Hormone Prosperity Podcast with Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Verónica Moreno | How To Get Unstuck And Reclaim Your Power To Create The Life You Truly Want To Live |

Welcome back, ladies! The latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast is here, and it's one you won't want to miss. This time, we're joined by the inspirational Verónica Moreno, an expert in Mindset Coaching and Deep Healing. If you're a midlife woman feeling trapped by past conditioning or weighed down by self-doubt, this episode offers a lifeline.

Meet Verónica Moreno:

Verónica isn't your average mindset coach. With a rich background that spans powerful Energy Healing techniques—including Emotional Freedom Technique & Matrix Reimprinting, Theta Healing, Pranic Healing, and Shamanic Energy Medicine—she brings a unique, multifaceted approach to personal development and healing. Combining these methods with the results-oriented world of Coaching and the therapeutic insights of Humanistic Integrative Counseling, Verónica has empowered women from nearly 20 countries to reclaim their power and live authentically.

Key Takeaways from the Episode:

1. Verónica’s Journey:

• Discover how Verónica's own path to becoming an expert in Mindset Coaching and Deep Healing has shaped her innovative approach.

 

2. Understanding Common Challenges:

• Learn about the common challenges that midlife women face, like past conditioning, self-doubt, and people-pleasing, and how to break free from these patterns.

3. Powerful Energy Healing Techniques:

• Get introduced to various Energy Healing techniques such as Emotional Freedom Technique & Matrix Reimprinting, Theta Healing, Pranic Healing, and Shamanic Energy Medicine. Understand how these techniques can be applied to reclaim your power and create a fulfilling life.

4. Inspiring Success Stories:

• Hear real-life success stories of women who have transformed their lives through Verónica's methods, illustrating the universal nature and effectiveness of her approach.

 

5. Actionable Steps to Reclaim Your Power:

• Walk away with actionable steps and guidance on starting your own journey of reclaiming power. Verónica emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, self-love, and living an authentic life.

 

In today's fast-paced world, midlife women often find themselves juggling multiple roles and responsibilities, sometimes losing sight of their own needs and desires. This episode is a gentle yet powerful reminder that it's never too late to reclaim your power and start living the life you truly want. Verónica's expert advice and inspiring stories will leave you feeling motivated and equipped to make meaningful changes in your life.

 

Ready to transform your life? Tune into this episode and take the first step toward breaking free from your past and stepping into your power. Don't forget to subscribe to The Hormone Prescription Podcast and leave us a review—we love hearing from you!

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Thank you for being a part of our community. Together, we can support each other to live our best lives. Tune in, take notes, and start your transformation today!

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• Tune In Now to listen to this empowering episode.
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► 7 day course Step Into Your Power with Confidence and Joy from Verónica Moreno. A step by step process to break free from the past, reclaim your power and create the life you truly want to live. CLICK HERE.

 

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Ashok Gupta | Using Limbic Retraining To Improve Your Hormonal Poverty

Welcome back to another empowering episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast! Today, we have a special guest whose story will inspire and enlighten you—Ashok Gupta. Ashok is an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, and health practitioner. He has dedicated his life to helping people overcome chronic illnesses and reach their full potential.

In this episode, Ashok shares his personal journey of battling ME, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, during his time at Cambridge University. Through his own neurological research, he not only managed to get himself fully recovered but also developed a groundbreaking recovery program called the Gupta Program. This neuroplasticity-based "limbic retraining" program has been helping countless individuals around the world since 2007.

Key Highlights

• Ashok Gupta's Personal Journey:

Discover how Ashok went from a chronic illness sufferer to a globally acclaimed health practitioner, filmmaker, and speaker.

 

• Understanding Limbic Retraining:

Learn about the concept of "limbic retraining" and how it can effectively improve conditions like ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and Long Covid.

 

• Hormonal Imbalances & Limbic Retraining:

Insightful commentary on the challenges faced by midlife women with hormonal imbalances and how limbic retraining can be a game-changer in addressing "hormonal poverty."

 

• The Gupta Program:

Explore the neuroplasticity approach of the Gupta Program and practical tips on implementing limbic retraining in your daily life.

 

• Latest Research & Success Stories:

Highlights of the latest medical research and real-life success stories related to limbic retraining, offering hope and empowerment to those struggling.

This episode is a treasure trove of valuable insights and practical advice for midlife women who are navigating the complexities of hormonal imbalances. Ashok Gupta's expertise and personal experience make this a must-listen episode for anyone seeking to improve their health and well-being through innovative approaches like limbic retraining.

Tune in now to hear Ashok Gupta's incredible story and gain actionable insights into improving your hormonal health. Don't forget to subscribe to The Hormone Prescription Podcast and leave us a review to help us reach more listeners like you!

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Speaker 1 (00:00):

Are you prepared to lose everything you've got in life? Well, Neil Donald Walsh is quoted as saying, you'll have everything you want in life when you're prepared to lose it. All confused by that and how it relates to your hormones and your health. You'll definitely wanna stay tuned to hear Ashok Gupta, tell you why.

Speaker 2 (00:20):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an OB GYN I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunton. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:13):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today as we talk with Ashok Gupta about limbic retraining, how it can improve the hormonal poverty that you're experiencing as a woman over 40 or maybe even sooner than that. Most women don't realize the interconnection between their nervous system and their hormonal system and also their immune system and so many other connections, which we're gonna talk about in this episode. But they are intricately connected and it's affecting you. Whether you're aware of this or not. Ashuk is, gosh, he's a lifelong learner who likes to go in depth and his pain has become his purpose. And he's been on a journey for many years since university to help himself and help others to heal the underlying root causes of many chronic diseases that come in the NICS category, which we'll talk about that you probably have heard of, but you may not be familiar with.

Speaker 1 (02:23):

And they're actually related to hormonal poverty and hor imbalance, perimenopause, menopause, PCOS, all the things that plague women or can plague women throughout the life cycle. We're gonna dive into that as well. So needless to say, if you have a female body <laugh>, then this applies to you and it's something you're probably not hearing about in many places. So I hope that you'll join me and also that very quizzical Neil Donald Walsh quote. We're gonna talk about that as well as some others. So I'll tell you a little bit about a shift and then we will get started. Ashush Gupta is an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, health practitioner who has dedicated his life to supporting people through chronic illness and achieving their potential. He suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome around 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University. And through neurological research that he conducted, he managed to get himself a hundred percent better.

Speaker 1 (03:23):

He set up a clinic to treat others and he's published a well-known neuroplasticity limbic retraining recovery program and known as the Gupta program in 2007. He has published several medical papers. He is undergone several randomized controlled trials around this program that he's created and published them. He's published trials on lung covid, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, showing that the treatment is effective. He'll give us the details on that in the interview. And he's continually researching these conditions in a way that allows him to provide workable, daily use accessible solutions to so many of us who suffer with these problems. Please help me welcome us Gupta to the show.

Speaker 3 (04:14):

A delight to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 1 (04:16):

Yes, lovely to have you. I actually have heard about your program from some colleagues who use it with their clients, so I'm super excited to have you on. I don't think a lot of people are familiar with the topic that we're gonna talk about and how really it applies to everyone. We're gonna talk about specific uses and how it might apply and really, I think in the times that we're living in with so much stress, everybody talks about, oh, you need to manage your stress, but what does that really look like on a daily basis? And also I don't think how people get that the nervous system is really triggered or programmed to have adverse responses to stress and what do you do about it? So we're gonna dive into neuroplasticity, limbic training recovery, which is as shooks program that he's developed and even an app I believe, which will get him to talk about, so what, what does that even mean? Limbic retraining? Why should we care about this? Why do we need this?

Speaker 3 (05:19):

Yeah, <laugh>. So great starting point for our conversation. Yeah, so look, when we go to a hospital, right, isn't it interesting how modern medicine separates and divides the different departments? Yeah. So in a hospital you will have a separate psychology department, a separate neurology department, a separate immunology department. And so we've got very used to this idea that there are, that the body's like a car and different things go wrong in different parts of that car. And we go to the right department and specialist who fixes that part of the car. But in the modern era, the types of diseases that people are suffering from are not hardware issues. They're not physically things wrong with a car. They're electrical issues. IE the nervous system, the electrical system, the information system. It's like when you go to the garage and your car has a fault, they often plug in a machine and it resets all the electrical system, the car, and all the warning lights go off and the system comes back to normal.

Speaker 3 (06:13):

And so in a similar way, when we're talking about limbic retraining or brain retraining, what we're saying is that traditional ill illnesses have been more reductionist in the way that we treat them. There's something wrong over here, there's something wrong over here, there's something wrong with the leg, let's fix that. But modern diseases are the interconnectedness that require a more holistic response. And that comes down to the software systems, not the hardware systems. So the nervous system is like the software that's running the computer of your body, the physical hardware of your body. And that's where we often get bugs. Just like in modern computers, we get bugs. And so brain retraining is saying, well, let's retrain those bugs and get our system back to balance. And a lot of those bugs we believe are in the unconscious brain, in the limbic system, part of the brain and the limbic system.

Speaker 3 (06:57):

Part of our brain is the more emotional part of the brain. And once again, we go back to old medicine as I call it, that would perceive the limbic system as purely responsible for our emotional responses, our fight or flight response, et cetera. But now we're discovering that the brain doesn't differentiate between an emotional response, a biological response. What these responses are are survival responses. The brain enacts survival responses. And so while we're retraining the brain, we're not only impacting on emotional responses but also physiological responses. And our immune response is a defensive survival response. And we've now discovered ways that we can influence that immune response and then enable the body to come back to balance. So that's a long way of kind of describing what we mean by brain retraining and limbic retraining. Right.

Speaker 1 (07:44):

Thank you for explaining that. And if anyone's listening now and you're thinking, oh, I don't need to listen to this, it doesn't apply to me. Yes, it applies to you <laugh>, <laugh>, it applies to every human and all mammals really on the face of this planet, particularly with the, the levels of stress that we're encountering. And I hope that you're clearly hearing what is saying, how this part of the brain is completely integrated with our emotional system, our nervous system, our immune system. So I think a lot of women are surprised when I teach them, for instance, in my hormone bliss challenge, which is coming up soon, that how they feel their emotions are related to their hormonal balance. And so if you have a particularly problematic emotional feelings that are coming up, depression, anxiety, that's related to your hormones through your nervous system, so exactly what we're talking about today.

Speaker 1 (08:46):

So if you're a woman in perimenopause, pre menopause, menopause, post menopause and you're struggling, part of the problem that you're struggling with with is not only a hormone problem but a nervous system problem. And that's exactly what we're talking about today. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. So this does apply to you and it really applies to, I love your analogy of the car. That's brilliant. And the electrical system, it really applies to all of us and particularly women because we are disproportionately affected by a lot of these. You talk about neuro immune condition syndromes, NICS, which is interesting. I've never heard it called that. So can you talk about what, what are NICS neuro immune condition syndromes?

Speaker 3 (09:31):

Yeah. So that's a label that we've given to a whole range of different diseases that we call those modern diseases. So there's neuro immune diseases. So that means are the neuro, the nervous system affected and the immune system affected. So that's conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long covid, and then also sensitivity reactions. So mold illness and also related to that Lyme because Lyme and mold often, you know, occur and then a whole bunch of pain syndromes, right? So all of these come under the banner of neuro immune condition syndromes where they've got commonalities between the symptomatology that is presenting itself. And if I can give a analogy of how I believe these nicks start, because I think if we go through that, that theory, I think that would be really useful to, to frame our discussion. So these neuro immune condition syndrome we see, you know, I mean we all know somebody's got long covid, right?

Speaker 3 (10:22):

Who's got lingering effects of covid so common in the population, why is this happening? Well, I like to go back to first principles of us as human beings. What is the biggest question of all? Why are we here <laugh>? Now we could answer that from a philosophical perspective and that would be a lovely conversation. But let's start with a scientific perspective. We are here because over millions of years of evolution, our bodies have adapted to our environment, learn how to survive and pass on our genes to the next generation. So we are survival machines and the brain's number one priority and the body's number one priority is survival. That's what can pass on those genes. Now what's happened is that in our modern life and modern world and the way we're living our lives, those threats to survival have increased or certainly the brain perceives them as increased.

Speaker 3 (11:11):

So for instance, we're more exposed to pollution if the brain sees as a threat, we're more exposed to toxins in our food, we're more exposed to daily stresses and strains of life. And now social media means that unconsciously we compare ourselves to all the best, most amazing people in the world and and compare ourselves to that top 0.1% of people out there, right? So we setting ourselves unrealistic expectations of life. So all of these things impact on our system. So our system feels more under threat, physically, emotionally, biologically. Which then means that when an illness comes along, normally our bodies just fight it off and go back to standby mode. So let's say for instance, mold, we have a mold exposure. Normally our brain perceives that this is dangerous, is able to create a response to deal with that mold exposure. And normally our systems will go back to balance.

Speaker 3 (12:00):

But I believe in a whole range of these different exposures, whether it's viruses, bacteria, mold, lying, the system errs on the side of caution because survival is the number one priority. So when we have exposure to that threat, the brain fights off that condition, but goes into over defense mode that even once it's fought off the threat, it errs on the side of caution and keeps stimulating the immune system and the nervous system unnecessarily. And what that then does is completely disrupt our hormonal balance, completely disrupt our autonomic nervous system, our gut, and all of these different processes in the name of survival. And for me this has to make sense because there's millions of people who are suffering from these conditions. Why is it so many people are have a system which is malfunctioning? It is because we now live in a more threat induced environment, which means our system is overstimulating these defensive responses. And that's why we're seeing, if you talk about emotional defensive responses, we're seeing anxiety and depression skyrocket at the moment in the population, especially since Covid. And we are seeing the number of neuro immune conditions also skyrocketing because of this threat system which is over responding. And if I can give an analogy, which I think many of my patients find really useful. So Kiran, are you a fan of, I don't know, game of Thrones or maybe a fairytales?

Speaker 1 (13:20):

I love fairytales. A good fairytales.

Speaker 3 (13:21):

Fairytales. There we go. So imagine that you are queen of your kingdom. So you are Queen Kiran. That's a nice, that's a nice ring to it. Queen Kiran, you are queen kirin, queen of your kingdom and your castle. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And you have an army which is your nervous system which defends the castle. And you have your navy, which is your immune system that also defends the castle from threats. And so when an invader comes over the hill, that could be a virus, a bacteria, gut problems, whatever it is comes over the hill. Your army and navy are able to fight off that threat effectively. But imagine there's now a drought in your kingdom. So now the kingdom is weaker, the army and navy are weaker because of the stress of the drought. Now an invading army comes in, could be covid, could be mold, whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (14:08):

Now your army and navy have to fight much harder to fight off this incoming threat because they're weaker. So it takes 'em a lot longer. The battle lasts a lot longer. And even once the army and navy feel they've defeated the incoming invader, they aren't sure because they think what happens if the invader is hiding in the forest or is somewhere peripherally in the body. So they come to the weekly meeting with Queen Kirin and they say, queen Kirin, we're not sure if we fully fought off the invader and the kingdom could fall. So we need all the resources now. We need all the food, the water, the wheats, the iron, everything needs to be channeled to us. And of course queen Kirin, you think that's a logical thing to do. We need to ensure survival of the kingdom. So now the army and navy are on a hair trigger.

Speaker 3 (14:52):

They keep firing off their weapons of war, which causes excessive inflammation in the body because some of those arrows start falling back into the kingdom causing internal inflammation and challenges and hormonal imbalances as well. 'cause Our system isn't designed to be in this overactive defensive state. Then what happens is opportunistic infections. So the spies in the kingdom start flourishing 'cause they're not the anti spy. The the secret service is not getting funded well. So now we get opportunistic infections or opportunistic viral infections, bacteria, pathogens, mycotoxins, all these types of things starts flourishing in the system because the army and navy is taking up all the bandwidth of the body and is fighting its non-existent threat. As this system continues, the weaker and weaker the kingdom gets from all of this over defensiveness, the more and more the army and navy believe we're still in danger.

Speaker 3 (15:44):

So they keep firing off more and more weapons of war, which gets the kingdom even weaker and so on and so on. And that's why often we then stay in this non homeostasis. We stay in this state of overstimulation, lack of homeostasis, autonomic dysfunction, gut dysfunction, hormonal dysfunction, all of these things are interconnected. And I believe they're all triggered by underlying reason, which is a system which is an imbalance because it's doing the thing that it thinks is best. Survival. Survival is number one priority. And what brain retraining is, is realizing that a lot of these symptoms that we're experiencing hormonal imbalance, guts, mycotoxins, these are downstream effects of an over defensive system. So brainery training is the next time the army or navy have their meeting with you, you say to them, my dear generals, the war is over. You can stand down, get back to balance, get back to standby mode.

Speaker 3 (16:39):

And what that does is it then means that the autonomic nervous system and the immune system start coming back to a level of homeostasis. And what we find with our patients, and we've done lots of studies which we'll talk about, then all of the downstream effects start also resolving themselves and therefore the gut challenges the fatigue, the health compromising effects all start coming back to balance and people start getting better and they start recovering. So you start, you, we came to this flow of thinking from the question, what is a neuro immune condition syndrome? So I believe neuro immune condition syndromes covers a whole variety of these modern diseases that we haven't found a magic pill for that doctors really don't have much that they're able to support. And yes, there's lots of great work that people like yourselves are doing in terms of supplements and medications that can support healing. But we often find that as soon as one has a stress, guess what all of the symptoms come back again or many of the symptoms come back and we have to find another route towards healing. And what we're saying to a lot of practitioners is the brain retraining piece. If you use that in compliments with traditional avenues, it magnifies the power of healing because you are, you are targeting from not only downstream but also the upstream causes as well.

Speaker 1 (17:52):

Yeah, thank you for that analogy that that really helps. And I guess one other I'll offer that's coming to my mind is a friend of mine called it, it's, you know, the limbic system is your smoke alarm. And it's like all of our smoke alarms are going off even though there's no fire, there might have been a fire at one time, whether that fire was a mold exposure or lime or foods you're sensitive to or maybe some type of childhood be big T trauma or little T trauma or something. And that the smoke alarm just gets stuck in this on state that keeps our entire system in a state of hyper arousal, kind of sympathetic outflow with, with parasympathetic deprivation. And then that causes a whole host of other problems. I love it when people like you come with great analogies that really help people understand what's going on for their body, why this applies to them. We really are, we're on assault just listening to the, the radio or looking at the TV with everything that's going on in our modern lives. And so this applies to all of us. And I love this quote you shared with me, I had to think twice about it. I think it's brilliant. Your brain can heal your body when you get your mind out of the way. <Laugh>, <laugh>,

Speaker 3 (19:18):

There's a lot to a lot to unpack in that. Yeah, <laugh>.

Speaker 1 (19:22):

Yeah. So talk a little bit about that and then maybe we can start talking about the program that you've developed, but yeah, that, that's a mind bending quote

Speaker 3 (19:31):

<Laugh>. So we are looking at three different components. We are looking at the body, our physical body, we are looking at our brain, which is the physical component that houses the electrical system or it's the kind of the head of the nervous system as it were. And then we're looking at the mind, which is our subjective experience of consciousness, of being awake, of being alive. And traditional medicine doesn't really necessarily look at the consciousness piece, right? It looks at the brain and the body in the very neutral scientific terms. But these three pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are constantly interacting and affecting each other. Every emotional condition, you call it trauma, it could be depression, has a physiological component. So we know that for instance, 50% of depression cases involve excessive inflammation. Every emotional condition has a physical component. Every physical condition has an emotional component.

Speaker 3 (20:22):

Now they, they are not separate and therefore often we may not realize it, but our mind and the way that we think and the way that we interact with our condition impacts on the condition itself and also impacts on how the brain can get back to homeostasis. So our program is not a psychological program, it is not CBT, but what it is is it's saying let's look at these three components and look at the interactions and look at how we can create the best environment for the brain to feel that we are safe and that it can switch off these overactive arousal systems so we can get our health back. And a key piece of jigsaw that relates to that quote is our past traumas. So we know that women are more likely to develop these conditions compared to men. And also that if someone has a background of let's say little T trauma or big T trauma, they also are three to four times more likely to get one of these types of chronic illnesses.

Speaker 3 (21:20):

And that's because we believe that whether it's your experience in the womb, how stressed your mother was, how stressful the birthing experience was, and then the first five years of life are hugely formative in terms of your sense of safety, your relational context with your mother and father. All of those impacts on your nervous system and how trigger happy it is to threats around you based on its sense of safety. And so in a similar way, our mind impacts our physical body because if we have never felt safe emotion in our past, why would our body believe that we're safe physiologically? Because once again, the brain does not differentiate between the different types of threats. They're just threats that need to be mitigated. And that's our clue as to why people with trauma are more likely to have these types of conditions. And it may not even be trauma, it can just be a, a sense of a lack of nurture from our past. And that's where these pieces come together. So that's why I kind of created that quote to make sure that we're aware of these different components and how they interact.

Speaker 1 (22:17):

I love that. That's so beautifully said and explained. I don't know that I've ever heard it more beautifully explained. If we've never felt safe emotionally, why would our body believe we are safe physiologically now? Right. The fire alarm is on. And so the program that you developed, and maybe this is a good time to ask you to share with everyone your background and how you came to develop this program because it, it really helped to, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but transform and save your life in a lot of ways. Correct? Absolutely. So how did that happen?

Speaker 3 (22:49):

So it was the mid nineties and I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge and I had a virus, didn't think much of it and the virus kind of went away, but I started feeling physiologically really bad. So extreme fatigue, extreme exhaustion. I'd look at a textbook and couldn't even read it. I had to crawl to the bathroom sometimes 'cause my energy was so low and I thought what on earth is going on here? And in my worst moments I was, you know, almost suicidal because it's a horrible condition, you know, you just don't feel like you can do anything. And I go from doctor to doctor and they'd say, we dunno what you have. We have no explanation for it. We have no treatment for it. We don't even know, really know what to call it. And you might have it for the rest of your life.

Speaker 3 (23:29):

And you can imagine for a young man that was a almost a death sentence that's like a brick wall in front of you saying you have this disease and we don't, we can't help you. And I met hundreds of others who were also suffering from similar conditions. And that started my lifelong quest to try and understand these conditions. And I made a contract with the universe and I said, if I can just get myself, well even if it's not fully, if I can just get myself well, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with this condition because there's so much untold suffering that's going on that we don't see because these conditions aren't really taken so seriously because they don't, they're not seen as increasing mortality necessarily. And that started my lifelong quest. And so I then researched brain neurology physiology and I came up with a hypothesis as to what causes these conditions, which I published online in 1999 and then in Medical Hypothesis Journal in 2002 and then set up a clinic to treat others. And since then we've become a online program with an app and we've published several medical studies and randomized controlled trials on our treatments as well. So that's been my journey and like all of us in, or many of us in these professions, we've gone through our own challenges, our own suffering and are looking to improve the lives of others because we've found something that's helped.

Speaker 1 (24:41):

Yeah, we are both here fulfilling our contracts with the universe. <Laugh>, I have a similar contract and I think that a lot of us who do the type of work that we do with communities and patients that are underserved by corporate medicine had a a similar story of not being helped and served by the corporate medical establishment. And so we found the answers. And so I'm so glad you're here listening if you're listening right now. So do you wanna talk a little bit about what's involved? I know that you have a free trial you're gonna share with everyone and we're, we're gonna talk a little bit more about that coming up. But what kinds of activities are involved with limbic retraining? It sounds like I'm gonna have to do brain surgery. I know somebody's thinking it sounds complicated. <Laugh>

Speaker 3 (25:33):

<Laugh>. Well I love that maybe one day science will progress and we can just flip open the head re we do in a car, fix a few wires and then done. But unfortunately that technology hasn't come so until then we are gonna have to do it manually. Yeah. Internally ourselves. And that involves various brain exercises that we have. So we teach a patient to recognize these danger signals on the periphery of consciousness. Yeah, because the brain has a safety valve, it always checks with our consciousness as to whether what it is doing is the right thing, the right defensive response. And most of us aren't aware of that day-to-day. But we enable people to tune into that and retrain the brain that we are not in the same state that we were at the original exposure to that threat. Life has moved on, we are now safe.

Speaker 3 (26:21):

And that doesn't happen the first time, the second time, the third time you have to repeat this. And that's where neuroplasticity comes in. The idea that our brain is malleable, changeable, we can rewire it towards health and that's what we do in the Gupta program. So we are now an app which makes it super easy to use. And the way it works is people can come to our website or download the free app and then, and obviously that'll be in the show links and they can take our free trial 28 day free trial where they can go through the videos and audios and learn a lot more about their condition and should they then decide to take on the full program. Then that involves watching videos, weekly webinars with myself. And something that has been an absolute game changer in terms of brain retraining and nervous system regulation is something called daily Gupta size. <Laugh>. Now what

Speaker 3 (27:13):

Lay on words there, daily Gupta size, we recognize that patients are often isolated. They lack motivation to put these practices in to daily routines. So we have daily Zoom calls with our trained coaches where we take people through the exercises that they need. So if you're not somebody who can follow a program and integrate it, just come online every day or whatever, whatever days you can, and we take you through everything that you need each day so it becomes a regular part of your daily practice. And that has been a game changer for our patients. And we have like two to 300 people a day who come on to these Zoom calls and it's a real sense of community and support as well. And so there's a whole package of techniques, events that people can then come to and we hold people's hand. We would take them through the brain retraining.

Speaker 3 (27:58):

Yeah. So that's how it essentially works. And until we have independent phase three trials, so currently we're doing phase one and phase two trials. We've shown great data and I'll share some of that with you. But until we have the large scale phase three trials, we offer a one year money back guarantee on the subscription so people can use it and after six months if they, if it's not for them or they think it's working for them, they can return it no questions asked and get their money back and use that money for something else. So we think people have got nothing to lose by giving this this way of doing things a go. Right.

Speaker 1 (28:27):

I love that you, you have a name for a Gupta size that's awesome. And that it's done in community because one of the biggest stressors we have right now in modern society is that we're so disconnected from our families, friends, loved ones living a lot of us in, in isolation and loneliness is at epidemic levels worse on your health than smoking. And so I know with me, I do my programs with women only in groups because the connection is part of what, when we have that co-regulation with other people, we need that as humans, as homo sapiens and it really helps. So I love that you have that and yeah, do you wanna talk a little bit about the research that you've done? I'm really interested to hear more about that.

Speaker 3 (29:15):

Yeah, definitely. Look, there can be so many things on the internet right now on Instagram, Facebook, you're scrolling through. Everyone's got some kind of healing methodology for all these different diseases, but for us, the science matters. Yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. So therefore we spent a lot of time and effort and money on supporting research studies in this particular field. And so we published a couple of recent randomized control trials. So we did one on fibromyalgia and we found that after eight weeks of our program compared to a relaxation program on our program, within eight weeks, patients notice a 40% reduction in their fibromyalgia scores. But zero response in the control group, we halved anxiety, halved depression, halved pain, and doubled functional capacity. And that's just within eight weeks. And these wow effects lingered and stayed on for six months or sorry, five months. So that's a four month, three month follow up.

Speaker 3 (30:07):

So that was one study which published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, which is one of the top journals. And recently we just did a study on long covid and we found that, well we were comparing our program to a wellness program. So it was a real proper control that wellness program had sleep and diet and supplements and all the good things that we are told to do to keep our health at a good level. So compared our program to that equivalent structural program and after three months our program was four times more effective at reducing fatigue and twice as effective at increasing levels of energy. And so it's quite rare in a medical study you get a 400% response compared to the the control group that's once to get a published randomized control trial that people can see on our website. And then another study we just published, which wasn't an RCT but was a clinical audit of our patients, we found that across 14 different conditions. So this includes Lyme disease and POTS and chronic fatigue and long covid across 14 different diseases. After just three months on our program, people had anywhere between a 60 to 120% improvement in their symptoms. And what this showed is that this idea that one program can impact on lots of different diseases because they may have the same underlying pathology, if we target that underlying pathology, we can heal a whole host of different conditions. And that's once again a published study that people can, can take a look at on our website.

Speaker 1 (31:31):

Yeah, I'd love that. Thank you for sharing that. It sounds like a lot of work but also a very worth it to validate this modality that has applications across disease spectrum. So for every aspect of that car that you talked about in the beginning, the the how the body is very mechanistically viewed in mainstream medicine and it's really not. We are living beings that every part affects every other part. I'm wondering before we close, if you can talk about this Neil Donald Walsh quote that you shared with me that I love and I'd love it if you could ex help everyone understand you could talk about a little bit who Neil Donald Walsh is. He's he, well he's the writer of conversations with God and other books and the quote is, you'll have everything you want in life when you are prepared to lose it all. What does that mean and how does that apply to what we're talking about today?

Speaker 3 (32:26):

It's an ancient Eastern philosophy. It comes from the ancient Vedic tradition, which is this idea that when we have an attachment to a specific result, we cause ourselves stress, right? So if we really want that job and we go to the interview, if we are really, really desperate to get that job, how are we gonna come across in the interview? We're gonna come across stressed, less self-assured, less confident in our ability to get that job because we are coming from a place of desperation. So it's that place of where desire turns into desperation or an intention turns into desperation. And so when we're so attached to result fist clenched, we actually push those things, those very things that we want. We push them away from ourselves. Now how is this relevant to healing? Sometimes when we put so much emphasis on our physical bodies and our physical conditions and we are desperate to get better and we have a hypervigilance of these disease states within us, although it can feel like that means we're monitoring it and trying to find solutions, actually we may push healing away from ourselves because we are in a state of desperation.

Speaker 3 (33:35):

And in that desperation to heal from it, we actually tense up our nervous system and push away the very thing that could heal it, which is a more relaxed nervous system. Therefore, acceptance of our current state is the first step to healing. And that's a core part of what we do in our program as well.

Speaker 1 (33:51):

I love that. Therefore, acceptance is, is the first step. You know, this applies very much to women who are wanting to, to achieve pregnancy and having difficulty. And they don't realize that in ruminating on getting pregnant and they're not getting pregnant and I've gotta get pregnant. And the stress levels are going up, that they're actually negatively impacting their hormones and their nervous system, their limbic system, and they're causing it to be in a survival state that says, I'm not safe. And then you can't get pregnant in that state. So gosh, I never heard Neil Donald Wash apply to our health. That's brilliant <laugh>. But yes, the attachment and acceptance, there's literature I love that says acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. And really it does start with accepting it otherwise, a, a lot of the healing that we do, even from a functional perspective is very what I've heard called transactional.

Speaker 1 (34:52):

I do this detox for myself and I want my body to give me X result. And it's no wonder that we go about healing that way sometimes because that's the kind of society that we live in. It's very much a transactional society. Relationships are transactional. I give you this money, you give me this, but our bodies are living systems that do respond to the intention with which we try to heal our bodies. So I think coming from a place of understanding that and loving ourselves, so to me self-love is not a transactional activity. It needs to be a, a very holistic, nurturing, ground up activity where our intention is to give our body everything that it needs, everything that she needs, I like to say to heal. So I love that you put that intentionality into your Gupta size, <laugh> and the Limby training program.

Speaker 3 (35:49):

Yeah, absolutely. The idea of we are where we are, it's already happened. If I don't accept what has already happened within my body right now, all I'm doing is resisting and I'm in a resistant state. And what we resist persists that famous quote. So to get outta that resistance state and calm our nervous system, the first state is accepting whatever is so right now. And from that place of acceptance, we can then say, I now save my energy instead of worrying about this, I save my energy to be able to look at solution orientated processes and set that intention for health. And that's really how that quote comes in.

Speaker 1 (36:26):

Yes, I love that our nervous system is activated when we're in that resistance state. So it starts with acceptance. I love that you're gonna share a free trial with everyone. Thank you so much for that. I myself would love to try it and, and even would invite you to come back after I've tried it and we can talk about my experience. I don't know if that would be beneficial. I'd love to, yeah,

Speaker 3 (36:49):

Give you complimentary access and then we can see how you respond to it, what you think of it, and have another chat. That would be lovely.

Speaker 1 (36:56):

Yeah, that would be lovely. And so tell everyone where they can connect with you online and around learning more about the program that you're offering. We will have the link in the show notes, but tell everyone how to connect with you.

Speaker 3 (37:11):

Yeah, so it's simple. They can come to our website, which will be in the show notes@guptaprogram.com or they indeed can go to app store or play store and just download the, the free app and straight away start retraining your brain. You can look at videos, audios, and even some of the daily Gupta size. The first part of it, the nervous system regulation is free. It's free to anybody on the planet. It's our kind of gift back to the planet. So you can join that for free and kind of experience those first, you know, ways of looking at your nervous system and yeah, that's how they can find out more.

Speaker 1 (37:41):

Awesome. Thank you so much shook for your journey, turning your pain into your purpose and for sharing your mission and your contract with the universe, with us and with the world. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (37:54):

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (37:55):

And thank you for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I know that you're inspired will by what you've heard today. I think the more tools that you can have in your tool bag for your personal healing, health and wellness to reverse hormonal poverty and get to hormonal prosperity, the better off you'll be. This is a great tool that I'm excited to share with you. So I hope that you'll click the link in the show notes and download and do the free trial. And I'd love to hear about your results. Reach out to me on social media at Kirin Dunston, MD Thanks so much for joining me. Until next week, I'll see you for another episode. Peace, love and Hormones, y'all.

---

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Kevin Ellis | The Hormone Stronger Bones Solution - Why Your Current Program Is Likely Not Enough and What To Do Instead

Welcome back to another enlightening episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast! This week, we dive deep into a topic that resonates with so many of us: bone health. We often think we’re doing enough by following generic health programs, but what if those programs fall short when it comes to bone health? What if there’s a better way to ensure stronger, healthier bones?

🎙️ Episode Highlights:

In this episode, we are thrilled to welcome Kevin Ellis, famously known as Bone Coach™, into our midst. Kevin is not just any health coach; he's a Forbes-featured certified integrative nutrition health coach, podcaster, YouTuber, bone health advocate, and the founder of BoneCoach.com. With his unique 3-step process and world-class coaching program, the Stronger Bones Solution™, Kevin has transformed the lives of thousands across the globe.

Key Points Discussed:

• The Reality of Osteoporosis and Osteopenia: Understanding why traditional programs might not be enough.
• Kevin's Unique 3-Step Process: Learn about the innovative Stronger Bones Solution™ that has helped individuals in over 1500+ cities worldwide.
• Personal Stories and Success: Hear inspiring stories from people who have regained confidence in their bone health journey.
• A Vision for the Future: Kevin's mission isn't just about the present. Discover how he plans to help future generations prevent osteoporosis and lead long, active lives.

Kevin's approach is both inspiring and informative, providing actionable insights and practical steps that you can start implementing today. His dedication goes beyond just addressing current issues; it's about paving the way for a healthier future for our children and grandchildren.

🦴 Who Should Listen?

This episode is a must-listen for midlife women who are looking to take control of their bone health. Whether you’ve been diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis or simply want to ensure your bones stay strong and healthy, this episode offers invaluable advice and guidance.

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Bone health is more than just a medical concern; it's a critical component of living an active and fulfilling life. Kevin Ellis’s expertise and passion shine through in this episode, offering you not just hope but a practical roadmap to stronger, healthier bones. Let’s embark on this journey together and make bone health a priority!

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Hormone Prescription Podcast and leave us a review. We love hearing your thoughts and experiences. Until next time, stay healthy and stay strong!

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By engaging with this episode, you’re not just taking steps toward better bone health; you’re joining a global movement dedicated to a healthier, more active future. Listen now and be inspired!

---

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

You don't have to know where each step is placed day one. You just have to know where you want your path to lead. Kevin Ellis, stay tuned for the Bone Coach who will share his groundbreaking program with you to make sure that your bones stay strong and vital as you age.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:19):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an OB GYNI had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:13):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today. As we talk with Kevin Ellis, also known as The Bone Coach, Kevin has a unique three step process and coaching program called Stronger Bone Solution. He's gonna share with you, he's gonna share so much. He really has a great way of articulating the importance of bone health. We're gonna talk about diagnostics. How do you know if you have an issue with this? What are the correct diagnostic tools you should be undergoing? You're probably not getting this information in your regular doctor's office. I even share a story about one of my clients who had a kind of interesting experience with her primary care doctor around that. So we're gonna dive into that. And you know, bone health is super important. It's kind of one of the most silent diseases because most of us start losing bone mass around the age of 30 unless we're doing something to prevent bone loss.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:16):

And most of us are not. And it accelerates more in women than men, which is super unfair. But it's just a reality for various reasons that we're gonna touch upon. Also related to your hormones as we go through midlife. So if you're not doing diagnostics around this and you're not paying attention and being proactive, I promise you this is happening to you. As you're sitting there listening to my voice, whether you're driving your car or gardening or doing the dishes, you are losing bone mass if you're not doing something to prevent bone mass loss if you're over 30. It's just a fact. And so the only way that you really will know this is a problem if you don't do anything about it, is you might fall when you're older and have a fracture, which can be devastating because a third of women who fall and have a hip fracture because they have osteoporosis, will die from it.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:20):

Yes, die. It's one of the leasing causes of death in older women, a third of us who that happens to will become incapacitated, where we can no longer live independently. That means you have to move out of where you've lived your whole life maybe, and into a facility where you have assisted care all the time and you lose your freedom <laugh> and you lose lots of things that come along with that, that change. So I know we talk about it really in this kind of detached, often the future way, like we're not talking about you, but yes, we are talking about you. So this is a vital episode for everyone to listen to. Even if you're a guy, there are men who listen to my show too. Hi guys. And I love that because you help the women in your life and this is you, you need to listen.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (04:09):

But we're gonna talk about how you can know this is an issue for you earlier. And then most importantly, what do you do about it? Kevin has some great resources for you. He explains things in plain English in a down to earth way just like I do. So I think you're really gonna love our discussion. I'll tell you a little bit more about him and then we'll get started. Kevin Ellis is better known as the Bone Coach. He is a Forbes featured integrative health coach podcaster and is the founder of Bone coach.com. Through a unique three-step process and the world class coaching program called Stronger Bone Solution, he and this team have helped thousands of people with osteopenia and osteoporosis in over 1500 cities around the world get confident in their stronger bones plan. His mission is to help millions of people with osteoporosis build stronger bones and to help our children and grandchildren create a strong and healthy foundation so they can lead long active lives. Please help me welcome Kevin to the show.

Kevin Ellis (05:11):

Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this. It's gonna be a great conversation.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (05:15):

It is. I have been waiting to have you on the show for a couple years. You are super busy because you have a su super successful program in helping people reverse their bone density and improve it whether they have osteoporosis, osteopenia. And so I'm really glad to have you on the show and share you with my audience. Some of my listeners may know, 'cause I talk about <laugh>, I'm an open book when it comes to my health and my family's health, and my mom has the worst osteoporosis I've ever seen. No surprise that she also has Alzheimer's, right? 'cause The two are connected and connected also with hormone imbalance. She was in hormonal poverty for three decades without treatment. So I think it it's great to launch into this talk really with you telling everyone why you're so passionate about the work that you do.

Kevin Ellis (06:10):

Yeah. 'cause usually when you're thinking about bone health or you're thinking about osteopenia or osteoporosis or stronger bones, you're not typically thinking about the younger male, right? You're, you're typically thinking about somebody later in life. Maybe it's maybe just like you said a mother or a grandmother or an aunt or a friend or someone like that who's experienced the effects of maybe fractures or osteoporosis and how you saw that, how that impacted their quality of life in their later years. So it's usually not the younger male that's passionate about this or talking about this, but for me, my journey really started a long time ago. And like a lot of us in the health space, my journey started through my own health issues and challenges. So when I came outta the Marine Corps, I had a lot of different health issues, high stress, poor sleep, chronic digestive distress, couldn't figure out what was going on.

Kevin Ellis (06:54):

My energy was almost non-existent. Some days I could barely even get out of bed. And then I was diagnosed with celiac disease. And for those who are not familiar, celiac disease is an autoimmune condition where when you ingest gluten, the tiny little nutrient absorption centers inside your small intestine, they're called vii. And I, I like to call 'em roots in your soil. And my roots were becoming damaged and they were becoming blunted and they couldn't do their job. And my body still needed these important nutrients to execute its daily functions, specifically calcium, because calcium is the primary mineral constituent of your bones. But you also need it for muscle contractions, for nerve impulses, for a, a variety of other things. So I wasn't absorbing these important nutrients and my body was going to the largest reserve of minerals I had, which were my bones and pulling from there.

Kevin Ellis (07:40):

So celiac disease led to bone loss and a subsequent diagnosis of osteoporosis. And this was right around 30 years old. And for anyone to get that diagnosis at any point, it can be scary. And you know, for me at a young age, I still was trying to make sense of it all. And there was fear was a very strong impetus and driver for me and also wanting to be there for my kids in the future because I lost my father when I was two months old. And all I ever wanted was to have that person in my life. And I didn't wanna leave my kids in a position where, you know, they didn't have me there too. So I had a pretty strong reason to make improvements and I put this plan together, I did the research, consulted with people, and I ended up turning this, this health journey into a passion. And I became a coach and I built out a program and grew that community to a couple hundred thousand people. And we've got over 10,000 people that have come through these stronger bones programs now. So it's, it's just really a passion of mine through personal experience, but also just seeing the lives of people we've changed and transformed and how they get to live their most best lives that you know in the future. So

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (08:43):

Yeah, I love hear hearing how people came to do what they do, that they love, that they're passionate about those. So thank you for sharing that. And I think that a lot of women listening right now don't think that we're talking to them because osteopenia, osteoporosis, bone loss really has no symptoms until you are at the point where you start getting fractures, right? It might be spinal compression fractures or you could fall when you're older and and break something. But I find that this is so <laugh> under-discussed in the medical community. And I actually recently had a patient who shared with me that she went and got a bone density. 'cause I advised everyone to get a bone density and based on certain parameters, which we can talk about. And she definitely qualified as needing one. And she went and got it and she had osteoporosis and she took it to her primary care doctor who basically scolded her and yelled at her for getting a bone density.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (09:50):

I don't know if you've come across situations like that, but increasingly I'm having patients come to me where their doctors are getting angry at them for getting screening tests that they really needed, that their doctor didn't recommend bone density being one of them because, you know, his whole attitude was, well now you have osteoporosis, what are I gonna do about that? Because he didn't know what to do. So this is why I love what you do because doctors really don't have an answer. And the fact I was so angry after she told me that, that her doctor got mad at her. So can we talk a little bit about what is appropriate screening? Who should be getting screening? What screening should they be getting? Because I think a lot of the women listening have never had the proper screening and don't even know that they need it and they don't know that we're talking to them.

Kevin Ellis (10:36):

Yeah, this is, this is so important. I'm glad we're talking about this because number one, you as the patient have the right to be the educated and empowered advocate for you. You have the right to ask for tests. You have the right to get those tests done and to see where you're at and get some objective baseline markers and monitor those changes. You as the patient you should be asking for that. That's how you take care of yourself long term. Because a lot of times what happens when I see people, a lot of people, they want to prevent future fractures. They may not already be at that point, but some people I've seen, they've already fractured a lot of times, 5, 10, 15 times, even some. So we want to prevent that from happening. So how do you do that? Well, first let's understand that every single person has bones in their body.

Kevin Ellis (11:18):

Your bone health is important and you're putting on 90% of your bone mass by the time you turn age 18. And by the time you turn 30, the remaining 10% approximately is gonna fill in. And that's what we call peak bone mass or what I call a full bucket, right? So if when you were younger, you had poor diet nutrition, you drank a bunch of sugary soft drinks, you ate a bunch of candy, you weren't getting enough calcium, vitamin D, magnesium K two, you weren't getting enough protein in your diet. Or if you're listening to this and you've got kids or grandkids, think through that lens too. Not just what you went through, but what maybe your kids are going through right now. If we led a sedentary lifestyle, if we weren't out playing sports or being active or moving our bodies and our bones in these short, sharp, dynamic movements to help stimulate good healthy bone growth from a young age or doing gymnastics, right?

Kevin Ellis (12:10):

Get those kids in gymnastics if, if possible because gymnasts have some of the best bone density out there. And then if we had an eating disorder when we were younger, if we took certain medications like glucocorticoids or if we smoked or drank excessively, all of those things could have prevented you from reaching peak bone masses starting with that full bucket. So it's good to understand how, how your bones are being built over time. And it's good to also know, hey there, there are probably some contributors I had in my youth. What are the things I can do now to understand where I'm at and what I need to do to move forward? So I like to see people getting these objective markers and baselines early in your thirties to forties, right? If you get a baseline right around the time you, you achieve peak bone mass, 30 years old, then you can monitor those changes over time.

Kevin Ellis (12:57):

And that's a great place to start. If you're already past 30 and you haven't had a bone density scan yet, you can get one. If you can't go to your doctor and get one, go to an external radiology group and get one. If you have any chronic digestive issues, especially if you have celiac disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, any, any of those absorption conditions, you have a reason to go to your doctor and say, Hey, I believe this is contributing to bone loss and I'd like to dig a little bit further. Can we get this test? And that's how you go about having those conversations. Or you can even just say, Hey look, I, I'm not saying no to your recommendations, I'm just saying can you help me get a little bit more data to make the best decision to move forward? Right? So if you just have that kind of dialogue instead of shutting your physicians down, that may lead to MM-hmm <affirmative> better results.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (13:42):

And then what kind of bone density should they be asking for? Because they're not all bone density testing is created equal <laugh>.

Kevin Ellis (13:50):

That's right. Yeah. So we would look for a DEXA scan, dual energy x-ray absor geometry, it's painless test, kind of like an X-ray, but very low levels of radiation. You lay down on the machine, it does a scan and it tells you your bone mineral density and then it generates a score. And that score is, if it's plus one or minus one, you're gonna be told that's normal and healthy. If it's minus one to minus 2.5, you're gonna be told that's osteopenia. We would call that low bone mass. And that's like a precursor to osteoporosis and minus 2.5 or lower. So minus 2.6, minus 2.7, so on and so forth. That's considered osteoporosis. And the greater the negative number becomes the more severe the osteoporosis. Now important note, bone density is only part of the picture. It's an important part, but it's only part of the picture.

Kevin Ellis (14:37):

So if we wanna really understand stronger bones, you have to know that bone density is the actual mineral content of the bone. Bone quality is the structural integrity of the bone, the micro architecture, how the bone is organized. Those two things combine to create bone strength. So a lot of times you only have part of the picture if you're just getting a bone density scan. So how do I get the bone quality part? Well, there's an add-on software to the DEXA scan that you can get. It's called TBS trabecular bone score. You can call a facility ahead of time, ask 'em if they have the capability and then just confirm with the technician before you start your scan, just say, Hey, do you have the TBS? 'cause It's, it's, you're gonna be able to get all that data just in that one scan, which can be great.

Kevin Ellis (15:20):

So you have bone density, bone quality, there's another technology out there that is, it's more prevalent in Europe, it's making its way more into the US now it's called rems, radiofrequency echo graphic multis spectometry technology. And it's found in a device called echo light. And this looks at the, it's an ultrasound technology that looks at your bone density, your bone quality and gives you a five-year fragility score, like a predictor of fracture basically. And that can also be another tool that you use. And the the last set of tools that I would encourage people to look at are when you get these tests, these, these markers of bone density and bone quality, you have to understand that if you only have one, you don't know if you're actively losing bone right now, present day as we speak. So what are the things that we can look at to understand what's going on right now in our bones?

Kevin Ellis (16:12):

Well, we'll look at bone turnover markers and bone turnover markers. Look at the activity level of cells that are building up and breaking down your bone and let's if the, the bone turnover markers, we're gonna talk about bone resorption. The most sensitive marker for bone resorption is serum CTX. And that is a CT low peptide test. And that looks at the activity level of cells that are breaking down bone. So if that activity level is elevated or even really high, that can be an indicator of active bone loss and a root cause issue that needs to be explored and addressed. And if we have, if we're looking at bone resorption, we also wanna look at bone formation. So the most sensitive marker for bone formation is called P one and P, that's pro collagen type one and terminal propeptide. And this looks at the activity level cells that are building up that bone. So you wanna look at, you wanna look at those two things at the same time. So those are some markers. I love that. And where you're at.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (17:08):

Comprehensive answer. Thank you so much. So everybody listening, we're gonna give some, Kevin has some great resources for you to get further information. So don't freak out about what are all the, this lingo you're hearing about. He's got more resources to really support you in your bone journey, whether you've got great bone mass or you're already losing bone mass because bone mass is something you have to promote. Just like you don't clean your house one time and it stays clean, you have to clean it periodically. So it's something you need to work on. So let's dive into talking about the connection between bone health and hormones because I don't think a lot of women get that there's a connection and particularly women at midlife don't realize that they're being robbed in the middle of the night while they're sleeping a bone mass and it has something to do with their hormones. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Kevin Ellis (18:05):

We most certainly can. So there are different types. There's absolutely a hormone connection, there's a major hormone connection to osteoporosis and bone loss and stronger bones. So let's start with, there are different types of osteoporosis. There is primary osteoporosis that is typically related to a decrease in estrogen. In post-menopausal women. Estrogen has a protective effect on bone as estrogen levels decrease as they do during menopause or even before menopause. That can cause an increase in the activity level of cells that break down bone. And when that activity level elevated and really high, that's gonna cause more bone loss, right? And over time, even in the five years right around that transition, some women can lose up to 20% of their bone mass in that, in that period of time. And that's pretty significant, right? So we have to be aware of that, that major hormonal change that's happening and even take some proactive steps to, to do that.

Kevin Ellis (18:59):

And I know Dr. Karen, you, you talk about this all the time, but in terms of other causes of osteoporosis, there's secondary osteoporosis and that is where it occurs as a result of behaviors, disorders, diseases, conditions, and medications. So there can be different reasons for that bone loss that's taking place. Hormones can absolutely play a role, especially estrogen. And then if we're talking about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, if that is part of your plan, you know, and it's different for every single person, and I know you talk about this quite a bit, but estrogen can help with the prevention of bone loss, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA can help with supporting the bone building side of things too. So there, there are things that you can do from a hormonal perspective and that again, it varies for every single person. You gotta work with a practitioner to help you figure out what's right for you. But just know those can be some tools to help support you as you start moving in the right direction or even preventing some of that loss from happening.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (19:52):

I just wanna make the point for everybody listening that there really is no current recommendation on use of sex hormones or what I like to call flex hormones because they have flexible functions. It's not just about sex. For the prevention of bone loss, really there isn't. So when you're talking to your doctor about hormones, you're probably not gonna get some of the information that we're sharing with you today about the fact that it does help prevent bone loss. So it's something that you're going to have to bring up. And the fact that flex hormone therapy or getting to a state of what I call hormonal prosperity actually helps you to build bone. There is a recommendation using estrogen in particular to reverse or treat osteoporosis. It's not considered a first line therapy though, which we might get into talking about medications and they don't talk about the use of other bone building agents like testosterone is super important for women too. So I, I'd love to just give that caveat because a lot of times people will hear something on the show and then they go running to their doctor and say, well I heard Kevin talking about this, Karen talking about that, and, and they just get poo-pooed and then they get really confused because they're kind of being gaslit but don't realize it <laugh>. Yeah. So that's why I like to, to tell them what to expect when you bring this information you're super excited about to your, your doctor

Kevin Ellis (21:24):

And, and you have to realize too, and it's just, you kind of just touched on medication. But you have to realize too that when you go into the conventional medical model and you're having these conversations, just know that the standard recommendation that will be provided for you is take some calcium, take some vitamin D, go for a walk, don't lift anything heavy over, you know, very small amounts of weight and here's this medication, take it. And we'll see you in two years for your next bone density scan. I would bet if anyone has already had this conversation with their doctor, 95% of you're like nodding your head. Yeah, that's exactly what I heard. Right? There is so much more to bone health than that. There are so many other pieces and let's even, I'd love to just touch on the medication because that that conversation is gonna come up.

Kevin Ellis (22:13):

So if you're okay with that. Sure. Briefly, I, I would, I'm not anti-medication. I have seen a lot of situations where it's necessary in lifesaving for some people, but I am pro do everything you possibly can naturally first before considering that as an option. Because when it comes to these bone medications, they have a dramatic effect on bone physiology. It's not like taking an aspirin. And there are different categories of these drugs. There are anti-resorptive medications and there are anabolic medications. Anti-Resorptive medications are designed to slow down the activity level of cells that are breaking down bone. Can they do that? Of course they can, but there are risks and side effects that come with their use. So for antiresorptives, this would be broken down into bisphosphonates and rank lain inhibitors. Bisphosphonates, you've probably heard of some of these before would be your Fosamax, your bon niva, your reclass, those kind of drugs, those are bisphosphonates and your rank lain inhibitors are like Prolia.

Kevin Ellis (23:11):

Okay? So bisphosphonates, the safety and efficacy of these drugs, not really well known beyond five years. And as you and I are going about our daily lives, doing our daily activities, exercising, doing chores around the house, we're starting to get these tiny little micro cracks, micro fractures in our bones. That's normal, right? For every single person. That's normal. And then what happens is you have cells within the bone called osteocytes, they're like orchestrators of this bone remodeling process. They sense that damage and they send out a signal and say, Hey, we need to become stronger. And that signal is picked up by other cells and these cells called osteoclast, they come in and they, they scoop out that damaged bone and right behind it, it's a coupled process. You have these other cells called osteoblasts that come in and build stronger, healthier new bone. That is a normal remodeling process that happens throughout our lives.

Kevin Ellis (24:03):

When you're taking some of these medications, especially longer term, multiple years, you can actually slow down that activity level too much to where you start to accumulate that old worn damage weakened bone over time. So even if you're taking one of these longer term and you're seeing improvements or you're seeing stability in your bone density scan, that quality, that structural integrity, it may not be there, right? So you may not actually have stronger bones, your bones may end up being weaker, just, it just depends. So you have to be aware of these things before you jump into them. And then other certain medications like Prolia, you can't just take that medication and then stop taking it because you'll have what's called a rebound effect. And that can increase the risk of ver vertebral fractures. So again, most people don't get that education in a 15 minute conversation before they just jump into taking a medication.

Kevin Ellis (24:54):

And then the other category of drugs are called anabolics. And those drugs are designed to build bone, build better quality bone and build it faster. Can they do that? Yes. Are there risks and side effects and implications of use? Of course. So you can only take 'em for a certain period of time and once you take them you have to follow it with another medication just to not lose the bone you gained. So the reason I tell people this is ask questions. It's okay to pause, to take a deep breath to make those decisions and to, to just make the most educated, empowered decision you can.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (25:26):

Yeah, super important to know about the medications, be an informed consumer, know what your options are because a lot of times you're not gonna get all the information when you're talking to your doctor. You're just gonna get a prescription here, take this. But what I love about what you do and the resource that you have for everybody is that you really help them to understand, like I I always say I'm not the type of physician who's just gonna tell you do what I say because I'm the expert. I'm gonna educate you about how your body works and help you make the best choice for yourself and you do the same. And that's what I love about the work you do. I think gone are the days when we can just abdicate control of our health to our healthcare provider and assume they have our best interests at heart.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (26:09):

We really have to become the CEOs of our own health and have a working knowledge of how our body works. Otherwise, we're gonna kind of get to the later in the finish line and be upset like a woman I talked to recently who's in her eighties and having all these consequences of hormonal poverty and she's really angry and saying, why didn't anyone tell me? Why Didn't anyone tell me what I was signing up for <laugh> when I didn't, when I went into hormonal poverty at menopause and nobody helped me to get out. I, I think something else that's really important. I know we only have so much time to talk today and that's why I love that you have this extra class everyone can attend, which we'll give you details on later, is exercise. I was talking with a client just a couple hours ago about exercise and when most women at midlife hear the word exercise, they think aerobics and <laugh>, they don't think about weight-bearing exercise or if we hear weight-bearing exercise, we don't necessarily think you're talking about weights.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (27:14):

This woman was actually kind of interesting won't give details on her name or anything, so it's confidential, but the situation I think is very common. I hear this a lot. She didn't wanna lift weights 'cause she didn't wanna bulk up like a man. Also, she was noticing when she was doing certain exercises like squats or arm ex upper arm exercises that she was having discomfort so she stopped doing them. So I know that's a lot of information in there, but basically let's talk about what kind of exercise do you do need to do for your bones?

Kevin Ellis (27:47):

Yeah, exercise is so important. You can be eating all the right foods, which most of the time people think they're eating. I hear this all the time. People are, I feel like I'm eating healthy, I feel like I'm exercising and I still have this condition. Why is this? Well, you have to provide the proper stimulus that your bones need to become stronger and your bones need a couple different types of stimuli. You need impact and you need muscle pulling on bone. So when the muscle pulls on bone, there's this mechanical signal that sends a chemical signal to tell the bones to become stronger. Most people, like I said, when they get diagnosed, they're told, Hey, do some walking. Don't lift anything heavy and just kind of avoid anything that could potentially cause a fall or fracture. Do.Dot that could actually be some of the worst advice that people get is to not put any stimulus on those bones.

Kevin Ellis (28:33):

And the reason I say that is you have to have weight-bearing exercise and you have to have resistance training and muscle strengthening. So what is weight-bearing exercise weight-bearing exercise is anything where your body and your bones are working against gravity to keep you upright. There are things you're doing on your feet and they're placing a good healthy stress on those bones. So that would be, you're walking, you're jogging, you're hiking, you're gardening, you're playing pickleball, you're running around with the kids and the grandkids out in the yard. All those things are considered weight-bearing exercise. It also would be yoga, Pilates, tai chi, qigong, dancing, even All those things are weight-bearing exercise. If you are doing those things, keep doing 'em and you can incorporate this into your plan. Okay? You have to also be aware of non-weightbearing exercise. And this is where your body and your bones are not working against gravity to keep you upright and they are not placing good healthy stress on your bones.

Kevin Ellis (29:27):

And if one of these activities is your primary form of exercise and the only thing you incorporate, you need to do more, right? So if you're doing swimming or cycling, especially swimming, you need to be aware of this. And swimming specifically, it's not that if you do it and it makes you happy and it brings you joy and you're, you just love getting in the pool and swimming around, that's great. You can keep doing this, but don't get in the pool five days a week, swim a couple laps, get out and say, I did my exercise. 'cause You didn't, you have to provide the stimulus that your bones need. And that would be this next form of exercise, which is muscle strengthening and resistance training exercise. And this is where you're bringing in, maybe it's the barbells, the dumbbells, the the resistance bands, the machines at the gym, if that's where your comfort level is at and you're starting to incorporate some, some really good movements that can be helpful.

Kevin Ellis (30:23):

Now, if you are new to weightlifting or resistance training or muscle strengthening exercise, don't be intimidated by some of the things I'm gonna share because you don't have to start at the highest, most intense level. That's not where we recommend people start. We want you to start at a weight that you're comfortable with, that we can look at your body mechanics that we can get you doing things with good form and slowly build up that intensity from there to where you just know how to do it and you're comfortable, right? So that's where we're doing things like squats or this is, it sounds scary, but it's actually not that scary. Dead lifts, right? Overhead presses. And there are other exercises that we can incorporate there too, but those are some great foundational movements that we can incorporate and we want to build up that intensity. Five to 10 repetition range can be a great, a great range to be in, but you gotta have good form, right? So again, you don't have to start at the most intense place day one. You just gotta slowly build up from there.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (31:18):

Yeah, I, I'm so glad that we're talking about this because I do think that just a lot of women miss it. We really do need the weights, the weightbearing activities and working with weights and it's something that a lot of women aren't familiar with, so they shy away from it. And I just thought it was interesting. The woman earlier said that she started having discomfort and so she just stopped doing it and she just wrote that off, I don't need to do that. It hurts <laugh>. Yeah. So it gave us the opportunity to have a, a conversation about, well, no, it's just like when, when something hurts in your body, you've gotta investigate why. Same with lifting weights. If you're having pain, you probably need to look into why.

Kevin Ellis (31:57):

Exactly. And, and just to give you an example, every single person is different. They're at different fitness and activity levels. They have different conditions, they have different pain in their body. So we actually teach people how to modify things to address this. I know we're gonna share this resource here in a little bit, but we'll teach people how to, you know, if they've got pain in any area, any area of their body, their neck, their shoulders, their back, their hips, their knees, their feet, and they're worried about their bones. We teach modifications, adjustments and tweaks to where you can actually provide the stimulus that you need. Or if people have specific conditions that they're trying to navigate, stenosis, scoliosis, spondylothesis, osteoarthritis, degenerative disc, or you've already had a fracture, we will teach modifications, adjustments, and tweaks to make sure you know how to, how to do those things safely and still provide stimulus that you need. So yeah, a lot of times pain, it can either prevent people from taking action altogether or it can compromise their body mechanics and put them at greater risk of injury. So we just wanna make sure they're doing the right things and they've got the right form as they get into these movements.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (33:00):

Two questions I definitely wanna ask you before we wrap up. And number one is, I know some women are probably thinking, so I'm getting thin bones, it's not that big a deal. But what they don't understand are the consequences they're signing up for or the potential consequences of having thin bones. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I I, more than anything from this episode, I want everyone to really get the message. You need a, you need to check your bone density now it's vital and you need to do something about it if it's not optimal. So what kind of consequences are we talking about?

Kevin Ellis (33:38):

Yeah, I'm, well, a lot of times the biggest concern is, is fracture, right? So if you have seen anybody later in life, whether it's a mother or grandmother or something like that, I used to work at a retirement home when I was, when I was a lot younger and that was one of the first jobs I had. And I always talk about how that had a dramatic impact on my life because I saw people in their final years and what they looked like and what their quality of life was like, and whether they were hunched over kind of making their way to the dining hall or they, they were just upright chatting, having fun with their friends. And that had a really big impact on me. And the biggest concern that I see people when they come to us is they're concerned about fracture. Because when we have fractures that that's gonna dramatically impact your life, they can be life changing, they can be debilitating six months after a hip fracture, you've only got about 15% of patients can walk across a room unaided every year.

Kevin Ellis (34:26):

We've got about 300,000 hip fracture patients. A quarter of people end up in nursing homes, half of them never regain their previous function. So it's, it's not to, not to scare people because just because you have low bone density doesn't mean you're gonna fracture, right? There are preventative things you can do to build stronger bone to prevent that from even being your fate. A fracture is a possibility and it does happen. So we need to do everything we possibly can to preserve and strengthen this structure that's gonna carry you to an active future. And that's a big part of what we focus on.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (34:55):

Right. And then the other thing I wanted to talk about, we talked about the sex or flex hormones when it comes to bone density, but we didn't touch on cortisol, the stress hormone, which also gets to gut health and bone. And I don't think that a lot of people are a aware of the connection between other hormones like cortisol, which relates to gut health and bone health. Can you talk a little bit about that briefly?

Kevin Ellis (35:21):

Yeah, I certainly can. So there's a major connection, let's even start with the gut health piece too. 'cause Yes, of course stress hormone cortisol that can impact your gut health can increase the, can increase intestinal permeability, leaky gut. But with gut health, there are a couple ways that this can affect your bones. So the first way is kind of what I talked about with celiac disease, the absorption of nutrients and having challenges with, with that, that can cause your body to pull minerals in from the bones and that can, that can lead to bone loss if you have issues with absorption. The other issue when it comes to gut health and bone health is that your bones are living tissue. They're not just these static structures that hold you up right and carry you through life. They do that and they do a really good job of it.

Kevin Ellis (36:04):

But inside your bones you have something called bone marrow. And bone marrow is a soft spongy material. It produces 95% of the blood cells in your body. So if you need help with preventing bleeding and clotting, that's where platelets are gonna come in. If you need help with carrying oxygen to the body's tissues, carrying carbon dioxide away from the tissues back to the lungs, red blood cells are gonna help with that. But if you need help with fighting infections, healing wounds, anything related to the immune system, that's where white blood cells come in. Well, the cells that break down bone are a form of white blood cell. So anything that is stimulating the immune system is speaking in the same language as the cells that break down bone. Where does 70% of your immune system reside in your gut? So if you have digestive issues, especially chronic and long term, it's not just a matter of am I absorbing my nutrients, it's am I stimulating that immune system speaking in the same language as the cells that break down bone and leading to more bone loss.

Kevin Ellis (37:01):

So resolution of those digestive issues is incredibly important. And then if we shift to, if we're talking about the impact of chronic stress and high cortisol on our bones specifically, there are a couple, a couple ways that this can affect our bones. Number one, it can reduce progesterone production and we need progesterone to support healthy bones. The other way is that it actually reduces the ability of the os osteoblasts, the cells that build bone, it reduces their ability to build that bone. And the other thing that we need to be concerned about is high glucocorticoids, these natural steroid hormones, they kill osteocytes, osteocytes are these orchestrators of the bone remodeling process. So we need all of these things to function in a, in a good way. And when we have high stress, elevated cortisol levels or we have cortisol dysregulation, even that can be an issue that comes up.

Kevin Ellis (37:55):

So just be aware that if you have stress in your life, and it may not be, I know we always, we talk about the lion always, but you know, the lion is, is probably not gonna be the, the main stressor in your life. The, it's probably gonna be the, the financial conflict, the family challenges, the keeping up with the perfect lives of the Jones is on social media. Those kinds of things can contribute to and drive that stress response. And you just have to be aware of that and you just need to cultivate a healthy practice around dealing with that stress. And I think if you do that, you you'll be in a really good place at least to start. Yeah,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:31):

For sure. And I love this quote you shared with me before we, we started recording, I have to share with everyone, you don't have to know where each step is placed day one, you just have to know where you want your path to lead. You have certainly given everyone a step for day one when it comes to their bone health journey and let's tell them where it leads. We'll <laugh> we'll have link links in the show notes, but Kevin, tell everyone where they can connect with you online and about this great resource that you have for them to help them continue on their journey. And we'll have the link in the show notes.

Kevin Ellis (39:07):

Absolutely. So you can always find me@bonecoach.com. We got a lot of free resources, stronger bones programs, all that stuff there. And you can always find me on all the social channels too. At Bone Coach or at Bone Coach Kevin, go to Instagram, go to the podcast. Go go. Any of those places you'll find us there. But the best resource I would suggest your audience starts with is if we could leave this in the show notes we kind of talked about, this is my free Stronger Bones Masterclass, comes with a free bone healthy recipes guide. But this masterclass is gonna take anybody who wants to improve their bones, is concerned about their bone health or just wants to have an active future and you want to take care of that structure that's gonna get you there, sign up for this masterclass. It's gonna walk you through step by step. Everything you need to do, it's gonna just gonna walk you through the process we take. We take our clients through step by step by step. It's gonna help you uncover missing pieces in your plan. It's gonna help you get on the right path for stronger bones. And that's the Stronger Bones Masterclass. We'll leave that in the show notes. So check that out, sign up for that. And that's the best resource to get started. Awesome.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (40:07):

Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing this really very important information, Kevin. I really appreciate it. Thanks

Kevin Ellis (40:14):

So much Dr. Ki,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (40:15):

And thank you for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I know you are inspired to lift up the hood of your bone car and take a look at your bones and see what's going in there. If you haven't had proper testing, please, please, please go and get it and then take action. This is vital. So I look forward to hearing about your bone health journey on social media. You can reach out to me on Instagram or Facebook and share your stories and your progress and what you're learning and we'll have another wonderful

Speaker 2 (40:48):

Episode for you

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (40:49):

Next week. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

Speaker 2 (40:54):

Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Get access to Kevin Ellis's Stronger Bones Masterclass: Discover The 3-Step Blueprint Osteoporosis "Thrivers" Use To Help Build Strong Bones So They Can Stop Fearing Fracture & Lead Active Lives plus Get a Free Recipe Guide! - CLICK HERE.

 

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Christine’s Journey Out Of Hormonal Poverty: From Metabolic Mayhem Hopelessness To Success At Midlife

Welcome to another inspiring episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast! This week, we dive into the captivating journey of Christine, a remarkable woman who transformed her life from the depths of hormonal poverty and metabolic chaos to a thriving midlife success story.

Episode Highlights

• Christine's Personal Journey: Listen as Christine candidly shares her struggles with hormonal imbalance and metabolic mayhem, painting a vivid picture of her life before finding hope and healing.
• Turning Points: Discover the pivotal moments that changed the trajectory of Christine’s health journey, leading her from hopelessness to empowerment.
• Overcoming Obstacles: Gain insight into the strategies Christine employed to combat metabolic mayhem and rise above her challenges.
• Benefits of Working with The Host: Hear firsthand about the transformative benefits Christine experienced through her work with our host, including practical advice and tailored strategies that made all the difference.
• Inspiration for Midlife Women: Learn how Christine’s story can inspire you to take control of your hormonal health and find success in midlife.

Christine’s Story: From Hopelessness to Triumph

In this episode, we delve into Christine’s personal account of facing seemingly insurmountable hormonal struggles. Like many women at midlife, she found herself navigating the confusing and often discouraging world of metabolic issues and hormonal imbalances. But Christine's story doesn't end there. Through perseverance and expert guidance, she discovered a path to reclaim her health and vitality.

Christine shared invaluable practical advice and strategies for women dealing with similar challenges. Whether it's dietary adjustments, lifestyle changes, or understanding the nuances of hormonal balance, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you on your journey.

Christine provides an insider's view of what it's like to work with our podcast host. She breaks down the process at a granular level, explaining the philosophy behind the approach and why it works when other methods might fail. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the information overload on Dr. Google, Christine's story will resonate deeply. She highlights how the expert knowledge and personalized care she received made all the difference.

Christine's journey is a testament to the power of resilience and expert guidance. Her transformation from hopelessness to success is not just a story—it's a beacon of hope for every woman at midlife feeling demoralized by hormonal and metabolic struggles.

Don't miss out on this inspiring episode! Tune in now to hear Christine's incredible journey and join our Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge today. Together, let's embark on a path to reclaiming our health and vitality.

---

Stay tuned and stay inspired, and remember: you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. With the right support and knowledge, you too can achieve hormonal balance and midlife success.

Happy listening!

---

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

Thank you so much, Dr. Karen. I truly, I cannot thank you enough. You have not only transformed my life, but you have saved my life in so many different ways and given me a life that I want to have.

Speaker 2 (00:15):

That's what Christine a had to say about working with me. Stay tuned for more details about her experience.

Speaker 3 (00:23):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us, keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an OB GYN, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results, and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kieran Dunton. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:16):

Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kieran. I'm so glad that you're here because you're gonna get to hear a client, Christine, share her experience of working with me. We've got the Hormone Bliss Challenge launching this week on May 23rd. I only do it live a couple times a year. So you definitely don't wanna miss this, especially if you've thought about working with me and you've been wondering what's it like, what am I gonna get out of it? And really wanna understand my philosophy and how I've gone about helping thousands of women's women get out of midlife metabolic mayhem and hormonal poverty and into hormonal prosperity. Because if you're a woman over 40, most likely, you are experiencing many of these 60 plus symptoms of midlife metabolic mayhem to varying degrees. And it's interfering with you living your life the way that you want to, frankly, the way that you deserve to.

Speaker 2 (02:19):

You deserve to be healthy, vital, alive at every single age. There's no reason really, that you shouldn't feel as good as at 80 as you did at 20. And if you think that's laughable, then you don't know what I know, and you need to definitely come because I'm gonna teach you how to do that and this program. So Christine is a client who has worked with me, and she can give you the insider's view of what that's like, what benefits she's gotten from it, and help you understand a little bit more about the nuts and boats at a granular level that are involved with the philosophy that I share and why it gets results when other things don't. I know you might be feeling a little demoralized because if you're like most women at midlife, you've been going down the Dr. Google route and trying to figure it out by yourself, which I don't doubt that you could given enough time and energy to try to figure it out, but it might take you the 30 years that I've spent as a board certified OB GYN, completing my fellowship in anti-aging, metabolic and functional medicine, treating thousands of patients to have the knowledge and expertise.

Speaker 2 (03:32):

So, hit the easy button button and listen to the episode and you'll find out how you can get on the fast train to where you wanna go with your health and your life. Please help and help me welcome Christine to the show. So how are you doing?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:48):

I am feeling so much better. My mood is stabilized. I am like, I am not girl. All the time. I am. I have enough energy that I'm actually starting to, I'm working out now in the mornings when I get up, I'm sleeping better at night. It is, yeah, it is <laugh> like it's, it's like I'm getting to a whole new me and I love it. It's a great journey and I cannot thank you enough, honestly.

Speaker 2 (04:14):

Oh, my pleasure.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (04:16):

It's great.

Speaker 2 (04:16):

What kinds of problems were you dealing with that made you seek out help outside of mainstream medicine? What kind of health problems?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (04:25):

I was experiencing a lot of feeling very tired, feeling beyond tired, lethargic, low energy, not feeling like myself, feeling very angry and on edge all the time. My hair was thinning. I was putting on weight, excessive body hair, facial hair, and feeling very frustrated, quite honestly, through mainstream medicine. I went to a, I had listened to one of your podcasts and I thought I had all this great information, and I went to my gynecologist who came recommended that dealt with women in menopause, was her specialty. And I shared all of this information with her, and she sat there and looked at me and she said, well, you're in your fifties and you have a 6-year-old child. You're you, it's not, you're depressed. You need an antidepressant, and I could, I can run your hormones and I can tell you you're low on estrogen and that doesn't mean anything. You need an antidepressant. And I walked out of there, literally sat in my car and cried, and I listened to another one of your podcasts and had this wonderful opportunity to begin working with you. And everything literally started changing my life around for me working with you.

Speaker 2 (05:35):

Awesome. Oh, thank you. So what have been the most surprising things that you've learned? I'm sorry that you dealt with that at your doctors. Unfortunately, your experience of basically what I call gaslighting is not uncommon, and some women listening probably have experienced that. What has been the most eyeopening to you in the things that you've learned since you've been working in the program?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (06:01):

I think so much everything, honestly, that I have been learning and continue to learn from you. It is, you are this fellowship trained gynecologist who has this wealth of medical knowledge behind you, and you also embrace different medicines from around the world and those philosophies, and you bring them all together and you put the science behind them for what used to be for areas that used to be considered, oh, this is different. Or it's not real because it's, it hasn't been vetted by us medical standards and we can't con you confirm it. And now so much of that we're seeing is being confirmed of, of different types of medicines and, and different approaches that have been for so long. And being able to combine those and really looking at your whole self, not just a piece of you. And you look at the whole woman and every aspect from the medical to the mental to the spiritual, and how do we bring that together and use that to be able to build what it is that women need, quite frankly. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> all women. It's not something that should be overlooked. And I think many times it has been overlooked in modern medicine, especially when it comes to women. The focus that you have brought to it and the work that you do and that you bring the science behind it, I think just brings, brings it to a new level for many people.

Speaker 2 (07:25):

Yeah. Thank you. And I remember meeting you the first time and you've come a long way. And can you share about what's changed for you?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (07:34):

Oh my gosh, everything. I am hitting 55 this summer, and I have a 6-year-old by choice. He was a little medical miracle, and I had always been in really good shape and in really active. And after his birth, like I just started noticing like my energy levels going down. My weight was heavier after birth than be when I was pregnant with my son. And just noticing going, wow, what's going on with me? And like, okay, it's menopause and how do I do and what do I do with this? And just feeling myself, just continuing to go down, becoming more lethargic, becoming more on edge with everything. And after having had the opportunity to work with you and learning from you and following, I have energy again. I'm to the point now where I'm up in the mornings and I'm working out and I'm giving myself that time and that space to be able to not feel guilty about carving out time and making myself a priority, which I think a lot of us forget or feel guilty about if we try to make ourselves a priority because we have to be mom.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (08:36):

We have to be the best at our, our work, and we have to be there for everyone else. And if we take time for ourselves, we feel guilty about it, or that's too selfish. And having learned that, no, it's not selfish, it's a necessity. We have to take care of ourselves and grant ourselves that time. And, and that has truly brought such incredible balance back. My, my children have commented <laugh> about and my 6-year-old mommy, like, I love that you're playing with me more. And, and we're doing more things outside. My daughter's like, yeah, you're not so angry all the time. And she's a teenager, so that says something. Yeah, just saying that says a lot for a 14-year-old to say, wow. And that has just been a huge gift. And even my husband has been very, again, you're back to a more pleasant person than I've seen in a really long time. And we now have time to go out and to do things and to have time together, which is huge. We have not had that in a really long time.

Speaker 2 (09:34):

Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. It's lovely to hear you talk about that because one of the biggest areas that suffers for us when our health suffers is our relationships. And I think that as women, we can really almost be in denial about that truth because people, to be honest, they don't wanna be honest with us and they don't wanna hurt our feelings and say, you know what? You're not showing up as the woman I married or <laugh>. I'm a teenage girl and I don't even wanna be my around my own mom. Right? So they don't say anything and we think that nobody really notices, but I promise you, isn't it like the elephant in the room and then when you get better, everyone says, oh my gosh, you're you're doing so much better. I love this. And so I like that you highlighted that because I think that, I don't know, it was true for me. And it sounds like it was for you too, that I was in total denial about how I wasn't showing up in my relationships. Like I really would have liked to, and nobody, people were too polite in my life to call me out on it. I wasn't showing up as the best doctor that I could have been when I, my health was tank. I wasn't showing up as the best anything. Don't you think that's true?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (10:46):

A hundred percent agreed. And, and what's really bad is my husband did call me out on it a few times and I lashed out at him. I'm like, what are you talking about? Just, I have all this work and the long hours at work and I, we have two children and we're doing all these things and I had every excuse under the sun as to why it wasn't me per se, because I couldn't, or I wasn't willing at that point to really just stop and take a breath and say, Hey, what's going on with you? Because that meant that if I had to deal with me and take time for myself, then I, in my mind at that point, then I couldn't be there and do what I needed to do for everyone else. And that was being selfish until I met you. <Laugh>. <laugh>

Speaker 2 (11:28):

Changed.

Speaker 2 (11:29):

Yeah. And you mentioned earlier about taking time for yourself. So doing this type of work, it is a time commitment. It's a financial commitment. And I find that's a, a lot of, there are a few reasons why women don't do this, because clearly we're not getting the answers we need at our mainstream doctor's offices. I don't think anyone would argue about that. But then the next is, oh, it's gonna gonna take too much time. Oh, it's gonna take too much money. And then there's the, I don't trust myself to do it. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So those are kind of the things that keep women stuck. And I made a pact with the universe when I discovered this. I said, I'm gonna use it on myself and then if it works, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life helping other women with this information. And it's not just menopause. 2 million of us go into menopause each year. In the United States alone, there are 50 million of us in menopause, but it's the perimenopause, it's the PCOS, it's all the hormone things. We've had women in our programs in their twenties. So what really tipped your hand that you said, this is the thing for me to get where I wanna be. I'm willing to invest the time, willing to invest the money, and I trust myself and I deserve it. What made you make all those decisions?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (12:45):

Honestly, when I left the gynecologist's office and I saw it in my car and I felt so deflated because I had listened to a series of your podcasts and I went in armed with all this information, I went, this is it. I've got it. And this is this gynecologist who she specializes with women in menopause or perimenopause. I'm like, yes, this is awesome. And being told I was depressing, made an antidepressant, and here's a script <laugh>, I was like, thank you. No, thank you. I said, something has to change because this is not me. I don't want to live like this any longer and I have to figure some things out. Having the support of my husband was huge and tremendous. It was, yeah, you, you need to, he was a hundred percent, yes, you need to figure it out and do what you need to do.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (13:32):

And in terms of investing in myself, I didn't at first see it as investing in myself. I saw it a need to fix myself, for myself to be there for others. And that's where I was when I started with you, Dr. Karen. And you know, in terms of the investment and the money, when you look at the numbers and you crunch it and you crunch the numbers, what you are investing in yourself over the course of a year is less than what we do so much with so many other things going out for dinner. And I'm not saying we shouldn't do those things. We absolutely should. But when you look at what we spend on going out for dinner, going to get a massage, going to the gym, whatever other things we do, when we, you break that cost down, it is a minimal investment.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (14:18):

And honestly, for what you, what the services that you offer for being able to make it affordable, if you break it out over what it costs over the cost of a year, mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And then with the gains and learning about that, it's, you are worth the investment in yourself. You are worth that time and the balance and being able to find and, and discover, it's not even about rediscovering yourself. It's about discovering who you are at this point in time and where you want to go with yourself and that work, the work that you do and that you, the journey you help so many women on is you honestly taking four or five different disciplines and bringing them into one, if not more than, and you're giving all of this to us to be able to do. And when you break that down over the cost of a year or cost of a lifetime, it's that <laugh>, the financial piece is not, it is not this astronomical amount that is out of reach for women. It really isn't.

Speaker 2 (15:23):

Yeah. And I'm so excited. So you talk about, to take you where you wanna go, so what do you envision for your future? You've got the 6-year-old, the 14-year-old. What do you envision?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (15:36):

Honestly, I am, that is where I'm working through right now. Right? I had a whole vision for myself back in my forties. I made a deal with myself that I was gonna go back and, and work on my doctorate. And I was like, oh, I'm never getting pregnant. It's not help happening. Working with modern medicine. I was like, it's just not happening. So I went back and I was like, okay. I got accepted into a doctoral program and then I found out I was pregnant and I was like, oh, did it all, did both. And started a new job. And in the process of that and said, okay, my goal was I was going to retire at 56 and be able just to enjoy. And now I have a 6-year-old and a 14-year-old. So it's a little different. So for me right now, it's really figuring out I want to do next how I want to evolve everything I've done and worked for and, and what is that next piece?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (16:22):

Not sure yet. And I'm exploring a lot of different avenues and just doing a lot of learning in some different ways and areas to see what it is that I want to continue to do because I'm not ready anymore. Two years ago or a year ago, I was like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna do this? I just wanna be able to retire and just sleep in the mornings and not do anything. And now I have this energy and I'm going, yes. Like what was I thinking? <Laugh>, what is the next step? What do I want to do? And how do I do that? And that's really what I'm focusing on right now.

Speaker 2 (16:55):

Yeah. And I love to hear you say this because I remember where you were and if I had said that to you a while ago, you would've just probably gotten very upset. What do you mean <laugh>? <Laugh>, when our health suffers, the, the, the biggest question, and the Bri biggest problem we have is like, how can I fix myself? How can I survive this? We're not, we let go of our dreams. And I know there's somebody listening right now who's identifying nodding her head saying, oh yeah, I remember I used to have dreams, but I don't even have them anymore. Because today my dream is like, how am I gonna make it through the day without two double espressos and then sleep the whole night? And how am I gonna keep my marriage alive when I don't ever wanna have sex? And how am I going to, you fill in the blank. And I love that the questions have changed for you and they've become expansive instead of contracting, they're expansive. Like, oh, and you have, now I see this and here the energy and vitality to basically do whatever you want, which is awesome.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (18:01):

Thank you for that. And it's honestly, I would not be here right now if it weren't for you. Oh,

Speaker 2 (18:06):

That is so sweet.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (18:08):

It's the truth. It's the truth. There are so many in all fields that don't truly hear what is being said, let alone listen, but truly hear and have the know and the level of expertise that you do in so many different areas. And the fact that you're also willing to continue on a growth journey professionally, that you're, that you continue to learn and you want to grow. That is incredible. And not many people, quite frankly, in the medical field at this point in their careers, are willing to do that. And that is a huge testament to you.

Speaker 2 (18:47):

Oh, thank you. Yeah. That I do have this lifelong learner in me that's always evolving. And I started my woman shaman training. I'd love to tell you about that. I'm wondering what you would share with a woman who's listening who maybe she's thought about working with me. Believe it or not, there are women, they see me and they hear and they're like, oh my gosh, I need what you have. But there are all these buts that get in the way. Yeah. One woman is coming to my mind who I've actually known personally for, gosh, probably 10 years. And she struggled with her weight and her energy and her health and all these things. And it's like she comes around and she's like, okay, I can't take it anymore. This is the last straw of my health. I'm gonna do the thing. And then she always, her butt gets so big, she doesn't do anything.

Speaker 2 (19:35):

And I'm not talking about her BUT, but her butt, her excuses. And I think the last time I talked with her, she now has fatty liver and pre-diabetes and all kinds of things. And so my job is to help people to reverse these things. And I know what path she's headed down because there is this point of no return. You get down with chronic disease where once you start having anatomic problems, then it becomes very hard to reverse. So anyway, all that to say, what do you say to that woman whose health is really not serving her in being able to live as who she authentically is in this life and express herself? Who's toying with, oh, I know Dr. Kirin can help me, but <laugh> dealing with her buts. And what would you say to her?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (20:24):

I would say there are always a million reasons why not to do something. And you only need the one reason, and that is yourself. And to give yourself the space and grace to take that risk. Because it is very scary to embark on a journey that can change you and help transform you and to help you become the person you want to be. And it's very easy to stay in a path or on a path that is very comfortable because you know where that's headed and you don't wanna head there, but you think that this is it. And I would just say to take that risk on yourself and and to take that chance and just to engage once with you and not look at a whole program or what the work is that I have to do or should do, just walk in and work with you and then go from there for the next part piece and one step at a time and not look at the overwhelming, this is where I wanna be and how am I gonna do that? That's so much work and it's so difficult. And it all these reasons and all those buts, why not? The one reason why is for you yourself

Speaker 2 (21:30):

Because you deserve it. We all do. Really, as you're talking, I'm thinking it's like if you go into first grade and you start obsessing about, oh my gosh, I've gotta make it through eighth grade, then, then I've gotta go through nine through 12 in high school and then I gotta go to college. And you just go, forget it. It's too long. It's too hard. I can't do, right. It's, we wouldn't do that. So you just look at the next step. And we've got the Hormone bliss challenge launching I think this week. And that gives people a real taste of seven days of working with me live one-on-one to see what it's like, and mostly have the ahas that a lot of people don't get. Because I think that, and I'm just wondering for you, is this true A lot of women, although you get that your mainstream HMO $30 copay doctor isn't giving you the whole truth and they're just giving you pill for every ill or a surgery for every symptom.

Speaker 2 (22:21):

Okay, we get it. We're not served there. But then there's so much online and social media, blogs, podcasts, and we're inundated with information. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. And if you're struggling, if you're a woman at midlife, you're probably struggling with some aspect of your health. It's just a fact. You're consuming all this information so you think you know the answers, but you don't even realize what you dunno. And so I'm just wondering, 'cause it sounds like it's, you were listening to podcasts and doing all these things that what we're really, you might have already answered this, it sounds like that the ahas were that you need to do all the things. You can't just do one thing. But I don't wanna put words in your mouth. What were the real ahas once you got down to the granular level, nitty gritty, okay, these are the steps you need to take. What were the ahas for you? What was most surprising? I

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (23:14):

Think the aha. There were so many along the there are, and I can't say there were, there are so many along this journey for me, the first, excuse me, the first aha was, again, as I said before, it is you have these expertises in so many different, and I'm saying four or five, and I know it's way more than that. And I'm, I apologize for underestimating that when you are out there and you are listening to different podcasts and you are researching and you are trying to bring all these pieces together, it was from the first podcast <inaudible>. I literally, I had stumbled upon it. It wasn't something I was actively looking for. I was like, oh, let me just give this a try and hearing your story. And I'm sitting there going, yes, that's me. Yes, that's me. And I'm literally checking off almost every single box that you were talking about, and you were so open and honest about your experiences and your journeys.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (24:09):

That immediately caught me. And I was like, okay, here is a doctor who is willing to put herself out there. Let me see what is the next piece. And then listening to the next part of your podcast and, and you talk about everything. And I'm going, okay, we've heard so many and we've learned, and I grew up with parents who immigrated to this country. So different alternative medicines were this thing for us growing up. And it was like, oh, there were those freaky kids. You know, using these herbal type things, what's up with you? You know, so you hide all those things and you kind of push them to the side. And here you are talking about all these different approaches in, in different combinations. And that was like, that was my first aha. Like, oh my goodness, I can unpack some of this.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (24:54):

And here is someone who is an expert in all these different areas. And then it just continued to grow from there. You treat the whole woman. It is not, piece of it is the whole woman. And again, and with our medicine that is such a compartmentalized, we have specialists, everything or people who generalize, but no one who's an expert in. So all the different parts, to be able to look at us as a whole woman and knowing how everything is connected. And again, for me that aha, oh yeah, remember this. And wow, here is someone who can only is not only speaking to that, but is teaching me and helping me understand how all these different parts are connected and how that will help me become the person I want to evolve into in a healthy manner without taking shortcuts, without looking for a fast fix, without, why isn't this working? And being able to do it in a positive manner that will help me continue to build and grow a healthy version of myself that I want to become

Speaker 2 (26:03):

So beautifully said. I guess I was blessed to be in a female body. So I have walked the walk of all of my clients. 'cause I've been in this body for many years, and then really blessed to have had the health challenges that I've had because they've exemplified that midlife metabolic mayhem that I help women with. So I uniquely, I'm intimate with the pain of it and also the pathway out because as a board certified ob, GYN, it wasn't, those tools weren't that, wasn't it? <Laugh>. And so I have sought out tools for to heal myself and then use them with other women and they actually do work. You just gotta pick 'em up and use them. Right? <laugh>, yes, <laugh>. Absolutely. Right. Well, thank you so much Christine, for sharing your experience. It's so great to connect with you. It's been wonderful working with you and with our health. There's always more to unfold and improve. It's a never ending journey. And I look forward to the future improvements you're gonna make, grateful for the ones you've already made and what you're gonna do, how you're gonna spend that extra energy and vitality and joy that you're creating. Thank

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (27:17):

You so much, Dr. Kieran. I truly, I cannot thank you enough. You have not only transformed my life, but you have saved my life in so many different ways and given me a life that I want to have. Thank you. Thank you. Oh,

Speaker 2 (27:34):

So grateful to have been a part of your life and your journey. Christine. Thank you. You're

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (27:38):

Stuck with me. I'm not going anywhere. <Laugh>

Speaker 2 (27:40):

<Laugh>. I know. I feel the same way. So thank you so much. Thanks for doing this. I so much appreciate it and I'll talk to you soon.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (27:50):

All right. My pleasure. Okay, have a great night. Thanks,

Speaker 2 (27:52):

You too. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me and Christine today and for listening to her experience, and hopefully you've gotten insight into what's possible for your health and your life going forward when you decide to say yes to yourself. We'll have the link in the show notes to the Hormone List Challenge if you would like to join us starting May 23rd to find out how we can help you transform your health and your life to where you want it to be, how you can get out of midlife metabolic mayhem caused by hormonal poverty and into hormonal prosperity. Look forward to seeing you live in the challenge starting on Thursday, if that can serve you well. And until next week, we'll be back with another episode. Peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

Speaker 3 (28:42):

Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

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Lori’s Journey Out Of Hormonal Poverty: From Metabolic Mayhem Hopelessness To Success At Midlife

🌟 Lori's Leap from Hormonal Poverty to Prosperity 🌟

Welcome to the latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, where we illuminate the path from struggle to vitality for women at midlife and beyond. Today, we bring you the truly inspirational story of Lori, a midlife warrior who turned her years of metabolic mayhem and hormonal havoc into a narrative of hope, health, and hormone harmony.

The Struggle Is Real

Lori’s saga began like that of many women stepping into midlife. Struggling with symptoms of Midlife Metabolic Mayhem, her days were colored with exhaustion, imbalance, and a silent cry for relief. Despite Lori’s dogged determination to find a solution—traversing through the maze of advice, medications, and regimens—the elusive answer to her woes seemed just out of reach.

The Turning of the Tide

The game-changer for Lori was her serendipitous encounter with the Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge. Like many, she approached it with a mix of skepticism and desperation. Yet, what unfolded over the course of the challenge was nothing short of miraculous.

Bloom into Balance

Not only did Lori achieve that long-sought hormonal equilibrium, but her entire well-being blossomed. Energy returned, clarity replaced confusion, and a renewed zest for life emerged. It’s not just a story of hormonal balance; it’s about rediscovering the fullness of life at midlife.

Key Takeaways and Inspirational Nuggets

• Persistence Pays Off: Lori’s testament to never giving up, even when the night seems darkest, speaks volumes. Your answer might just be around the corner.
• The Power of Personalized Solutions: Lori’s experience underscores the value of tailored approaches in navigating midlife transitions.
• Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge: This beacon of hope stands as a testament to the power of targeted, supportive strategies in reclaiming one’s health.

An Invitation to Share and Support

Inspired by Lori’s story? You’re not alone. We invite you to share your stories, struggles, and successes. Because when one woman blooms, she lights a path for all. Whether you’re deep in the throes of your own hormonal poverty or have found your version of prosperity, your story holds power.

Embark on Your Journey

Midlife mayhem doesn’t define you. If Lori’s story has ignited a spark within you, perhaps it’s time to explore what the Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge can do for you.

Remember, it’s not just about surviving; it’s about thriving. And you don’t have to do it alone. Visit us for more information on how you can start your personalized path towards hormone prosperity.

Thank you for tuning in to The Hormone Prescription Podcast. Until next time, may you find your balance, your bliss, and your unique prescription to hormone prosperity.

To connect, learn, or find support, reach out. Your story is just beginning.

 

Dr. Kyrin (00:00):

Lori says about the hormone bliss challenge. I'm just so thankful it has changed my life. Stay tuned to hear a little bit about her story and her journey with the Hormone Bliss Challenge, which is coming up starting May 23rd.

Dr. Kyrin (00:15):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us, keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself again. As an O-B-G-Y-N, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Dr. Kyrin (01:09):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today as we talk with one of my clients, Lori, who is a woman at Midlife who was really struggling with her health. Maybe you can relate those 60 plus symptoms of midlife metabolic mayhem. She had been just so many different providers. I tried so many different programs and treatments and therapies. She says shares in the episode about the symptoms that were just accumulating, kind of like ants and really had gotten to a very hopeless and helpless place trying to search for answers online 'cause her doctors weren't helping her and trying these different. So-Called one-Shot Wonders She'll Share. You'll get to hear all the details of her journey and how she finally found success when she joined our Hormone Bliss challenge, which is launching again on May 23rd.

Dr. Kyrin (02:06):

I only do it live a couple times a year, so you're definitely gonna wanna join us if Lori's experience speaks to you. If you're a woman at midlife who really feels lost and hopeless to correct your weight, your energy <laugh>, your sex drive, your hair loss, your male pattern, hair growth, right, getting a mustache, your memory problems, your concentration problems, your mood problems, irritability, depression, anxiety, the list of symptoms that women start experiencing, usually by the time they hit 40, definitely by the time they hit 50, and sometimes even in their thirties and twenties, is long. The symptoms of midlife, metabolic mayhem is what I call it. And it's not just about your sex hormones. You might be surprised to learn that it's about so much more and we touch on more about what it's about in this episode. So I hope you'll enjoy listening to Lori's story because this could be your story going from feeling lost and confused and hopeless to being successful and hopeful and knowing that you too have received all the tools that you need to get out of midlife metabolic mayhem and to experience the vitality and joy that you deserve.

Dr. Kyrin (03:28):

So without further ado, let's welcome Lori to the show. And Lori, start by telling us a little bit about what you were struggling with that brought you to the challenge.

Lori (03:41):

I have always, it feels like always had symptoms from fatigue. I didn't have the weight gain until recently, late fifties before I started the weight gain. But I've had the insomnia at times. I've had the fatigue during the day. Lots of times I would drive an hour and I'd have to pull over and take a nap, just fatigue. But thinking a lot of times that it was being a mom working full time, just being busy all the time. And then you get to the stage where, okay, now I'm retired, now my kids are gone and I'm still having those symptoms. And then you blame it on allergies. But I had some issues that I had to go to my gynecologist and have checkups every sometimes six months. And I love her. She's fantastic. But she even admits I don't know anything about hormones. And I knew that was part of the key.

Lori (04:45):

I thought it was the whole key because it seems like friends of mine who have, once you have one symptom, like you don't just have one, you have them all <laugh>. And so all of my, the ones that have migraines, we also have this and we also have that and like, what is it? And so I had tried many things. I've researched many things, avid reader, always trying new things. But I think until I participated in the hormone challenge and you explained the why behind a lot of things, I thought I knew the why, but really digging in and getting the why and you have such a fabulous way of not overwhelming and making it so technical that that we don't understand and it just goes over our head. You give analogies and make it in a way that even I can understand that has no science background.

Lori (05:40):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And those things have been sticking with me. And I think the other big part was I am more of a type A just do it, cross it off your list, done that and understanding all of the energetics about it, the why, the connecting, the how does our experiences in life, either our stress, our past stress, our current stress, how we handle things that how of, how all of that affects our health as well. And of course there's a connection. You always hear stress causes, but those were things for people that are older. And then now you're older <laugh> and you're like, okay, this is gonna be me, this is me. And the symptoms just keep, seem to keep adding. And I so appreciate understanding that why and working with it. And I think one of the biggest things too is you can change.

Lori (06:41):

I think a lot of it felt like, well that stress that's external, there's nothing I can do about it, but I can. And you've given me so many ways to change and deal with it and to feel empowered that I can, it's not about taking a pill. It is about lifestyle changes and how impactful those are, as well as maybe supplements and hormones and things that will help along the way. But deep breathing, some of the evening relaxation audios, those have helped so much. And I've, I'm still a list person and I'm probably always gonna be a list person, but I don't let the list drive me like it used to. I used to almost be in a panic until I could start working on my to-do list. And I'm really trying to enjoy life more and I know that it's helping my health as well. So I am. That's awesome. I am so thankful that I started this journey with you and I'm trying to, I think I had done a summit years ago with you, and so I just really connected with you and your way of teaching and sharing and empowering. And so I've always followed you and all of a sudden one day I saw the Hormone Bliss Challenge and I said, I have got to do that. So I'm just so thankful that I have, it's changed my life.

Dr. Kyrin (08:12):

Yeah. I'm so thankful that you have two because I think a lot of women you mentioned earlier, it's not just one symptom, it's many. And I always say they're like ants. If you see one an at a picnic, there's never just one <laugh>. There's a hundred. And it's like those symptoms, 60 plus symptoms of midlife metabolic mayhem, like I call it that women over 40, sometimes even younger, can start experiencing. And I find I come across so many women who I really appreciate you coming on the podcast to talk about this because so many women are online looking for answers and there's so much that they don't understand that they don't even know. They don't know. And then it makes hard for people to recognize a solution that works when it drops right in front of them and they're likely to poo poo it. Because fortunately, or unfortunately, well I'll say unfortunately, doctors, OBGYNs, internist, family practice docs, brilliant, dedicated, caring, loving people, however they're put through training that into corporate medicine that basically takes them through training on a pill for every ill a surgery for every symptom.

Dr. Kyrin (09:28):

And it's not really about healing the cause of these problems. That's what most of us are getting at our doctor's offices, including me when I went through my forties. And that means there are a lot of people online teaching about women's hormones. Unfortunately, a lot of these people actually don't have the depth and breadth of experience to give a comprehensive solution. So there are a lot of people who say, oh, essential oils, that's the solution for your midlife hormone problems. There are a lot of people who say, oh, you just need this one supplement and this is gonna fix it for you. Oh, you just need to follow this one diet. And are those tools useful? Yes. However, I think that when women don't know even what they don't know and they don't know what they're looking for and they see someone says, I have the answer, they oftentimes fall in the trap that a lot of us fall into is trying that solution and then it, it doesn't work.

Dr. Kyrin (10:29):

And they conclude there is no answer. Right. And that's why I've done the summits that I've done and I think the last one we did, we had a hundred experts on the Stop the Menopause Men Summit, most of whom are board certified medical doctors or other credentialed healthcare practitioners who have the comprehensive information and solution. And that's really what I offer. I've been accused of, Karen, you, you tell people they have to do all the things. And I say, yes, if you wanna feel great in your fifties, sixties, eighties and be as healthy as you can, increase your vitality span, your longevity, your libido, your weight, all those things you really do need to do all the things. If you leave any one thing out, you're never gonna achieve what's possible for you. And I know this is a long commentary on what you said, but you really inspired me. So I'm so grateful to you to come and talk about your experience because I think that women can, sometimes they're inundated with information in their social media and email about balance your hormones this way. And they don't recognize an authentic solution that works when it comes across their path. And so I appreciate you coming and sharing your experience. 'cause You had tried a lot of different things, hadn't you? Over many years. Yes,

Lori (11:48):

A lot. And I think that was specifically one thing I remember you saying is that it rarely is this comprehensive. I still get probably five emails a day on this solution, that solution, and they sound good. And you try and then like you said, it doesn't work or maybe it doesn't work right away. And so then I stop because I don't have that follow through with somebody that can help me say, Nope, you just need a little more time. Or this is another thing, this is another piece to the puzzle. I think I thought too that it was a couple of puzzle pieces and really it's a multitude of puzzle pieces and that's the good thing. And the bad thing, <laugh>, the bad thing is it can start to feel overwhelming sometimes, but that it is important. It isn't gonna be that one or two things that fixes you.

Lori (12:43):

Especially like you said, things that have built up for 30 years. Like it's not just gonna course correct immediately that it takes a while to turn the ship around. And I just so appreciate that expertise that you have in so many areas across the whole body, the whole mind, the whole spiritual aspect because it is all of that. And I have never found any wedding over the past 30, 40 years that can be that conduit together, that knows that can share all of it and guide me in all of the pieces instead of like this piecemeal stuff. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> that I've forever. So I'm just, yeah, I'm just so thankful.

Dr. Kyrin (13:24):

Yeah, we learned through our pain, right? And so it's my weight struggles, my health struggles, my spiritual struggles, all the things that I've had to learn in my path, most of which I learned was not in medical school or even in my residency. Sure, that was the nuts and bolts of it. But working with thousands of women over the past 30 years and my own health, I always say that people shouldn't listen to me because I'm a board certified MD or in fellowship trained in anti-aging, metabolic and functional medicine. But why you really shouldn't listen to me is because I've been where you have been. And I reversed all those problems and navigate, continue to navigate my health journey in positive ways. What are some of the most surprising things that you learned in the challenge that you just would've never not even known, that you didn't know or never guessed would be a part of reversing midlife, metabolic mayhem, preventing disease, increasing longevity? What are the surprising things?

Lori (14:24):

I think one of the biggest things, one I've already mentioned that it is way more than a few pieces. Like it's so complex, it's more complex than I ever imagined, and yet I knew it wasn't easy. So that's been a big piece. The other piece, I always knew eating was important. I thought I was a good eater. I don't snack, I don't eat like candy and a lot of junk food. But really the difference that being careful with foods particularly that cause inflammation. And I didn't understand the inflammation part and how that damages cells, which just sets off this chain reaction of pieces. And it was, even as I got into it was a little harder for me to accept, again, thinking that I ate pretty healthy. But that has really made such a huge difference in how I feel mental health as well as health.

Lori (15:24):

And that's probably one of the biggest pieces. And then I think just how I get in my own way of, even though I have wanted to be healthy for a very long time, like where have I put the roadblocks in? Where have I refused to make changes? And just having that support. It's great for somebody to tell you, oh, this is bad for you, don't eat this. But I think having that support along the way is what's really sort of proven to myself, how valuable that piece is. And we don't get that with mainstream medicine. You go to appointment and then like, do we need a follow up? And even if you have a follow up, they're not talking about these important pieces, it's just what's the next test? What's, how's the pill affecting you and how important those other pieces are. The pills aren't even going to work very well if you still, if it's just covering up the surface and you don't get covering up the symptom and not really getting down at the root cause of what is causing this. Yes.

Dr. Kyrin (16:25):

But something you said made me think this idea that there's one right diet for everyone, it just popped in my head. It's like saying that there's one right kind of music that we should all listen to. We should all listen to acid rock music. That's the right kind of, well, anyone would say that's insane. People have different preferences. Well, just like you emotionally and mentally have different preferences. Your body has different preferences and needs and so diet needs to be very customized. And I think that a lot of people are surprised to find out that it's not only about calories when it comes to diet. We talk about that in the challenge. There are other issues related to the foods you eat that most people are not aware of. And how was it doing the challenge with seven days on Zoom with other women, A lot of women are very hesitant to talk about their health in a public format like that.

Dr. Kyrin (17:20):

And it's funny, when I first started doing group programs in my office, gosh, over 10 years ago, what I realized is in doing this work, women need support, but not just support from me. They need support from each other. And so that's why I started doing groups in my office and then I said, well, I'm not gonna be able to reach all the women who need this help in my office. So I started offering online programs in groups and invariably women are very hesitant to do something online, to do something in a group. Now with the pandemic, I think that's changed. But how was that for you? Were you hesitant to do that? And what was your experience like?

Lori (17:54):

I'm pretty open and I'm pretty open about my symptoms and sharing with people. And because I, I'm amazed at how people can, I had that I feel that way or I tried this and I've always known how helpful that is to share your story with people because I learned so much. So I wasn't quite, I do a lot of work on Zoom for work too, so I wasn't initially worried about that. But then when you do start talking about some of these things, you're, hmm, I do. I really wanna share that to a group. But the group was, so everybody's going through the same thing and it was beautiful to hear some, someone would share something and I would be like, I didn't even know I had that symptom, or I had never thought of that being connected to all of this. Because that's another thing that I learned.

Lori (18:46):

It's like you can have the most remote little symptom and be like, yep, that is because da da da. And it's all connected in like those ants. It's not just a thousand ants around. They're all from the same colony and they all feed off of each other. So I learned so much from other people and you do get to the point where you're just like, if I wanna be better, I just need to be open and I need to be able to share. So when you think about all the programs that really help people, like whether it's Alcoholics Anonymous or whatever, you need that follow up. You need that support. You need to be with other people that are going through the same things. So I just found that I was able to make better connections because I was working with other people.

Dr. Kyrin (19:30):

Yeah, I find that the power of the group, and it's been documented in many white papers and studies over the past decade. I even had a gentleman on my podcast who really does a lot of work with this around the power of the group in increasing healthcare outcomes. And so a lot of programs are using group models now for improvement for diabetes outcomes and all kinds of chronic health problems. So it's not just with me, but I find a lot of people haven't been exposed to it yet. So it can seem a little daunting. And it's funny though, in the courses we've created over the past few years, we, I find that's one of people's favorite aspects of the program is the group. And people have literally found their BFF in my programs, which is really nice and special. So the challenge, I think it sounds like it was pretty eye-opening for you about a lot of things and then you chose to go on and start working with me in my other programs. What really tipped your mind and to making the decision to commit to yourself in that way?

Lori (20:38):

A couple of things. One was the challenge. After the seven days, I was like, oh my gosh, I can't do anything for seven days and make this huge commitment for seven days. And, and then what I did, I found that was the thing I was looking most forward to every day. And I learned so much in seven days that I was like, I can't stop for one thing. I, there's so much more I need to learn. It's that whole, are you consciously incompetent? And I really felt like I was at the point that I needed some guidance specific to me because where I live in rural Iowa, there, there aren't not people like you that I can like just go pick up with. There's just no support like that. And so I felt that, that I needed, that. I had just been recently diagnosed with testing positive for autoimmune disease.

Lori (21:32):

Didn't know what that really meant. Didn't really want to go to the medical field on that 'cause they'll just give you a pill. And I knew that wasn't the answer. I didn't realize it was all related to the hormones and the gut. And that was a surprise for me. And when I found that out, I was like, I have to do this. I am going down the fork in the road is to the left. That's not a good place and I need to go to the right and I don't have that kind of expertise here. And I knew you did. And so you've gotta go with the sure thing. I've spent 30 years trying this and trying that and going here and one thing here. And I just needed to do that. And another thing that you've shared is that we wanna just go to the doctor, get surgery, get a pill, go home.

Lori (22:19):

And I realized that I really had bought into that too. And that not only do I not have, even if it was true, I don't have that option around here, but we do deserve to be healthy. And I have a new grand baby, my first, and I wanna be healthy. I wanna get on the ground and play with her for years. I don't wanna be where I can't take care of her or play with her. And that really was the tipping point for me is I have done for a lot of people, done a lot of work over the years and now it's, I really need to take care of myself and so that I can be there for my family and not just even physically be there, but to be my full self there to be a happy self and not just a person that's in pain and suffering. Yeah. And that it is gonna take time. It is going to take time out of our day. It's gonna take some money, but why have those things if it's not in a healthy, happy way?

Dr. Kyrin (23:24):

Yes. And I'm just thinking as you're talking, remember you sharing and the program and the challenge, and I remember all the women's shares and we have the, the daily worksheets that people submit, which I love reading because I really get to see what people women are struggling with. And it breaks my heart because when I read it, it I see, I know how unnecessary the health suffering is and I know the severity of suffering that it causes. And then something that I ask women to reflect on is if your health challenges continue, all those little ants that are creeping up every day, where are you? What's your life gonna look like in another year, five years, 10 years? What dreams are you going to have to give up on? And so I'm just wondering, if you were still out there looking for answers and trying one-shot solutions that don't work, what would you be afraid are the dreams you would basically have to give up on?

Lori (24:23):

I think for me, I have a lot of like aches and pains, muscle. And so just being is sometimes difficult and painful and you just, all you can do is focus on the pain and I don't wanna be that way. A, you don't wanna be in pain and B, it just ruins everything. And so even, you know, the times I'm with my granddaughter and the times I'm with my family, that is everything to me is just like, it's never completely happy because you're just in all this pain. That was the biggest thing that I wanted to get past is I wanted to just really enjoy my retirement. I've worked hard to get here. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and I wanted it and not suffer through it.

Dr. Kyrin (25:06):

Right. And yeah, you have the grand baby and your husband. I, I, he is, I love working with women because you teach a woman about her health and then she teaches everyone she loves and that's in her circle. And everybody's health improves. Thank you so much, Laurie, for coming and just sharing your experience. I think it's really valuable for other women to hear women like you who have gone through this experience, sharing your experience so that they can judge, is this something that could help me? And they can see, wow, is she suffering, like I'm suffering? And what benefit has she gotten? And help them make a decision about if the hormone was challenge could be something that could be helpful for them. Any last words you'd like to share with any woman who's considering going to the challenge? Not quite sure, and that's on the fence. What would you tell her?

Lori (26:05):

Well, I think the main thing for me is I've spent a lot of time researching, a lot of time going to doctors, a lot of money on a variety of, whether it's supplements or appointments or tests, and then it always goes away. And you, I never really saw huge benefits and I already see huge benefits in this short amount of time and it will stay with me forever because you teach us how to take care of ourselves. It's not, it's something that I will take with me forever, even though I still have a lot to learn and I am just so thankful. And for someone who has tried and tried to find answers, this finally is an answer and I just can't thank you enough. And I would tell anyone, please do it. If you have any of these symptoms and you want to get better, it is the answer that I've been looking for. And also, I had a doctor appointment this morning and I've lost seven pounds, so, woo. Yes. And I only wanted to lose about 10 or 12, so I'm pretty close to being there, so I'm super excited about that too.

Dr. Kyrin (27:20):

That's amazing. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to work with you and I so appreciate you sharing your experience on the show. I know there are women out there you're helping right now who are feeling hopeless and lost and don't know where to turn, and they've made so many bad mistakes and wasted so much time and so much money that they're afraid of making another one. And they're just paralyzed with fear, honestly. And so I know you've helped some women today get unstuck and take action on their own behalf. Thank you so much, Lori.

Lori (27:56):

Thank you. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-Bye.

Dr. Kyrin (28:00):

And thanks for joining us for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Hopefully you've gotten some hope here today. Hopefully you've gotten some answers and your understanding that you really need to address all the things. And then I'm gonna teach you about all the things you need to do during the Hormone Blist challenge that starts live on May 23rd. Seven simple days where we go live on Zoom. You'll have one-on-one interaction with me and other women struggling with the same things. And you'll learn the exact steps that I took to get out of midlife metabolic mayhem and to stay out of it for over a decade now and the exact steps that I've taken thousands of other women through. So if that could be of service to you, please use the link in the show notes to find out more and to join us. I look forward to seeing you there. Until next week, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

Dr. Kyrin (28:56):

Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

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Michelle Saudan | Easing The Stored Trauma That's Hurting Your Health

In this enlightening and empowering episode, we're joined by the inspirational Michelle Saudan, a beacon of light in the world of healing arts and the founder of Amanzi Wellbeing. Michelle’s dedication to transforming lives through trauma-informed approaches, coupled with her mastery in sound healing, breathwork, movement, bodywork, and meditation, brings us a conversation that's both healing and revolutionary.

Episode Highlights:

• Michelle opens her heart about her personal and professional voyage into the realms of healing arts. With her story, she illuminates the path for those of us seeking a deeper understanding of our holistic health.
• The spotlight of our discussion shines brightly on the topic of stored trauma—how it's often the unseen force disrupting women's health, especially during the pivotal stage of midlife. From hormonal imbalances to a spectrum of other health concerns, Michelle sheds light on the shadows cast by unaddressed trauma.
• Have you heard of trauma-informed approaches but find yourself mystified by what they entail? Michelle demystifies this term, explaining how such strategies foster a safe environment for healing and liberation from the chains of past hurts.
• Seeking practical wisdom? This episode is laden with tangible tips and strategies. Discover how integrating sound healing, purposeful breathwork, mindful movement, and meditation into your daily life can act as pillars supporting your health and healing voyage.
• We wrap up our conversation with a surge of hope and a call to empowerment. Michelle reminds us that it's within our power to nurture our health, rewrite our stories, and step into a life marked by balance and vitality.

About Michelle Saudan:

Michelle Saudan embodies the essence of holistic healing. Through her groundbreaking work with Amanzi Wellbeing, she has dedicated over a decade to enriching the lives of individuals, especially women navigating the complexities of midlife. Her approach is one that intertwines the physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions, offering a roadmap to those eager to heal from trauma and lead a life filled with joy and well-being. Michelle's commitment goes beyond individual healing—she is passionate about fostering community healing, notably through her trauma-informed wellness retreats that spotlight Africa's unique wellness treasures.

In Conclusion:

Dive deep with us into this life-affirming episode as Michelle Saudan helps us uncover the profound impact of stored trauma on our health and guides us through the pathways of healing. Remember, the power to transform our health narratives is within our grasp, and with the right tools and wisdom, we can emerge stronger, healthier, and more vibrant.

Ready to start your healing journey? Join us on The Hormone Prescription Podcast and take the first step towards not just surviving, but thriving. Because your health isn't just about hormones—it's about heart, healing, and harnessing your power.

 

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

G Mate is quoted as saying trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you. Trauma affects all of us, and it affects our health. If it stays untended, we'll never achieve the brilliant health that's possible for us at midlife and beyond. Stay tuned as Michelle Sudan shares with you, how to use Compassionate Inquiry and other modalities to help ease the trauma that's hurting your health.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:27):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us, keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an OB GYN, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunton. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:20):

Hi everybody, and welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thanks so much for joining me today as we talk with Michelle Sudan, a beautiful woman I met in Dubai who's going to talk to us about healing the trauma that binds you, that's hurting your health. Whether you know it or not, the majority of us pro, probably pretty much all of us have little T traumas throughout our life. I know we've talked on the podcast and during the Stop the Menopause Madness summits some about this, but we haven't really tackled it in a big way. How do you start to address this in a tolerable way that's compassionate and really helps you to understand how these little overwhelming situations in your childhood and life have affected your health and are affecting your health to this day. So we're gonna talk with Michelle about that.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:18):

I met her when I was in Dubai. She's from Zimbabwe. She talks a little bit about her story, which is beautiful, as with many of the healers I met in Dubai. She has a multifaceted skill set and is just a gifted human being. And really I think it's her presence that's more healing than anything. You'll see what I mean when you hear her talk. I think she has a healing frequency that just heals people who are in conversation with her or listening to her. That's been my experience with her and I just had to have her on the show. I had some beautiful experiences with her when I was in Dubai. Looking forward to having more. I think you will love this conversation as we really talk about healing the trauma that's binding you that you might not even be aware of, maybe you are, and how to go about doing that. So I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. Michelle Sudan is the founder of AM Manzi Wellbeing and a practitioner of healing arts. She's deeply committed to the transformative powers of trauma-informed approaches, found healing, breath movement, body work, and meditation. She's devoted to supporting and holding space for the healing and wellbeing of our global community via trauma-informed wellness retreats with a focus on expanding awareness of Africa's unique wellness assets. Please help me welcome Michelle Sudan to the show.

Michelle Saudan (03:45):

Thank you, Karen. I'm so happy to be here. It's an honor. Love you energy, and just happy to share.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:52):

Mutual. I'm so glad that our past crossed when I was in Dubai and really your energy just spoke to me. You have such a calming presence. There's so much talk about trauma and trauma informed therapy. I think the world is really waking up to how we've collectively been traumatized and how it's affecting our health. I know that's been a part of my journey these past 10 years, and you just had a presence and a way of speaking about these issues that was extremely non-threatening and inclusive and compassionate. And I saw people opening up in response to what you shared in a way I hadn't seen before, and I very much appreciated that. I know I participated in inner child healing meditation that you offered at Eva experience in Dubai that was just beautiful and so many other interactions. I so enjoyed hearing you talk about your grandmother and how she would speak to you and speak to just the culture that you come from, the continent that you come from.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (05:15):

It's steeped in you <laugh> in such a beautiful way. And so I was very excited to share you with my community because I think here in the US we women have been traumatized in ways that we don't even realize. And that was a big thing that happened for me in my year and a half travel outside the US was just seeing that, okay, yes, people have trauma pretty much everywhere, but it's very different in the ways in which, and the support systems and cultural differences in other areas that allow people to have a resiliency that I don't necessarily see here in the us. I mean, first off, the fact that it's talked about openly and collectively and discussed is so foreign to my US experience, particularly in the medical field where this really hasn't so much made it into the mainstream. It is starting to show that people are kind of left with not identifying, oh, this is talking to me, not aware particularly as a woman at midlife struggling with hormonal and other health issues. Oh, this is a part of my hormonal healing. Oh, what tools could I use? So you're left with a lot of women googling on doctor go, trying to find answers, maybe finding some answers, but really not a holistic, nurturing, supportive collective approach. So I'm wondering if you can start by talking a little bit about what brought you to trauma work and trauma healing. Hmm.

Michelle Saudan (07:10):

It's a lovely question. Thank you. Well, Kirin, I started my career as a bodyworker 14, now 14 years ago. And it came up to a point where a lot of my repeat clients would book sessions just to talk. I remember the first client, like it was yesterday, who booked a 90 minutes deep tissue massage. And he sat down and I said, well, you know, it is not first time he knows the protocol, you know, put the bath lay down. But he just sat and he said, no, Michelle, from today onwards, we'll do 15 minutes massage. 75 minutes we are going to talk. It started, and I was so confused because at that time, you know, 22 years old, I, I didn't know that there were such modalities like coaching and counseling and therapy. It doesn't exist in my part of the world in Zimbabwe where I came from.

Michelle Saudan (08:09):

So I started researching and, you know, came upon all these beautiful modalities and discovered that this was something I could, you know, serve my clients with. And then, then it was the topics that they brought as well, you know, topics such as suicide or harmful habits or, you know, depression, anxiety, which I did not know of, but they just opened up. And so I took it as my responsibility and also curiosity to find out more about these deeply rooted concerns that they were speaking to, and so that I could meet them at least halfway. And then that's how it started and it's been a roll on effect. And I remember watching a documentary called The Wisdom of Trauma by who is now one of my teachers, Dr. Gbo Mate, and his approached Compassionate Inquiry. And when I watched that, I just resonated with his teachings and everything that he spoke to in the world of trauma. And I decided to dive deep into somatic somatic healing when it comes to trauma informed practices and just an overall overarching theme when it comes to looking at trauma. And that's, yeah, that, that's the way it's taken me today. The nutshell.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (09:31):

I love that because for so many reasons, the first, well one relates to this quote that you shared with me before we started recording, that I love by a h Almaas, only when compassion is present will people allow themselves to see the truth. I think that's something that I feel from you is from truth, but also peace, truth, inside peace. But the truth to me is peace. And that this man, bless him, <laugh>, he saw the truth of who you were and he didn't believe, oh, she's just a massage therapist. And he saw that truth in the compassion that you offered him, that came through your hands because you weren't counseling him. And he called that out in you. So he loved and respected himself enough to say, oh no, I see who this woman is. And he also saw what he needed. And then to basically stand for that truth, this is what I need.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (10:34):

And so it, it's so beautiful. I do believe that we each have a unique purpose on this planet and a reason for being here. And that part of our health problems are the fact that we haven't recognized or allowed ourselves to know that truth. And particularly in America, we've tried to decide with our minds, oh, what's a good career? How can I make a good living and, and have quote unquote security with a good pension plan and 401k and a home and a car, and all this with our minds. And we haven't listened to our souls to allow us to be called forth from us what our true purpose and calling is. And so I love that story because it says to me, you were attuned and you were listening to what is the universe telling me that I'm here for what I'm good at? And he called that out in you. I just think it's so beautiful. Does that make sense?

Michelle Saudan (11:40):

It does. It's, it's similar to, you know, when you, when you reflect on the quote, what's so beautiful about it, Karen, is that if, if I came to you and I was pouring my soul and bearing everything that I needed help with, I'm gonna seize to see everything and see things as they are and be willing to accept them and see the truth. And not just the story, but the underlying truth of what's really happening to me. For me, if there is judgment, if I'm being seen to be that which is not right in my life, if I'm being seen through a lens of compassion, then I'm gonna be willing to see all the parts of me, the good and the bad. You know, the comfortable and the uncomfortable. So that truth, seeing the truth of what really is present, seeing the truth of the pain that's underneath, you know, whatever addiction, you know, if there's, because underneath the anger that I hold within my body, within my soma, I'm gonna be willing to see it all and listen to it being mirrored back to me when there's compassion present and I'm willing and I'm ready to open that Pandora's box.

Michelle Saudan (12:53):

'Cause when we open that box of healing, so much comes out that sometimes even shocks us. But if there's a compassionate witness or there's that sense of compassion within, then I'm, I'm not gonna be afraid. I'm just gonna be willing to open up that box load, I know what's inside, but I'm gonna be okay with it. 'cause The person in front of me is just mirroring that it's okay. And I think that really embodies what that quote stands for. And thank you for, for reflecting it back. I think it's so important.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (13:27):

Yes. And something that has been really a part of my journey was initially I said, well, I want to work with women and help them with their health. So what's the biggest toolbox, most powerful toolbox I can get to access to help women? And so I said, oh, I'll get my medical doctorate. So I went to medical school and then I practiced that for many years. And then I saw that so many women, despite all the prescriptions I gave them and surgeries, I did hysterectomies, things like that, people were still suffering, particularly at midlife, including myself. And I said, well, we're missing something. Something's not right here. And then I discovered something called functional medicine. So that looked at the physiologic, biochemical causes of disease. So I studied that and that helped me transform my health and the women I was working with. But then after a while I started saying, wait a minute, yes, this works but not for everybody and why is that we're missing something.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (14:31):

And then kind of went on my own healing journey and realized that the things that you help people with is what I was missing. And now I've realized, well this affects all of us, but very much in the US we have this mindset of, if I'm able to have a family and work at my job and be a productive member of society, this doesn't apply to me. Like there's very much this culture of don't talk, don't trust, don't feel like feelings are the enemy <laugh>. And I find in working with women with their health, feelings are everything. And that's really what stops us from doing the things that could help us with our physical health is the feelings that we don't feel, the traumatic history that we don't acknowledge, that we don't talk about. But people spend so much time and energy not talking about it and pretending that everything's okay.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (15:39):

Put some lipstick on, do your hair, you know, what's that song? I got my hair done, dah, dah, everything's fine. Like that to me says American culture. And so a lot of what I spend time with women doing is trying to help them see that no, everything's not fine 'cause you got your hair done and your nails done. And that really avoids talking about the things that are underneath what's causing you to not follow the diet. You know, you should follow, you know, eating things that I say are not in your best interest. <Laugh> doing things that are not in your best interest and your energy provides kind of, I've seen people open up in a way that, well, and I, I must say that in the Middle East where I encountered you in general, people are more open to being aware of these things.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (16:36):

I'm talking about it. And I was amazed to arrive there and find this huge conversation going on in the kind of public that isn't going on in the US particularly. Also, I saw that in South Africa about apartheid and it's very public. And people say to you right away, oh yeah, we talk about this. We have to heal from this as a country. So can you talk a little bit about how people come to realize that this is them? And I'll say one more thing. I know I've said a lot at the retreat that you gave her a treat and you had kind of a conversation with everyone that to my mind was about codependency. But you never said that word <laugh>. And you had people open up in a way that was so beautiful having this conversation in such a gentle way that women were realizing, oh yeah, this is me, but you never came at it. We come from a, in the US from a very top down perspective, oh, this is what the issue is and you need to da, and then people shut down. And no, that's not me. I'm not codependent. Can you talk a little bit about that? That's

Michelle Saudan (17:46):

A great question. It's like when you talk to a child, we have to realize that when people go through trauma, you know, like we all have gone through our own stuff, is that it causes us to put walls up and to protect and defend. That's a normal primal state of being when we're, you know, subjected to external forces that are, are not right, that are not safe for our being. So that when people are trying to heal, the last thing you want to do is, like you said, come from the mind because that's not gonna help anyone. It's what got them there. That's not what's gonna take them out. We need to come from the bottom, you know, and but come right from the heart center, that's what's gonna take them out. So in order to work with, with the trauma or to work with any of these circumstances that got people into the limiting states that they're in, then we can't be pointing fingers, for lack of a better word, it's gotta be different.

Michelle Saudan (18:51):

So that defenses are lowered and then we can work, then we have an open field. We don't have, we are not dealing with an army. You know, we are dealing with a peacemaking operation here that's ready to, to make amends and to see how we can fix things. And with regard to people talking about things you had said, you know, in South Africa, you know, people speak South Africa a little bit differently. That, and I love the movement and the energy, you know, that's building up. I can't say the same thing for other parts of Africa. I'm from Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans and South Africans, even though we share the same border is very different. Zimbabweans are still very much, we are very held back. I think we are 10 steps behind, for so many reasons. There's that fear, you know, that we can't speak, you know, after having, without bringing politics into this conversation.

Michelle Saudan (19:51):

But, you know, that has largely played a role, you know, lack of freedom of speech. It was never, never present from the time we won independence. But the South Africans had amazing leadership. Look at Nelson Mandela. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, that, you know, for them to rely on. But for us, we can't say the same. So it's, we are still stuck in that time zone where people are not so open, at least not yet. And I hope to be one of the people with other sisters and brothers to change that narrative, not just for Zimbabwe, but for the continent as its own. 'cause It's time for us to heal, not just as a country, but just as a people regardless of where we come from. Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (20:36):

Yes. And so is your approach something that you came by more innately from your origins and your ancestors? Or is it something that you learned?

Michelle Saudan (20:49):

It is something I would say I learned largely because I grew up in a community where we did not speak and you just had to go and do your job. Just if you had a roof and you had something to eat, whether it was once a day, you, you, you were better off. You just go and you continue because things could be worse. That was the mantra in our homestead. So, but then something happened and I have to thank them. I, I got a youth exchange scholarship at 16 and I went for the first time to the USA and it was such a huge culture shock because we were taught to be quiet, respect the teachers <laugh>. And if we had an opinion, we kept it to ourselves. And when I went to a public school in Santa Barbara, it was very opposite.

Michelle Saudan (21:48):

Children spoke their minds. And so it, it really awoke something in me. I said, wow, you know, I mean, if we had a bit more respect, yes we can do it with some respect, but I loved how the children were just open, you know, they spoke the family. I stayed with them. The girls spoke about, you know, their emotions, how they were feeling openly with the parents. And that wasn't something I grew up with. So when I went back to Africa, it ignited something in me and I said, well, you know, I'd like that to be different, you know, 'cause it was nice, you know, we learned, we spoke our truth. Nothing was held and they were still together even though they spoke opinions. So it was a reflection. And then it was also something I learned because I traveled to so many countries in my time and then said, no, well, I've been extracted from what I've known for so long. I think this is where we are missing. We are missing something here as a people, as a culture. And this is hindering us in so many ways, economically, mentally, physically, socially, emotionally. And this is one of the major missing links, at least from the country I know of. I can't speak to others in the world, but from what I know from experience. So to a long-winded answer to your question, yes, it was learned.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (23:19):

And so what was the evolution? Because yes, there are, people do speak their minds and opinions in the US and there's this whole reservoir of pain that isn't discussed, the feelings underneath. I'm wondering, coming from what you described in your cultural background and then the kind of eye-opening experience in the US, what was the evolution that allowed you to really have this deep presence and ability to sit with people in their pain and feelings? How did that evolve and how did you learn that? Hmm.

Michelle Saudan (23:58):

Yeah. Sitting with the deep pain comes from having gone through a lot of deep pain and adversity yourself. So I've gone through my own deep adversities, not just as an individual, but with my family is a lot of pain we've gone through as a collective. And I think watching when that's being mirrored to you as a child growing up. And you can see maybe we were not able to speak about the emotions, but the physical presence of holding space for people was always there is always part of the culture. You sit, there's no words being said, but we sit with the person and we know what's going on, but we sit and we grieve, we hold that space. So seeing that, but also having felt my family hold me and very much the same way and do the same for them is something you could sit with anything.

Michelle Saudan (25:00):

You know, people came with so many things and my grandmother was a, a nurse by night, but she did traditional African healing in the community, you know, and people were always coming to the home with different things and just sitting, you know, we could, they could be laughing and talking, but you see there was some pain and there'd just be silence, you know, or the body posture, you know, with the rounded shoulders and the heads down and the hands together under the chin as though you really, you know, I I I hear you, I resonate with you. So seeing that it's just been able to, to help me as well, to be able to sit with other people. It's like, no pain is, it is too big for me to be with you. I might not have all the answers to, or, you know, support to help you unpack it, but sitting with you that I can do no matter what. It's,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (25:58):

That's so beautiful. Just being present with it. And, you know, my experience in the US is that we can't sit with, with uncomfortability. We gotta turn the TV on, eat that, you know, sweet compulsive avoidance of being present to discomfort, hence all the compulsive ways that we medicate our pain that then affect our health. You know, rates of diabetes, <laugh> and pre-diabetes are soaring in the US over consumption of sugar, but also caused by stress, which affects how we process sugar, right? It affects our cortisol stress hormone. And it's interesting to me, a big part of what I help women with is the menopause transition. And it's a huge problem in the US but in other cultures it's not as much. And it's partly because of our lifestyle and the things that we reach for and the stress levels that we have. But it's very hard to get people to see this because in a capitalist culture, people profit off of our poor health and our compulsions. And it's such a part of the culture that we're taught when we're literal, oh, you fell and skinned your knee, have a cookie that'll make you feel better. How would you help someone compassionately lean into looking at the ways that they compulsively avoid their pain and feeling their feelings? Hmm.

Michelle Saudan (27:31):

Yeah. The first one, and I always use this word, is first compassion for yourself where there's no judgment. 'cause What leads us into the, the habits is then now the, you know, finding ways to cope with how bad we feel about ourselves, right? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. So it's okay, you know. So first I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll share an acronym that I share with many of my clients and something I use myself. So it's raining. So r stands for just recognize, just recognize what's going on for you. Okay? There's anger within me, there's guilt, or there's shame, or there's deep sadness. So there's grief. Just recognize what's there. And then the next thing is a, is allow, can you allow it to be there? You know, can, can the sadness be there without you trying to change it or whatever it is. And then I am in choir, just get curious, okay, what's really happening for me?

Michelle Saudan (28:31):

You know? And this creates space, you know, it gives you really a lot of space between the stimulus and you know, your reaction or your response. So get curious, okay, well what's happening? You know, what's triggered that? What's brought this on? And then the last part is to nurture yourself. So by the time you get curious and you say, oh, okay, well it was something someone said, okay, that triggered this belief. You know, there's this, there's something, 'cause this is, this is a pattern. Now there's space. You're becoming more conscious. And as Carl Young says, it's, it's until we make the unconscious conscious, it'll drive our lives and we'll call it fate. So here you are being conscious now, you know, by just doing this, you know, recognizing can you allow it to be with no judgment? Can the grief be there without me saying, oh, enough now, or have grieved for too long, I've been too sad, I've been crying for too long, or I haven't cried enough.

Michelle Saudan (29:34):

You know, can there be no evaluation on, on, you know, what's present for us? And then we get curious. And then the last part is nurture. Okay, what do you really need besides the cookie, you know, or the ice cream tub, is it a hug? Do I need to talk to someone? What's underlying? Because if it's, if it's a habit that doesn't serve you, it's okay, but let's look at what it's giving you. So when we look at a cookie, what are we getting? You know, we get dopamine, right? We circuits are wiring and firing. So from that, eating that satisfaction from the sugar. So what is that equivalent to? It's equivalent to a hug, quality touch. Yeah. So can I try that instead? And then it doesn't hurt me internally. So that's how the framework I use, it seems like a long little, long checklist. But when it's more conscious, it's just the way of being as opposed to, to doing. I

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (30:32):

Love that. So rain, recognize our recognize a allow, I was

Michelle Saudan (30:39):

In choir, so this was curiosity. And then n was is nurture,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (30:46):

Right? And that quote from Carl Young, until we make the unconscious conscious, it will drive our lives and we will call it fate. And so many of the women I work with really have the mindset and attitude that my life is the way it is. I only have this health problem, this hormonal problem. Most of the women who come to me. And I just want you to tell me what supplements I need to take, diet to eat, exercise to do, to get rid of these symptoms. And not really seeing how unconscious patterns are playing a role in their health problems. And for so many of us, it is, I know for me, you know, unconscious patterns of this belief of I wouldn't be doing a good job as a doctor if I wasn't bleeding myself in my giving, right? I had to suffer in my giving.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (31:41):

And then that caused me to overwork and overdue, which then affected my wellbeing and health. But it was such a compulsive, unconscious belief. And now I've kind of transformed that. 'cause I recognized it and it wasn't serving me. So I guess I kind of did this <laugh> rain. I inquired this is serving me, oh, it's hurting me. And then I didn't, couldn't show up my best self and then started to nurture myself and say, no, I, you know, I can only really help other women to nurture themselves when I nurture myself. And so I stopped doing that. And I find that a lot of the women I work with have that similar belief. They give till it hurts. What thoughts would you share about that?

Michelle Saudan (32:32):

My grandmother always used to refer to this. I don't remember the passage, but it was from the Bible and it was about my cup runneth over. And she always used to say, you know, I'm, I'm a nurse, but at the end of the day, you know, my cup has to be four and the extra is what I give you children's, what I give my patients. And that was always something she spoke. And we didn't understand what it meant as an adult, I do now, but when we are giving so much and get into something where we spoke lightly saying compassion fatigue, you know, is giving so much that there is an underlying belief. And that's something that is very old. So it's something we have to look at, you know, within ourselves. It's like, okay, where, where is this coming from?

Michelle Saudan (33:27):

Because it's okay to give, you know, we're all in this line of service. But when it's, there's an, an agenda because it's a, it's attached to something that, that doesn't serve us where we de be depleting ourselves. So there's some work for us to do. 'cause It shouldn't be that way where when it's, when it comes out that way, there's, there's something where it started is so, so my question would be, where did you learn that you had to give so much of yourself that, or you depended or you placed your value on how much you know you gave. So something you learned. So it's, where did you learn that? And can we look at it from a nonjudgmental lens and see what's happening?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (34:15):

So yes, the compassionate inquiry, and I know that you work with Gabor mate and I wanna share a couple quotes that you also shared with me. One from Gabor, which is, trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you and the other from Tara Brock, whom I love the deepest transformations in our lives come down to something very simple. We learn to respond, not react to what is going on inside us. And very much what I hear you talking about is first becoming aware that something's happening. I think this used to be me and, and so many women I work with, we're not, we don't even, we're not, we don't even recognize these internal thought and feeling processes that are happening. And then we try to shut them down because we don't wanna go there. So we don't allow it. And then we're certainly not inquiring <laugh> because I just need to put my lipstick on and keep it moving. And then we don't really know how to nurture ourselves 'cause we're not in touch with what we're needing and what we're wanting. But this idea of slowing it all down and learning to respond and not knee-jerk reaction, how would you help a woman to start to slow down and to start to respond and not react and really turn towards herself in this way?

Michelle Saudan (35:47):

It's, I think cultivating or having a practice of your own, you know, a mindfulness practice. And what I mean by that, Karen is not, not everyone needs to light a candle and burn incense and have a meditation cushion. You know, it, it, it can sound like making your own pot shrimp soup on a Sunday. And, and that's your moment and taking all the time. If whatever takes you out from the busyness, you know, of your external and really brings you in, then find that and use it as an anchor. If you love trimming your roses, let that be that moment where you say, okay, I'm gonna try and be as present as I can consciously and use this moment to, to really, I'm trimming the roses, but there's also, it gives me space and time just to be with myself, to slow down, you know, walking your dog, brushing your dog or your horses, just whatever it is, just find something that really anchors you.

Michelle Saudan (36:51):

We all have it, but maybe we just haven't consciously realized that, hey, that is my thing, you know, but you just unconsciously drawn to it, but you just didn't know that that is your, you know, your, your silver, your golden key to presence. So finding any practices that really bring you into the present moment to really slow down and anchor you can really make a difference. Because it's in those spare moments where you actually think, you know, well no, that didn't go well. What, what's wrong? You start questioning and give you space to contemplate if you are also ready to go there. Sometimes we can have all the space, but if we are not ready to go there, then all we'll have is just space. But, you know, so I hope that that helps. But just finding one's own way of taking that moment. But like you said, self-awareness is just do I realize that something's wrong and or something needs to be changed? Not wrong, I'll, I'll take back that word, but just something that needs to be changed. And if you just have that realization that no, something needs to change, then you have presence, voila, the rest will unfold.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:10):

Yes, presence and awareness. And it leads me to a question that really has been reframed for me recently, and that is, what is self-love to you? How would you describe that to someone? Because we hear so much, oh, love yourself, love yourself. But really what does that mean on an everyday basis? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What, how do you do that?

Michelle Saudan (38:35):

Yeah. self-love. I, I think for me when I have a balance between authenticity and attachment, it means that I'm not stretching myself too thin to save the relationships around me. I'm not, I'm not putting myself on a spit as a sacrifice for the relationships I have. There is an element of me nourishing those relationships, but there's also a balance of me nourishing myself in equilibrium that for me, daily, because I'm in a relationship daily as all of us are, it's a very big thing because your relationships really test you. You know, <laugh> as my young aunt made a joke. She said, well, if you want to get to know your crazy, have relationships or go live on an island, <laugh>,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:30):

You <laugh>.

Michelle Saudan (39:32):

So it's so self-love is, in what ways are you choosing you even in the daily mundane things? I think it goes beyond, you know, spoiling yourself with a beautiful breakfast and a spa day or meditation treat at a center. But it's just how are you choosing you every day and how are you holding yourself accountable? 'cause It's also gotta be self-Love is also that element of allowing yourself to see your own growing edge, because then there's evolution, you know, that is also self-love. Not just in the ways we give space for, for ourselves, but it's also in recognizing, no, you know, this is where I contributed to this conflict or, you know, I, I wasn't my best here. You know, I could have done better, I could have responded better. That I feel, oh, I believe is also self-love because you are so self-aware and you are growing. So where are you catching yourself to be accountable and responsible for actions that may not have served or hurt somebody else's? Also, self-love, if it makes sense.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (40:44):

Yes. I love that. Balancing authenticity and attachment and how you are choosing you every day and holding and holding yourself accountable. So it's kind of like a responsibility to yourself and to others. And how do you hold both of these gently in both hands together? <Laugh>, that's kind of what I heard. You have a beautiful retreat coming up that I would really like to go to. So I'm gonna see if the universe would like me to go. So I'm setting that intention 'cause it would be my 60th birthday, and I've been wondering what do I want to do for my 60th birthday? And then I saw the retreat you have and I said, oh my gosh, what I love, love that. And I try to live my life by what would I love to have happen? Because in this life I only get one <laugh>. So I try to be guided by that. But do you wanna tell everybody about it in case they might be interested? We'll also have a link to your website that has the details, but tell everyone about it.

Michelle Saudan (41:50):

Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Thank you, Karen. Here, this retreat is called the Ancient Walks of Wisdom. And the intention was to, to really hone in on the holistic, forgotten languages of healing on the continent of Africa. But some of the oldest tribes such as the Himba and the Sam, who we know as the, you know, being the guardians of nature, they only take what they need. You know, they move from different ends of their lands with only what they can carry. But when, if I were to move, I speak to myself, I need a whole moving truck. I cannot carry everything in my hands. And it's a reminder for me, and I hope that it would be a reminder for those that come is that we forget to live lightly and not just externally, but internally. And this was the intention. And just to really look at how they live in unison and community with their children.

Michelle Saudan (42:51):

For example, one of the tribes we will visit is a Himba tribe. And the woman does not put the child on the ground unless he wants to, to walk and run. But she, he, this baby is latched with the mom 24 hours, you know? And eye contact and holding is something that we've lost in modern society. So this was just for us to come back. We are teaching this, we are learning this now by reeducating with modern studies and trauma, somatic healing. But when we look at it is something we already did in all our tribes, wherever we come from. So this is just to reconnect us, what has always been, but we've just forgotten. And this is what this retreat will embody. And I have one for local women. 'cause One thing I realized was that some of the retreats I was doing, which I canceled most of, was I didn't see my grandmother in who I was trying to represent.

Michelle Saudan (43:56):

I didn't see my mom or my great-grandmother, and they would have never afforded some of the retreats. And I said, well, I think I need to, to change this. And it gives me so much passion to now do some really low income retreats for just most women. So I'd like most women to be able to come and connect, like what we did at her retreat. I'd like everyone to be able to come because trauma and mental health is how it's seen right now in, in, in Africa is if you've, you know, in a mental health hospital, then that's when you need it. But if you don't do it again, put on the lipstick like you said and carry on. So I'd like to open that up. 'cause Our ancient elders, they did all of this, so they just didn't call it a retreat, but there was that support. So I'd like to bring that back in a way that suits us in the day and age we are living right now. So that's what I have upcoming and I'm really excited to share it and hopefully maybe I will come closer to you in the states and we can do some for, you know, for everyone's. I believe everyone should be able to have this at their fingertips.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (45:13):

Oh, that sounds beautiful and I love your consideration for, for inclusivity at all economic levels. It's something that I struggle with in what I offer because to provide the type of services is rather expensive, and that means that some women are left out. And one of the ways that I can be more inclusive is by providing this podcast free. So I love having guests who come on and really I offer as you have this depth and perspective that they're not encountering every day and, and information and inspiration that they can use for healing. I mean, you sharing the rain technique, I invite everyone who's listening to start using that and just maybe keep it in your mind and the next time something happens that is disturbing or troubling or keeps coming to your mind, maybe just spend some time using that rain process of cognize, recognizing, allowing, inquiring and nurturing. That's a place to start. And I invite everyone listening also to look at, at Michelle's website and the offerings that she has, we'll have the link in the show notes that you can click. I thank you so much for just being who you are and for sharing yourself with us and the world. I think you've been a healing presence for me, and I know everyone listening to this show feels that as well.

Michelle Saudan (46:50):

Oh, thank you, Karen. It's been a joy. Thank you so much. Love to everyone listening and if anything, just remember it didn't start with you. I think we can love ourselves to healing by remembering just that. And yeah, I look forward to seeing you, Karen. If not at the retreat, I see you in Dubai or somewhere where God aligns us. But thank you too for the work you're doing.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (47:15):

Thank you. And you know that what you just said, it didn't start with you. That's a whole other conversation, <laugh>, that we can have. So maybe we'll have that at another date. If you're listening and that intrigues you and you would like us to talk about that, please reach out to me and let me know and we'll see if Michelle might allow us to make that happen. Thank you so much for joining me today. Look forward to hearing your experiences with the rain process, which is really a beautiful process that Michelle has shared with us. Thank you so much. I will see you next week in another episode. Until then, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (47:54):

Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormones and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Know more about Michelle Saudan's offerings in the transformative powers of sound, breath, movement, bodywork and meditation. CLICK HERE.

 

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Dr. William Li | Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself

Welcome to the latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, where empowerment at midlife isn't just a dream—it's your reality! In this enriching episode, we're thrilled to bring you insights from the esteemed Dr. William Li.

Dr. Li isn't just any guest; he's a life-changing force in the world of medicine. From the prestigious stages of TED Talks to the informative panels of top news programs, Dr. Li has become the voice that's reshaping our understanding of health. His revolutionary insights have contributed to more than 40 medical treatments for diseases making waves in the waters of wellness.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg...

In today's discussion titled Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself, Dr. Li picks apart the essence of his New York Times bestseller which dives deep into the healing powers of food. This isn't a conversation about fad diets; it's a masterclass in how everyday nutrition can be your most powerful medication.

Imagine navigating midlife with a treasure map that leads to vitality and longevity. Thanks to Dr. Li, you won't have to imagine much longer as he reveals the inner workings of how the food you eat can help you combat illness, not just survive, but thrive.

For all you seekers of wellness and warriors of well-being, this episode is a beacon of hope, guiding you towards a life where diet isn't just about your waistline, but about staying one step ahead of disease.

It's time to get inspired and learn how to:

• Burn fat without starving yourself
• Heal your metabolism for good
• Use food scientifically proven to fuel longevity

Dr. Li's message is tailored not just for the health-conscious but for anyone who's yearning for control over their body's destiny. And for midlife women, this might just be the Hormone Prescription you've been waiting for.

Prepare yourself for a conversation that's loaded with practical advice, backed by rigorous science, and imbued with a dash of culinary magic. Are you ready to transform your midlife experience? Then grab a comfy spot, tune in, and get ready to Eat to Beat Disease!

---

Featured in This Episode:

• Why your kitchen holds the key to disease prevention
• Dr. Li's groundbreaking research that's revolutionizing the medical community
• Strategies to nourish your body at the cellular level for lasting health
• A peek into Dr. Li’s latest literary masterpiece

 

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease. Hippocrates, stay tuned and find out your most powerful tool when it comes to mastering your metabolism at midlife with Dr. William Li.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:15):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us, keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an OB GYN, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:08):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me as we dive in with Dr. William Li to talk about eating to Beat disease. Eat to Beat Disease is the name of his New York Times bestselling book on the new Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself. He also has another book, Eat to Beat Your Diet, burn fat, heal your Metabolism, and live longer. Needless to say, he is an expert when it comes to what to eat, how to eat when it comes to improving your health, and he is super passionate about food. He loves to cook like I do. So we had a really great conversation I think you're going to enjoy. He is gonna talk a little bit about the quote from Hippocrates that I shared with you in the teaser, and also another one from Bruce Li and another one about what discovery actually consists of and how it can help you when it comes to creating great health.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:14):

I'll tell you a little bit about Dr. Li and then we'll get started. Dr. William Li is a medical doctor and internationally renowned physician scientists and author of the New York Times bestseller Eat to Beat Disease. His groundbreaking research has led to the development of more than 40 new medical treatments that impact care for more than 70 diseases, including diabetes, blindness, heart disease, and obesity. His TED Talk, can we eat to starve? Cancer has garnered more than 11 million views. Dr. Li has appeared on Good Morning America, C-N-N-C-N-B-C, Rachel Ray, and live with Kelly and Ryan. He's been featured in USA Today Time Magazine, the Atlantic O Magazine and more. He is president and medical director of the Angiogenesis Foundation and he's leading global initiatives on food as medicine. And he has a new book, New York Times bestseller, Eat to Beat Your Diet about burning fat, healing your Metabolism of living longer. And it was released in March of 2023. This is a super fan girl moment for me because Dr. William Li is amazing, personable, and passionate. I think you're gonna love him as much as I do. Please help me welcome Dr. William Li to the show.

Dr. William Li (03:29):

Well, thank you very much Dr. Dun, it's a real pleasure. Yes, it's

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:32):

A pleasure to have you here. I heard you speak at a conference a few years ago and I thought to myself, oh, I wanna have him on the podcast. That would be amazing. And you're very in demand. So I think it took me this long to <laugh> be able to get you on the show, but I'm super honored to have you here. Your books have transformed so many people's lives and really helped to move forward people's level of understanding about their diet, what they're putting in their mouths and their health, the outcomes they're getting. So I'm very curious, as a traditionally trained physician trained, how did you come to become so passionate and knowledgeable about eating to beat disease?

Dr. William Li (04:21):

Well, you know, those of us who trained in traditional medicine know how little nutrition actually is taught in medical school or during training, and that's certainly true in my own education. I had some secret sauce that I brought into the equation before I went to med school. I studied biochemistry in college and afterwards I took a gap year. And during my gap year before going to medical school, I traveled to the Mediterranean. I lived in Italy and I lived in Greece. And my interest all the way back then was in studying the interconnections between diet, culture and health. And what really interested me, and this is again, long before I went to med school, I was curious about how these cultures in Italy and Greece developed their food traditions and the seasonal eating that they did using whole plant-based foods, primarily long before these terms became popular and how much it meant to them culturally.

Dr. William Li (05:26):

In other words, people are eating, the children are eating what the parents are eating, who cooked what the Nonas or the grandmas are eating. And they passed these traditions and recipes down and it's been going on for hundreds of years. And, and that was really interesting to me because of my own background being Asian American. I grew up with cultural legacies that came from my own family and we saw lots of things mixing together, but I was always very curious about that link. And of course, being in the Mediterranean, I got to see people viewing food not outta fear, which is what we so often encounter. Oh, I don't know what I should eat. Should I be afraid of saturated fat? Should I be fearing dairy? Should I be fearing soy? I saw something completely different. And what I saw was people approaching food with joy.

Dr. William Li (06:16):

When people in the Mediterranean sat down for a meal, they usually sat down with company. And when they were, and the conversation they had inevitably when they were eating together was about the food that was placed in front of them and its tastes and the seasonality and how their mothers prepared or how their spouses would prepare the foods at home. And it made me realize as I then, you know, later went to medical school by contrast, how absent the idea of food and health in our culture and American culture was, and so I could never forget that. And as I memorized bugs and drugs, as you know, from medical training, my, you know, my, and as I observed all the terrible, crappy food and lifestyle, the diet, lifestyle of the medical student and the resident was just so terrible. I started to realize that there clearly was a missing piece of what modern doctors are trained on.

Dr. William Li (07:17):

And I think that the tide is changing a little bit, but here, hear me out for a second. What was missing was really the toolbox of the medical community. Before 1930, we had no antibiotics, we had no fancy drugs. You know, doctors going back in the beginning of the 19 hundreds and going back thousands of years really only had what was in the natural world and food and lifestyle as our only tools. And somehow in those last, you know, let's say 90 years, a hundred years or so, we lost sight of the fact that food is a tool in our toolbox. And so we have, we're training doctors to practice with inventions, medications surgery and radiation and all this other kind of stuff. And we've forgotten our roots and the roots of the food being a tool in the toolbox is so important because we now have the science.

Dr. William Li (08:13):

And I'm a scientist, I'm an internal medicine doctor trained for, for, you know, young and old men and women, healthy and sick. And I realized the huge wonderful opportunity was for people who had the scientific knowledge like me to dive, to do the deep dive, kind of like the, I could dive into the mosh pit of food using the same scientific rigor that we use for drug development to try to understand why foods are good for us, we know they taste good, now we have a better understanding of why they're actually beneficial as well. So I'm all about what foods to add and the new knowledge coming out of that rather than what foods to avoid. Although obviously there are some foods that one should avoid as well. Yes,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (08:55):

Thank you so much for sharing that. You know, as you were speaking, a couple things came to mind. I recently watched a British series that I think took place in the 1800s. And whenever somebody felt ill, they gave them bone broth. They didn't call it bone broth, but they called it broth. Yeah. And so exactly what you're saying is something that I've observed and, you know, chicken soup, where does that come from? It's broth. Well, it's bone broth and then what you shared about traveling to Italy. And I have the pleasure of traveling to France with Walter Willette from Harvard. I think he's the author of, is it The French

Dr. William Li (09:34):

Paradigm? Yeah, I know Walter. Yes. Very good.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (09:36):

Yeah. And to study why they don't have the, the cardiac and other diseases that we have based on their diet. And so that was really fascinating. So you just said that picking your food from a joyful place versus a fearful place, which I love. And really focusing on what foods to add. So what has been most surprising to you in the research that you've done in terms of what foods to add?

Dr. William Li (10:05):

Okay, so the wonderful thing about being a scientist is that we're always surprised because we're at, you know, as a scientist, most people think that researchers, scientists spend all their time getting together and dishing brainiac rocket science on each other. But in fact, that's not what real scientists do. When we get together with other scientists, we spend all of our time talking about questions that we don't know the answers to. And so we don't actually talk about what we know. We talk about what we don't know. And so for me, the opportunity to do research on food as medicine is a wonderful opportunity to continuously being surprised by what we're actually discovering. Give you some examples. All right. We know that berries are healthy, right? I mean, colorful berries eat the rainbow. I love strawberries, I love blueberries, I love blackberries. They're, they're good for us.

Dr. William Li (10:58):

They're anti-inflammatory. I think most people would actually know that. Okay, well, when I first dove into this food as medicine world, one of the things that I did with colleagues at the National US National Cancer Institute, this, my colleagues were actually doing drug discovery, trying to find new cancer drugs. And so in that process you have, as a researcher, you're not aware of what you're testing. So they call it blinded or masked. So you have no idea what you're testing to be objective. And you would throw these chemical powders or liquids into a test system to see if they would starve cancer by cutting off the blood supply. All right? That's what this project was all about. And what I did in a, what was considered daring back then, I decided to sneak about 20 different food extracts into the system. So maybe there were 50 drugs to test, and I snuck 20 extras.

Dr. William Li (11:51):

So there were 70 site things to test, and literally we were testing food versus drugs head to head in the same system for cancer discovery and drug development. Okay? Cancer drug treatment. I was so surprised to discover that strawberry extracts contain something called ACH acid. So you don't have to be a chemist, a chemist, but just know that people that are doing the research, we're beginning to figure out what these substances are. Allergic acid is a powerful anti-cancer substance because it cuts off the blood supply that's actually growing that could feed a cancer cell. And we validated and tested this head-to-head with cancer drugs. Okay? Now that was a big surprise. Fast forward to just a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised yet again that other researchers have been studying strawberries looking at the same types of substances, the IC acid. And now we know there's another group of compounds called pro anthocyanins.

Dr. William Li (12:49):

And guess what they've been shown to do in clinical studies. This is a study from the University of Cincinnati where they looked at about 30 men and 30 people with mild cognitive deficits. So not full on dementia, but heading in that direction. And they found that one cup worth of strawberries per day over the course of six weeks could improve memory and cognitive performance. Amazing. Now, and that's the same substance. So here it is, you know, strawberries have activity in the Cancer Drug Act along the lines of a cancer drug. Strawberries have activities and a clinical study along the lines of helping people who are having cognitive difficulties. If that's not foodist medicine, if that's not real research being conducted, I don't know what is. And these are the kinds of surprises that I literally get out of bed, right? Roll out of bed, and I've got like one foot in the past, you know, the same stuff that you and I trained on Dr.

Dr. William Li (13:49):

Dunson, you know, the bugs and drugs as I call them. Okay? Right. And, and, and the other foot in the future, because this is what we're discovering how the mother nature's pharmacy, pharmacy with the f not a pH, the mother's nature's pharmacy, is more incredible than we ever imagined. And so this is why I think I'm surprised by tea. Green tea is good for you, but so is a super fermented tea called P or tea. Guess what? P or tea is even a probiotic tea that improves metabolism studied in human trials. Amazing. And so every day I am surprised by something and it makes me smile. And it makes me happy to realize that we are able to lean into the foods that we should be adding to our system and learning more about that and not just vilifying foods, which has been really kind of like the cave we've crawled outta.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (14:44):

Yes. You know, you mentioned poo or tea and I call it dirt tea <laugh> because it has a different taste, so you have to get used to it. But because of the health benefits, I remember when I first tried it, I didn't care for it, but I said, I'm gonna learn to like it because it's good for me. And now I love it. So I think that what are a lot of people's objections to eating in ways that are healthy? You know, I don't know anybody listening when's the last time they ate a fresh strawberry or a fresh green green or had something like a poo or tea. But people say it's expensive. They say it's time consuming. It's not convenient. They say it doesn't taste good. So how do you, you've done this beautiful research and really shown that these foods can help and bring them into your diet. These other foods maybe you wanna eat less of, but the practicalities of those cost in terms of time, financial expense, and then also the dislike. How do you help people get past those?

Dr. William Li (15:55):

Sure. Okay. So I wrote two books that became New York Times Best Sellers. Yeah. Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat Your Diet. And one of the things that I did as I wrote each book is I created tables and charts of foods that have been scientifically and clinically shown to be beneficial to help boost your body's health defenses. These foods make you healthier, okay? And the evidence and the science proves it. Okay? So, but I took all the, I did all the heavy lifting for my readers. And so the tables and charts are there. What I tell people to do is if you take, if you crap go of my books and you just take a photograph, screenshot of the tables and charts, and please take a sharpie or pencil or, or whatever you're writing with highlighter and circle the foods among those 300 that you already like, you know, maybe some people don't like green beans or Brussels sprouts, but maybe they like peaches or maybe like berries.

Dr. William Li (16:51):

You know, if you start circling these things, I always say I have not found anybody over the last four years. I've been challenged that couldn't find something, some foods, in some cases, many foods, but they're circling like crazy. And I said, guess what? You have just won the lottery, the food and health lottery because you've circled the foods that are already good for you and you like them. You've said that you like them. So if you start eating healthy foods that you already like, you are way ahead of the game. 'cause You're, you already like the foods that are good for you, start with that. Go to the grocery store. And, and so that's one way of actually addressing the like versus dislike. I'm starting with you and I'm trying to find out in a very personal way, what are your taste preferences? Everyone's different. Everyone's got their comfort foods.

Dr. William Li (17:35):

Everyone, you know, everyone can remember something that mom cooked when we were kids that we actually really resonate with. That's cool because you're almost certainly going to find something good, and you're gonna find something that's healthy. Now, that's one thing. What about the cost? Look, there was once this idea that you have to eat organic and you have to eat local and you have to eat fancy stuff. Turns out that the research is showing that the dirt cheap stuff, not just dirt tea, but dirt cheap foods is actually good for you. Yeah. Nuts and seeds, you know, walnuts, pecans, almonds, all those kinds of things you can buy in bulk. You know, go to one of those big discount stores and buy them in bulk. Great for our gut health, which then improves our metabolism, helps our fat hormones, helps all kinds of other aspects in our lives. Lowers cholesterol. It doesn't have to be expensive.

Dr. William Li (18:26):

One of the least expensive things I can think of that I actually like and I, and I put into my own shopping cart is not fancy pants at all. I love navy beans. All right, Navy beans. You go to the middle aisle and you just get a can of this stuff. They're pretty inexpensive. Navy beans have lignins, they've got great soluble fiber. They eat super fast, super cheap, crack a pan, the crack thing over there, rinse 'em out. Okay? I rinse all that cloudy stuff away from it. All right? Stick 'em in a pot. Heat 'em up, throw some inexpensive herbs that you can get outta your pantry to light it up a little bit. And you got yourself a gut healthy meal that's good for your gut microbiome, shown by evidence that it's not only inexpensive, it actually works to improve your metabolic health.

Dr. William Li (19:16):

So I think that, you know, if you take a look at healthy food, it's not only for the 1%. I think in fact the elemental foods, the things that used to be widely available to everyone are, can actually be really, really healthy, including dried foods, which tend to be healthy. You can store them longer, you can buy them in bulk. And that's totally fun. Here's something a lot of people don't realize. I know that it's true that eating mostly vegetarian, all vegetarian, you don't have to be vegan, but a mostly vegetarian diet is gonna be healthier for you. But if you eat seafood, okay, you don't have to go to the fancy fish market to buy expensive line cuts, whatever. Okay? If you go to the middle of the grocery store and you just carefully look for little tins of fish, I'm not talking about cat food.

Dr. William Li (20:06):

Don't go, don't go to the pet food section <laugh>, okay? I used to think canned tuna was cat food because it smelled exactly like what we'd feed a cat. But there is a, in the Mediterranean, there's a long history of tinned foods, tinned sardines, tinned mackerel, tin tuna. They put a little extra virgin olive oil and they added some spices and herbs. They might put some like piquillo peppers or something in, you can find these in a grocery store and they're not expensive. You can buy a big pack of them, you can put 'em in a pantry. And man, do they make a tasty Omega-3 healthy oil final. Not only the Omega-3 fats, but also olive oil when they're cooked with that, you can just put that with a piece of crusty sourdough bread and have some raw carrots and you put yourself a real snack.

Dr. William Li (20:53):

And you know, wherever the girls, the girls dinner or the girls meal, like they talk about something like that, can be inexpensive and incredibly tasty and healthy for you as well. So I always tell people, don't let price be the obstacle. There's lots of things that are inexpensive that anyone can actually afford. Okay? And then the other issue about convenience, all right? I think that if you look on the internet today, you pick an ingredient, beans, kale, tomatoes, what have you, nuts, tree nuts. And if you want to actually find something, a simple way to do it, you don't need to bust open that old yellowed thick book that your mom used to keep around as a cookbook, right? <Laugh> passed around for generation, you, you know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah. All you gotta do is to go on a Google type ingredient, you know, collars or kale and type a recipe and type simple, how about 15 minutes, alright?

Dr. William Li (21:48):

20 minutes and hit search and type, click on the video and watch somebody show you how to do it. All right? It's easy to do. And so I think that we should, and by the way, there, I, I have to tell you, as somebody who enjoys cooking, I'm not only a scientist and a doctor, I actually love cooking. But to me it's joyful. It's relaxing. I get some time by myself, I'm creating something. Listen, if that actually fits your personality as well, there's nothing better than knowing that you're eating and feeding your loved ones, then your friends and family as something that you put together. And you know everything that you put into it, and you can make those decisions for other people and it tastes great. So again, I hear you point out the exact same things that lots of people talk about as obstacles to healthy eating. And from my perspective, they're not really obstacles at all. You just have to look at them in a different way.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (22:41):

I love that answer and I wholeheartedly agree. I was blessed to be raised by a mother who actually was a trained chef. She trained with Anne-Marie Colman at the Natural Gourmet Cookery School in New York. And Anne-Marie was one of the pioneers in teaching people how to cook mostly. I don't think she dealt with meat at all, actually. It was vegetarian, healthy, tasty meals. So I learned at a young age how to cook healthy food. Of course, I went off to medical school and I came back and told my mother, ' we heal with steel mother <laugh>. 'cause I thought I knew better. It wasn't until I had my own health challenges that I went back to her and then really started to pay attention to how she cook healthy food that is delicious with healthy ingredients and, and really learns how to do it in an efficient, cost effective manner. Yeah. So I think it's something, it's a skill that anyone can learn. And abso you described beautifully.

Dr. William Li (23:42):

Absolutely. And you know, listen, if you know how to change a tire in your car or put in or change your oil in your engine, if you know how to fix the gutter or the, or, or the, the drain sink, if you know how to plunge a toilet, you can actually, you're, you're smart enough to know how to actually cook something tasty. And I like them. I I love the idea. I don't know, I, I don't know if you're saying healing with steel, it refers to cookware, but like, you know, but oh, <laugh>. But, that's another way to think about it. You know, like, look, you don't have to go to the hospital and sit in the waiting room, you know, to be called by the nurse. I think that there are, look, I'm, I, we're both doctors and so I'm quite confident that we're on the same page.

Dr. William Li (24:26):

There are medical issues that you must go to your doctor for and communicate with your doctor for, and that only your doctor can really solve for you because it's not something you can really tackle at home. But on the other hand, healthcare, and I think you'll agree with me as well, it doesn't happen in the doctor's office or the hospital. Healthcare is what we, what people deliver for themselves between visits to the doctor's office, between visits to the ER, to the hospital or the infusion clinic or wherever you're going. You care for yourself. We do medical interventions, you know, in a doctor's office, we can do assessments, but the care for your health is what we do for, to all of ourselves at home. And, and food is just, you know, one of the several important things, because obviously we can't just think about this over simply.

Dr. William Li (25:14):

I mean, you've got exercise, you've got stress management, you've got sLip socialization, all things that are part of self-care. And, and look, everybody out there is in the world now, you know, in this new era of self-care, right? Where we know not to overwork ourselves, we know not to overload ourselves at work. Self-Care is really sort of a new era where we are taking responsibility for the amount of stress that that either we put in ourselves or other people, people put in ourselves. I think nutrition and eating well, and importantly, eating the things that you like that are healthy, all right? It's gotta taste good. That's how our, and it's just another thing to really think about and cultivate for yourself.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (25:59):

Yes, I am saying that 2024 is the new self-love and self-care. It's like the next level. It's time to bump it up a notch and really make self-love an action word. It's a verb. And really meeting your needs and your wants and your desires to a high level, including your diet. I do know that a lot of women listening are dealing with what I call midlife metabolic mayhem. The 60 plus symptoms that women start experiencing over 40, the top two being fatigue and weight gain. So they're gonna wanna hear something from you about your second book, eat to beat your diet, how you heal your metabolism, burn fat, and live longer. So can you talk a little bit about the challenges for all of us, but maybe particularly for women over 40 with their metabolism and what's happening there and how they can work with their diet to assist them?

Dr. William Li (26:58):

Yeah, well listen you know, if you're a woman in your, in a, in the middle of your life and you're struggling with the actual issues or the questions about weight gain, weight management, fatigue, you know, all the things that, well, I think most people recognize, dread and maybe even accept that they're gonna have to contend with as they get into their forties and fifties and, and later in their lives. I have some good news. First of all, my book, Eat to Beat Your Diet, is not a diet book. That's a trick title. It's an anti-D diet book. I wrote a book about how you don't need to go on these intense, crazy diets that might actually help you lose a few pounds or maybe even more than a few pounds, but you can't stick to them. But how you can instead use the latest thinking about human metabolism, about body fat and the connections to our hormones or to our energy levels, to our ability to live rich, fulfilling lives in a way that we didn't recognize before.

Dr. William Li (28:01):

And let me explain this in a way that I think people can understand. All of us probably do something pretty similar, right? You get up in the morning, roll out of bed, take a shower, come out of the shower, and you're drying off and you probably got a mirror in the bathroom and out of the corner of your eye, you probably see on your naked body a lump or a bump that you are not happy with. It doesn't matter if you're a big person or a small body person. We all see this stuff, right? And then what's the thing you do? You go cur you curse. Like, ugh, I don't wanna see that. Then the next thing you do is what? Step on the bathroom scale. And that number that comes up isn't the one that you are hoping for you to curse again, all right?

Dr. William Li (28:38):

First thing in the morning, you've cursed yourself twice, right? And if this sounds like a familiar story, and I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I think most people resonate with it. 'cause I do the same thing. I used to do the same thing. We kind of associate our weight with our health. We associate body fat with something very negative. And we always talk about negativity and body fat. Look, we're, so, it's maybe part of our human nature. I don't care if you're a vegan or not, but if you actually go to a grocery store and you're wheeling, you're pushing your cart around and you're gonna be pushing it by the meat section, a butcher section, and you see that gigantic t-bone steak that's got like a thick rind of white fat around it. I don't care if you're like a, if you're, if you're like the, the biggest meat eater in town, everyone goes, Ugh, I hope nobody eats that.

Dr. William Li (29:25):

Right? So we're conditioned to think about body fat and the word fat in very negative ways. But what I wanna tell people in their middle age is that we don't always think about it, we don't always think about fat negatively. There's one situation I can tell you, everyone sees fat and smiles and you know what that circumstance is? That's when we see a baby or we see a pudgy baby. Mm-Hmm, you know, newborn, 1-year-old, big fat cheeks, double chin, rollie, polly tummy, <laugh>, you know, big fat arms and legs. You're smiling right now, right? I'm, I'm not smiling saying it, right? We, that's one situation in which fat makes us feel happy. So think about what that means. Somewhere in our brain, we recognize that body fat is actually a good thing. In fact, if you saw a baby that was long and thin, like a fashion model, like a runway model with thin thighs and thin arms, like, like sharp chiseled cheekbones, <laugh>, you'd be freaked out.

Dr. William Li (30:22):

You'd be freaked out, right? You go, you would, you would, you would run the other way. You would say, there is something seriously wrong with that baby, and you'd be completely right. Okay? So to understand body fat and metabolism and hormones in middle age, it's really helpful to do, to go, go way back and realize what body fat does for us when we're younger. Now, a lot of people don't know this, but our body fat and our hormones are really tightly interconnected. And our body fat and our health meaning good health, beneficial health, are tight, tightly, tightly tied together. All right? Now I gotta explain this. Most people don't know this, but if you go back, Dr. Duston back to med school, you remember we were sitting in embryology class and they were teaching us about how humans from dad sperm meets, meets mom egg, mom's egg and AEB of cells.

Dr. William Li (31:13):

And we had to memorize all the things that actually happened. Well, when the organs form, all right, one of the first organs that form are blood vessels. And that makes sense because every organ's gonna need blood flow to remain alive. The next tissue that really forms are nerves. 'cause That's the electrical system of the house of your body. And we all need electrical wires to power up our organs. All right? A third tissue organ that forms is body fat. Body fat is one of the early first organs that form. And by the way, at this point in our lives, we don't have waste lines. We don't actually have chins yet. We're still kind of forming our overall shape as humans. And you know where the body fat forms is as a ring around blood vessels. So when body fat starts forming, it forms as a cushion around our blood vessels.

Dr. William Li (32:07):

And you go, why would that be? Why is body fat forming on blood vessels? Well, it turns out, and we now know this, that our body fat, which is sometimes called adipocytes, adipocytes, adipose tissue, so we know, call fat tissue, these adipocytes the cells of fat around are living around blood vessels because each of these fat cells, adipocytes, are actually fuel tanks for the energy that we need to run our body. And where does the fuel get loaded? Into the fuel tank from our blood vessels? Because the food that we eat goes into the fuel, goes into the blood vessel, and the blood vessel loads them into the storage tank, which is our fat cells. And that's why fat starts forming around the blood vessel. So all around our blood vessels, all throughout our body, there's fat that actually starts forming. Now obviously the fat forms elsewhere as well, but it shows you just how important body fat is.

Dr. William Li (32:58):

Now, later in life, as we develop as teenagers, I mean, look, little boys and girls, five year olds, seven year olds, pretty much they look all the same, right? They're, they, they have the same body type, but later during adolescence, puberty, hips form, breast form, chests form, you know, facial features start reforming as well. That's where the future adult us begins. We start to look like the future adult who we're gonna be. And our body composition changes and fat starts moving in different places to where it needs to go. And we've got three kinds of fat that form, all right? And I'm telling you this because people who are middle age need to understand fat didn't form because you had too much to eat over Thanksgiving dinner, okay? Or that you went to that restaurant and you had, you know, you had too much on your plate.

Dr. William Li (33:43):

This is actually fat that is healthy fat. I'm talking about three types of fat that form, even when we're young teenagers and into young adults, you know, kind of the best shape of our lives. We've got subcutaneous fat that's under the skin sub under cutaneous skin fat. That's kinda like a wetsuit that protects us, that's healthy, helps to shape us. Then you've got visceral fat, which is gut fat, visceral meaning gut packed inside the tube of our body. So if you think about it, you could have a thin tube or you could have a big tube. People with large bodies have big tubes, but even people who are thin, who are thin, have thin tubes. And when, and the visceral fat can, it grows inside the middle of the tube of the body, you can't see in the mirror. All right?

Dr. William Li (34:28):

It's not the muffin top, it's not the double chin. It doesn't wobble under your arm. It's deep inside your gut. All right? And you need some of that. And then there's brown fat. And this is something that I think is really interesting is that brown fat, which we used to only think was in animals and babies, is a thin layer of fat. We're not talking about wiggly jiggly wobbly fat. That's not under your arms. Brown fat is quite different. It's paper thin, wafer thin, and it's pressed not close to the skin, but close to the bone deep in our tissues. We got some of it behind our breast bone. We got some of it around our neck. We got some of it a little bit in our belly, some of it behind between our shoulder blades. Brown fat is like an engine, like the stove top in your kitchen that uses gas.

Dr. William Li (35:16):

You want to blow some water. What do you do? You turn the crank, it goes click, click, click, click whoosh, you get the flame going on. That's what brown fat does. Brown fat metabolically whooshes fires up to create heat, right? For our body, and it draws that energy from our white fat, starting with a visceral fat, which so that you, so we, our fat controls fat. Now what happens? And there's all kinds of hormones that a fat is normally producing. This fat, healthy fat produces at least 15 different kinds of hormones. Adiponectin is one, is one that even helps our body absorb insulin and, and helps us release insulin and draw in our glucose so we have energy. So I'm bringing this up because people complain about not having enough energy. All adiponectin gives us our energy because it takes the food that we're eating and stores that energy into our fat cells.

Dr. William Li (36:09):

All right? And then we burn off that fat cell when we move around, and that's what gives us energy in our brain, in our muscles, everything. Okay? Now what happens is that if you actually overload the body's fat stores, if you overeat, you put too much fuel in your body, your body, like unlike a car where if you put too much fuel and it just splashes right out of the fuel tank, what does it do? Run down the side of your car, around the tires, and pool around your shoes. Now you're standing in a dangerous, toxic, flammable mess, right? In a gas station in your body, if we actually overload fuel, okay? By overeating, we just make more fuel tanks, those fuel tanks being fat cells. And so we, the more we eat, the more fuel we store, the more fuel we store, the more fuel tanks we need, the more body fat we need to make.

Dr. William Li (36:54):

And that's really why over consumption of food, good or bad actually will lead to more body fat being created. And the body fat that gets created, you can see it in the mirror, okay? Those are the lumpy, bumpy things, or they can actually grow in the center of your body around visceral fat. This is the fat that wraps around all your organs, because when you overeat and you have too much fuel and you've got too much fat wrapped on your organs, that fat becomes starved of oxygen. It becomes inflamed. It's like a forest fire that gets ignited inside your belly, you can't even see it. It's steep inside. And that inflammation rushes out throughout your body. And what it, one thing it does is it inflames fat upsets the, it derails the hormones like the fat hormones, like adipokines adiponectin. When that hormone gets derailed, you can't use it, you can't absorb your fuel.

Dr. William Li (37:48):

Well, and guess what? Now even though you have, you're loaded with a lot of fuel, you're not using a lot of fuel, you are tired, you're fatigued. So gaining too much weight leads to fatigue, inflammation accompanies it. All right? So overeating is one of these things that we need to really be careful about. Now, the other thing that happens in middle age, people go, oh, my metabolism's gonna slow down. There's something I can do about it. It's my fate, right? And indeed, people's bodies change. Women and men, but especially women, I think they notice it a lot more when your body shape changes, when you hit your mid forties and into your fifties you know, I don't know what I can do and I'm looking just like my mom did. All right? So the fact of the matter, it used to say, I've gained too much weight because my metabolism has slowed down.

Dr. William Li (38:31):

Nothing I can do about it. Right? Wrong. We used to think slow metabolism causes excess body fat, but in fact, it's the other way around. Too much body fat slows down your metabolism. And we know this from a seminal research study that was conducted just in 2021, published in the Journal of Science, one of the most credible journals in the world, where they found that all humans only undergo four phases of metabolism in their life and in the middle phase of metabolism. All right? So when you're born, everyone's born with the same metabolism. One year old, it shoots straight up from one 8-year-old to 20 years old. Your metabolism comes down to adult level. And then from 20 to 60, this is exactly where middle age occurs. 40, 45, 50, 55. Human metabolism is designed to be rock stable. It is not hardwired to go down. We are not programmed from birth to have a slow metabolism.

Dr. William Li (39:28):

We hit our middle age. And so anybody listening to this, you gotta realize everything that we thought has just been the story has been changed because we now realize that we are, our bodies are hardwired. It's our birthright to have a normal stable metabolism in middle age only at age 60, 60 to 90 slows down a little bit, okay? But not huge. It slows down a little bit. Now, what happens is that if you gain extra body fat, if you have extra fuel consumed, all right, and you're not moving, and that extra fat causes the inflammation disrupts the hormones, the fat hormones we're talking about here, you know, dip, pectin, ghrelin, I mean, these are all kinds of lectin. These are all hormones that are affected by, that are needed and healthy for us when we have the right amount of body fat and energy.

Dr. William Li (40:14):

But when we have too much of it, not only does that slow down our metabolism, but the excess inflammatory fat derails our hormones. When you derail these hormones, it's literally taking a train, okay? And just chucking it off the rails. Now it all, all heck breaks loose. And now you don't know if you're hungry or not hungry. Well, maybe I'll just eat some more. No, you know, you're eating more food now, you're eating more fuel. It's making everything worse. And then it, and the excess body fat slows down your metabolism. So the explanation for people who are middle reaching, middle age to say, I'm fatigued. I'm gaining weight. I don't know what to do, I don't think I have a choice. One of the things that modern research is showing us is that number one, you can actually try to restore your body's metabolic setpoint.

Dr. William Li (41:01):

It might take time to do it, but one thing to do is actually to burn down excess body fat. And to do that, you want to eat less e even intermittently fast and be a good way of doing it. Second, you wanna eat good quality food. 'cause You don't wanna be eating food that's just gonna blow up that inflammatory fat. You wanna eat good quality food, less of it, stay away from the ultra processed stuff, the added sugars, the added, you know, carbs. Then what you wanna do is exercise. You wanna stay physically active. You know, a body in motion stays in motion as the old law of thermodynamics or physics. And so you wanna actually stay in motion walking exercising. You don't need a trainer. You just need to stay active. You're gonna be burning down some of that extra fuel. You need good quality sLip because our metabolism burns down extra fuel when we're in REM sLip. Good quality sLip. All right? Now, why, by the way, why is all this not happening to us? Why is it so difficult to do this when we are in our mid forties, for women watching this? Think about it, how complicated our lives are at middle age when you are 20. You know, you might be struggling with various things, ideas, but you might have seen something like a mountain, but really a mold hill compared to what you're dealing with in your 40 bucks, all right? Yes.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (42:15):

Right?

Dr. William Li (42:16):

Okay. So back then you were working out, you were looking good, you were fitting into whatever clothes you wanted, and you had plenty of energy and you know, you could do whatever you wanted and you didn't seem to gain weight, but you're active, all right? Now, fast forward the decades, and now you're in your mid forties. We got so much going on, all right? And I'm just trying to talk to people like, you know, who are listening, like, like real people, right? I mean, look, you got your spouse to worry about. You got stressors with your family life. You got your kids to worry about, you got your mortgage, you got your job to worry about, your boss worried. You get your car payments. And then, oh, by the way, if you follow anything in the news, we're worried about the election, worried about the war, worried about, you know, what kind of sickness is going on.

Dr. William Li (42:58):

Look, there's a lot of stressors going on, okay? And those stressors make it really hard for us to focus on making good decisions about the food. We choose quality food. Those distractions make it very difficult to eat smaller quantities, smaller portions. In fact, they're so distressed, so stressed out, we eat a lot. Those distractions make it hard to exercise and stay active. Those stresses prevent us from getting good quality sLip, which interferes with metabolism. So it's not that our fate is hardwired in our body, and when you hit 45, that's it, baby, you're screwed. No, the reality is that we got a lot going on. So we have to sort of tease apart some of the things that are gone and start to just calm down a little bit and make the, some of the good decisions, starting one by one that can help our body reset to the metabolism, to the fat, to the hormonal interactions that our body needs to give us energy, to give us the shape that we want to have, and to be able to allow us to live and thrive as we get older.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (44:01):

Yes, thank you for that very comprehensive, detailed explanation. I think everybody probably got a lot out of that. And really the way you're describing it is that the communication has completely gone offline because of your current metabolic condition. And there are things that you can do to restore proper communication, right? I always say hormones are the communicators and you can get them reestablished. I loved inter, I love intermittent fasting and exercise and many of the other things that you've shared. Thank you so much for sharing this wisdom with everyone. You make it sound very approachable and doable by almost anyone, which it is. And so I love that. We'll definitely have links to your books in the show notes. You have a wonderful Dr. Li's Friday five handout, which we'll have a link to in the show notes. You wanna tell them a little bit about that and where else they can find you online?

Dr. William Li (44:59):

Yeah. Well, listen, my mission is to get good information about people's bodies and how food interacts with them in a joyful way. That's my mission, is to really impact as many lives as possible. So I have a website, Dr DR William Li l i.com. Please come to visit my website, take a look at the information that's on it. My books Eat to Beat Disease. You can buy them anywhere books are sold. You can order them online very, very easily. I do courses, I have online courses you can find on my website. I run them every month. And this is a deep dive into your body and the foods that can activate your body in ways that are delicious and effective so that you don't have to fear your food. You can love your food and love your health at the same time. And I'm, and I put out newsletters.

Dr. William Li (45:44):

These are free newsletters that you, or just contain facts and information. And you know, I'm inundated with information all the time. I just wanna get, I wanna do the heavy lifting for the public. For you guys who are listening, I'll, I'll try to, you know, bury the stuff that's BS and I'll try to surface the stuff that's really useful that you should know. The difference between medical research involving drug development and biotech and pharmaceuticals is that, you know, even if you hear about that stuff, you can't do anything about it. Most of the people in the public, but if you, for food is medicine research, when there's something important there is immediacy. I told you that eating, you might be surprised. Soy foods, like at a Mame or tofu can lower the risk of breast cancer, or tomatoes can lower the risk of prostate cancer if you're a man. Hey, guess what? That is something that after you hear that you can make a decision right away lickety split to add something good to your health. And so please know, I welcome people to my community. I've been teaching these online courses. We've got thousands of people from more than 80 countries that have taken my course. And so I, I just love the idea of trying to create as much impact as possible. And thank you for having me on. Well, thank

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (46:58):

Thank you for being here, and thank you for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I know you have loved today's episode. I know you're gonna add strawberries to your diet. I know you're gonna add tomatoes. I know you're gonna look at Dr. Li's books and read them and get some powerful information. Maybe join one of his courses. And really, your most powerful tool when it comes to your health and your hormones is the food that you put in your mouth. I cannot say that you literally are what you eat. Your hormones are what you eat, you are what you eat. So this is the most powerful tool that you have at your disposal to make powerful changes in your health for this year. Like I said, 2024 is the year of self-love. So do it right, make it an action. It is a verb. Take the actions that will get you where you want to be. Thanks so much for joining us, and until next week, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (48:00):

Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormones and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Get Dr. Li's Friday 5! Top science-backed recommendations, including healing foods, studies, podcasts, supplements, and more. Sign up now to get this FREE newsletter weekly. CLICK HERE.

 

► Are you tired of feeling like you're losing control at midlife? Weight gain, low energy, and a decrease in sex drive are all too common. But it doesn't have to be that way.

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Dr. Akil Palanisamy | Your TIGER Protocol For Solving Autoimmunity & Health Dysfunction

Welcome to another empowering episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, where we explore the intricate dance of hormones and health, specifically crafted for the vibrant midlife woman.

Today, we're honored to have the remarkable Dr. Akil Palanisamy, join us to unravel the mysteries of autoimmunity and health dysfunction through the lens of integrative and Ayurvedic medicine. Get cozy and ready to be inspired by a Harvard-educated expert who takes a deeply compassionate and holistic approach to healing.

Episode Highlights:

• Introduction to Dr. Akil Palanisamy: Discover the fascinating path that led Dr. Aki, a Harvard grad and a mind-body medicine-certified physician, to the forefront of integrative health.
• The TIGER Protocol Explained: Learn about the groundbreaking TIGER Protocol that Dr. Aki has pioneered, offering hope and healing to those suffering from autoimmune disorders.
• Integrative Medicine and Ayurveda: Delve into a unique conversation on blending modern medical practices with ancient Ayurvedic wisdom.
• Real-life Success Stories: Hear uplifting stories of resilience and recovery, showcasing the transformational impact of Dr. Aki's approach.
• Practical Tips for Midlife Wellness: Arm yourself with actionable advice and wellness strategies tailored for the midlife transition, ensuring you live your healthiest, most hormonal-balanced life.

Inspirational Takeaway:

Dr. Akil's expertise isn't just in his impressive credentials; it lies in his ability to see the patient as a whole. His methods are a testament to the power of integrative medicine - providing a beacon of light for anyone navigating the murky waters of hormonal health and autoimmunity.

Tune in now to begin your own healing odyssey with the wisdom and warmth of Dr. Akil guiding the way. This episode is not just about listening; it's about awakening to the possibilities of true health renewal.

Listen, Learn, and Thrive:

Your body's plea for harmony between your hormones and health has been heard. Dr. Akil's knowledge and the TIGER Protocol could be the key to unlocking your body's fullest potential.

Don't miss this life-altering conversation. Tune in, tap into your innate healing power, and take charge of your well-being. Your miraculous body awaits.

Subscribe and Listen Now!

 

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

There is no greater thing you can do with your life and your work than follow your passions in a way that serves the world. And you, Dr. Akil , stay tuned to find out how to reverse the root causes of your autoimmunity and health concerns so that you too can follow your passion.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:20):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an OB GYNI had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results, and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dundton. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:14):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive into the topic of autoimmunity with Dr. Akil, who is a very accomplished physician who had his own healing journey during medical school that led him to a root cause resolution approach. He focuses on autoimmunity and helping people reverse it naturally. You're gonna hear some of his case studies of how he helped someone reverse Hashimoto thyroiditis, probably the most common autoimmune disease that disproportionately affects women as opposed to men and causes a lot of suffering, and how he helped her transform to not having Hashimoto's. Yes, it's possible despite what you might have heard, and you're going to hear just lots about what are the steps you need to take from his tiger protocol that he's developed. It applies to everyone, not just those of you with autoimmunity.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:14):

So I hope you will give a listen and take notes and check out his book. We've got a link to get a per an excerpt from it in the show notes and talk a little bit about this quote that I shared with you at the beginning about living your passion. He shares what that means to him and how that informs his daily life and activities that I think you'll really love. So I'll tell you a little bit about him and then we'll get started. After working with patients in his two decades of practice, Harvard trained Dr. Aki Palani me was inspired to develop the tiger T-I-G-E-R protocol, an integrative treatment approach. Combining his work as a functional medicine practitioner with his training in Ayurvedic medicine, he has since used his simple protocol to successfully treat thousands of patients with autoimmune diseases. The protocol works to address the root cause of your autoimmunity instead of just treating the symptoms by suppressing your immune system. And that's what mainstream medicine does. It's a revolutionary transformative approach that can help you transform your health and your life as well. Please help me welcome Dr. Akil  to the show.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (03:26):

Thank you so much Dr. Dunston, for having me on.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:29):

So excited to talk with you about the tiger protocol. I always like to start because people love to hear how traditionally trained doctors like you and me. Yes. Arrived, became enlightened and <laugh> became enlightened, saw the truth, the angels sang, we saw a better way. We really started people healing and doing things like reversing autoimmune disease. And so could you share a little bit about your journey from traditional mainstream medicine to a more root cause approach?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (04:03):

Yeah. It actually began in medical school for me when I developed a mystery illness during my second year of medical school. You know, I was actually very conventionally thinking, very conventionally trained, didn't have a real awareness of integrative medicine, but I had kind of this mystery illness with chronic pain and fatigue, and it, it was so bad that I couldn't sit up in a chair and I had to actually take a year off for medical school to try to recover. And it was that time that I started exploring integrative medicine and complementary therapies, and that was the first thing that really helped me after a few years of conventional medicine. So that helped me during my year off to return to really optimal health. And I realized that I needed to learn this stuff so I could help my future patients with it.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (04:52):

And so could you share a little bit about what you went through with that mystery illness and what you discovered Yes. That it was causing it?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (05:02):

Yeah. So the symptoms were, you know, started with fatigue and then I developed a lot of musculoskeletal issues like neck pain, back pain. You know, I couldn't sit up in a chair, and so I couldn't attend class, and I was doing all the conventional treatment, you know, physical therapy, anti-inflammatories and so forth. But it was only when I saw an Ayurvedic doctor, which is Ayurveda as a traditional medicine from India, that she told me I have a specific imbalance of a dosha, which is one of the Ayurvedic principles. And that actually tied together all my symptoms that I was having. Whereas in Western medicine, there was no diagnosis and never was, because there's no clear diagnosis that ties together all those symptoms. But when she started treating me with an auric diet and, you know, lifestyle and spices and herbs and a whole program, you know, lifestyle program as well, then that was the beginning of recovering my health.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (06:02):

Wow. I mean, I'm sorry that you went through that and it, you know, I I always say pain becomes your purpose, and it's only through pain, unfortunately, sometimes that we learn the truth if we're willing to lean into it and not just snuff it out. I always say that Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> yes. Symptoms that our body has is, you know, she's this beautiful vehicle that we have. She only has so many ways that she can let you know what she's needing and wanting and what's out of balance. And she's always talking to us. So a headache is not, she's not saying I need Tylenol, is that's not what a headache means. And <laugh>, you know, if your tummy gets upset every time you eat, it's not, oh, I need something to stop my gut from being able to contract like an antispasmodic. And so right, everybody listening, I really encourage you to start learning the language of your body and understand what she's saying to you so you can get to the root cause and get out of the leaves and branches of the tree and stop medicating with drugs and surgery. So thank you so much for sharing that. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. So I, let's dive into your book on the Tiger protocol you've developed. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, a very specific detailed root cause protocol to help people with autoimmune disease. Was autoimmunity at all a part of the illness that you were suffering from?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (07:29):

No, fortunately but you know, over the years, in the past 25 years I've been practicing, I've just started seeing more and more autoimmune patients and wondering, you know, why there is such an increase in autoimmune disease. So it's really just organically through my own practice, I started seeing more and more autoimmune patients.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (07:51):

So is the tiger protocol developed with, from you working with them and really seeing what was specific to their needs and situations that needed to be addressed in order for healing to occur?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (08:03):

Yes, exactly. And, you know, with these same five root causes, the more I researched, the more I found that it, they're actually driving most of our modern chronic diseases, you know, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, which is still the biggest killer of, of most men and women, obesity and also disrupting hormones. Because I, in my practice, I do work a lot with female hormones in, in women. And so I found that, you know, these five root causes not only affect autoimmunity, but all these other chronic conditions and hormones especially.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (08:36):

Right. And I would love it if you could comment on the fact that women suffer with autoimmune immune disease way more than men. We are disproportionately represented with autoimmune disease. And why do you think that is?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (08:50):

Yeah, I think it's probably several reasons. So, you know, as we're going to go through the tiger protocol, we can see that toxins affect women more than men because of, for example, xenoestrogens, which we can get into. Same thing with the, with the gut. You know, a lot of the gut bacteria have a big effect on estrogen, which we can discuss. And that, you know, the key role there. And then with stress the, the R part, you know, rest and managing stress, I think that is also very fundamental in terms of its effect on multiple hormones. And I think, you know, we need more research to confirm this, but I think that because women are more complex in terms of their hormone chemistry, that more of these factors in our modern life are attacking and disrupting more and more of their hormones than in men. And I think that's one of the reasons autoimmunity is more common in women.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (09:48):

Yeah, I would agree. I really think it boils down to, down to hormones, <laugh>, and that's foundationally what makes a woman different from a man. And so that's what puts us at risk for so many of these problems. So let's jump into the tiger protocol. I know that each letter stands for an issue that needs to be addressed. So if you just wanna start at the beginning, we can dive right into it. And I wanna just tell everybody listening, don't discount what we're gonna talk about and say, I don't have an autoimmune problem, this, they're not talking to me. Everything that Dr. Akil  is talking about and details in his book, actually is an issue that every woman at midlife, early life, later life, needs to address to address the root causes of any dysfunction that she is suffering from. These are really the root causes of all health problems.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (10:46):

Whatever your diagnosis, whatever your symptoms. So if you think about your health like a tree, the symptoms and diagnoses you may have are up in the leaves and branches, and that's where mainstream medicine works. You go to the gastroenterologist for a gut problem, and you might get a drug or surgery for that problem. You go to the gynecologist for a female period problem, and you might get a drug or surgery for that problem. But where we're dealing with is we're going down the trunk of the tree into the roots of the tree in the dirt, and dealing with the root causes of all your leaf and branch problems. So everything we're gonna talk about applies to everyone. So I just wanna give that caveat. So without further ado, let's dive into the tea in tiger.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (11:32):

Yes, sounds good. Yeah. So the tea stands for toxins, which are environmental toxins that are present in our food, water, air, you know, that all of us are exposed to. And when I was researching toxins, I found a class of toxins called obesogens, which are known to promote obesity. So these are things that disrupt our metabolic signaling, you know, the intricate hormones like leptin and ghrelin that regulate appetite and satiety. So many of these toxins the broader category is called EDCs or endocrine disrupting compounds. So they disrupt our endocrine system, which is the hormone system that we've been, we've been talking about. So for my women who are really struggling to lose weight I feel like that's one of the missing pieces of the puzzle is addressing these obesogens, you know, helping clear out those toxins that are promoting obesity.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (12:26):

So that's, I think, a really key factor. Also, in toxins, there are ens. So these are toxins that promote insulin resistance and raise your blood sugar, again, a key cause of our diabetes epidemic. It's not just obesity. There's also a key factor of toxins that are disrupting your insulin and disrupting your blood sugar regulation. And we have to really address those as well. And then specifically for women, I talked about xenoestrogens. So these are compounds in our, you know, fragrances, pesticides, other chemicals. We put our body widely present in plastics, for example. And these are artificially created compounds that mimic estrogen. And so they're absorbed by the body. They disrupt the estrogen signaling and lead to, you know, a host of issues. So I, and of course, autoimmunity, which is the fastest growing category of disease, is included as well. That's what I focus on. But in my research, I found these toxins affect so many other key conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, as well as just general inflammation in the body. So that's why I believe that's why I put the T first. 'cause I think toxins are really fundamental and maybe the first thing to be addressed.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (13:47):

Yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, I just wanna tell a little personal anecdote. So I really, uhhuh, the biggest thing I think people can do in this area to start reducing their toxic load is to stop using artificial petrochemical fragrances all over your body and in your house. Just stop <laugh>. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Yes. And really there isn't an awareness of the dangers of these artificially scented products in the environment. So I, every, a lot of people know I've been traveling for 18 months globally, and I've had a lot of experiences where I go into new homes and stay in new homes. And there are plugins and scented candles and sprays and all the things that people use 'cause they like the way it smells. They use it on their dryer sheets with their towels and the sheets smell like perfume. And my body.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (14:40):

I say that I'm a human chemical detector because of various circumstances I've encountered throughout my life where I was actually made sick by a building. Now I'm a human chemical detector. So I walk in and before I even smell it, my body tells me that it's there. Mm. And so I've had the opportunity to talk with people about, and try to educate them about the dangers of these, they're carcinogenic as well as contributing to health problems. And it's interesting how many people are very resistant to this information, not knowledgeable. And I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on that, or, and I know you've got way more details in the book, but what would you say is the number one thing that people can do to start reducing their toxic load?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (15:24):

Yes, I think that it, you know, it always starts with diet because I believe food is really fundamental. So I think, you know, trying to choose organic, so you're limiting the pesticide exposure. And then you don't have to have everything organic. You know, you can go with the environmental working group, which publishes a list called the Dirty Dozen, which is the 12 fruits and vegetables that are highest in pesticide, where you should try to get organic. And then they also publish the clean 15, which is the 15 that are pretty low and can be non-organic if possible. So I think that's a great way to start. And then to boost the detox pathways, I really like the cruciferous vegetables, all the, you know, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, those are, are very powerful. And then I think sweating like a sauna or steam room is really underutilized because there is very good research on sweating and how it excretes toxins through the skin, which is a really great way to, to help detox and keep the toxic level low.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (16:26):

Yes. Those are great suggestions. And how does this relate to hormones? 'cause We always try to tie everything to hormones.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (16:34):

Yes. So mainly in that, you know, all of these things that we've been talking about as toxins, like the endocrine disrupting compounds, the obesogens, the ens Z estrogens, all of them are disrupting this delicate balance that in women is critical, you know, because I always tell women it's like a symphony, you know, with all the female hormones that every piece is critical. And there's many different components that have to be in sync to, to make the perfect music, you know, the optimal health. And all of these toxins are disrupting that symphony. So that's why it's so important to address, you know, reducing the exposure and also boosting things to detoxify so you can have a, you know, better symphony and better music in the end.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (17:18):

Right? Yeah. A lot of these toxins actually stimulate those hormone receptors in negative ways. They sit right on the receptor and really confuse your body. Yes. So super important. So that's the T in tiger. And then what is the, I,

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (17:33):

So I refer to infections, and this is a broad category. There's many different types like a bacterial, viral, fungal and, and so forth. And there's many ways that infections disrupt hormones. One of the ways is by causing elevated cortisol, which is one of the stress hormones because of infection. I'm not talking about acute infection things like, you know, flu or you're down with a cold and you, you're really sick. I'm talking more about low grade chronic infections, which can be detected by an integrative medicine doctor. And those can slowly cause stress on the body. And any stress on the body raises cortisol. And that has a variety of negative effects, which we can talk about when we talk about stress, which also raises cortisol. But I think that, yeah, infections can really disrupt the hormones by raising cortisol. And then, for example, another example would be candida, the yeast overgrowth. So candida often is an issue that is, you know, overgrown and surprisingly has really negative effects on hormone balance. When you have the overgrowth of candida, it actually breaks down progesterone and contributes to estrogen dominance. This is, you know, air emerging research. But a lot of these infections are starting to be studied for their negative effect on hormones.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (19:03):

Yeah. So these chronic infections like candida, Epstein Barr virus Yes. Just dysbiosis in the gut where you don't have enough healthy bacteria and it's kind of skewed towards some of these less healthy ones. I, I think it's important 'cause some people listening are gonna say, great, I get it, Dr. Akil , I need to address toxins, infections, and all the other things we're gonna talk about. And they're gonna run to their $30 HMO copay doctor. And they're gonna say, right, well, I've heard Dr. Akil  on Dr. Kieran's podcast, and I want you to check me for these infections that are contributing to my autoimmune disease and MIT toxins, and I want you to help me with that. And what's gonna happen, <laugh>.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (19:45):

Yes. Yeah, no, exactly. I think it's you know, it's variable in terms of how much a typical conventional doctor will do or, or test. But I think that the good thing is what I focus on is really teaching people tools they can use at home on their own with, you know, diet and, and lifestyle. And, and with the topic of infections, my focus in the book is teaching people how to make your body inhospitable to infections, because then you can actually let your immune system work better to take care of whatever's there. So you don't have to do, you know, all of these tests. So there are ways to focus more on the terrain, the inner environment of the body to make it less hospitable to infections. And I think that's more of a root cause approach.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (20:32):

Yeah, I agree. But I just don't want anyone listening to think that the average doctor with the education that we initially had is gonna be able to help them. So this is where your book comes into play. So yes, in, you know, I know this might be really inappropriate, but I met a woman when I was traveling and her name was Candida, and it just stuck in my head. 'cause When I met her, I thought, I wonder if she's had problems with having that name. Because I think of one thing when I hear candida and it's chronic infection, <laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> that actually, and you know, the, as a gynecologist, what would we do if someone said that they thought they had a yeast infection? We do a wet mount and look for yeast or candida in the vagina. But I always like to say to people that if you have chronic candida, it might not be on, I say it lives in your gut and it goes on vacation in your vagina. So, right. You know, if you get chronic candida infections, that means you've got a reservoir in your gut of where it's really living that's chronic. So that's what you gotta look at. Alright, so that's the T and then the I and tiger. And then how, what do we get with the G?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (21:42):

Yeah, the gut is really critical. And the microbiome refers to all of the 40 trillion bacteria in the gut that have a really big effect on every organ system in the body. Pretty much if you name a, a part of the body, it's affected by the gut and the hormones are, are no exceptions. So I'll just pick three to focus on in terms of hormones and good gut. So first is the thyroid. So the very important gland that regulates your metabolism energy and so forth. And one of the key ways that the thyroid hormone in the body works is there's a conversion that needs to occur from what's called T four to T three, basically some of the, the active hormones. And about a quarter of that conversion happens in the gut microbiome. So if you're not having a good balance of bacteria, then your production of the active thyroid hormone is really gonna be limited.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (22:35):

And that's a, that's gonna affect energy and weight and all of these things. So that is number one, the thyroid. Number two is melatonin. So we know this is important for sleep. And melatonin is produced from one of the precursors called serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter or a signaling compound. And actually about 80% of the body's serotonin is made in the gut, which then gets processed, you know, into melatonin and so forth. So all of these neurotransmitters which affect the brain, a lot of them are made in the gut. And that's what we call the gut brain axis. And then finally, I'll mention estrogen because there's a huge role of the gut bacteria, what's called the estrobolome, which are the bacteria that process and metabolize estrogens. And one of the key things, it's a little bit technical, but just bear with me here. It's called beta glucuronidase.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (23:30):

So this is an enzyme that your gut bacteria have. And with, you know, with estrogen, it has to be just the optimal level, not too much or not too little. And the body has a system called estrogen recycling to kind of regulate that, which goes through the gut. And the beta glucuronidase, which is in certain bacteria, actually disrupts that. So the beta glucuronidase is an enzyme that de conjugates estrogen that is in the gut that's marked for excretion, you know, supposed to be flushed out of the body through the, the poop, and it allows it to be reabsorbed into the circulation. And then you can get, you know, estrogen dominance or too much estrogen. And that balance of recycling estrogen is disrupted by the gut bacteria. So again, if you have the, you know, imbalance of gut bacteria, it's going to be affecting not just estrogen balance, but your thyroid, your, you know, melatonin, you so many, so many things. So I think the gut is really foundational.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (24:30):

Yes. So what do you say to someone listening who says, I don't have a gut problem, and they immediately shut down? Yes. And don't, I'm not gonna listen to this. My gut is like, works like magic. I poop every day. It's quiet. I don't have any symptoms. I don't have a gut problem. So then you say, improve your gut health. And what do you say to that woman who tells you, no, I, I don't need to look at that. I don't have a gut problem.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (24:56):

Yes. And a lot of women I see in my practice are in that category. You know, fortunately they don't have GI symptoms, generally have good gut health and don't really expect to have any GI imbalances. But I always test their microbiome. You know, I always look in there and pretty much most of the time we find imbalances. And, and often, you know, the body is very resilient, so it's able to adapt and overcome a lot of imbalances and, you know, prevent you from feeling bad. But it doesn't mean those imbalances aren't there. And so what I found in my experience, when we start looking, there are imbalances, for example, in the, you know, the bacteria or the beta glucuronidase or some of those things. So that's why it's key, even if you are healthy without GI symptoms, to really focus on trying to boost your gut bacteria and really make sure they're optimal.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (25:48):

So I love how you said that you test everyone, right? And I do too. I say, even if you don't think you have a gut problem, you need a functional stool test, food sensitivity, testing, et cetera. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So can you talk about the importance of testing for hormones, for gut health, for mitochondrial function, for all the things that you think it's important for?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (26:10):

There is a way, like for my patients who cannot afford functional medicine stool testing, there is a way through a regular lab to get an indirect measurement of the microbiome. So I do order this a lot. It's called a stool pH test. And it can be done through any traditional lab, you know, LabCorp quest, any lab in the us. And what a stool pH tells you is that it's an indirect marker of your gut microbiome, because the main determinant of that is your gut bacteria and specifically certain metabolites they produce called the short chain fatty acids. So if they're producing the right compounds, your pH will be really good. And that is a great way to gauge, you know, indirectly how the microbiome is doing. And then all of the things that I talk about in the book, like the prebiotic foods, fermented foods, certain specific types of fiber, all of those things can improve the stool pH.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (27:07):

And then also the stool pH is a key factor for your immune health for reducing infections. You know, for example, candida can only overgrow if your pH is out of balance in the stool, in the gut. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. And same with a lot of bad bacteria. That's one of the ways your body keeps those bad bugs in check is by keeping the pH in a really optimal range. So that's a great way to test. And so I think for pa patients who don't have access to a functional doctor, that is something you can get through a regular lab. It's a standard test.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (27:38):

Okay. Awesome. Love that. And let's go through E and R and then as we do, I would love it if you could just incorporate any examples of patients that you have worked with who maybe were suffering with the E or the R in particular. Yeah. And kind of what their journey was like to healing, but yeah, please proceed.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (27:59):

So of course it is a big topic in terms of eating right and, you know, the diet. And so in general, yeah, I'm recommending a plant forward diet with plenty of, you know, whole foods. And so let me discuss three things which I think are negative in terms of their effect on hormones. Number one being sugar. So, so, you know, we all know that processed white sugar is inflammatory and has a really negative effect on the immune system as well as some of the metabolic hormones. And, you know, yes, occasionally like dark, dark chocolate, an occasional treat I think is fine. But in the long run, trying to cut back on sugar, I think, is really beneficial. So mainly because inflammation is at the root of all of our modern diseases and sugar has been linked to increasing inflammation in the body.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (28:49):

And then second, I think they are processed foods. So a lot of the heavily processed and ultra processed foods that are present in our food supply right now, I think they, a lot of them have ingredients that are known to be disruptive, like preservatives, emulsifiers, artificial flavors or sweeteners. And so I think that's a category as well to, to really be mindful about. And then third, I wanted to mention dairy products because not everyone is sensitive to dairy. I think that it's important to test it out, maybe eliminate it for some time and then reintroduce, see if you notice a change. And so for women who do not have a sensitivity or allergy to dairy, this might be surprising, but from the hormone perspective, it's actually better to have full fat dairy rather than low fat. Because there was actually a study from Harvard where they looked at 18,000 women and their dairy intake pertaining to fertility.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (29:48):

And they found that those women who had more low fat dairy products actually had worsened fertility and were more at risk for infertility. And in that case, also having full fat dairy, like normal un unprocessed dairy was associated with better fertility. And so in that study, they recommended women trying to conceive, you know, not have low fat dairy because it's actually potentially negative. And that goes back to processed foods because, you know, dairy as a whole, food does have that fat and has to go through a lot of processing to make it low fat and, you know, skim milk and all that. So if a woman tolerates dairy, I do recommend going with the whole fat and just in moderation, but avoid the low fat dairy. So yeah, those are just some, some examples. But, you know, there's so much we could talk about in terms of yes, p food, of course. Yeah.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (30:39):

I love that study. I wasn't aware of that. And I would just encourage everyone, fat is your friend, right? All your cells are coated in fat. Your brain is fat. You need fat. And, and a lot of us in the eighties were really trained that fat was our enemy. And fat is not. It's your friend. Sugar is your enemy, but fat is

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (30:57):

Your friend. <Laugh>. Yes, yes. Yep.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (31:00):

And then how about the R in tiger?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (31:02):

Yes. So the R refers to rest, which encompasses sleep, and also managing stress. And stress has so many effects on hormones. So one, one of the main ways is through cortisol, which is one of the stress hormones and chronic stress, like many of us deal with that, you know, very full busy lives. But if it's out of control it causes high levels of cortisol chronically, and that disrupts a number of the other hormones. So that will cause, for example, testosterone to drop. And even women need some testosterone, you know, for normal function also, then it disrupts the thyroid. So then you start seeing thyroid hormone dysregulated, and then chronic stress can also lower estrogen and progesterone levels. So it just is something that affects almost every hormone. And you know, of course stress disrupts blood sugar regulation as well. So insulin is another hormone.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (32:00):

So I think it's very important. Sometimes, you know, my patients, their eyes glaze over when I talk about stress. 'cause We've all heard so much about it. But I, I tell people to think, focus on something you enjoy, whether it be going out in nature or doing some yoga or Pilates or prayer or, you know, it doesn't have to be meditating for an hour every day, but finding something that you enjoy, that you're willing to do regularly is, is the key thing. And there's a lot of different ways to accomplish that. So. Great.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (32:29):

So there we are at the Tiger Protocol, and I would love it if you could share some stories of people you've worked with, maybe the autoimmune diseases, Hashimoto's Lupus Yes. Multiple sclerosis and what their journey has been like through this protocol.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (32:45):

Oh, sure. Yeah. So a case comes to mind of a nurse at our local hospital. She was in her forties and dealing with Hashimoto's and thyroid condition. And a lot of the common symptoms of Hashimoto's are fatigue, weight gain, and hair loss. And then, you know, with autoimmune diseases in general, they do develop slowly. So there's a key window where integrative or preventative strategies can really help. And she was in that case where her thyroid hormone levels like TSH were just going slightly high, but not at a level like greater than 10, where her doctor was gonna put her on medication, but it was abnormal. And so her doctor told her her thyroid levels don't qualify for a medication, so there was nothing he could do. And then he said, you know, your immune system is going to destroy your thyroid, and then at that point, come back and I'll prescribe you the medication.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (33:42):

And, you know, that didn't really sit well with my <laugh>, my patient who was used to being very proactive. So she came to our, you know, integrated medicine clinic, and she didn't want to just wait for her thyroid to fail and then get medication, you know, she wanted to do something more proactive. And in her case, we did some testing. We found that she did have IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, which had not really been addressed. And when we did some stool testing, we found she had this condition called the leaky gut, which is increased intestinal permeability, and that's a key factor in autoimmune diseases. She also had bacterial overgrowth, what we call dysbiosis. And so I put her on a gut healing program with a lot of fermented foods, bone broth, and prebiotic foods, which feed the good bacteria. And then we looked at her hormones.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (34:35):

So commonly, like in thyroid conditions, the adrenal hormones are affected because there's a close link between the thyroid and the adrenal. And so I used certain herbs like ashwagandha, which is a, ashwagandha is a common urban Ayurveda, and used a lot to support the thyroid and adrenal. And then she started noticing some of her symptoms improving, like her fatigue, the hair loss, the IBS, you know, those, it took about, you know, three or four months because integrated medicine worked slowly, but some of those symptoms that were really bothering her had been resolved. And then after working together for about more, you know, six to seven months, we retested those Hashimoto's antibodies, the thyroid antibodies, and found they had come down into normal. So she no longer had Hashimoto's, you know, autoimmune disease. Yeah. So that was one example where, you know, just taking steps to address the root causes can, in some cases reverse the autoimmune disease and at least improve the symptoms. You know, even if it's not possible to cure the condition, people can feel normal and, you know, have a good quality of life.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (35:48):

I, I think it's so important to highlight what you just said and the example you just gave, because people are really given this kind of death sentence by a lot of doctors because, and, and they're just telling their experience and what they've been taught that Hashimoto's, once you have it, you're always gonna have it. It's gonna destroy the thyroid. There's nothing we can do. And it's not, it's just because they don't know what's possible. But every day I see people go from very high Hashimoto's antibodies to no antibodies, right? Every day I see people go from having diabetes type two and go to not having diabetes and having optimal insulin and glucose control. And probably you do too. So I want everyone to hear that diseases can be reversed. And you didn't hear him mention any drugs in there, right. <Laugh>.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (36:45):

Right. So

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (36:46):

Just naturally it can happen. So thank you for that. I, I want to highlight this quote you shared with me that I love, because I think you really exemplify it. And to me, I love helping women get healthy because I want them to feel better. Yes. And function better, but I always say I'm kind of sneaky because I really want them to live their passion in life, whatever that is. Yes. And you really can't live your passion if you don't feel good. So the quote is, there is no greater thing you can do with your life and your work than follow your passions in a way that serves the world. And you, and I'm just wondering, is that a quote from you or somebody who you admire?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (37:29):

No, I had, you know, written it down during my medical school years, you know, when I was dealing with that illness, and I was going through a lot of depression and really despair. So because I was, you know, it was my dream to become a doctor, and here I was to stop my training. And so I really had to seek out inspiration. And I don't remember where I found that quote, but that is in my journal that I've kept for many years. And yeah, that was a key part of how I think now.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (37:56):

I love that. And how does that, what does that look like in your daily life? How does that change what you do? Or how you do what you do? What does that look like?

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (38:06):

Yeah, I think for me, you know, really like teaching is my passion. And I think a lot of medicine, as you know, is really teaching and, you know, sharing with our patients. But I really wanted to do more teaching. So you know, this with my second book, the Tiger Protocol, you know, getting out there, being on podcasts such as this one and, and talking to patients. I also have started doing these group visits, shared medical appointments where I also do a lot of teaching. So that for me is really something I get excited about.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:35):

Yes. And I can't remember if it's the word physician or doctor. One of those words means teacher, and it really is <laugh>.

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (38:44):

Yes, exactly. Doctor, I think. Yeah, yeah,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:46):

Yeah. What we, what we are. And so I love that you are living your passion of teaching and helping others. It's my passion too. So from one person who's passionate about helping people see the truth about their health and learn the truth, and find the path towards health and wholeness and a passionate life to another, I thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I think you've offered such valuable information, and I know inspiration as well to a lot of women who are feeling hopeless, and I know they've learned something that they can implement today. I'm gonna encourage them to check out your book. I know you have a free excerpt, what we're gonna have a link in the show notes to, but tell them all the places they can connect with you online, where can they find you, and what resources you have available

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (39:37):

Through my website, dr Akil .com. And then I am pretty active on some social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, as at Dr. Akil  on all three of those. So,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:50):

Great. Thank you so much for joining me today, Dr. Akil .

Dr. Akil Palanisamy (39:54):

Thank you so much, Dr. Dunston. I enjoyed our conversation today,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:57):

And thank you for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kieran. I know that you have learned something that you can put into effect in your life today. Don't wait to start moving towards greater health and wholeness for yourself. I look forward to hearing about it on social media so that you can start feeling better and then move towards living what you're passionate about in your life. Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next week. Until then, peace, love, and

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (40:29):

Hormones, y'all. Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormones and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

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Kaely McDevitt | Why Minerals Are Vital To Hormonal Prosperity

Welcome to The Hormone Prescription Podcast, the heart-to-heart space where we unravel the tapestry of women's health! 💜 In our latest enlightening episode titled "Why Minerals are Vital to Hormonal Prosperity," we are joined by the incredibly knowledgeable Kaely McDevitt, a Registered Dietitian dedicating her life to the well-being of women.

Key Points Discussed:

• The Mineral-Hormone Connection: Discover how minerals are the unsung heroes in the choir of hormones. 🎼 They conduct the symphony that determines your energy, fertility, and overall hormonal balance.
• Reclaiming Your Energy: Learn about the specific minerals that can turn the tides on fatigue and give you back your zest for life. ✨
• Optimizing Fertility: Kaely shares her expertise on how strategic nutrition can support reproductive health and make the dream of parenthood achievable for many. 👶
• Conquering Hormone Symptoms: Find out which key players in your diet can help you take control of hormone-related symptoms from PMS to menopause. 🛑
• Personalized Nutrition Strategies: Take a deep dove into the world of tailored nutrition and how personalization leads to health transformation.
• Building Health with Connection: Kaely emphasizes the importance of connecting with self, nature, and community on the road to hormonal health. 🌿

About Kaely McDevitt:

Kaely McDevitt is not just any dietitian; she's a trailblazer in the realm of women's health, armed with a passion for natural wellness and a deep understanding that there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to health. 🌱 Through her virtual practice, she and her team have cultivated an oasis where women can find answers, hope, and a path to reclaim their energy and vitality.

Why You Shouldn't Miss This Episode:

Take command of your hormonal health by tuning into this episode. Whether you're someone battling with hormonal imbalances, searching for fertility support, or simply thirsty for knowledge on women's health nutrition, this conversation with Kaely will be a beacon of insight and inspiration. 🌟

Step into a world where minerals and hormones dance in harmony, where personalized nutrition is the key to unlocking the mysteries of your body, and where healing comes with an empowering sense of community. This isn't just about health; it's about thriving in every sense of the word!

Listen Now!

Find your sweet spot in the world of health and hormones by listening to this must-hear conversation with Kaely McDevitt. Tap into the wisdom, comfort, and practical guidance that will propel you towards hormonal prosperity.

Pour a cup of tea, find a cozy corner, and hit play! 🎧 Listen now and infuse your life with the balance and vitality it deserves.

Sharing is caring! If this episode sparked a light in you, spread the love by sharing it with your friends, family, and community — because every woman deserves to sing a hormonal harmony. 🗣️💕

 

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings. Elizabeth Gilbert, stay tuned as Kaely McDevitt tells you why minerals are vital to hormonal prosperity and the manifestation of your own blessing.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:18):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an OB GYN I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:11):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive in with Kaely McDevitt, who's a registered dietician into minerals. And I know there's the alphabet soup nutrients and it can be hard to keep track of them. And you're like ki Now you're gonna get into the real nitty gritty. Yep. We're gonna get into the nitty gritty, but she's gonna make it super simple because is hormonal balance and hormonal prosperity necessary? Absolutely. But if you don't have the right co-factors for those hormones to be able to get into the cell first, to get to the cell, then to get into the cell, then to be used by the cell, then it's kind of pointless to try to get to hormonal prosperity. So you've got to address your mineral repletion. There are some essential ones that you need to really pay attention to and why.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:14):

We're gonna talk about why it's best to get from your food and supplements, which ones are most important, first, second, and next. Where are the pitfalls when it comes to balancing and repleting your minerals? And we're gonna talk about this amazing quote from one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gilbert and one from Fitch, not Han, that will help you in your life. Kaely's gonna share part of her journey from poor health to vitality and really serving and her purpose in this lifetime because isn't that what we all want after all? Yeah, I know you want that. You sure do and you deserve it. So I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. So Kaely is a registered dietician, as I said, specializing in nutrition for women's health. And she owns a virtual private practice where she and her team help their clients reclaim their energy, optimize fertility and overcome hormone symptoms through personalize nutrition. Having experienced the pitfalls of a conventional approach to women's health firsthand. I know a lot of you can relate, I can relate. Can relate. Kaely is passionate about empowering women to build health from a place of connection to self, to nature and to community. Please help me welcome Kaely to the show.

Kaely McDevitt (03:30):

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:31):

I love talking about nutrition because as a traditionally trained mainstream doctor, originally I got no education in nutrition. And even though I'm now fellowship trained in anti-aging, metabolic functional medicine, I find that nothing replaces the depth with which a nutritionist or dietician can go into each specific nutrient, can go into the foods and where you find that and really has a depth and breadth of knowledge that I probably will never have in my lifetime. So thank you for being here and sharing that with our audience.

Kaely McDevitt (04:09):

Yeah, my pleasure. <Laugh>.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (04:11):

So when it comes to a woman's health, right, so from Menarchy when she first gets her period to motherhood when she's pregnant to perimenopause, usually by 35 40, the menopause average age of 51, there are a lot of hormonal transitions that women go through. We talk a lot on the podcast about that. So I think women are pretty familiar with what's happening at these different stages as they go into hormonal poverty, as I call it. Hmm. But we don't talk a lot about how minerals are changing and how they might be the key to any transition. So I'm wondering if you can start just by sharing with everyone from your perspective, 'cause you have a unique RD perspective. Is that something that you were taught in your training about these changes through the transitions for women's health or is that something you came to a realization about on your own in practice? How did this arise for you?

Kaely McDevitt (05:14):

Yeah, it came about on my own kind of out of personal necessity. And I think, you know, your personal story to the work you do now is, is pretty similar to mine in that I finished about seven years of higher education in the health space and didn't feel like I really learned anything about women's health in in particular and how hormones work, how they operate, how they impact things like metabolism and nutrient utilization. And you know, I initially went into this field thinking I would work in sports nutrition and as luck would have it, I was dealing with a whole bunch of hormone health symptoms while I was in school getting my credentials. And so I was spending all my free time trying to learn this women's health stuff that really wasn't part of our curriculum. So you know, at the end of all the schooling, I had an RD behind my name but really felt horrible health-wise.

Kaely McDevitt (06:01):

And I was like avidly applying <laugh>, the nutrition stuff I was learning. So I would say the realization for how we need to customize nutrition for women specifically and how that might change over different seasons of life really came after and it was personal necessity. First it was like creating this life raft to get myself out of hormone chaos. And then when I got there I looked around and was like, huh, I think a lot of other women are hungry for this kind of info and they don't want this like one size fits all recommendation for things. And so once you start digging into that and working with clients to kind of across the lifespan, you start to see some pretty clear patterns of things that get depleted at different times and how we might make for smoother life transitions.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (06:42):

Yes, personal necessity is really I think the driver of everything important that we accomplished in life, right? Pain becomes our purpose. So I love that you're really focusing on nutrition around hormones and helping women with it. 'cause What you put, you are really what you put in your mouth. And I know we say that all the time, you are what you eat, but I think we don't really get it. And I, I've seen this meme on the internet where it's a person that's literally made out of food <laugh>, right? So their shoulders broccoli and their right eye is cauliflower and their left eye is pork and you know, <laugh> and so when you look in the mirror and you see your flesh and bones and skin really think about it's that it's, it's what you ate for dinner last night. It's what you ate for breakfast this morning or didn't eat I should say. So how would a woman know she is, you know, we generally talk to women who are over 40, so they're possibly in the perimenopause transition, maybe they're having PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, maybe fibroids, endometriosis, some of these estrogen dominant conditions. How should she suspect that she might have a mineral imbalance? What would you say to her?

Kaely McDevitt (07:56):

Yeah, so I think minerals don't get the airtime that they deserve. I feel like we talk about vitamins a lot more and that was definitely the avenue of investigation I was interested in. First minerals kind of came around after the fact when we were trying to figure out why the heck certain clients weren't getting better as fast as others. And so minerals like kind of in as simplistic of a term as possible, they're really just enzyme co-factors in the body, meaning that they kick off reactions. And so these reactions can be things like producing energy or a TP in the cells. So our metabolism and energy production, it could be part of making healthy red blood cells so we can carry oxygen around. They are how we get nutrients and hormones into the cell. So actually the way your hormones interact with their target tissue is dependent on enough minerals being there at the cellular level, they're necessary for digestion and absorption.

Kaely McDevitt (08:46):

And so really the point that I'm making is minerals impact everything and if we are deficient or imbalanced in minerals, some of the classic symptoms would be fatigue, brain fog, kinda your list of hypothyroid, constellation symptoms that might be cold, hands and feet, brittle hair and nails or maybe some hair fall slow wound healing, a lot of digestive complaints secondary to not making enough digestive juices. So things like bloating, food, kind of sitting on comfortably constipation or just sluggish transit. And we typically see women peeing all the time when they're minerally deficient because we don't have the minerals to actually hold hydration in the cells. So you might feel like you're drinking water constantly and just peeing constantly or maybe waking in the night to pee. So those would be a couple of the first clues that we'd be looking at. Right.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (09:32):

So many of the symptoms that we experienced, but I love how you explain that really minerals are the co-factors that make everything else work. So we might be looking at your hormones, looking at your vitamins, looking at your fats, looking at your macronutrients, but we might not be looking at your minerals. I know this was really brought to my attention by an acupuncturist I worked with years ago and she had me take some liquid mins, trace minerals and all kinds of other minerals and really we started looking at it and I saw how much better everything else worked. That was my real life experience. Let's kind of talk about what are the biggest nutrients that women are deficient in that they might want to look at?

Kaely McDevitt (10:15):

Yeah, so we do a lot of mineral testing on our clients. It's actually the only test we automatically do for everybody because for all the reasons we've discussed, minerals impact everything. It's kind of like our grassroots approach for getting things to work really well. And a common pattern that we see, especially women in their forties, maybe getting into that perimenopause territory, is depletion in our foundational minerals. And so foundational minerals would be calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium depending on who you're learning to interpret mineral testing from. Those can be considered foundational or kind of tier one minerals because they dictate really what happens with the rest of our trace minerals. So they influence the state of the nervous system and our buffering capacity with stress, they influence thyroid uptake at the cellular level. They influence digestion in our adrenal health too. And so if we think about what is happening in life in our forties and fifties and we've had decades probably of a lot of stress, we've had decades probably of some pretty poor nutrition advice.

Kaely McDevitt (11:18):

I think most of us grew up with a lot of like be skinny at all costs, 1200 calorie diets on all the tabloids at the grocery store, checkouts maybe we've been through a couple of pregnancies, maybe we've breastfed babies and there's just so much mineral loss that happens from all of those different types of stressors that if we haven't been intentional about it, we're gonna hit that point of those things being really depleted. And that's the most common pattern we see in that season of life is just very low minerals versus them being really imbalanced, which is a different flavor of of mineral issue.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (11:51):

Okay. And I know people are gonna, I in and ask us what tests <laugh>, what tests yeah. Are available to check minerals, maybe the one you do, maybe there are others. What would, what are the TE names of the test?

Kaely McDevitt (12:01):

Yeah, so we run an HTMA, which stands for hair tissue mineral analysis. So it's actually a hair sample that's looking at mineral status because hair is telling us what's happening in the tissue level and it's giving us about a three month picture of mineral status. Whereas blood work to look at things like sodium, potassium is telling us what's in transit and it is going to be transiently impacted by things like hydration food or supplement intake. So we just get a longer term picture from a hair sample and there are many different labs in the US that run HTMA tests. We use trace elements specifically, but there are several that do it.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (12:39):

So my question would be, for instance, when we look at heavy metal levels in people, there are many different tests. You can get a blood test, you can get a urine test, you can get a stool test. So urine and stool to look at how much is is excreted blood, how much is in the blood. And you can get a hair test, which some professionals like because they say it's a three month excretion average. But the problem is that heavy metals are not floating around in your circulation. So a blood test is pretty inaccurate and because they're not floating around in your circulation, they're not being excreted through your stool or your urine readily nor are they being secreted in your hair. And so really you have to do these provocation tests where you give them medicine to bring them out. So how accurate is hair analysis when it comes to looking at kind of the steady state mineral levels that are in your systems and in your cells on a day-to-day basis?

Kaely McDevitt (13:36):

Yeah, I think it's a really great tool for assessing mineral status, but the testing procedures of the lab really matter. So this was one of the more recent tests that we decided to bring on the practice a couple of years ago because I kind of had a bad taste in my mouth about HTMA testing, validity and accuracy. I think I read some studies back when I was in school that kept this perception there. And so what was important to me is that we found a lab that used mass spectroscopy, which is the gold standard for assessing mineral analysis. It's also what the EPA uses to look at like heavy metal toxicity from a chemical spill in an area. So it's their gold standard test method for it. And then I also wanted to find a lab that did not wash the hair sample before they process it because that could influence and skew the results.

Kaely McDevitt (14:21):

So we found that in trace elements, they do a ton of, I forget the term of this for like their quality assurance, but they'll take, oh, a split sample report to make sure that their test is accurate and we're getting the same result for the same person run at the same time. And they do a lot of kinda independent measures for quality assurance, but all tests have their limits. No test is gospel is what we talk about with our clients. It's a tool, it's a guide, it's a way to learn more about you and your physiology. But with things like minerals and with metals, we often find that when we do a retest four to months later, things have shifted quite a bit because minerals are defense against heavy metal accumulation. So as we start to restore mineral status, we start to shift, we almost provoke metal movement. So we'll often see more heavy metals in the hair on a retest because we started to move their foundational mineral status. So I think it's been an extremely reliable and valuable tool in practice. But it's always important with lab testing to keep in mind that this isn't the only story. We have to use this in context with you, your symptoms, your life past data that we have. And we typically can't just run something once and call it a day.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (15:29):

Yeah, I think helping people to understand the limits, the value and the limits of lab testing and each lab test has its own value and limits. And because we are living systems in a living in environment that's constantly changing, we are constantly changing internally. Our external environment is constantly changing. It's not like setting the thermostat in your house, heat at this temperature, cool at this temperature and set it and forget it. And that's why I always say repeat testing is necessary. Looking at your story as you said, your symptomatology, what's going on, where have you been, where have you been traveling? Yeah, what's your diet been like? What's your stress level like? Just all of the different inputs. So you start at, start with testing. So calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, foundational or tier one minerals you might look at first and then mm-Hmm <affirmative>. What are some, I mean I know magnesium is huge for women, you know it's used in what, over 450 processes. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about these individually?

Kaely McDevitt (16:36):

Sure, yeah I think, I think magnesium gets good attention now, which is awesome because it does so much for us. I'm very rarely recommending something to like the general population at large, but magnesium is one of the few things I would feel really comfortable doing. So because most of us are deficient, whether it's from the stressors and life seasons that we discussed or the fact that it's really hard to get enough minerals from food today thanks to the fact that the soil mineral content is so depleted versus even 50 or a hundred years ago. So sodium and potassium are really good starting points, especially if you resonated with that kind of low energy, almost hypothyroid picture of symptoms because sodium and potassium are our more energizing foundational minerals. These keep things in solution. These help get hormones and other nutrients into the cell. They help us make digestive juices.

Kaely McDevitt (17:27):

So when we think about sodium, which I think if I had told my like young dietician student self that one day I'd be recommending more salt to my clients, I would've never believed it. But I, we really, really need a good quality nutrient rich salt in our diet to function optimally. And I know we're coming off of a couple decades of being really salt fearing, but there's a big difference between very refined processed table salt and unrefined mineral rich. And the difference is that it hasn't been stripped of additional trace minerals and I think it's probably not new to your audience that things exist in nature typically in the form that they belong in the body. Meaning we don't just find an isolated sodium molecule somewhere. We find sodium with the abundant trace minerals in actual salt. So actually just adding like a pinch of a good mineral rich salt to water first thing in the morning or making sure we salt our meals can make a big difference with digestion and energy levels.

Kaely McDevitt (18:25):

I know for me that was a pretty quick win that I felt personally and we see that play out with our clients. Potassium is another one again that's commonly very low and especially if you resonate with the hypothyroid stuff, potassium is actually how we get that active T three into the cells. And if we came from the low carb kind of fruit and potato fearing diet dogma, then we probably haven't been getting a lot of potassium because fruits root vegetables, those would be our biggest potassium powerhouses in our diet. So we'd be looking for ways to bring those in with each meal. You can of course use mineral and electrolyte powders to accomplish this too. But again, those like whole food forms are gonna come with a bunch of things that science hasn't even yet. Understood. Calcium is very good. Yeah. Oh go ahead. Well

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (19:10):

I wanna, before you go on to calcium, I just wanna mention with the the sodium and potassium. You know, it was interesting, I just am back from traveling kind of to 13 different or 14 different countries in the past year and a half and it's, it's amazing in some of the countries I was in in Africa, middle East, they in commercially prepared foods, they don't put any salt because they really have taken the salt as the villain dogma to the N degree. So they're like, it's a public health problem. We're not putting salt in restaurant food. A lot of places limit the amount of salt that's put in the food. And it's so interesting because yeah we need, we so need the salt. And so I had a lot of conversations with people about yes, maybe stricted salts, sodium chloride is not great but that sea salt, that pink chimay and sea salt with all the rich nutrients, right? It's got color in it which tells you and usually the colors very vary. So right there that tells you different colors, different minerals is so vital for your health and at any functional medicine conference you'll see all the doctors like fighting over the salt shake <laugh>.

Kaely McDevitt (20:24):

Yeah, it's true. So they bring those tiny ones in their purses sometimes <laugh>,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (20:29):

Yes. Right, because we know, you know, you got to have the peak salt and lots of it. So anyway, I just wanted to to add that that's it for everyone but go ahead with calcium.

Kaely McDevitt (20:39):

Yeah, I'm glad you added that. The salt, the salt thing just needs to get out for sure. But the cool thing about minerals in particular is that you can do a lot of experimentation with this easily with things that are in your house and feel the difference in your body in a pretty short period of time. Which is why it became so fun to focus on minerals because in the world of hormone health, as you know, things typically don't resolve overnight. We usually need like 90 days of an intervention before we have huge shifts in in cycle related symptoms. But minerals you can feel that change pretty quickly. So if you're listening and you're curious, I would just dabble a little bit in what we're talking about and note how that feels. So we hit sodium and potassium calcium. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I think gets a decent amount of airtime just primarily about like bone health, especially for women.

Kaely McDevitt (21:27):

But it does a couple other cool things for us too. So it is very calming to the nervous system. So when we lack calcium we tend to hang out in that sympathetic fight or flight state more often and struggle to get out of it. So that might feel like poor sleep racing thoughts or minds just feeling really amped up and kind of anxious and that state further depletes minerals. So calcium is one of the ways we break that cycle and actually create some flexibility in the nervous system to go back to that parasympathetic or rest and digest state. So much like sodium, I love calcium from food forms the best more than a calcium supplement. 'cause Again we've got co-factors that we don't even yet fully understand and probably never will in science that really help with the way that we move and use calcium in the body.

Kaely McDevitt (22:13):

That it goes where it belongs in the bones and teeth and stays out of things like circulation and soft tissue. And then magnesium is the other piece of that kind of soothing mineral puzzle. So we've got sodium and potassium being more energizing calcium and magnesium being more soothing and calming to the nervous system like you already mentioned. I mean magnesium's involved in literally hundreds of reactions in the body. We actually can't even recognize an A TP molecule without magnesium attached to it. So the energy conundrum is a big magnesium situation. Most cycle related symptoms improve with some supportive magnesium. So I'd be thinking about potentially a magnesium supplement because as much as I love food as our first line of defense, it's really difficult to get a therapeutic dose of magnesium through the diet. We could do Epsom salt baths if you don't have time for a full bath, you can do an Epsom salt foot soak, which is like a nice hack I like to do in a busy workday and still absorb that transdermally. There are a lot of topical magnesium sprays and lotions that you can leverage too. I think this is the mineral that when we're on vacation, especially if you're in the ocean and you just like feel so good and you sleep like a baby, it's probably 'cause of that

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (23:21):

<Laugh>, yes sunshine, sand, you know, the ionized air and the salt in the water, it's the best. So you know, this is where I think people get a little intimidated by minerals because one, there are so many two, there's so many forms of each different type three, how do there now people are wondering, well how do I get this Kaely, how much do I need and how much, how do I get it into my body? Right? A lot of us want the convenience of prepared foods we don't wanna cook. I was amazed particularly in Dubai and the UAE and in England, how the proportion of prepared foods in the grocery store compared to America where it's more you have to put it together and cook. I was astounded in London, it was, I'd say three quarters of supermarket was all already prepared foods and similar in Dubai. So there's the idea of convenience. So I know that's a lot of topics I'm throwing at you, but there are several different types. Let's take magnesium for instance. So you said mentioned take a supplement, magnesium citrate, magnesium chiate, magnesium malate, magnesium three innate, you know, how do people even begin to know what to do

Kaely McDevitt (24:40):

Here? I know, I really empathize with this. There's just, there are too many options for things <laugh> these days, which is a blessing and a curse and we get kind of stuck in the middle In my experience best tolerance and absorption and price has come from magnesium glycinate really well absorbed, generally well tolerated, does not have the bowel loosening impact that like a magnesium oxide or citrate would have because it is better absorbed. Three and eight is another good form as well that I think is generally well tolerated. It tends to be a little bit more expensive than glycinate and I'm a big fan of like the lowest effective dose of things. I don't need to get the creme de la creme if the second step down does the same work for me. So I think that's a pretty good one to start with to trial that I find most people tolerate well if you are totally brand new to minerals, you've never taken a magnesium supplement before, then I would actually even start more simply than that and do like an Epsom salt bath or foot soak or a topical spray or lotion because we're getting to bypass the digestive tract when we do a skin transdermal delivery of magnesium so we can avoid any potential bowel disturbances.

Kaely McDevitt (25:47):

It tends to be a little bit more gentle than a supplemental form. And I would also say too that everything works best in tandem. So I wouldn't get hyper-focused on just magnesium. I would also be bringing in, you know, a little good pinch of salt in your day and your water on your food. And then just keeping in mind those potassium rich foods. And this is the main reason why we like to start with those foundational minerals, those first four before we get any further on in somebody's report because it does get so overwhelming so quickly. And if we can hone in on those first four, everything else tends to fall into place. It becomes much easier to address some of those secondary and tertiary minerals. But we always start with those first four for about a month first get some, you know, good momentum going, some quick wins in terms of symptom changes and then we can get more complex from there.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (26:35):

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And as you were speaking when I was traveling one store I went to for Epsom salts also had pink Himalayan salt in a big bag for a bath soak and they had did sea salt and so I got one bag of each including the Epsom salts and I really tried to notice what was the difference I felt after taking a bath with each of these and by far I felt the best with the pink Himalayan salt and I think it's because of all these, the panel of contents of minerals, the panel of of minerals that were in there. Totally. And then where would you go next from the foundational minerals?

Kaely McDevitt (27:14):

Yeah, so I would spend about a month kind of playing around with that, bringing some of those foods into your diet, noticing how you feel. And then when we look at HTMA testing some of the next kind of orders of operation I guess if we're using a math term for what we would address next. We love to look at what's happening with copper and its relationship with iron and zinc, particularly for women. So copper is a really big deal for the way that we handle and move iron around the body. That's a goldilock situation as most things are. We want enough but not too much. We want enough so we can make really healthy red blood cells that carry oxygen well. And copper's also big for our connective tissue so our collagen cross linking and so healthy skin, hair and nails And then if you've been pregnant or had babies, we pass a lot of copper on to babies during the third trimester.

Kaely McDevitt (28:04):

It's big for developing new vasculature and healthy connective tissue for baby as well. So we do see abnormalities in copper quite a bit in women to add a layer of complication to that. Things like birth control, particularly copper IUDs can start to skew that copper balance with zinc and iron. So we would look at that next mm-Hmm <affirmative> and that varies so much from person to person. I'm not seeing like a flat, everybody in this season of life is deficient or everybody in this season of life has excessive amounts. But we would be looking at that and workshopping that accordingly. Meaning we'd look at the diet to make sure that there were good copper and zinc rich food sources. We'd make sure that we had enough co-factors to help the way that we balance and move things like copper and iron. So things like vitamin C and vitamin A come into play with that conversation and then just making sure that they can move and access iron well and that it's not being stored in tissues. Those would be our next three that we'd look at.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (28:59):

Right. And I do just wanna reiterate the copper and iron are both kind of these Goldilocks minerals. You do not want too much. So if you're kind of, oh, if it's good for me more is better. Do not do that with your iron and your copper <laugh> because you can totally overload yourself. And then these are heavy metal, they become heavy metal toxic in your body and I've seen that with both of these minerals. So don't do that. So test, I'm always like test don't guess. Yes, test don't guess. Yeah. Amen. And so amen. It's true here, right?

Kaely McDevitt (29:35):

Amen. Yeah, especially with those. Yeah. Which is why I don't like to give out any recommendations related to copper and iron for someone to try. 'cause I just don't know enough about you or what your testing results look like or history to make a safe recommendation there. But that would be the next area of investigation for sure.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (29:50):

Right. And what you will see is that a lot of the over counter, you can buy copper and iron separately, but a lot of the multi women's vitamins that are over the counter will not include iron and copper specifically because of the potential to over overlap load for nutritional supplements tend to be a very litigious area so they just steer clear of it. But this is where some of the higher level prescriber prescribed are available nutraceuticals that you can only get through a healthcare practitioner have versions. Usually for women they'll have a multivitamin mineral with copper and without copper with iron, without iron because they're assuming that you're getting tested in, you're being appropriately followed and counseled. That's how delicate it is with these. And what are your thoughts about, you mentioned earlier you prefer people to get these minerals from their diet, from food dietary sources rather than supplements. Can you explain why that is and how successful people should expect to be with manipulation of their diet? To increase their mineral status? Yeah. Versus taking supplements. Mm-Hmm.

Kaely McDevitt (31:03):

<Affirmative>. Yeah, it's tough like we talked about with the way that the soil and therefore our food supply is different in terms of nutritional value today it takes a very concerted effort to do this through the diet and I've yet to be able to be completely void of, of supplementation to really accomplish this. But I do think it's important that we start with food because food is brilliantly designed by nature to have minerals and vitamins in ratios that really support utilization and absorption. So for example, with our kind of like copper conversation, the relationship between copper and zinc is a really important one in the body. And foods that have copper always come with a little bit of zinc and vice versa. So we've got good checks and balances in place with food where we're not likely to overdo something. And we have a whole bunch of non-identified by science factors in whole foods that I think really benefit the whole human being.

Kaely McDevitt (31:56):

A lot of our antioxidants and polyphenols and things that are not nutritive but do influence the health of the of the host. So I think looking at, again, bringing in some good fresh fruits and vegetables as mineral rich powerhouses, good broths, whether it's a bone broth or a vegetable broth is a great mineral rich food to bring in those good quality unrefined salts are great to bring in quality dairy if you to tolerate that for some of the calcium, those things would be great foundational elements to build that diet. And then we can supplement beyond there if there are gaps to fill based on your testing, your stressors, your story. But I think we're remiss if we wanna take, you know, three handfuls of capsules every morning and then not have to care about the food that we eat. It just doesn't play out the same <laugh>.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (32:44):

Yeah. And you know there's something that food has that by the time they crunch down these nutrients into a vitamin capsule for you that's the prana or the chi, the life force in the plant. And like you mentioned earlier, everything exists in nature in a form with a life force that's meant to nourish us. So what are we doing if we're only taking supplements and we're only, we're not eating food. So just to learn story. So someone who I respect very much in the business world who I was working with and he had a bit of a weight problem and I hadn't seen him for a while and then all of a sudden I saw him and he's telling me that he's gone to this diet that he, and he's looking great, right? Really tram lowered his body fat, muscular. So I asked him, what are you doing? He said, oh I changed my diet. So he's using making protein powder pancakes in the morning and having like, you know, artificial sweetener syrup for breakfast and he's basically not eating real food all day long but he's cutting his calories and he's like, I feel great. And inside I'm like, that's not gonna last for an hour. <Laugh>. No this is not getting that. So talk, talk about those intangibles and food and real food that are so important.

Kaely McDevitt (34:02):

Yeah, I think there's so much more to nourishment than just like the actual food and the composition of it. Like carbs, proteins and fats. We get real focused on the composition of food in the weight loss space and miss the nourishment that comes from eating something that you enjoy that you took time to prepare, that you put love and intention into as you prepared it. Or maybe put love and intention or gratitude into it right before you consumed it. Maybe this is a family recipe, this is something that's culturally relevant to you. There's so much more nourishment we get from that than something that's been packaged, processed, manipulated, and is so far removed from that initial version of the food. A good example of that would be like a whole apple being as close to it as it exists in nature as possible versus apple sauce, apple flavored candy, you know, at the far end where we've gotten really far removed.

Kaely McDevitt (34:55):

So we just get more nutrition on the closer to the natural form as possible. And when we contrast that with really processed foods, which they normally have to go back in and add some nutrients to make it comparable, the form is different. So we have synthetic lab produced vitamins and minerals in fortified foods and a lot of supplements. There are some great supplements out there that are not synthetic forms, which would be a helpful thing to look at. But what exists in nature is the form that your body is most easily recognizing, most easily absorbing and using. So there's a big difference between like the vitamin C that you get from eating a whole orange or grapefruit than the like refined ascorbic acid you might get in a vitamin C drop very different functions and they come with, you know, that full spectrum of polyphenols and antioxidants in the food form versus that kind of refined extracted supplement.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (35:45):

Right. Thank you so much for, for sharing that. So copper, iron, zinc, co-factors, vitamin C, vitamin A, what would we work on next?

Kaely McDevitt (35:56):

Yeah, so there's a mineral that's kind of further down our chart called boron that does not ever really get talked about. It's not like this fun sexy nutrient that you're gonna see a lot of posts about, but boron <laugh> really helps with the way that we retain potassium and magnesium. So potassium and magnesium are supposed to mostly be inside the cell and they dip outside of the cell during seasons of stress. So that's one of the first cellular changes when we see stress hormones enter the system is magnesium and potassium leave the cell. That's why we can sometimes see them actually shoot up on a hair test if we catch this acute stress picture. But anywho, boron helps with the retention of potassium and magnesium, which is a big way to bolster our tolerance or resilience to stress. We talk a lot about stress and burnout with our clients and I know that in and of itself can become overwhelming because we can't like quit our jobs, leave our families and typically can't just take a sabbatical tomorrow if we need it.

Kaely McDevitt (36:56):

And so the goal is not this stress-free life where we have just a whole day of meditation and yoga unless of course that's an option for you, which is amazing. But our goal is to build that resilience and retaining our potassium and magnesium is a big part of that and boron is a piece of that puzzle. It does have some function with the iron copper balance too and even the way that we make sure that calcium stays in the bones and teeth. So it is a kinda an unsung hero in the mineral world that we definitely look at with our clients on testing and can provide support if needed. A couple easy ways to provide some boron support if you wanna go food, we're actually looking at prunes and prune juice being a good boron source. Yay. Which is funny. <Laugh> easy, right? If we wanna supplement form that can come from you know, drops or capsules.

Kaely McDevitt (37:42):

It's usually just like a plain boron supplement or like you mentioned a trace minerals dropper. A lot of the trace mineral formulations that are out there have boron in the mix because it is the full constellation of macro minerals and trace minerals. So there's easy ways to do that. Then a lot of the like mineral baths, so we talked about Epsom salts, we talked about Himalayan pink salt being in the bath. You can even put like food grade borax that we would use as like a cleaning aid into a bath and actually get boron from that absorbed through the skin. So there's a couple of different options for some boron support

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:17):

Now I have never heard that. What food grade Bax. MM-Hmm <affirmative> and put it in your bath. Where do you even get that

Kaely McDevitt (38:25):

On Amazon? So it's usually a cleaning supply, right? It's what people add to their laundry to <laugh> boost the effectiveness of their detergent. But you can absorb that in a bath. And so we've experimented with this a lot because we do so much HTMA testing with our clients and we've had some clients that really struggle to move the needle with the potassium and magnesium stuff. We'll do retest and it's just not budging. And so we started bringing in where we sprinkle in a little bit of borax in a foot bath or as part of like their bigger mineral detox full bath and they sleep amazing that night and then their mineral retest actually look better. So it has stuck with me it as like a very low cost mineral added <laugh>.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:03):

I'm gonna have to try that and I will get back to you on what <laugh> please do. <Laugh>. I never heard of that. That's amazing. Yeah, there are many, many minerals we can't possibly go through all of them during this this show and teach you about all of them. You all obviously hear that Kaelyn knows what she's talking about. I love that you test and don't guess I, I'm such an advocate for that with everything. But I do wanna touch on, you talked a little bit about burnout and it's the beginning of the year. A lot of people are like, oh my gosh, January of a new year I didn't do all the things I wanted to do last year and now I have new things I wanna do and how am I possibly gonna get them done? Especially because my hormones are out of whack.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:47):

I don't feel good, I don't have good energy. You shared this quote with me before we started recording from some bylaw of Elizabeth Gilbert that is you have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings. Which that's, I I love so many quotes of her. She just has a beautiful facility with crafting <laugh> sentences and paragraphs and storytelling stories and I think that this speaks to kind of the the burnout issue. So can you talk a little bit about, I know it's a lot I'm asking you to do, but this quote and how it relates to burnout and where we are kind of at a new year, 2024 and there's a lot going on on this planet, right? There's, I think I heard in one news story and you may not hear about this every day, there are a hundred wars going on on our planet right now and we're in this kind of insanity where we're overwrought with technology and now here comes AI and you guys listen and you know, you know the stressors that you've got. I'm not gonna stress you out by listing them <laugh>, but where does a woman even begin and how does she begin to deal with her transitions and prevent or reverse her burnout and manifest her own blessings? Yeah,

Kaely McDevitt (41:07):

I'm glad you brought this up because I think this is like, this is the root I think of most hormone health issues is this like chronic state of stress and then on the other end of that being burnout. And it's tough because we're living in a time where we have access to limitless information and exposure to everything that's happening around the world. And we also have like pretty extreme pressures on our personal and professional lives and maybe there's families in the mix with that too. There's just a lot on the plate and I think we also tend to get almost addicted to the way stress hormones feel in the system. It starts to become a bit of our personality and I'm like fully calling myself out a few years ago with this, but we love the feeling of being that like yes person, we just say yes, we take it all on.

Kaely McDevitt (41:53):

We are the one that shows up for everybody we do the most and our own cup is left on the back burner and it's very, very empty. So a way that we like to talk about this with our clients and I think what ties us back to that quote is you have to decide for yourself what that vision of your life looks like. And in order to let go of the stress and burnout picture, there's often a like renewing your identity or letting go of things that don't fit anymore. So what I mean by that is if we want to not live in this burnout state, we have to figure out who we are. If we're not the person that says yes to everybody and no to ourselves, who are we in that room? If we're not the people pleaser that derives our worth from what we do for others only And that's a pretty uncomfortable piece of work.

Kaely McDevitt (42:37):

But I think it's the only way out of this because like she said in that quote, you know you have to relentlessly participate in creating that vision for your manifestation. So what do you want life to look like? How do you wanna feel in your body? How do you wanna show up in the room? And I don't think we have enough examples of women that are really grounded in who they are that aren't burning the candles at both ends that know their worth comes from who they are, not just what they do. And I think if more of us awake to that vision and really resonate with that being the image, we can start to rearrange our life and our priorities and even our personality to support it so that we don't burn through our minerals like a mad woman every single day and have to play catch up so that our sex hormones can actually thrive because we're not in an environment of stress hormones all the time. And so that when we do go through perimenopause and into menopause, it's not such a rocky road because our adrenals aren't just burnt out and in the gutter already. So I think I maybe created more questions than answering any, but I think it's just this big conversation of who am I if I'm not burnt out? Who like who is that person? But

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (43:39):

It's such an important conversation to have because so many women are suffering with hormone problems, they're also suffering with micronutrient deficiencies, whether it's mineral, vitamin, other nutrients and they're running around looking for answers. I just need my estrogen fixed, I just need my magnesium fixed. But like you said at the beginning, this gets to the root. The root is that we're running around trying to live and create our worth by everyone else's expectations being the best. And you know the epidemic of <laugh> busyness, particularly in some of the countries that I visited, it's in the nth degree, it's really at an insane level. And what was so beautiful is is visiting some of the less developed countries where it's more of a simple existence. Connection is way bigger. You would see people walking to work together in groups of women or groups of men and talking, you know, in groups and you know, everybody wasn't on their phone.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (44:43):

Oh my gosh, in every country I've been to that's considered a progressive country. Nobody's looking at each other, nobody's talking. Everyone's got their face in their phone and they're doing, doing, doing. And so I think having these larger questions, which we're gonna be having more of on the podcast this year, I would love to have you on 'cause it sounds like you've grappled with some of this really talking about like this quote you shared from Fitch, not Han, which I love The miracle is to walk on the green earth telling deeply in the present moment, right? Are we doing that <laugh>? And that really gets to, to the crux of the issue. So before we wrap up, do you wanna talk a little bit about how you're, you've changed your life and your way of being in the world to dwell deeply in the present moment?

Kaely McDevitt (45:33):

Sure. And I wanna be clear that this is an ongoing and ever evolving practice. <Laugh>. I don't think you <laugh>, I don't think you just like arrive there and that's, that's the end of the work. But as a business owner and working in like the health field that I know you can relate to, it's really easy to feel like your worth comes from what you give to everyone around you. And that the more you do, the better things get in your life. And I was basically just burning myself out trying to do work that I ultimately love. So I had to reevaluate that because when I do my own tests I was getting called out left and right about things being out of whack because I wasn't living in an alignment with what it takes to have balanced hormones and balanced minerals. So I had to really consider the pace and how I structured my days and create opportunities to really focus on being present and being outside and off of screens and just being instead of focusing on the doing so much.

Kaely McDevitt (46:27):

So having a morning where I don't check my emails or social media for like the first hour of the day. Totally life changing for me because I get to pour into myself before I let my energy go out into the world getting outside. We have chickens, which was a really fun thing for me 'cause I have to go out there in the morning and do stuff with them. So get to be out there. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> seeing the sun and trying to do that in the middle of the workday made a big difference. And I think at the end of the day, one of the like thought processes that changed it so much for me was remembering like you're the main character of your life. Like you gotta make decisions as the main character, not the support role. We're always doing things for other people and for whatever reason I wanted to share that 'cause it really made things click with me where I was not choosing things as like main character of my life. I was letting circumstances kind of steamroll me, but you steer this ship, you create this vision, this manifestation that you're working towards. So what do you want it to look like and how can you own the responsibility for when it doesn't look that way? So mostly just called myself out a lot and <laugh> and continually work on that each day. <Laugh>.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (47:33):

Yeah, I think it is a work in progress for everyone, but I find that as women share more about this and talk about strategies they find things they've done, how they do it and make it work for them, it gives permission for others to do, do things that are off the beaten path and and create their own map to their own sanity. The manifestation of their own blessings, their own ideal health. And so thank you much so much for sharing the path that you're forging and how you're helping other women. I think it's been a great value. And please share with everyone where they can connect with you online.

Kaely McDevitt (48:12):

Sure, yeah, you can find me mostly on Instagram. I don't have the bandwidth for multiple social media platforms, so I'm on social media and it's just at Kaely Rd on Instagram. My website is the same. So you'll find more education like the stuff we discussed and then ways that we can help if, if you need help on that

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (48:30):

Journey. Thank you so much Kaely. Thanks for being here. Thank you for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription. I hope you are inspired to work on manifesting your own blessing, starting with your minerals 'cause that will help your hormones. Reach out to me on social media and let me know what you're doing and how it's working out. I'm gonna try that thing we talked about <laugh>, I'll let you know on social media how that works out and I hope to see you again next week for another episode. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (49:00):

Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

►Get Kaely McDevitt's free masterclass recording on "Busting Burnout" - helping women leverage nutrition & lifestyle to bounce back from burnout. CLICK HERE.

 

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Dr. Cathleen Brown | Hormone Poverty And Your Brain, Vagina, Libido - How To Fix It Now

Welcome to another empowering episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, designed specifically with you, the midlife woman, in mind. 🎙️

This week, we're tackling a topic that resonates deeply with so many of us – "Hormone Poverty And Your Brain, Vagina, Libido - How To Fix It Now". And we couldn't ask for a better guide on this journey than our esteemed guest, Dr. Cathleen Brown. 👩‍⚕️

Meet Our Guest

Dr. Cathleen Brown is not only a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist with an exemplary background rooted in the Philadelphia suburbs, but she's also a decorated former Army physician with a heart for mentorship and a passion for holistic women’s health. 🏥🇺🇸

Her career, spanning over two decades, paints a picture of dedication - from guiding future medical practitioners to addressing the intimate concerns of women transitioning through menopause. ✨

In This Episode

• Discover: What "Hormone Poverty" means for your brain health, vaginal vitality, and libido. 🧠💕
• Learn: The profound impact hormones have on our bodies and the nuanced interplay between them and our well-being.
• Explore: Dr. Brown's insightful advice on hormone replacement therapy and how it can revitalise your life during and after the menopausal transition.
• Hear: Candid, real-life stories from Dr. Brown's extensive experience that illuminate the path to a healthier, more vibrant you.
• Get Inspired: To take control of your health and explore the options available to combat the symptoms of hormone imbalance. 💪

Dr. Brown also shares her personal interests in traveling, gardening, and the joys of motherhood, connecting with us on more than just a professional level. 🌿✈️

Actionable Takeaways

• Empower yourself with knowledge about your body's hormonal dynamics.
• Don't hesitate to seek help; quality hormone replacement therapy might just be the key you need.
• Remember that your concerns are valid, and your health matters - always.

Keep shining, lifelong learners, and remember - your body's changes are not just a medical matter; they're a pivotal part of your story. Join us as we learn from Dr. Brown how to rewrite the narrative on hormone health and reclaim our vibrancy.

Until next time, keep nurturing your body, cultivating your mind, and inspiring your spirit! 🌟

If you found value in today's conversation, please consider leaving us a review or rating on your preferred podcast platform. Every bit of support helps us reach and empower more women just like you.

Stay connected with us on social media and join the movement of women who choose to live their best lives – hormonally balanced and brimming with energy. 🌷

 

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

The founder of my alma mater, Thomas Jefferson Medical College, said that knowledge is power. We're gonna empower you with some foundational knowledge about bioidentical hormone therapy and why it's absolutely necessary and how to do it right in this episode with two board certified OBGYNs. Stay tuned.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:23):

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an O-B-G-Y-N, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kieran Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:17):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive into one of my favorite topics, natural hormone therapy, hormonal poverty, hormonal prosperity, midlife, metabolic mayhem. You know, all the things I love talking about. The things that I presented in my TED Talk. If you haven't checked that out, it's on my YouTube channel. You'll wanna see that. Super important because hormonal poverty that's programmed for us women as we go to 35 and 40 and beyond, can cause myriad symptoms. I like to call midlife metabolic mayhem contributes to disease, including dementia and heart disease, the number one killer of women over 50 and others, and it shortens your lifespan. So you might wanna listen up today. My guest is also a board certified O-B-G-Y-N. Who gets it when it comes to natural hormone therapy and the necessity for it.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:14):

Now, if you know me well enough, you know, I'm fellowship trained in anti-aging, metabolic and functional medicine as well. I had my own healing journey that included the two prescriptions you need for hormonal prosperity. One written for maybe sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and the other is not a written prescription, but a lifestyle prescription. So I've really gone into even additional training further than Dr. Ka, but she gets it when it comes to bioidenticals. We do differ when it comes to what you should do for an evaluation before they're prescribed, what should be prescribed, et cetera, et cetera. So I think you'll find this interesting because she and I are on different pages when it comes to certain aspects of bioidentical hormones. But as you know, I'm not the kind of doctor who says, do this because I say it's right. I like you to educate yourself.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:09):

We present the education and then you make your own decision. So is testing necessary? Hmm. You'll have to listen. Is testosterone necessary? Hmm. You'll have to listen and so much more. So I think you'll enjoy it. And I'll tell you a little about Dr. Kat. She lived near where I went to college. I went to Bryn Mawr College. She lives in the Philly suburbs where Bryn MA is. And I went to Jefferson in Philly. She went to one of the other medical schools in Philly. I think there are five or six. It might be the highest concentration of medical schools, actually, in any city in the country. So it's a very medical education focused in Philadelphia. Anyway, Dr. Kathleen Brown, she's board certified. I'm gonna try and make this a little shorter 'cause it's really long. But she's Philadelphia trained at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She was in the military, actually, where my cousin was in, in medical administration at Tripler in Hawaii, which is a very beautiful place. She's worked in North Carolina doing general OB GYN and she is an OB hospitalist now also in Philadelphia. And she works with a company called One Nona prescribing Bioidentical Hormones virtually. So you'll get to hear about that as well. So please help me welcome Dr. Kat Brown to the show.

Dr. Cat Brown (04:40):

Well, thank you so much Dr. Kyrin Dunston. It's very nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (04:44):

Yeah, I'm always excited to talk to another ob, GYN who gets it when it comes to what I call hormonal poverty of menopause, but also perimenopause that women are programmed to go into. And you totally get it. So you guys are gonna get a treat today 'cause you're gonna get two ob gyn board certified OBGYNs who get it and really understand and speak hormone, who are just kind of talking about what's important that you need to know now. So this is really a privy conversation I think you're gonna enjoy. So I always think it's fascinating for everyone to share with my guest to share, you know, you were trained like I was a traditional straight shooter, O-B-G-Y-N, pharmaceutical prescriptions and surgeries to quote unquote fix everything. And here we are in our careers later down the line, and we both realized that maybe we didn't get the whole truth in what we were thinking. So what was that path like for you?

Dr. Cat Brown (05:48):

Isn't that the truth? I mean, it's, I remember in residency being told like, oh, just memorize these hormones and just, you know, give everyone Premarin if they need to. And you're probably not gonna need this because you're not gonna prescribe hormones. I, I remember attending telling me that, you know, because of the WHI study that, you know, this was something we learned for the test, but you were never actually gonna use in real, real time practice. And for me, that changed when patients started coming to me with issues. But also when I started going through my own journey into this part of midlife too, and realizing that really the things that we were taught and the things that we were doing in practice were just not good enough. You know, it just seemed like not enough emphasis and time was put into women's health and midlife.

Dr. Cat Brown (06:36):

And then I felt, of course, you know, like many people do, like you feel gypped, right? You feel like the information is inadequate. And I also felt like, just like the same as, you know, our nutrition information and, and education that we got as physicians. And I think maybe I got an hour in medical school talking about nutrition and I, thinking back, you know, to medical school and residency, how much time was actually spent on perimenopause and menopause. It was grossly inadequate, you know? So I feel like at this point in my career, I've had to do a lot of introspection, but also a lot of research on my own and a lot of education on my own in order to help myself as well as help my patients.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (07:15):

It's so true. I mean, you know, I have that same cut and dry education training and, and I practiced that for many years because I hadn't experienced those changes yet, which is wholly inadequate to really address the symptomatology that women have as they go into hormonal poverty. And then when I started going through it, I was like, holy, what is happening? <Laugh>?

Dr. Cat Brown (07:39):

Yes.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (07:40):

And then realized that the solutions that we had as sports certified OB GYNs didn't really work. And so here I was at 243 pounds where I had no energy and slept all the time, and my hair was falling out. I had no sex drive. My gut was a wreck. I, you know, my digestion, I mean, I was, I was just a mess. I had chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and then I kind of saw the light and <laugh> and then figured it out. And so now, you know, I made a promise that I would spend the rest of my life teaching other women about this. So if you're listening, you're getting the insider's view of where OBGYNs go when they learn the truth. Because if you're going to your regular ob gyn right about now, you're not getting the whole story. You're not getting the whole truth, you're not getting everything that's available to you. And I'm not saying it's their fault, it's just how they were trained and they don't know any better, just like it used to be true for Dr. Kat and for me. But you wanna go to someone who's been through hell and back and, you know, has seen the light.

Dr. Cat Brown (08:45):

Isn't that the truth? Seen the light, for sure. <Laugh>,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (08:49):

What do you think is super important? I'm a huge proponent. One of my complaints about traditional OB GYN is that their standard of care for testing everything in mainstream medicine. Test your blood pressure test, your weight test, potassium test, your total cholesterol test, you know, your rectal blood for, you know, for blood. All these things we test. And then when it comes to women's hormones, we go board certified OBGYNs, throw their hands up and go, there's no standard of care for testing. We don't test. They're all over the place. We don't know. I mean, just anyone listening to that can go, that's kind of insane. What do you make of all that? You know,

Dr. Cat Brown (09:29):

It's one of those things that I feel like not enough attention has been placed on it, but I think just even, even talking to a patient, just even simply getting a good quality interview of a patient and talking about their symptom profile, like, we can tell right away when someone tells me that, you know, they're not getting as lubricated as they used to, or their joints are hurting, or, you know, they're experiencing vaginal dryness, their skin is different. Like, in my mind right away, I can start to think about, okay, what's happening in their hormonal environment, in their body? You know? And I think that frankly, like a lot of the time you go to a traditional OB, GYN, you go to those visits, there's just not enough time for them to even have the conversation. Half the time you don't even really get to, to talk to your doc.

Dr. Cat Brown (10:11):

You might give your history and your symptoms to their ma or to their nurse, but they come in and it's like they focus on the exam and that quick in it, that quick interaction and then you're done. So I think that it's just a matter of time and having a real quality conversation. You know, I don't think that, you know, right now, like we, I can't rely on a lot of the lab tests that patients bring to me because I have no idea what the lab's doing and, and when they're drawing the labs and that kind of thing. And so there's just so much variability. There's not enough consistency for me to really look at the lab values and really value them. So for me, in my practice, I end up using the patient's history and their symptom profile and their symptom log gives me so much more information than I could, could otherwise.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (10:55):

Yeah, I mean, certainly I hope you would agree blood work is not accurate for steroid hormones that are not water soluble. So I typically rely on the Dutch test, the dried urine hormone, which is really accurate. I know there's some others that have used it, but I just think it's kind of crazy. I would never have a patient come in and, you know, talk to them and get their symptoms and then go, you know what? It sounds like your low potassium, I'm gonna give you some potassium because you have symptoms of low potassium without checking their potassium. So I just, when I learned about accurate sex hormone testing for estradiol s trial, estro progesterone testosterone, and learned how to read it on myself, because of course I had done blood tests that all came back, quote unquote normal 'cause the range is ginormous on blood. And then I did it, and it actually gave me in four colors where I was and Oh, this is why you have the symptoms.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (11:54):

And then over the years, as I've seen thousands of these tests, really seeing how each woman has a unique picture, right? It's not one size fits all. People have their unique flavor of what they're high on and how high, what they're low on, and how low what their estrogen phase one and two detox looks like. So I just find testing invaluable for women instead of just, like I say in medicine, there's, there's nothing that we don't test. That was a big wake up call for me. And now I see the real injustice. I don't know if you've looked into the history of gynecology, the profession of gynecology, like under the American Board of Specialties, how it started? Yeah. And kind of how it's evolved. I mean, what were your thoughts on that? I was pretty horrified when I learned some of the details about how that specialty evolved.

Dr. Cat Brown (12:46):

It was just the sense of embarrassment and like the feeling of just feeling appalled as how especially gynecologic surgery evolved and learning how so much of our field has so many roots in systemic racism is just crazy, you know? And some of the information about Marian Sims and coming out about some of the things that he did and how he experimented on his slaves to, in order to get the information, you know, for surgical advancement especially, you know, that's something that came to light, I think more in the last few years, especially since Black Lives Matter, you know, and ACOG has done some memorial lectures in in response to that. But that was probably one of the biggest things that I was just thrown back by because I don't remember hearing anything about that at all throughout my training, you know? And so to learn that, and, you know, even to move forward and, and, and hear about, you know, the Henrietta Lacks situation too, and how, how she was experimented on, but not really fully treated. And, and we still use ourselves to this day, you know, to study chemotherapies for ovarian cancer. It's insane. That was one of the biggest eye-opening moments for me as a gynecologist. I, I would say.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (14:02):

Yeah, I agree. So, you know, for everyone listening, if you haven't heard about this, basically the profession has been developed with a kind of unethical medical and surgical use of people of color and women without consent to do research on. And some of it is very unethical, not the way we do research now, which, you know, people could argue maybe there's some problems with the ethical nature now, but it's way better than it used to be. And it really was started as a surgical specialty more than anything. And so then you have people who are surgeons who they weren't really ever intending to address women's hormones that that wasn't the intention. So you have to look at the lens at which people are viewing a problem that they're dealing with. So here you have men, you have white men who are looking at women's health through a surgical lens and really what their intention is and how they view women in general.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (15:09):

And so it's just really clouded. And, you know, maybe I'll have to have someone come on the podcast who's a historian, sociologist, who can really break it down for everyone. But I too was embarrassed when I learned all the details. I really got a good understanding of why we're stuck with our present mainstream gynecology system of care that we have and why we know everybody's so myopic and won't move out of it and won't really see the problem because they can't. So make that discussion a larger discussion to have another time. But thank you for sharing your thoughts on that. In terms of the importance of natural hormone therapy and, and the difference between what you would get at your doctor's office, traditional mainstream doctor's office, or what you might get from a physician like us who is trained in bioidenticals, what would you say is the importance? 'cause I get a lot of questions from women. What are bioidentical hormones? Can my regular doctor prescribe that? Why not? What's the difference? So what would you explain to them?

Dr. Cat Brown (16:13):

Yeah, I mean, I think that my biggest, easiest way to discuss this, with regard to this, is really to talk about Premarin, right? Which is probably the most common hormone replacement that can be prescribed by most physicians, whether it be the topical vaginal Premarin, or whether it be the oral pills. I like to tell patients the story of Premarin, and I like to tell them what the origin of the name of it is, you know? 'cause When you break it down, I mean, Premarin really means pregnant mare's urine. And so, you know, fundamentally just the main difference from the traditional pharmaceuticals, especially given for hormone therapy compared to bioidentical, is that most traditional pharmaceuticals are not hormones that exist naturally in our bodies. Especially when you think about Premarin being the pregnant mare's urine. It's coming from the urine of pregnant horses.

Dr. Cat Brown (17:04):

And, and these have, you know, when you look at the label, I remember as a medical student even looking at it saying conjugated equine estrogens, why equine? You know? And when you finally learn like this is the, a jumbling of horse hormones that's put together, and it's almost like we're collecting as many estrogens, estrogens as we can, putting them into a pill and throwing them at a patient hoping that one will take, you know, but there's so many other compounds in those medications that aren't even biologically active and human beings that, you know, just really can't. So it can't be optimal for a patient, right? Because we're giving them horse hormones when really they need human hormones that are similar to what their body is making. And so that difference, you know, when we talk about bioidentical, it's, it's really hormones that are the same as what your body would normally make on its own, but it's incapable of continuing to create on its own and the levels that we need it, you know? And so patients are always shocked and they say, well, how could they do that? How could they be giving me horse estrogen? But we've been doing it for years, you know?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (18:06):

Right. But the body thing that a lot of people are amazed to learn is that why, why is the next question? Oh. Because they can't get a patent on a naturally occurring substance. Yeah. So they could have created exactly what you had in your body, which would've been best for you. Right. So if you're low on potassium, what do we do? We create potassium. Exactly. It's what you have. And then give that to you. So it would be best for you. Anyone can understand that. But no, we can't get a patent on it, meaning we can't make money on it even though it's best for women. Right. So that's why we're gonna go get it from horses. So it's a whole capitalist capitalistic view. Yeah. Capitalism drives so much of our health problems and we don't even realize it <laugh>. Well,

Dr. Cat Brown (18:53):

And that's such a bigger conversation. I mean, we could get into that whole conversation about how, you know, so much of wellness and health is driven by big pharma and because they can't make money on naturally occurring things or even supplements, you know, that there's just no money or research put into that. And so they create these synthetic compounds to make new medications. And it's, it's all this big money making scheme. And pharma just keeps getting richer and richer. Whereas, you know, the medications aren't as readily available to patients. It's sad, but true <laugh>. But it extends into the women's health arena too, when it comes to not only hormones, but even birth controls. You know, that big pharma kind of rules everything. And as soon as it's something is old enough that it gets to generic and it gets more affordable for a patient, they just tweak some little thing about the medication, the color of the pill, or how many days it can last or what the package looks like, just so they can get another patent to be able to continue charging ungodly amounts for brand new medication. It's crazy, right?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (19:57):

So Yes, it is. And so you talked a little bit about Premarin. So yes, mainstream pharmaceuticals, Premarin Provera, which wasn't progesterone, it was hydroxyprogesterone acetate. So how are these hormones, why are they important for our brain health? I think that's something that not many people don't hear enough about. Yeah.

Dr. Cat Brown (20:17):

I think the best way to describe it to patients is that estrogen has such a beneficial effect on every tissue of our body. You know, as, as female human beings, estrogen is pervasive in every tissue and even at the cellular level. And so with, without it, the junctions, especially in our brain, like our, our neurons, our neurotransmitters, things just can't function as well as they can unless there's estrogen in that environment to help those tissues act their best and, and help those connections. So I think, you know, the same is, goes through, you know, joint discomfort. And, you know, even with the cardioprotective aspect of estrogen, there's so many good things that it does through every tissue in our body that when you start removing estrogen, those areas just can't function as well as they want to. That's how I kind of describe it to patients to kind of get it to a simpler level.

Dr. Cat Brown (21:11):

But, you know, we, we see the research coming out that, you know, for patients that don't use hormone therapy, their cognitive decline is so much more rapid. Those changes are so much more noticeable in patients that aren't on hormone replacement. You know? And I think it's something that we're gonna see more and more of, especially as we in general, as patients and as consumers, are more demanding of treatment. I think we're gonna start to see a change in that, in, in that climate, you know, as far as watching patients, you know, combat that cognitive decline. And, and you know, especially when it comes to dementia, the onset of that, I think that that's important.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (21:48):

The other thing that I found crazy, did you find this crazy too? When I learned about proper bioidentical hormone treatment used to be, and I think it's still this way, that mainstream doctors are taught that women who don't have a uterus don't need progesterone. Because the only reason you need progesterone is to prevent the uterus from creating cancer in response to estrogen. When I discovered, when I did my fellowship in anti-aging, metabolic and functional medicine, you know, I learned, well, oh, you know what, what about the breast counteracting the effects of estrogen in the breast? And then also the neuroprotective effects of progesterone where it's actually used in traumatic brain injury patients and stroke patients to help preserve brain tissue. And all the tissues, all the cells have response to progesterone. So can you talk a little bit about that? 'cause I know there are women listening who are saying, well, I'm only on estrogen, I don't have progesterone, and they're not really aware that they need that to balance it out. Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Cat Brown (22:48):

<Affirmative>. But I think it's a, you know, it's something unique to each patient. You know, I have that conversation with my patients, you know, and, and typically I have patients that, you know, that come to me with a history of a hysterectomy, maybe on estrogen only. And we have that conversation. I mean, I think that, I don't necessarily prescribe, personally, I don't necessarily prescribe progesterone for every single patient that has had a hysterectomy. It's a, it's, you know, I make it a shared decision making process with my patients. And we talk about the risks and the benefits, and it's one of those things that I have some patients that really do want it. And so we add progesterone, but it's not something that I've made universal for each patient, you know? And I think that, so a lot of my patients want as minimal amount of medications as possible. And so it's mm-Hmm, <affirmative> it's one of those things that we have the conversation about. But I absolutely have patients that feel like they function better with both hormones, with the estrogen and the progesterone. And so we do that when they want that and they need that.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (23:46):

Yeah. I mean, I guess that's different when you're just treating based on symptoms. Like, oh, you have this symptom, I think you need that, and you have this symptom, I think, versus a test, you know, I guess it's a different viewpoint where you see the hormones as these are necessary components for optimal functioning. 'cause You have progesterone receptors in all your cells and tissues, including your brain. So I guess it's a different way of looking at it. How about the importance of testosterone? Yeah. I

Dr. Cat Brown (24:14):

Mean

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (24:14):

About that.

Dr. Cat Brown (24:15):

Sure. I don't think a lot of women realize that we also have testosterone in our system. You know, a lot of women just focus on their female hormones, but they don't realize that, you know, testosterone really drives our metabolism. It sometimes drives our energy level, helps to combat fatigue, but it really is one of the biggest drivers of our libido and sex drive too. And for us, especially trying to combat osteopenia, osteoporosis, as we age and trying to maintain our bone health and our, our strength and our muscle health, we don't, we don't realize how much testosterone is integral for that as well. And really muscle maintenance, maintaining our strength, I think it's important. And so that's something that, I think is, is something really important for patients to take into account too. And, you know, testosterone, it's, it's one of those things that we have some limitations because testosterone in, in the medical community, and especially in the bodybuilding community, especially for men, it's been so abused and misused.

Dr. Cat Brown (25:15):

And I come from a military background, you know, I was an army doctor for much of my career for 12 years. And we had a huge issue with male soldiers coming in because their wives couldn't get pregnant. And they had been taking so much high dose testosterone just for performance enhancing to make them faster, to make them better soldiers, make them run better, and be able to lift more. But then as a pro, as a result, their body wasn't creating its own endogenous testosterone. And so, you know, now as a result of all those abuses, testosterone is considered a controlled substance because with high doses, it can cause more harm than good. So for women, you know, we have to be cognizant of that. But I think that we don't realize that, you know, many pro providers out there don't realize, physicians don't realize that you can safely replenish a woman's testosterone.

Dr. Cat Brown (26:05):

You have to be very careful because our therapeutic range for testosterone is a little bit more narrow than it is for a man. We don't wanna, you know, it's, it's like walking a fine line. We wanna replace testosterone, but we don't want to masculinize our female patients either. We don't wanna cause those masculinizing side effects that women can get if they get too much of it. You know, like the male pattern baldness or facial hair growth. You know, most often I see patients come, you know, with changes in their skin and, and more acne develop, you know, as a result of testosterone. So we have to be astute to really fine tuning, like what we're giving patients when it comes to testosterone supplementation,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (26:43):

Our narrower range for women. And that's why I think testing is so vital. And again, you know, here it's where politics and money, politics and money really rule women's health when it comes to our healthcare. We saw that in terms of Premarin, but also with testosterone, where it's considered a controlled substance because of the abuse by male bodybuilders. To my knowledge. I don't know that female bodybuilders have abused it, but that's possible. But testosterone is just as essential for women as men, right? For our muscle mass, our bone density, osteoporosis, and fractures due to osteoporosis, one of the biggest causes of death and disability of women over 50. It's important for our neurochemistry, our dopamine, our get up and go drive neurotransmitter for our mental clarity, functioning feelings of wellbeing. A lot of people think, assume it's only about libido, doctors and patients alike. And it's about so much more than that. So much

Dr. Cat Brown (27:45):

More.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (27:45):

Yeah. So I think it's essential. And then, you know, it's also not only a controlled substance, but because of a 17-year-old boy, Ryan Haight, who was able to obtain a controlled substance from another state through telemedicine, it's also very difficult to obtain it through telemedicine. So because of teenage boys and bodybuilders, women's access to this important hormone is limited, and most doctors won't even prescribe it for women. They, I've found a lot of patients come to me and they say that, oh, my doctor told me that I don't need it, and they won't prescribe it. And let's talk a little bit about libido before we wrap up, because that's something, you know, I'm recently back from traveling the globe where one of the things I was really looking at is what is women's healthcare like in other countries and other continents, particularly around menopause.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (28:43):

And everywhere I went, women over 40 were grabbing me when they heard what I did and sidelining me to tell me they had the same problems as women in the us. And I was really startled to learn that it's global, but I guess I shouldn't be, because as America goes, so goes everywhere else. But women really, this lack of sex drive is a problem globally. Women don't have one. I mean, it's a problem for men too, but a lot of women don't have a libido. They think that that's normal for their age, that they shouldn't have a libido. They don't talk to their doctors about it because they're ashamed and stigmatized. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Cat Brown (29:27):

I think that not enough emphasis has been placed on it, but I also think like, it's so much a, it's a bigger, like, more deeply rooted issue, I think in our, our culture as a society, not just in, in healthcare. But I feel like, you know, there's this double standard, right? You know, that I think it kind of stems back to like that purity culture too. Like, like, you know, women aren't supposed to be sexual beings. Like we're, you know, there's this kind of underlying theme that like everyone wants us to be good and to be well behaved. And so, you know, there's not enough emphasis placed on it. And then meanwhile, you see so much in the media and on the news about women or men's health, you know, and, and we've spent so much time and energy researching erectile dysfunction, <laugh>, and helping men with their situation.

Dr. Cat Brown (30:12):

But then we're not helping their partners, especially if they're in a heterosexual relationship. You know, we're, we're helping men get a hard on, but we're not helping their wives be able to be receptive or even interested in having sex at all. It really is back to like women just being treated kind of like second class citizens and not enough emphasis placed on us. I think it's that very misogynistic view of the world, and it kind of is pervasive in healthcare too. I think that not enough importance has been placed on women's health and, and that this is so, so evident when it comes to libido and, and women's sexual health. And I don't even think I knew until getting into taking care of women and perimenopause, menopause and menopause, that there even was like a society for sexual wellness. Like, I just, I just found out about ishish, you know, probably in the last five years, you know, which does extra training for physicians and providers. And as far as their sexual wellness, you know, that wasn't even something that was even discussed when I was being trained to become an ob GYN. And what a shame, because, you know, we're supposed to be the experts when it comes to female genitalia, female organs, reproductive health. But then that part of reproductive health, which is, which is so important and it's such a important part of life and a part of our health, it's not even really discussed, you know, you know, it's

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (31:37):

So true. And as, as you're talking, I'm thinking if I had to do it over, I literally would specialize in female sexuality because I think it is the most underserved area of obstetrics and gynecology. And so I was thinking, why don't we have fellowships in female sexuality that would be something, you know, just for women to understand. And I think it does come from the religious perspective that most people have of puritanical views, but I think we're growing out of it. You know, I've been watching this show on Netflix called Dating on the Spectrum, which I love. It's so heartwarming,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (32:17):

So beautiful. Yeah. And what I love especially is seeing how the younger generation, most of these people are in their twenties, a few are in their thirties, they're open about sexuality and talking about sexuality. And I think that along with that open discussion comes an understanding, hopefully it does for them. I mean, they don't talk about it in this show about the importance of healthy sex for your overall health, vitality, wellbeing, and longevity. Yes, yes. And I think it's really time, you know, it's not too late for women over 40. It's not too late for women over 50, 60, 70. I don't care if you're in age. I think

Dr. Cat Brown (32:57):

It's never, it's never too late

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (33:00):

<Laugh>. It's never too late to have some good sex and get the health benefits. What are some of the health benefits of having regular good sex where you have orgasms? What are some of the health benefits for those who might not be aware?

Dr. Cat Brown (33:16):

Well, I think that overall, I mean, what I see is like, you know, a woman's immune system is much stronger when she has regular sex that it's pleasureful. I mean, not only that, but just opening up those pleasure centers in the brain as well. You know, it's fundamental, and when a woman allows themself to really enjoy sex and really puts importance on, on physical pleasure in that way, it gives them so many health benefits and just invigorates their life and invigorates their health too. I mean, women that tend to do that more, are more in touch with their bodies and tend to take better care of themselves than women who don't just, you know, comparing apples to oranges. But I think that not only that, but you know, the old, old saying that like, if you don't use it, you'll lose it, <laugh>. So the more we bring arousal to our female genitalia, the more healthy that tissue becomes, you know, whether it's through masturbation or whether it's through sex with someone else. The more that you use those tissues, the more healthy those tissues become, the more blood flow that they get, the more hormone rich the environment that those tissues get, the more they're, they're used in that way.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (34:29):

Right. And then it improves your cortisol stress hormone profile. Yes. You know, I call queen cortisol and your overall health is really governed by cortisol. Yes. You know, it was interesting. A, a woman I did a consultation with last week, she had had the BRCA gene, and this is anonymous that I'm talking about this, I won't mention her name. She had had double mastectomy, bilateral ovary removal with a hysterectomy, all kinds of consequences from that. And her main concern was, I have no sex drive. Can you give me a magic pill to fix that? What would you say to a woman who's kind of in that predicament? 'cause I know she's not alone.

Dr. Cat Brown (35:10):

Yeah. I think that one of the biggest things is setting expectations. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, and, and there is no one magic pill. I think that fundamentally, as women, our sexuality is so much bigger than that. It's not just a matter of turning a hormone on or off. Our largest sex organ. And the most important sex organ that we have is our brain <laugh>. And so much of our sexuality is emotional and mental, because unlike men, we're wired differently. We have to be in the right mindset. We have to have the self-confidence, self-motivation to even be, allow ourselves to feel romantic or sexual and something that they have to work on and have to really put the effort into cultivating that. It's, it's not just a, a matter of having a magic pill, but sometimes I think as for us as physicians, just opening up that conversation with a patient can be empowering for them just to be able to start having the conversation and just using the language and talking about it gets their mind starting to think about, well, like what can I do to start reframing?

Dr. Cat Brown (36:18):

I think that sometimes having those surgeries, you know, having, going through hysterectomy, going through a mastectomy, dealing with either cancer risk or cancer surgery, then puts a woman in a completely different mindset. And they have a hard time thinking about themselves as sexual beings anymore. You know, and a lot of women, there's a, you know, the self-stigma that they place on themselves that, you know, having certain female organs removed changes who they are as women. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But it really doesn't. And so we have to help them empower themselves to kind of change that view as well. But, but you have to put the work in, it has to come from multiple angles. I think, you know, we can help with the hormone aspect of it, but then they also have to do the work of that mental mind shift about it too.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (37:04):

Yes. So true. And, you know, you had given me some great quotes to share before we started. I wanna wrap up and add this one. 'cause It's, I think it's attributed to several PE people, but one of them happens to be Thomas Jefferson, where I went to school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Knowledge is power. So hopefully you've learned something today, listening that you can use to empower yourself when it comes to hormonal poverty, getting out of it and getting to hormonal prosperity, to experience the vitality that you deserve. Dr. Kat, thank you so much for joining me. Where can people connect with you online and find out more about what you do?

Dr. Cat Brown (37:46):

Sure. I have an Instagram account at Dr. Cat obgyn and I do hormonal therapy for patients through Wyn oda, which is by wino.com. I'm also on LinkedIn, although I haven't done much with that profile lately, but <laugh>, I have to do a little bit more. But that's primarily where you can find me.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:03):

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and for your path in women's health that hopefully is empowering lots of women. Thank you so much.

Dr. Cat Brown (38:14):

Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a great conversation.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:16):

And thank you for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription. Hopefully you've gotten some different perspectives when it comes to natural or biologically identical hormones. Today. We've talked about testing. There are different opinions as you can see between me and Dr. Kat on whether testing is necessary and accessibility to testosterone and how important that is, and more so. I really think it's important that you take this as a note to educate yourself and make informed decisions that are right for your health. Like the founding father of my alma mater, Thomas Jefferson says, knowledge is power. Hopefully you've gotten some knowledge today that can empower you to make the right choices for yourself so you can move out of midlife metabolic mayhem, prevent disease, increase your lifespan, and get to hormonal prosperity and live the vitality that you deserve. I look forward to hearing about the changes you're making. Reach out to me on social media, so on social media. On social media, and let me know until next week, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:25):

Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormones and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

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