. It just makes you feel good, satisfied. And then you can easily just say, no, I'm not going to have that dessert.
[41:36] women always, we always feel like we have to explain ourselves, you know, but men might be like, I don't want that. I'm not going to have that. I, I don't have, you know, no reason given it's like, I'm not going to eat that. It's like just, you know, be like that, just don't explain yourself.
[42:13] hormone replacement therapy and you were touching on the fact that it can actually increase insulin resistance.
[42:36] So estradiol, especially, I mean, I would say estrogen therapy helps to improve insulin resistance and weight loss. Like was very little doubt about that in my mind. I know some bizarrely, somehow estrogen gets blamed for weight gain or well, okay. It depends on what we're talking about.
[43:31] Obviously testosterone has many benefits for women. We do have some, when we're in our reproductive years, we get this really intriguing little boost up in testosterone just before ovulation that some of these sports people are studying, because women get this surge in kind of confidence and performance around that time.
[44:30] The argument is, you know, with P C O S, which comes first, the insulin resistance or the high androgens, the research actually suggests high androgens come first, generally with that condition.
[45:29] But what happens is when estradiol and progesterone drop away, we lose out on the beneficial antiandrogen effect of those two hormones. So the androgens, the testosterone shines through and that is potentially contributing to insulin resistance.
[46:21] I just, you know, the data says that 50% of women in menopause are deficient and testosterone, but I'd say in the women I work with, it's more like 90%, and it's just so vital for brain function.
[46:50] but I'm just curious for myself, what dose of testosterone might you prescribe? Like, just for example, like just for someone who I guess it
[47:01] Depends on a transdermal, it depends on what they're we test don't guess of course, yes.
[47:07] So at the hormone club, which is our telemedicine solution for women in 47 states in the US to get, uh, by identical hormone therapy, we test, right. So we do the Dutch test, the dried urine metabolite test and see where their levels are.
[47:42] how closely do you look at S H B or sex hormone binding globulin, because this is another, and this is just a, a background thing. It's on a blood test. It's actually quite important. I think for women in general, to have that in a good range, it tends to drop at menopause.
[48:25] So it is important to know that because then your free fraction will be higher, kind of one of know what you're, what you're dealing with.
[48:40] I'm one wondering if you can share with everyone just some of your daily practices that help you to keep your hormones balanced and your health in tiptop shape.
[48:59] And then I guess the other things for health are like, we didn't talk a lot about it today, but just quit alcohol basically or seriously think about quitting it or reducing it dramatically, even though it's nice. It's lovely to have a beer with dinner. That would be my preference, but it's not worth it. Especially during the tumultuous rewiring phase of per menopause.
[50:12] I know you have a free download of the first two chapters of the period repair manual and hormone repair manual, both. And we will have the link in the show notes.
Free download to the first two chapters of Period Repair Manual and Hormone Repair Manual by Dr. Lara Briden:
https://www.subscribepage.com/larabriden
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Tuesday Mar 15, 2022
Tuesday Mar 15, 2022
There's a lot of talk about hormones these days. You might have heard that they're responsible for everything from mood swings to weight gain. But what about their role in immune resilience and breast cancer?
In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, we're talking with Dr. Lindsey Berkson about the vital role of hormones in immune resilience and breast cancer. Dr. Berkson is a highly respected physician and author who has dedicated her career to helping women achieve optimal health.
During our conversation, Dr. Berkson discusses the importance of hormone balance for maintaining good health, as well as how hormonal imbalances can increase susceptibility to disease. She also shares some tips for keeping your hormones in balance and boosting your immune system.
Join us for this episode of The Hormone Prescription as we chat with Dr. Lindsey Berkson about the vital role hormones play in keeping us healthy. You'll learn why it's important to keep your hormones in balance and find out how you can do that with natural strategies like diet and lifestyle changes. You'll also hear about the latest research on hormone-related cancers, and find out how you can reduce your risk. So tune in and get empowered to protect your health!
[02:03] And we're gonna talk about a topic that's very important right now, and that is immune resilience, right? Who's concerned about immune resilience, uh, just about every human on the face of the planet.
[03:00] Lindsey Berkson has been a thought leader in pioneer, in functional medicine for over four decades and has authored over 21 groundbreaking books on women and hormones, gut health toxicity, including safe hormones, smart women, which is available online with a background in chiropractic and naturopathic medicine
[05:23] Sexiest Hottest, most beautiful 70 some year old you'll ever see. And so she says, well, you know, I've been on natural hormone therapy for what, 20 years.
[05:34] So I waited five years to try and be prudent and to make sure that I'd clean mammograms and clean serum, cancer markers and inflammatory markers. And then I went on hormones.
[06:02] . People, I think, don't realize that their hormones have anything to do with their immune system, let alone their health resilience.
[07:18] So first of all, in the business, we have always known that hormones send signals to satellite dishes called receptors and whatever tissue has these receptors, they're called target tissues. That's where a hormone signals.
[08:23] And we know that 70% of your immune system lives in the lining of your gut and testosterone. The male hormone sends signals to that.
[09:21] And if an older woman wasn't on hormone replacement, she suddenly had the same statistics of severe COVID a, if she didn't have early intervention, but if she was on hormone replacement, then she had similar safety statistics against COVID like younger women did.
[10:17] And the other thing is we talk about the role of the gut with immunity. So a healthy gut opens and closes. You eat a meal and after you eat a meal, supposedly digest your food to tiny little pieces, amino acids, die peptides, tri peptides.
[11:22] So we have greater immunity because we have greater sex steroid hormones when we're younger. And when we age, we are more vulnerable.
[12:20] Because it seems like we women carve out when it comes to hormones. Why, why do we have these opinions and values that somehow it's shameful or bad to use hormones or to bolster ourselves?
[13:16] And I love your show because I wanna bust that at bull crap, because what it is is that aging picks up speed. You age faster in your forties than you did in your thirties.
[15:14] We're so afraid of shaming people for being overweight that we tell a whole nation, nothing about losing weight, cuz COVID loves overweight and flamed bodies.
[16:11] You know, by the way, hormones help you keep a trimmer torso. That's one of the reasons you gain more weight when you get older.
[17:07] But the litigious atmosphere made doctors afraid of the women's health initiative and we're afraid to call it like it is. We want everything to be so moderate and middle road that we're willing to sacrifice the smarter kids in the, the kids that are in the midrange.
[18:05] And you're consequently your health and your life are going to be substandard until you die, which will be premature because you will live longer if you use natural hormone therapy.
[19:00] And in none of those cases where women were given right after treatment, hormone replacement and they were tracked for so many years and not one of those 26 studies did women on hormones do worse.
[19:53] There's more of us that are older than more of us than are younger and it's accumulating. And within another 10, 20 years, the majority of Americans are gonna be over 65, which has never happened before.
[20:46] So they decided to do a study to prove that hormones prevent heart disease and keep you healthier and feminine forever.
[22:05] But in Europe they've primarily been using biologically identical hormones for decades.
[22:19] So they came out and said to reanalyze the data because we didn't buy the conclusions of the data. And when we reanalyze it, we made a big, big discovery that in the control arm, they forgot to control for which women had taken estrogen historically.
[23:13] And if they did get breast cancer, once they had been historically on estrogen replacement for a little bit, they had a 44% decreased mortality case incident.
[25:14] Women on hormones had a decreased incidence of getting Alzheimer's disease by 69%. But if they were on bio identical hormones, they had a decreased incidence of Alzheimer's disease by 72 to 73%.
[26:08] It's key though, to hear what Dr. Lindsay is saying about estrogen, protecting against breast cancer, protecting against cognitive decline in Alzheimer's among other things. I mean heart disease and heart attack, which we always gave it to prevent.
[28:10] There are those who are motivated by deprivation and fear and lack, and they're going to lose something they already have or not get something that they want. And then there are those who are motivated by pleasure.
[29:00] So when you're true, more hormonally out of balance, you're a more fearful, anxious person.
[29:24] So we are a much dirtier air food and water, which all of adversely they're endocrine disruptors. So I wrote one of the very first books on endocrine disruption called hormone deception.
[30:16] They talk about if they're not looking for a super orgasm, they really are not functional and they'll go, oh, well I know I sat too much this month and I ate too much processed food and I know, but it's, it's outta control.
[31:29] You may render them in, of making decisions based on healthy cognition. And basically you block their hormones, you screw their hormones up and people can't function optimally.
[32:13] And one of the things is balancing your hormones and getting them for which, for each woman, has her own individual hormonal footprint. And that's why it's important to work with a doctor that honors that like yourself, when your hormones are more balanced, you understand that you wanna never ever give up, but you wanna push yourself.
[33:13] The more muscle mass you have, which of course testosterone replacement is one way to maintain it. But resistant exercises are another way.
[34:06] Because if you are, you know, you need the androgens, you need the testosterone and your regular doctor probably is not only not aware of that, doesn't know how to properly test for it.
[34:30] If a doctor tells you there's nothing left to be done for you, or it just means they know, wait, what is it? It just means they know nothing left to be done for you.
[36:03] And I was told many times in my fifties, you're just not, you're not getting any younger. You have to learn to age gracefully.
[36:47] I love feeling well. And I love feeling so young and well and full of energy. I'm flying all over the country, lecturing, isolating everyone else's isolating and scared of everything.
[39:22] And that's pretty much a steady diet, lots and lots of diverse pigments in those different colored plants, protect your eyes, protect your brain, protect you against cancer.
[40:11] So I work out, I try to find things to turn a fire in my belly. So I love what I do a lot, but not all the time cuz nobody loves what they do all the time.
[40:52] I think vitamin F fun is an important component to life. And so canoeing for me is fun and hanging with girlfriends is fun, but I eat plant food. I work out regularly.
[42:00] I don't believe in doing this obsessively every day, but I take 30 to 40 to 50 supplements a day, depending on what I'm dealing with. Um, I only have one kidney, so I can't overwhelm it.
[42:43] So I do a lot of botanicals and I've just created a new line for Biotics, with one product that clears off your receptors.
[43:35] Thank you so much for sharing your regimen because I think people, well, two things, some people, they overestimate what it takes to get their health back in line and keep it there. And a lot of people underestimate.
[45:24] What does it take to have six pack abs in your seventies? And you mentioned getting your hormones at the optimal levels, and this is not gonna happen in corporate medicine.
[45:42] And what really gave, so realizing that estrogen protected against breast cancer and that you died less from a, if you did get it. So that was huge.
[47:49] So I got courage to go higher than the little toe in the water by taking just the right amount to eliminate the symptoms. And boy, the minute I did that, I shed weight.
[48:21] And that's why at the hormone club, we test, we don't guess everybody gets monitored and followed with the dried you're in testing because you got to, to know where that person is, cuz it is a unique blueprint.
[49:24] I have lots of books out on Amazon and some of them are on my website and I also do some consulting telemedicine. And I see patients in person in Florida, Naples, Florida at Dr. Pearl Mutter's old clinic, the Naples center for functional medicine.
[50:55] Dr. Lindsay and I have been talking about what we could do together, cuz we are both on a mission to make your health the best that it can be as you get older so that you can enjoy more of life.
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Tuesday Mar 08, 2022
Tuesday Mar 08, 2022
You've been struggling with thyroid issues for months, years, or maybe decades. And you still haven't gotten it right. You've tried every diet, supplement, and lifestyle change out there. But you still don't feel like yourself.
You're not alone! In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Elle Russ explains how to boost your confidence by fixing your thyroid. She'll teach you everything you need to know about the thyroid gland, how it affects your mood and energy levels, and how to correct any imbalances.
Elle Russ is the bestselling author of Confident As Fu*k and The Paleo Thyroid Solution. She is a TV-film writer, master coach, and the host of The Elle Russ Show. You can learn more about her at ElleRuss.com.
In this episode you'll learn:
- What's different about a mainstream corporate medical approach to thyroid
- The signs and symptoms of thyroid imbalances
- How to test your thyroid function
- What test results mean
- How to correct imbalances in your thyroid
- Tips for living a thyroid-friendly lifestyle
- How do we keep our stress down and keep our cortisol in balance to help our thyroid
- And more!
Don't miss this important episode on boosting your confidence by fixing your thyroid. Be sure to subscribe to The Hormone Prescription Podcast, so you don't miss any future episodes. And if you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review. We love hearing from our listeners!
Get a FREE audiobook from Elle Russ! Two 7 minute guided meditations (money / health) + two 50 minute affirmation tracks (confidence / abundance).
CLICK HERE: https://bit.ly/ellerussfreegift
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𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝘂𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗕𝗶𝗿𝗱 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁 to be the first to know when the challenge starts again!
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