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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 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
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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!
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Q & A Episode each month
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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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Tuesday Mar 01, 2022
Tuesday Mar 01, 2022
One of the biggest challenges we face as we get older is maintaining our energy levels and keeping our hormones in balance. In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, we're joined by Debra Atkinson, a Wellness Coach hormone balancing fitness expert and the founder of Flipping50.
She has helped over 250,000 Women flip their second half with the vitality and energy they want. She's the best selling author of us still got it girl, the after 50 Fitness formula for women navigating fitness after 50 Your GPS for choosing programs and professionals you can trust and hot not too bothered.
Debra hosts flipping 50 TV and the flipping 50 podcast, an AARP top podcast for 50 Plus. She is a frequent speaker at TEDx present and TEDx presenter excuse me, of everything women in menopause, learned about exercise may be alive. She has 38 years full time fitness experience. She's an international fitness presenter for associations including International Council on active aging, a lot of alphabet soup fitness agencies, you may or may not be familiar with IDEA, NSCA, and Athletic Business, and CanFitPro.
She's an American Council on Exercise subject matter expert and prior Senior Lecturer in Kinesiology at Iowa State University. Debra is also the founder of flipping fifty.com, and creator of the flipping 50 fitness specialist program for fitness professionals. She is a frequent contributor at HuffPost, Sharecare, and other featured outlets and on the Education Advisory Board for medfit.org.
Debra shares her wisdom on how to exercise safely and effectively as we age, and offers some great tips for keeping our hormones in check. She also tells us about her journey to becoming a fit and healthy 50-something.
In this episode you'll learn:
- Flipping the expectations with aging and menopause.
- Empowering longevity and enjoyment of it with muscle and bone strength.
- The lies that we're all believing about exercise over 50 that are keeping us stuck
- And more!
So if you're looking for ways to boost your energy and feel better about yourself, be sure to listen to this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast! And don't forget to subscribe and leave your questions and feedback.
Join Debra Atkinson’s Stronger: Tone and Define Program.
THIS IS A SPECIAL 12 -WEEK STRONGER program designed based on research featuring women in perimenopause, menopause, and beyond… by a Medical Exercise Specialist who knows:
- you’re not broken, you’re just juggling hormones and joints that have had some injuries or some fun!
- you aren’t 22 but your also not in need of chair yoga!
- what works for 22 year old fit males (subjects in 60% of studies) will not work for you
- your greatest limits are what you don’t yet know about hormone balancing exercise and how it’s unique from traditional exercise prescriptions you’ve done for 30+ years (or never done)
- YOU should enjoy this second half MORE than the first: you earned it!
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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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Tuesday Feb 22, 2022
Tuesday Feb 22, 2022
How to age beautifully using the holistic science of beauty? How do you use the inside out, to care for your outer appearance? The Hormone Prescription Podcast is back with another episode! On this week's show, Rachel Varga will be discussing how hormone balance factors into healthy, glowing skin. Whether it's reducing wrinkles or restoring the skin's youthful glow, hormone balancing is a great way to prevent and correct various skin problems.
Rachel Varga is a Board Certified Aesthetic Nurse Specialist with over 20,000 procedures performed and the author of unlocking your vitality. She's an international clinical trainer for other physicians and nurses, a celebrity skin expert. She's been featured on Bulletproof Radio as the health expert podcast with JJ virgin live with Dr. KellyAnn, Petrucci and Naveen Jain, and more.
Rachel is also a speaker and a four-time academically published award-winning author in the field of plastic anesthetic nursing, as well as an executive board member and peer reviewer for the plastic surgical nursing journal. Through education on skincare skin and laser rejuvenation, nonsurgical solutions, healing lifestyle, and biohacking practices. Rachel helps inspire others with her unique toolkit to navigate and strategize aging and possibly well using the holistic science of beauty.
In this episode you'll learn:
- The holistic science of beauty and how to know if you have a healthy skin
- The skin problems of women during midlife and beyond
- How inflammation affects our skin and what we can do about it
- Practical tips to help you achieve radiant and glowing skin
- The types of supplements for a better skin health
- The safe options that you can take for skin problems like wrinkles, sagging, etc.
- And more!
[03:21] one of the characteristic things that we tend to notice with our skin as we age usually starts to happen at about age 37 to 41. This is when we start to see changes in our hormones, we lose a little bit of estrogen in some cases, which can lead to then loss of collagen and elastin.
[08:13] So at the end of the day, we want to make sure we're taking very potent antioxidants in our diet so that we have that internal protection.
[12:57] And I'll talk about some science about why going into the forest is good for you. There's all these compounds that are released from trees and plants that like terpenes, for example, they can be very helpful and supportive at combating inflammation. Also, the way that I like to get into the woods, is I like to get into areas where there's no cell phone reception, or Wi Fi or anything like that.
[18:06] And I love how you talk about nature therapy and describe that kind of draining off those positive ions. I love to go to the beach at least once if not twice a week and just put my feet in the sand and in the ocean
[19:04] Because at the end of the day, when we're working with mature skin, we you can't use the same skincare routine that is going to work for a teenager, you need more advanced and stabilized peptides, antioxidants, like vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin A retinol.
[23:53] And I know that some people are saying but Rachel, like me, some people would be like a friend of mine who wants to know whose face is sliding. Her skin is sliding down her face. What is our safe option for wrinkling, sagging, volume loss, all of these things that women at midlife and beyond are dealing with to fix them more acutely.
[25:14] And then for the body, we need to make sure that we're doing strength conditioning, cardiovascular conditioning, and flexibility and stability. So lifting the weights, doing the cardio, doing the yoga, Qigong are great balancing practices as well.
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Tuesday Feb 15, 2022
Tuesday Feb 15, 2022
Did you know that there is a link between mold toxicity and those pesky symptoms of fatigue, nervousness, mood swings and brain fog?
My guest for this episode, Bridget Danner knows this first hand as she has suffered from all of these symptoms before. She also spent years feeling lost and confused about how to heal.
Bridgit Danner has been a licensed acupuncturist since 2004 and a certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner since 2015. After losing everything to toxic mold, Bridgit now educates about toxins and how to detoxify through a functional approach.
Mold toxicity is one of the most common toxic exposures that people are exposed to. We all know that healing takes time, but in this episode, we talk about how you can speed up that process by taking some super simple steps, so you start feeling better now - not months from now.
You'll learn:
- What is mold toxicity
- The symptoms of mold toxicity
- What you can do to detoxify your body after being exposed to mold
- How toxic molds travel throughout our homes and how they are making us sick
- How molds impact our hormones
- And much more!
[01:14] Hormones are imbalanced because they're reacting to other things in your environment like mold. So sometimes you have to address the thing that your hormones are reacting to in order to get your hormones in line.
[02:08] Over 50% of the homes in America are estimated to have mold contamination.
[05:11] I got my own environmental illness of toxic mold, pretty severely and had to deal with that in my life, in my personal life and my personal health.
[05:59] So I started just talking more about detox techniques and how to detox and then over time really moved into the mold specialty cuz I, I do think there's still a big gap there.
[07:20] And it took probably about eight years until I found out I had mold and that time I just had various symptoms coming and going, you know, with, I had anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, breakthrough bleeding, gut issues, a lot of immune issues like getting sick too often, um, having a lot of like chills and they would kind of come up and down, right?
[09:12] So, you know, looking back, I can see that there were some things we, we could have known about if we were more aware of mold, we just weren't, but it can happen in newer homes too, when they're built too tightly.
[10:09] So, you know, looking back, I can see that there were some things we, we could have known about if we were more aware of mold, we just weren't, but it can happen in newer homes too, when they're built too tightly.
[11:10] Mold is probably one of the hardest things to diagnose. There you're usually many years delay and people actually receive a diagnosis and it's hard to treat.
[12:19] One is that issues that aren't resolved are worsening. You know, we're not meant to get sicker and sicker every year or, you know, just have these stubborn, right? It's not like just some of us are meant to have IBS. There's a reason.
[13:43] You can tell me if this is true or not that over 50% of the home and commercial buildings in the United States are affected by mold. Is that correct?
[15:10] if you're doing all the right things and it's not working check for toxins, I love that you say this because I think that's the hallmark message from this episode is if you're doing what I call all the things and your health is not where it's supposed to be, then you gotta check for toxins and mold would probably be top on the list.
[16:49] So you're inhaling right into your nose, like these VOCs and these mycotoxins and these bacterial fragments that are coming off the water damage right up into your brain. Basically that information goes right to your brain. And those little microtoxins can travel like anybody's business.
[17:54] So you can have suppressed hormone production, which I was experiencing for years and just being told it was stress. So that's like a big one right there. And if you're trying to get pregnant or you're trying to make it through menopause or whatever, that's gonna be a problem.
[19:05] Most people aren't aware that the quickest way to get into your brain is through your nose.
[19:31] One of the reasons why is for humans, because they are very good at not killing us and living off of us. Whereas some viruses just go too far and bacteria, they're too acute, too virulent.
[20:48] There's so much actually tons of studies because in animal husbandry, in, in livestock production mold has been a big issue for a long time because the feed is moldy and then it affects the health and the animals and reproduction.
[22:14] And then once you find out that mold is a part of the problem, detangling that mess can be insurmountable. So how should someone start approaching that?
[22:53] So sauna and coffee and amount were probably my two biggest favorites when I was at my sickest and there's things I still do today to detox.
[23:18] So a lot of basic things that just support healing and movement of toxins, as long as we'll talk about this next, as long as you can eliminate and handle those toxins, supporting the liver, making sure you're pooping, then the nose toxins can exit.
[25:35] If you don't move it, right. You're just feeling sluggish. You're feeling heavy, right. You're not thinking well and nobody wants to live like that.
[28:14] One of the things that I find most women have to come to terms with is that your symptoms and your illness are calling for a greater expression of you and your life that's different from the life you're living. And it sounds like you really accepted that.
[28:44] Sometimes we're not seeing what isn't working for us until we have a health crisis or some other crisis. And that crisis creates an opportunity to change a hundred percent.
[30:46] Diet can play a factor, but a big part of my journey, especially being divorced in the last couple of years, is really like, how do I wanna show up for myself? What thoughts do I wanna choose? Like what beliefs give me my best life.
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