Hormone Prosperity Podcast with Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Unlock The Mysteries of Female Fat Loss And Set Your Spirit Free

In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Karen Martel, a Certified Hormone Specialist & Transformational Nutrition Coach, joins us to provide insights on how to unlock the mysteries of female fat loss. In a candid conversation, Karen shares her journey of struggling with health issues and how she overcame these challenges to become a leading expert in women's hormone health and weight management. 
  
Throughout the episode, Karen provides invaluable information on methods to balance and optimize hormones in peri and post menopause, and breakthrough weight loss resistance. Her practical tips and advice make a considerable impact on women's lives struggling with similar issues.

Karen's passion for helping women improve their hormone health stems from her own experiences, and her approach to women's health is bold and practical. She is the host of the top 100 rated women's health podcast, "The Other Side of Weight Loss", where she shares her deep knowledge and expertise on female fat loss and hormone imbalance. 

 

Episode Highlights:
- Unlocking female fat loss secrets
- Understanding hormonal challenges in peri and post menopause
- Overcoming weight loss resistance
- Karen's personal journey and experiences
- Bold and practical approaches to women's hormonal health
  
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for more expert insights and breakthrough approaches in women's hormonal health!

 

Speaker 1 (00:00):

What if you could break through weight loss resistance with a novel bioidentical hormone, would you try it? Stay tuned to find out if I would.

Speaker 2 (00:10):

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.

Speaker 1 (01:03):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today as we're going to dive into a novel tool that's a bioidentical hormone that could help you lose up to 5% of your body weight in fat. Wanna know about it? Sure you do. Right? We always wanna look for all the natural options that could help us safely and effectively be more healthy. Right? If that includes losing weight, lose weight, regain energy, right? All the things you still gotta do all the things, but maybe this is something that can give you a little boost. We're gonna dive into that in this episode. And our guest today, Karen Martel, is gonna tell us about it and you're gonna see if I'm gonna try it or not and would you try it or not. So we're gonna have some information on that.

Speaker 1 (01:51):

But we're also gonna take a little tour off the main road that we usually talk about when we talk about breaking through weight loss resistance. And that has to do with the intangibles related to losing weight. The intangibles related to going from perimenopause to menopause, all the intangibles related to every symptom or disease that you might have. What are those? Well, the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are driving or supporting that energetic disruption. That is the symptom that you have, whether it's excess weight or you've got diabetes and your pancreas isn't functioning well, or you name the disease or symptom. There's some underlying spiritual, if you will, or energetic, cause we're gonna dive into that too. As my GE guest today, who is a weight loss resistance specialist has a lot of experience with that, as do I on my journey. It really is something that you will come to face yourself when you're healing from disease, if you're doing it right, and if you want the optimum outcomes, it really is key.

Speaker 1 (03:01):

So I'll tell you a little bit about Karen, then we'll get started. She's a certified hormone specialist and transformational nutrition coach and women's weight loss expert. She's got a top 100 rated women's health podcast. It's called The Other Side of Weight Loss, where she helps women to unlock the mysteries of female fat loss and hormone imbalance. She struggled with her own health issues, but she was determined to bring her knowledge to others with a bold new approach to women's hormone health and weight management. Her passion lies in helping women balance and optimize their hormones in per and post-menopause and breakthrough weight loss resistance. Yes. Please help me welcome Karen Martel to the hormone prescription.

Speaker 3 (03:44):

Thank you very much for having me, Dr. Kyrin. I'm very excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (03:49):

Yes, we talk about weight loss resistance. It's such a problem for women once we hit 40 and midlife and we age, and you really have some unique perspectives on some tools that are novel that can assist us with this weight loss resistance, and also how to address something that most people aren't aware of as an issue for them around weight loss at midlife. So maybe actually you can start by sharing a little bit about your journey and how you zeroed in on hormones and weight loss resistance and all things that we, women over 40 are concerned with .

Speaker 3 (04:26):

Yes, . Well, mine actually started, of course, had to start early for me in my thirties after the birth of my first child. I, you know, lost the pregnancy weight, but about a year and a half into it, I just, very suddenly, within a few months time, I rapidly started to put on weight and I had not changed anything. And I was experiencing not only weight gain, but I was having severe insomnia, really bad PMs, anxiety, depression, gut problems. And I did what every woman is told to do. I started to exercise like a mad woman . I started pretty much starving myself, trying every diet under the sun, calorie counting. I had always been a really healthy eater. So it wasn't like, it wasn't because I had changed my diet or was eating McDonald's every day and I was working out probably harder than I'd ever worked out in my life.

Speaker 3 (05:25):

And I only continued to gain weight. And I went to the doctor, I was put on an antidepressant, I was given a sleeping pill and kind of told to, you know, go on my way. And nobody at that time would've told me I was 33. Nobody would've said, Hey, maybe this is your hormones. And after a lot of struggling and a lot of different diets and exercise programs, I decided that I had to take matters into my own hands. And I started digging into research and decided, I think this has something to do with my hormones. And so I ended up going to a naturopath and having my hormones tested through saliva testing at the time. And it came out that I was, you know, super low on progesterone, high estrogen, and I had very low cortisol and D A T A, which I'm sure your listeners are familiar with, those two hormones and those are your stress hormones.

Speaker 3 (06:24):

And there I was just doing everything wrong. According to that hormonal profile, I was doing high amounts of cardio. I'm starving myself. I later found out that I also was hypothyroid and had no idea, which also those two things would've perpetuated that. So I had to go, okay, I have to make a serious shift because I didn't even think I was a stressed out person. So I started, I quit the, the hardcore CrossFitting and starving myself. And I actually started doing yoga all the time. I started asking for help. And the biggest piece of that puzzle was I started to really look at the spiritual side of what was happening. And I realized that there was a lot of things that I had not dealt with from my past. I had always had really bad self body image. I had an eating disorder as a teenager, I had sexual abuse.

Speaker 3 (07:24):

There was a lot of things that Karen had not dealt with. And so I went on a bit of a journey and I will tell you, it was not quick. There was no quick fixing this. And it took probably a good year of like really working on these things, slowing down, like looking at the spiritual aspect of things, dealing with some of the past stuff that the weight finally started to slowly come off. Mm-Hmm. . And I came out of that experience just going, there's gotta be more women like me. There's gotta be more women that are doing everything right that are not, you know, closet eating or eating McDonald's mm-hmm. and all of these things that, that they are eating, right. That they're exercising and they're not able to lose the weight. And so it kind of, it threw me into this world of nutrition.

Speaker 3 (08:13):

And then at the age of 42, I started to go into menopause and overnight Wow. Yeah. Overnight I had my thyroid crash on me and I started missing my periods. I started having hot flashes. I was, I gained two months and was like, what the heck? Because I really didn't think, I said at that point in time, I had been, you know, 10 years nutritionist, weight loss coach, like doing everything right. I don't drink, I don't, you know, dealing with the, the mental stuff, sleeping well. Like I, I really had all the boxes checked and then behold it happens again. And so that sent me on a mission to find out, okay, what's happening with my, my hormones? Why am I going into menopause so early? I was able to reverse it and I, at 47 today, I still have my period and I'm doing well. But it was a big eye-opener. Both times that when that happened to me, and I just, I know now work with so many women that very similar things have happened to them too, where they're, they are really healthy and they're trying to do things right, but they can't get that weight off. So

Speaker 1 (09:22):

Yeah, that period is that fifth vital sign. And when it starts going wonka donk, that is your sign emergency. Something is wrong. Just like if your pulse is sky high or your respiratory rate or you have a really high fever when your period, it really should be like clockwork. Your body has a timing mechanism where your period should come every, you know, 28 days or whatever is normal for you. And when it doesn't and it stops or it's late or it's irregular, that really should be your sign to look for the cause, not to get on a synthetic hormone. Just shut up your female system. Right? Everybody's heard me say that don't get on the birth control pill

Speaker 3 (10:08):

Or

Speaker 1 (10:09):

You know, the vaginal ring or devil shots like was done to me for decades. That's not the answer ladies. It's really not the answer. You gotta find the cause. So yeah, you hit that wall wow. At 42 and that, you know, bring drive home. Another very important point I wanna point out is that a lot of times if you go to a corporate or mainstream doctor with that scenario, they're just gonna say, oh yep, you're going into menopause. Oh well it's just biology. There's nothing we can do. And they're not going to investigate it. But you know, what you just heard Karen say was that she found the underlying cause she remediated it and then she had got her periods back and it wasn't menopause. So you don't wanna go into hormonal poverty any sooner than you have to, cuz then you have to face the consequences of them.

Speaker 1 (11:01):

So let's dive into, you mentioned some of the spiritual things. Let's dive into that cuz that's something we haven't talked about on the podcast that I think is super important. And then after that we'll dive into this novel tool that really is very hot and late breaking tool that you can use to help your weight loss resistance and lots of other problems in health that a lot of people don't know about. So we'll dive into that next, but what were some of your understandings that you learned through that period that you just described about the spiritual nature of this change you were going through?

Speaker 3 (11:37):

Yeah, I mean for my, myself personally, and I think for so many women that body self-image was a huge piece that I had to really look at. And I had self-abuse myself for a very long time. I was an alcoholic, I was a drug addict. Like I said, I had been raped, I had very bad eating disorder. I was bulimic for many years and I hadn't looked at any of that. I just literally had numbed myself and just pushed it away and thought, well I know that that's not good and that I probably am a little bit messed up from it, but I recognize that that wasn't a good thing. So I must be fine , I don't need to go back and really pick it apart. But I did and I had to. And it took a long time. I mean, like I said, it wasn't easy.

Speaker 3 (12:24):

I had to, I was in therapy for seven years and it was, it wasn't traditional therapy. I did a lot of what connected with me. I had started with traditional therapy and then I moved into spiritual therapy and I started seeing an energy worker. That was life-changing for me. And that's what really connected with me. And I really highly recommend that women find somebody that's gonna connect with them. Because I think a lot of the time women don't look at these problems because they don't, they immediately think if, if I'm going to go down that road, I gotta go see a therapist and I don't wanna do that. I'm not gonna go talk to somebody about my problems doesn't work, what are like, they have some issues around that. And it doesn't have to be that. It could be something completely different. E every single one of us is different.

Speaker 3 (13:12):

I've had, I've seen people that have gotten so much help just from body work, like going or doing yoga. Like there's so many things that you can do to connect with self. Mm-Hmm. , it doesn't have to look like that. And for some people that does work. So I think it's important to look at all of these things in, if you are continually running into the same problems over and over again, that's your sign. That's your sign that you are not looking at something that you need to look at. So if you are continually looking to the next best diet, constantly failing at that diet, constantly gaining the weight back, or maybe it's something completely different where it's just like you have this repetitive pattern of somebody wronging you constantly or getting yourself into the wrong relationships with the wrong partner. These are your big warning signs that hey, you're not listening. There's something here that you're not learning from, that you're not looking at that you have to deal with. And then, and if you don't, it's gonna keep happening over and over again and likely worse.

Speaker 1 (14:22):

Yes. And you know, I identify with a lot of the things that you shared. I'm wondering for everyone if you could talk about what you mean by spiritual. Because some people hear that and they're like, oh, that's not religion. I'm religious, I'm ex religion, I'm not gonna hear this, I can't hear this because spirituality is anti-religion. So maybe you could address that. So what do you mean by spiritual aspects? What does that mean?

Speaker 3 (14:50):

It can mean religion. I think that spirituality, I think religion is under that umbrella. So what it's whatever feeds your spirit. So if that is religion, no matter what religion it is mm-hmm. , that could be maybe what you need to connect more with. If that's what connects with you. If that's God, if it's Buddha, whatever it is, then maybe that's the road that you need to go down. Maybe you have to go talk to your priest or go talk to go get into a Bible study group wherever it might be. But if that's what is your thing, then that's great. Spirituality for me is personally my soul. What purpose am I here on earth for? I think we're all here to love and to learn. And I think that if we don't learn these things, that we're gonna have to come back in our next life and learn them again or try to learn them again. And that's my belief. I believe that there is a God, I think there was a Jesus, I think there was a Buddha. So I have this kind of like mix of all the religions put into one. But spirituality is more than what what you see here. It's that intuitiveness, it's what's going on inside. It's your heart, it's love, it's, and it can be your religion as well. So that's personally the way I see it. I don't know about you Karen, when, how do you see spirit ?

Speaker 1 (16:06):

Oh yeah. I mean to me it's the part of us that enlivens the human form that we're in, that we get to use while we're in this, on this earth plane. And it represents all of who we've ever been and ever will be and what we're meant to express in this lifetime. What we're meant to experience, the people we're meant to come in contact with. And to me, when I talk about the spirituality of perimenopause or menopause or the spirituality of any disease, I think there is a spiritual lesson in, in every symptom and disorder that we can experience. I'm talking about looking for the deeper meaning that isn't obvious, right? If you, when I weighed 243 pounds and I looked in the mirror, well you could, I could see I was morbidly obese. Right? But what's the meaning? What's the meaning behind that? More than, oh, I had hormonal imbalances is I had toxicities, I had gut dysfunction, I had all these physical causes contributing to it.

Speaker 1 (17:08):

I had energetic causes, right? Thoughts, feelings, beliefs, all garnered from past experiences that I had had that led me to certain belief systems. So it's interesting with obesity, they found in some of the studies, I think his name is Filetti, who did some of the research on this. And he just happened to notice that 80% of the women in, in the study he was doing on obesity had been sexually abused. And that's ultimately what I think led to the ACE trials, the adverse childhood experienced trials. Cuz they were starting to see this link between adverse childhood experiences, emotional psychosocial experiences, and physical health problems. And then when he, he noticed this 80% incidence of childhood sexual abuse among these women in this study that were obese. So to me it's really looking at the deeper meaning. And so how did that show up for you? Mm-Hmm. in terms of what you were going through right Here are your 42 mm-hmm. , your body's getting ready to go into menopause, which is on average nine years early, your thyroid shut down. And so what did that look like for you? Mm-Hmm.

Speaker 3 (18:19):

The thyroids energetically signifies your voice chakra. So we have these energy centers in our body, and this isn't woowoo, this is science. We have energy centers throughout our body. And the voice chakra sits right where your thyroid is. And I think that this is, I personally think this is why so many more women have it than men have thyroid problems, is because we don't tend to speak our mind as much as men do. We tend to stuff things down. We're not, we're taught that, you know, maybe not to voice our emotions so much. And I, looking back at my history and all the times I didn't say anything when I wanted to say something, when I wanted to stop that person from abusing me, when I had so much self-hatred for myself, I did not think that I was capable of being loved even. And that I think was really tied up in my thyroid.

Speaker 3 (19:16):

And I don't think it was something that I dealt with over those first few years of therapy. I don't think I, cause the thyroid thing didn't come in until later. And then I was like, oh, I'm not surprised that I have a thyroid problem. And I didn't address it. And so I really think it was my body going, n you have to pay attention to this now. This is, you have to start speaking your mind and you have to start loving yourself. And it sounds really like, oh, so cliche, oh, love yourself. But looking back at my history, I never did. I never loved myself. I had always hated my body. I always critiqued it. I didn't trust myself. I didn't, there was so many things that needed to be unpacked. And coming into my forties, going into menopause and gaining that much weight, especially as a weight loss coach, that was super hard on my ego.

Speaker 3 (20:09):

And I knew that no matter what I did, this was interesting. No matter what I did, I would not have lost the weight then I knew it. So every time I would like go, oh, you know, the, the old patterns would start to come up and I'd say, oh, I, I better start, you know, cutting down on the calories and we better start working out harder. And then I'd be like, Nope, stop. Don't do that. Because then that's like going back into that old pattern of dieting and thinking that that was the answer. Cause for me it's, it wasn't, and I knew that, I knew that there was something emotional, like you said, like there's always something emotional to every medical problem, every chronic ailment that you've got. I really truly believe that there is going to be an emotional component to it. Whether it's the full root cause, whether it's just a third of it, who knows. But there's always something emotional or something that, that your body is trying to get you to look at in your life.

Speaker 1 (21:07):

I totally agree with that 100%. And some of the things that you said, I wanna, let's go back and talk about this. So, you know, you very are very open and very freely shared some of your struggles earlier. And then you said, I hated myself. And the average per woman, if you ask her, do you hate yourself? She's gonna say no. And if you ask her, do you love yourself? She's gonna say yes. So I'm thinking we probably, because that probably would've been me at one point also. And then there was a point where I realized, no, I actually treat myself as if I hate myself, . And so what does that mean? What does, how would a woman identify, oh my gosh, I behave as if I hate myself. And the whole cliche, like you said, of self-love, we tell, we hear that so much, but really what does that mean on a day-to-day, day basis? Maybe you even take some instances, well, oh, here's something that I dealt with and here's how I treated myself with hatred around that, and here's how I now treat myself with love. So maybe we could have a little richer, more in depth discussion on that.

Speaker 3 (22:11):

Mm-Hmm. , I think people, women can recognize it because you have to tune into how are you speaking to yourself all day long. Right? Pay attention, like most of it is subconscious, but pay attention to, and I, and we're gonna get into this, is, I just recently lost a bunch of weight and it's so interesting to me to, to realize that I still have these like nagly little self-talk bull crap inside of me. . It's like, you know, I just go lose a bunch of weight, even though I was, you know, I, I was looking good and, but I lost weight. And then I caught myself looking in the mirror, not even realizing going, I wish I, I could lose a little bit more weight right here on my, the back of my arm. And I was like, oh, Karen, how dare you say that you just lost 10 pounds off your body and you, how dare I?

Speaker 3 (23:06):

And I was so ashamed and I felt so guilt. I was like, what, what? How can I even think that? And so I had to look at it and be like, where's that coming from? And I'm like, it's coming from the fact that I've done this for the last 30 years of my life. I've looked in the mirror and I have cut myself down. I, it's al it's never like, Hey, I'm looking good. Look at how great my stomach looks. I'm looking so hot. Like, it's usually like, we don't do that. We right. We pick up the one or like many things, whatever it is. But you'll, you'll nitpick. You'll be like, what's this freckle doing here on my face? , you're just, you'll find anything. And sometimes women, it's a lot, it's not one thing. It's their whole body that they look at and they hate.

Speaker 3 (23:54):

They're going, what? Look at my stomach, look at my legs, look at my cellulite, look at my hair, look at my wrinkles, look at my chest, look at my breasts. Like it's never ending. And so ask yourself like, how, how is your day spent talking to yourself? Are you constantly worried about your weight? Are you constantly worried about the food that's going into your mouth? Are you constantly going, Ooh, I'm gonna start this tomorrow. Ooh, I'm gonna eat better today. I'm gonna eat better tomorrow. I'm gonna start the diet next week. Because I think majority of women do this, wouldn't you say?

Speaker 1 (24:28):

Yes. And you know, I love the litmus test for that because it's such a habitual way that most of us think when we look in the mirror, we're not looking for what we love. We're looking for the things we don't like that we need to fix so we can be perfect. Would you say that to a friend? Would you say your friend says, oh Karen, I lost 10 pounds. Look I lost 10 pounds. And they proudly come before you and you go, you know what? Yeah. But you've got fat on the back of that arm and you need to lose that. What would your friend say to you? She would not be your friend anymore. Right. That's how you know you're hating on yourself.

Speaker 3 (25:06):

Yeah, exactly. And, and hate's a strong word, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:10):

,

Speaker 3 (25:10):

You know, like how much are you loving on yourself? Maybe ask that. How much are you actually just going like, you are rocking it. You look so fantastic. I had a friend last year who was desperately trying to lose weight. She was eating, trying to eat right. She was exercising. And then I didn't talk to her for like a month or two. And when I saw her, she had lost weight. And so I'm thinking like, oh, all my tips are working for her. Right? And she said, you know what Karen? I wasn't losing weight no matter what I was doing. And she said, so I, I stopped thinking about it. Instead I would get myself naked and I would stand in front of my mirror and I would tell myself how great I looked. And she said, I did that consistently . And she said, and the weight started coming off. And I was like, wow, .

Speaker 1 (25:58):

It's so true. One other thing I noticed, I just wanna share cuz I know some people listening are gonna be like, oh my gosh, I do that too is so I had been traveling and not been able to keep to my eating and exercise schedule and I gained a few pounds and then I came to a city here in Argentina where I could kind of get settled and get to a good gym and eat like I like to eat. And so I just started doing, doing the things that I do for my health. And then I started seeing that weight come off, come off. And I was very pleased. But instead of just continuing to love myself and give my body what it needed, I turned it into a project and I'm like, oh my gosh, I lost five pounds. I bet I could lose another eight pounds this month if I up my gym.

Speaker 1 (26:44):

And I cut my intermittent fasting to only eating four hours a day. And before I knew it, I had made myself in my progress into nothing. And I had made myself into a project and objectified myself instead of just loving myself and giving my body what it needs. Because I know she'll go to what the weight she likes. And I know there's some people listening going like, oh my gosh, I do that too. So you're not alone. But then what is the loving thing to let go of that I don't stop, I'm not, I don't usually weigh myself. Why did I even get on this scale? Right? It's not loving. So now I don't, not

Speaker 3 (27:21):

Not on

Speaker 1 (27:21):

The scale, right? I'm still in in Buenos Aries and I just go do the exercise and give my body the food it needs. That's loving. So how does a yeah. Self love look. How would you explain that? What kind of actions would it be?

Speaker 3 (27:37):

I think both with my, both times there when I was in my thirties and when I was in my forties, when I remember getting to a point even in my late thirties where I realized that I was still trying to lose weight even though I was at 128 pounds, that was my weight set point. It would never move from that. It would be like I would try something extreme, I'd lose some weight and it would just go right back to 1 28. And I just kept doing this for years. And I was constantly like, I wanna get down, I wanna get down. I shouldn't be this weight. I should be 1 25, I should be one 20, whatever it might be. And then I remember this one day, it just dawned on me, I'm like, this is where my body wants to be . It's not a super skinny little person.

Speaker 3 (28:20):

And I never will be. I never have been, I never will be. So quit trying to get down to this unrealistic weight. And I'm like, what, Karen, are you really willing to do what it would take to be 120 pounds? Like I would have to starve myself. I would have to, I I, even if I did, I still don't think I would've gotten down to that. And I let it go cuz I was like, I can sit here and spend the rest of my life trying to get down to this fricking number on the scale because I feel like that's how I should look. Or I can accept where I'm at right now and work on just accepting that. And so I did and I did great. And for many years I was, I was very pleased with where I was at till I hit my forties and I, and I gained the 15 pounds and then I immediately started to hate on myself.

Speaker 3 (29:11):

But I did the same thing where I, I knew if no matter what I was gonna do at that time, I wouldn't have been able to lose the weight. And so I worked on loving myself and I worked on sharing that message. And I think that that really helped because menopausal women, perimenopausal women and menopausal women, I really believe that it's very normal for us to soften a little bit. It just is men do. So why can't women? And it's not realistic to think we're gonna look like we did when we were 20, when we're 50. It's just not, and it's okay to soften a little bit and we need to start accepting that and having that be the normal where we can look at women that are in this midlife go and go, they look beautiful because I do, I look at women my age and I think they're beautiful when they're healthy.

Speaker 3 (30:10):

And so I just kept telling myself that is, I'm gonna be healthy. I'm gonna still eat right, I'm gonna still exercise, I'm gonna still do yoga and I'm gonna be healthy. And I had super clear skin and I, and I looked good. And yes, I was more overweight than I wanted to be. And I knew that that would come off eventually. And it did take a couple of years and it was slowly started to come off. And I still was though accepting. Cause I still wasn't down to 1 28. I still accepted that I needed to, that it was okay for me to soften a little bit mm-hmm. because I was getting older and that's okay. I wasn't overweight. Mm-Hmm. . I, but I had softened.

Speaker 1 (30:52):

I mean, I think if you do want to be the same as at 60 as you were at 20, you can do it. It's just, do you want to do it? I will say, I wanna ask you this cuz I, I don't know how old you are now. I'm in my fifties 47.

Speaker 1 (31:07):

Okay. So my generation, I guess that's your generation. I don't know if we're, I'm a baby boomer. I think we had some pretty unrealistic expectations of what weight we were supposed to be at any age. Yeah. Literally we had, you know, those little Barbie dolls where you could wrap your little pinky finger around their waist. And for my whole life, I thought because my thighs touched and I didn't have a gap thigh gap, there was something wrong with me. But now the, there were earlier, more recent generations, they really accept themselves. And I love some of these kind of TV and internet stars where they're big and beautiful and bold and they love themselves and nobody judges them and they're just accepted for who they are and their beauty. And I, you know, I don't know how you overcome the conditioning we went through, but any thoughts on that you'd like to share?

Speaker 3 (31:56):

Yeah, you could look like you did when you were 20, but what is it gonna take to get there? Like, how much suffering are you going to to have to go through and, and, and it's just not realistic. And I always tell women like whatever their numbers that they're trying to get down to, I asked them, when was the last time you were at that number and how long were you there for? Because usually it's like, oh, well I did this really extreme diet when I was 25 and I got down to 115 pounds, so I think that's what I'd like to be at because I love the way I looked. I'm like, yeah, I bet you did. But is that realistic? No, that's not your set point. So I just think be realistic about it. Be okay with softening a little bit. I'm not saying you have to accept being, you know, 300 pounds or two.

Speaker 3 (32:40):

Like I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that there is a place where you have to begin to accept where you're at because it likely will not change. Like you can only get down to that set point. Maybe that a healthy set point that is still maybe in your eyes overweight, even though it's only like five to 10 pounds or 15 pounds overweight maybe for you. But could you just work on accepting that and loving yourself for that? And just focusing on being healthy and feeling really good. And that's, I think, a really hard thing to ask women really, really hard.

Speaker 1 (33:18):

And what about the cultural norms that we grew up with, with very skinny barbies and a very skinny twiggy kinda expectation of what the definition of beauty was and what we should look like? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:30):

Well I, I ask you then, all of you, how many women do you know that look like that? Especially in their forties, even in their thirties, how many women did you know that were stick thin and had a perfect model figure? I can count like two friends out of all my friends that looked like that. Most didn't. So it's more normal to have curves than not to have curves. And we just see it in the magazines as these, this 1% of society of women that ha that were literally born genetically superior and that have those shredded bo like, they just come out looking fantastic and never have to worry about their weight. So it's more normal to be curvaceous and we have to tell ourselves this, that, that, that is what's normal. It's not normal. And, and look at men, geez, the discre, like between men and women.

Speaker 3 (34:24):

I just, it drives me nuts that men, all of my guy friends right now, they're in their forties and fifties. They've got the bellies. They're not getting Botox, they're not doing plastic surgery, they're not concerned . Like, they're just riding along, you know, and we look at them and oh, they're handsome with their gray hair. But yeah, women, we start to age and we're looked at like, Ooh, no, no, you better get your Botox. You better. Not that I'm saying anything wrong with Botox, I do get myself, but you know, like the pressure on us is far more right. And you have to remind yourself, like, I remind myself all the time, like, my husband's not doing all of these things. So take it easy on yourself. Don't feel like you have to too. Mm-Hmm. , this is the time in our life, like talking about spirituality.

Speaker 3 (35:11):

This is a time in our life where we, it's all about us finally. You know, like we in our twenties and thirties, it's all about our career, having children, getting married, and a lot of the time, right? We, we've, at this point, we've figured out if we're keeping the man or we're getting rid of 'em or, or, or your wife, whatever it is. And as we go into these years, our hormones start to shift. And I really think that this is is a calling to start paying attention to yourself, to start paying attention to your health mm-hmm. and let it be about you. You know, your kids are growing up, they're getting older. If you have children, you know, your ki your ki you figured out your job at this point. So let these years be about you because these can be the best years of your life. You know, we talk a lot about the bad, about the weight gain, about the hot flashes, the, the low sex drop, all the things that come with losing our hormones. But there's so much good that can come out of these years. These can be the best years of your life if you can start to take care of yourself and treat yourself with love. Like, it, it is, it's the time to do this and to work on these things. I really, really believe that.

Speaker 1 (36:21):

So one of the things that you shared with me before we started, I said, oh, we have to talk about that, that you can do to love yourself and really help yourself be your best as you age is peptide therapy, particularly if you're experiencing weight loss resistance. And I thought that is something that we should cover and talk about in this episode. So tell me how you became introduced with peptide therapy to help weight loss resistance. Yes.

Speaker 3 (36:49):

So we have actually a, a peptide weight loss program now because it started last year when I had a client who had Hashimotos. She was one of those women that was doing everything right, eating right, exercising, could not lose the weight no matter what she did. She had optimized her hormone, she optimized the thyroid, could not get the weight off. And we have, we, I hadn't seen her for a couple months, we have this session together and she just lost 17 pounds, . I said, how the heck did you do that? She said, Ozempic. And I'm like, what's Ozempic ? I hadn't even heard of it. So she tells me what it is and it's a weight loss peptide. And so then I went on the search of what the heck is this? And I started googling it and finding out for myself and thought, wow, this is amazing.

Speaker 3 (37:38):

I'm gonna give this a go. So I try it for myself and it was a complete disaster, to be honest, . I actually ended up getting severe migraines from it. I felt super sick, didn't lose any weight the first couple weeks. So I was like, well of course this isn't gonna work for Karen. Lo lo and behold, like, not shocking at all. Right? So I then started to recommend it to other client, other perimenopausal, menopausal women that I knew that had tried everything. You know, like they had done all the work and every single one of them were got results. And it was, it's, it was like, wow, this is amazing. So then fast forward to now, we've created our own, we like weight loss peptide program because it, I, it really truly just blows my mind how well these peptides work. So I have now gone to the other one, which is known as Manjaro.

Speaker 3 (38:34):

So I do it just the the peptide. I don't do the name brand Manjaro. So that's called Tze Peptide. So there's Semaglutide and there's Tpat. Tpat is the newest Semaglutide, which is also known as ozempic has been around for 10 years. So we've got a lot of research now on that originally developed for type two diabetics and they realized that, oh my goodness, people are losing a ton of weight, but they're on average in a year's time, or 72 weeks I think it was, they were losing 15 to 20% of their weight. Which just so everybody knows bef prior to this drug, if a drug could help a person lose 5% of their weight, that was considered amazing. Cuz that's all we had seen. That was how good it got. Mm-Hmm. , these were 15 to 20%. And it wasn't just that people were reversing all of these metabolic diseases.

Speaker 3 (39:29):

You know, cholesterol was getting better, their fatty liver was disappearing. It was helping there, there's research now showing that it helps to prevent Alzheimer's disease, plaque formation on the brain. All of these little metabolic markers were getting substantially better. People were getting off blood pressure mega medications and so many things were getting better mm-hmm. and plus they were effortlessly losing weight. These, these medications not only help to suppress appetite, but they work on your brain and they help it so that you don't crave sugary foods anymore. You just kind of just disappears . So you don't care to you, you're not struggling that whole time. Right? The whole, any other diet, you're struggling. We all know that. You're, you're like, I can't, I shouldn't eat that, but I really want to, you know, that's like why most diets fail is because our willpower runs out and we end up eating the highly palatable foods that are all around us.

Speaker 3 (40:31):

Well, this drug eliminates that need. So weight loss becomes easier than it's ever been before in your entire life. It's nuts how it works. So I went on Tze peptide, I was at 138 pounds and no side effects. In six weeks I lost 10 pounds and it was mm-hmm. . And it's been easy, fantastic. Like, I have no problem with it. This is though something that you have to typically stay on. So that's the downfall is you come off of it and a some people will, will keep the weight off, but because most people will blow past their set point, then you will likely, if you come off of it, you may go back to that normal set point, right? So for a menopausal woman, if you've gained, let's say you were always 130 pounds, but in menopause you've gained 15 pounds and you cannot get it off.

Speaker 3 (41:30):

Well, you could go on this drug and it's gonna gonna get you down to that 130 pounds. But if you wish that you could go actually down even farther. So if you came off of it, you would likely, as long as you were eating right and still exercising, you could go back. You may gain back, let's say right back up to maybe the hundred and 30, because that's your normal set point when most women I find have to stay on a maintenance dose. So they have to have seen everything from once every couple weeks to every six weeks. They have to do an injection, their once a week injection. So they, you start to spread them apart and then you can maintain that weight loss as long as you continue doing a shot every four to six weeks. Sometimes did everybody's individual. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:17):

So can you talk a little bit about how semaglutide works? So everybody knows like, is this an appetite suppressant? Is this uppers? What is it?

Speaker 3 (42:27):

No, definitely not. Uppers. So both semaglutide and tze peptide are hormones actually. And they're gut hormones. We produce them in our gut and then they tell your brain when you're full. So when you're eating these, because we're increasing, so they're 90, you can think of them as, I think of 'em as like a bioidentical hormone. They're 94% bioidentical to something you already make in your body. So it's gonna create more of this hormone that's gonna be telling you that you're full a heck of a lot faster. So there's no stimulation to it. It slows gastric emptying as well. It does affect the dopamine centers of the brain and the pleasure centers. So you don't get the same payoff from food, drugs, alcohol. Mm-Hmm. . So anything that is addictive to you that you are getting a dopamine hit from, it will bring that down. So there were mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 (43:29):

, there's actually some PubMed research showing like how it helps with co for cocaine addicts. So, interesting enough, I was just looking at that last night. So it works on different, a couple different mechanisms. There's two different, so Semaglutide is a glucagon-like peptide is what it's called. And then the tze peptide is a dual agonist, not that anybody needs to know this, it's a G I P. So glucose dependent, insulinotropic probably not saying that, right? Polypeptide. So these are peptides that we've already got in our body that are mimicking these peptides when we're taking them. So mm-hmm. , it's the best way to explain it. .

Speaker 1 (44:11):

And then everybody's gonna wanna know, oh my gosh, I want this, what does it cost? ? Yeah, that's the next question.

Speaker 3 (44:18):

Unfortunately, if you're not diabetic, you cannot get it covered through, if you've got insurance, you will not get it covered if you're not diabetic. Ozempic has now been approved for weight loss for obesity, but you have to be, I think it is over 30% or 35% bmi. So if you were to just go and get yourself a prescription, manjaro is gonna cost you about $1,500 a month. Semaglutide is about 1200 a month, but there's now compounding pharmacies that are making it. So compounding pharmacies can make semaglutide. And you're looking at about 200, 2 50 a month for that through a compounding pharmacy. Mm-Hmm. . And then with Tpat, it's a little bit of more gray area that they're not allowing compounding pharmacies to do it. There's still some that are, and I think eventually we'll start to see it more mm-hmm. . But right now, the company that made it is coming down on compounding pharmacies if they're trying to compound it.

Speaker 3 (45:23):

So then you can get it through peptide sites. So I, I don't know how much you've talked about peptides on here, but you know, there's growth hormone peptides, b BPC 1 57, all of these very familiar peptides that people are using now, and they're ordering them online from reputable peptide sites. Mm-Hmm. . And there you can get, we've got Tze peptide that starts at 170 a month, and the semaglutide is like 75 a month to start mm-hmm. . And then you increase your dose as you go along. So then it starts to, then the price goes up the farther along you go. So that's not too bad considering what, what us women will do to lose weight in the money that we spend on it. ,

Speaker 1 (46:05):

I mean, I'm still a proponent of addressing the underlying root cause, but if something is natural and can be an aid to assist you, hey, why not? In fact, as you're talking about it, I've never, I always have to try everything first. You know, that's how I developed same everything that I I do with women is what I learned from losing a hundred pounds and getting off all prescription medications and healing from all the chronic medical conditions I had. I said I was gonna see if it worked, and then if it worked, I was gonna spend the rest of my life teaching other women about it. So that's what I do. And when I hear about something that could help us, that isn't gonna harm us, and you know, with it being a peptide, that's just a protein and it is fairly bioidentical. I'll tell everyone right now, I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna try it and I'll give you my feedback. But it sounds like you've had a, some good results with this. Do you wanna share any patient stories that come to mind? Oh,

Speaker 3 (47:01):

I've got so many patient stories. It's, it's so gratifying. It's just, we've been, we've been brain, we've been, not brain, we've been, it has been very, very hard. Our whole lives to lose weight. Like weight loss is really hard. And we all know this. And I have spent my life helping women to lose weight. Like, it's something I'm very passionate about. And I feel the same way as you do Dr. Kiran, that you have to look at all of these other factors. You know, it's, you gotta look at your hormones for all of you perimenopausal, menopausal women. You've gotta address the hormone loss, right? Well, you're gonna be, if you go take these peptides, you have to building, you're building a house on sand. That's what I'm saying. It's like you're building a house on sand, you gotta have a foundation. And so this is why we've created a program to go with it, because you could go out, buy these peptides on your own, go for it.

Speaker 3 (47:52):

But you know, if you're not, if you're still not eating right and you're not exercising, you're not replacing those hormones and working on your spiritual self like we've talked about here today. Then I just feel like, why, why? Like, why don't do that to your health? Don't use it as a, well, I'm gonna go eat my donut and I'm not gonna lose any weight. That's not good for your health then. Mm-Hmm. . So I really think you need to prioritize and you have to have those foundational pieces be part of it and take the time because this, this drug works so well take the time to change your eating habits, then if it's always been a struggle for you to eat, well then use this as a tool to work while to take, while you work on your eating habits, because it does make it so much easier.

Speaker 3 (48:41):

So work on the eating habits, work on the time that you eat, work on how much you eat because it's very hard to overeat on this drug. Use this as a positive thing. And it is very exciting because you just, the weight just falls off and it's like, oh my gosh. Like I felt, I, I've gone through this like battle within myself of guilt and shame and like, oh, it's been nuts. I've just been like, oh my. And like, and I've had to turn and look at like, some of these things that have arisen because I feel like if it's not hard, then I have no right to be thin.

Speaker 1 (49:16):

Wow. That's a belief system. Do you like believing that

Speaker 3 (49:21):

? No. So I've been like, really try, I've been speaking about it on my own podcast and sharing my journey because these are things that may come up for other people where you do start to feel guilty or when people ask you like, oh, you've lost a lot, a lot of weight very quickly they think there's something wrong with you. Or they're like, oh, what she's doing a peptide or, you know, and I've just been like, no, let me educate you on this. Like this is actually the most astounding weight loss show we've ever seen to date. And if it can be easy, why not? I say, let's, let's embrace it. .

Speaker 1 (49:59):

Yes. Anne, I just wanna reiterate, you gotta address the underlying causes. Otherwise you are building a house on sand. If you don't fix your hormones and detoxify and get rid of the inflammation and fix your gut and do all the things, you still gotta do that. Well feel

Speaker 3 (50:14):

Good. You may be thin, but you're gonna feel like garbage.

Speaker 1 (50:17):

Right? And I, I will reiterate, I know we have a difference of opinion. It was pretty effortless for me to lose the hundred pounds when I address the underlying causes. And that's my experience with the women I work with. So I just wanna incorporate both of our experiences for everyone listening. It can be effortless, sometimes it's harder, sometimes it's easier. But why not take advantage of a tool that could help you? So I'm for sure gonna try it. I'll share my experience. If anybody listening decides to try it, maybe you'll decide to do Karen's program. She's got amazing programs, which she's gonna share some in, in information on right now. But you share these amazing quotes with me, Karen, before we start started, and we haven't offered any. So I will, before we wrap up, I just wanna offer two of my favorites that you shared. So one is one of the most courageous things you can do is identify yourself. Know who you are, what you believe in, and where you want to go. Sheila Marie Bethel, I don't know who she is. Can you talk a little bit about this quote and what it means to you?

Speaker 3 (51:20):

What it means to me is, is that's been my life mission as really being who I truly am. And that's all the work that I've done has led me to that. And it's, I I, I want that for everybody. I do.

Speaker 1 (51:34):

Amen. Yes. It be courageous. Identify yourself, know who you are, what you believe in and where you wanna go. And then Tony Robbins quote, the path to success is to take massive determined action. Action. You know, sometimes we women, we can just get stuck in our heads believing not true things. And you really deserve to have amazing health. You deserve to have a great sex life and great sexuality. You deserve to have great hair. Yes, you deserve to feel amazing in your skin. Look amazing in your skin if that matters to you. And do all the things that you want in life, right? Those dreams that you have we're given to you to fulfill. They're not some pipe dreams. So any last words you wanna share with everybody?

Speaker 3 (52:22):

Yeah, just off of, right off of what you just said there, like, don't settle for subpar. This is, like I said, this is the time in your life that could be the best time of your life. So go after it. Be courageous. Take massive action, but do what you, whatever it is that you have to do to be where you wanna be and look how you wanna look and that's fantastic. And embrace it and just, just don't be afraid and don't think that you have to suffer. I think poor, perimenopausal, menopausal when we have it in our head that there's gonna be some suffering or a lot of suffering. And we take this on like a badge of honor and it's like, no, we don't have to suffer and we can look fantastic and we can be fantastic and we can thrive. We don't have to suffer.

Speaker 1 (53:11):

Yes. So get about that business and you know, I think that's really part of loving yourself and maybe this is where we'll end. Mm-Hmm. self-love is honoring your dreams. That your dreams are meant to be fulfilled and taking massive action to make them come true. So where can everybody find you online? You have a free gift, a hormone quiz you can tell everyone about. We'll have all her links in the show notes. So if you're driving, please don't try to write these down, but share with everyone about the hormone quiz and all the places to find you.

Speaker 3 (53:44):

So karen martel.com. You can take my hormone quiz to find out, you know, which hormones could be stopping you from losing weight. It's just a quiz. So, but it's a great place to start and you'll get a little free meal plan from it. And besides that, you can find me on my podcast, the other side of weight loss, or we talk a ton about hormones and weight loss for women. We just hit 1 million downloads, so that's very exciting. So we've got 260 episodes on there. And then on social media, you can find me at Karen Martel hormones,

Speaker 1 (54:14):

Karen Martel hormones, and, and your podcast. Absolutely, definitely check it out. We'll have links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for your journey, your wisdom and your passion for helping women. Thank you for being here, Karen.

Speaker 3 (54:29):

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (54:31):

And thank you for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kirin. So glad that you joined us today for this insightful discussion with maybe some things you hadn't thought about when it comes to your health, whether you have a weight problem or not. Looking at the deeper message of the malady or illness that you're experiencing can really help give you some insights that you can work towards healing and may just be the root cause that's keeping you stuck and you learned about a novel tool that you might want to consider using to help you. If you are struggling with weight loss, I'm gonna try it too and we'll share notes and see how it works, and I look forward to seeing you next week on another episode of The Hormone Prescription. Until then, peace, love, and Hormones. Y'all talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 (55:20):

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.

 

► Take Karen Martel's Hormone Quiz and find out which hormones could be stopping you from losing weight - CLICK HERE.

 

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Lifting Heavy Things Is Essential For Your Midlife Metabolism

Don't miss out on the latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, where we delve into the importance of lifting weights for boosting your midlife metabolism. Our featured guest, Ashley Fillmore, is a leading expert in sustainable weight-loss who helps women balance their hormones, heal their metabolism, and achieve body composition changes that last a lifetime.
  
Ashley Fillmore is the Founder and President of Metabolic Fix™, a premium online coaching company that has helped thousands of women unlock the secret to better health and wellness. She is driven by her passion for helping women discover the life of health, happiness, and self-love they deserve.
  
In this episode you will learn:

• the importance of incorporating heavy lifting into your fitness routine for a robust midlife metabolism
• the science behind the benefits of weightlifting
• the transformative power of lifting heavy things and how you can effectively shape and transform your body, especially during the midlife stage.    

Join us on The Hormone Prescription Podcast today and learn how to unlock the secret to a boosted midlife metabolism with Ashley Fillmore!

 

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Everything you've ever wanted is sitting on the other side of beer. Ashley Fillmore. Stay tuned and I'll tell you how to do this thing that you haven't wanted to do for your health that you must do to make midlife marvelous.

Speaker 2 (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 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.

Speaker 1 (01:12):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today as we're going to talk about facing a fear that many women have that really is essential for them to do this thing, to make midlife marvelous, to make their metabolism marvelous, to get the health, the brilliant health that you desire and deserve. Yeah, I gotta do this thing. And so many of you are afraid of it or you're avoiding it and not doing it, and you don't know that there's some fear under there, but a lot of times there is. So we're gonna talk about it today. My guest today is really a ninja at this. I mean, she's had her own health challenges that she's gonna share with you and she's found some really cool paths over the mountain that she's gonna guide you through and help you understand.

Speaker 1 (02:09):

So I'm excited to dive into it with Ashley and to get you some information. She's gonna talk about your bravery. How do you get to the other side of fear and why your dreams might not be working? And that might be helpful to know because you have your dreams for a reason. They're meant to guide you to where you're supposed to be. So if you're not doing all the things like I like to say, we're gonna talk about all the things, but mostly this one thing that you're not doing, that you keep saying you're gonna do that's stopping you from experiencing the brilliant health that you deserve. So I'll tell you a little bit about Ashley and then we'll get started. She is a leading expert in sustainable weight loss and she helps women heal their metabolism, balance their hormones, and achieve body composition changes that lasts a lifetime.

Speaker 1 (02:58):

Woohoo. She is the founder and president of Metabolic Fix, a premium online coaching company that has helped thousands of women finally break free from chronic dieting for good and achieve long-term sustainable results using the metabolic fix method. She has a deep commitment to helping women better their lives and she strives to inspire others to embrace a life of health, happiness, and self-love. You deserve that self-love that we all deserve. She's a renowned keynote speaker, she's been on many podcasts. She has her own podcast, cheers to your success, and she has a Bachelor of Science and Exercise and nutrition and is a certified PT professional nutrition coach and health educator. Welcome Ashley to the Hormone Prescription. Hi.

Speaker 3 (03:44):

Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to talk with you today.

Speaker 1 (03:48):

Yes. I think this is such an important topic. Why lifting everything is essential to your midlife metabolism. We women just don't get the weight lifting aspect and requirements of our health, especially as we age. And I find so many women don't lift enough weight, not heavy enough, or they don't do it at all. They're very focused on aerobics. So what helped you zero in on the fact that this is essential for us as we age?

Speaker 3 (04:19):

Yeah, so I think it started back when I started my career and when I was going through school and studying hormones, metabolism and sustainable weight loss. One thing that popped up all the time throughout my research and my certifications was the importance of weight training and its impact on your metabolism as you age. So most of the women that I've helped from day one in my career, I would say, are in their forties, fifties, sixties. And a lot of the women wanna lose weight. They've done a lot of crash dieting, they've done a lot of cardio based exercises cuz that was really popular in the eighties, nineties, even seventies when they were growing up. And you know, they need different because what they're currently doing isn't working and not serving them well anymore. And so when I was studying the impact that weight training has on your metabolism, the research is really shocking.

Speaker 3 (05:12):

And honestly for me it was just a no-brainer to say, okay, as women we need to become more comfortable in the gym. We have a space here. Your gym could be in a physical gym or even at home, but we need to become more comfortable with weight training. It's not just for men and it's not gonna make us bulky because that's the number one thing I hear from women is I don't wanna look like a man. We don't have the hormonal profile as you know, to look like a man. Even if we wanted to look like a man, we couldn't do it unless we were taking some extra hormones to help us look that way. And so really it started there in just recognizing the importance of building muscle mass and then backing it up from there and saying, okay, what do you have to do to build muscle mass? Does cardio help you build muscle mass? Does that 90 minute aerobics class build muscle mass? What's really gonna add more muscle mass on your frame? And what can you do to maintain the muscle mass that you have? When I started researching that, it connected all the dots. Weight training was the answer.

Speaker 1 (06:21):

Yeah, it's so key. And I mean we, we start as women losing muscle mass at the age of 30 if we don't lose any, do anything to prevent it, like weight training, hormone balancing, all the things. But weights are really essential. And you know, a lot of women I think don't realize that they're resting metabolic rate, meaning the rate at which they burn calories when they're just sit sitting there looking beautiful and doing nothing else really goes down when they, you start losing muscle mass and, and this is that 3% weight gain that we start with at age 30 if we don't do anything to counteract it. So this is really essential. So if you're listening and you're not using resistance or weight training as a part of your program, you want to listen up and, and you're right, absolutely right Ashley, about we don't have the testosterone to sustain the amount of muscle mass that males have. We just don't have it. So unless you're taking high doses or doping with testosterone, you're not going to bulk up. So you're not gonna look like some of these women who are professional weight trainers and have these huge muscles. You're just gonna get definition. So where is important for someone? Where do they start? Say they're, they've never worked with weights, they've never listed lifted weights. Yeah. How do they even get started with that?

Speaker 3 (07:40):

Yeah, and I think that it can be really overwhelming and it can be really intimidating. I've had so many women come to me and say, I'm, I'm terrified to go into the gym. I am so terrified. There's, you know, college kids, boys, you know, men, everyone's, you know, grunting and groaning and sweating on everything . I don't feel like I have a place here, but I'm like, no, you have a place here. And sometimes when we look back, at least I'm thinking back to when I was in college doing my internship, a part of my internship was working at a local health training studio. And when I even went to the gyms, there was a women's only section, which meant as a woman you could go to this designated area in the gym and use your machines and they had five pound dumbbells and eight pound dumbbells.

Speaker 3 (08:28):

It may be 10 pounds, but it stopped there and it kind of made you feel like as a woman that's where you belonged. You weren't really welcomed or supposed to be out in the big gym with the guys and it can be intimidating as a beginner. And so I think that's simple as best. And honestly I would say number one is getting some professional help. Truly it is really worth the investment because you can go on Instagram or even Google it these days and sure, are you gonna be able to find a workout? Definitely we can find a workout within a couple of seconds. Doesn't mean that this workout's effective or where you should be starting. Absolutely not. And so I think it's important to, if you can have someone assist you and guide you if you're a beginner, the basics work. Well, compound movements, you don't need to do workout for hours a day, even 20 or 30 minutes.

Speaker 3 (09:23):

There's research that shows the benefits in doing that. And then the secret is consistency. You have to consistently put in the work and be willing to progressively over time increase your weight in the gym, which is what we refer to as progressive overload. So not necessarily every week or every day go up on the weights you're lifting, but progressively over the course of several weeks and months, you should be able to say, okay, as I reflect back on my program, maybe you start off with five or 10 pounds, but over the course of maybe three, six weeks, 12 weeks, you go up to 10, 15, maybe even 20 pounds or more. I think that, you know, being, getting comfortable with lifting heavy weight and realizing heavy is relative to the individual. But keeping in mind as a beginner, you don't have to use fancy equipment, you don't need fancy machines, you actually don't even need a gym membership. You can simply buy some weights at home and follow a great program in the comfort of your home or going to a gym. But having a professional guide you, unless you are a certified personal trainer and know how to program effectively, can really be a game changer for that beginner getting started.

Speaker 1 (10:41):

Yeah, I think that's such important information. I will say I have trained with weights in a variety of scenarios throughout my life and the best results I ever got one of was actually when I worked with the best personal trainer I've ever worked with. And she knew exactly what you needed for optimum weight and different muscle groups and for functional capacity, right? So I was trying to increase certain muscle groups in my body cuz I was having back problems when I was so obese and she was just amazing. And I've done it myself too, where I've had weights at home and even I still was left with those questions. Am I doing the right exercises? Am I using the right weights? So where would someone start, say they want to buy some weights and do it at home, and maybe this is something you go through in your programs and help guide people on, but if you could just give them a ballpark idea so they can see it in their minds of how easy this could be, where would they even start if they were gonna do this at home?

Speaker 3 (11:43):

Yeah, no, that's a great question and, and you're right. One of the things I'll offer at the end of our show is even a trial to my rise workout program, which really does lay this out nicely for someone getting home or getting started and maybe wanting to work out at home or wanting to work out even in the gym. But if you're listening in and you're thinking, okay, I really want to get started, what do I need to buy today and what should I be doing? I would say if you're gonna work out at home and not join a gym membership, a bench, preferably an adjustable bench. So you can do incline dumbbell presses or flats, step ups, there's a lot of different things we can utilize that bench for, depending on your mobility and your flexibility. Certain movements like squats could be difficult to do free standing, so squatting to a bench can be very helpful to ensure that you're getting the proper range of motion so you can, that adjustable bench is perfect.

Speaker 3 (12:39):

I would say depending on your strength level. One of the things I mentioned earlier on was that strength is very much so relative to the individual. So for example, you may feel like 15 or 20 pounds is heavy or, and I may think it's super light, but it just depends on our strength levels, how long we've been lifting weights, how much muscle mass we have. And so for you getting started, I would say get a range of weights, you don't need a ton. I would say get some light dumbbells for higher repetitions and working more isolated muscle groups. So maybe five pounds, maybe two and a half pounds, eight pounds, 10 pounds. But then I would also suggest investing in some heavier dumbbells. So you can do lower reps at a heavier weight, meaning maybe you're only gonna do five to eight reps, so that five or 10 pound set of dumbbells isn't gonna work anymore.

Speaker 3 (13:33):

You're gonna need maybe 15, 20 plus pounds. So I think just having a variety of weights, maybe two lighter sets, two heavier sets, or one of each light and heavy. And I'm a big fan of bands as well. I do a lot of mini bands. We utilize them a lot for glute activation, which is something women struggle with, especially if you have a very sedentary job and you're not activating your glutes a lot, which you're not activating them when you're like in a, in a chair all day long. So we do a lot of band work as well. So you can typically google like mini band glute bands and there will be a variety of options that pop up. Those are very handy. You can add a lot of tension on your glutes and even for your lower back strength. And then if you can also maybe think about a stability ball.

Speaker 3 (14:23):

So you could do some core exercises as well as some leg exercises when you're like lying on laying on a floor, there's certain exercises you could do with that stability ball. So that would be the equipment a bench adjustable dump bes heavy and light mini bands for the glutes. And if you can't afford it, a stability ball, that would be enough to get started. Sure, you can go on and invest in more advanced equipment for your home gym, but I think build start there, show yourself that you can do it consistently and then think about making a larger investment down the road if you wanna get a squat rack, barbells and things like that. And then for your workouts, I think starting off really basic, generally speaking, you wanna focus primarily on compound movements. And so compound movements would be your squats, lunges, pullups, pushups, bent over rows. And some of these terms may not even, you know, just if you haven't lifted weights, it may be hard to even know what I'm talking about. Bench pressing, those are compound movements. You're activating multiple muscle groups and you're gonna burn more calories by doing that and help rev up your metabolism. And so focusing the bulk of your training plan on that, and even a basic template of three by 10 to just get started with anywhere between, I would say six to 10 exercises is very effective for a beginner.

Speaker 1 (15:57):

Awesome. Well that's like a comprehensive how to get started guy. Thank you Ashley, that was amazing. And I'm wondering if you can, because I know a lot of women are still are so hesitant to get started with this, can you share some stories of some women who have you've worked with in your program who maybe they were hesitant to and what their journey was like through starting with resistance training?

Speaker 3 (16:25):

Yeah, I would love to, and if you're okay with it, I would love to share a little bit of my story and then I'll go into sharing. I have a couple of clients in mind that I would love to just briefly touch on. But I will say that I used to be very afraid. Interestingly, although my education and background is in personal training, nutrition coaching, specializing in sustainable weight loss. When I was, started my career literally right out of college, I was very young and didn't have a lot of experience at that time. You know, I was afraid to be honest. So truly lifting weights, I leaned more into cardio and I thought that that was the secret and I thought more was better. And so I would, I signed up for a gym membership, not at for personal training, but for myself. And I started taking, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the less mills classes, but I took body pump step aerobics, spin class, and I would spend three to four hours a day in the gym burning calories because I thought that was the secret to building the body that I wanted what ended up happening.

Speaker 3 (17:32):

And combine that with crash dieting and eating about 1200 calories a day as a 20 year old, let's just say that's a perfect formula for disaster . So I thought that was all I needed to do to lose body fat. I was putting in a ton of effort in the gym doing exclusively cardio based workouts to burn calories. I was eating in a big caloric deficit, but I realized instead of gaining muscle mass and looking strong and healthy, I ended up honestly looking the opposite of that in my opinion. I had friends and family members and even clients say, wow, you know, are you okay ? You know, no, like you're no nothing personal, but you just, you look like you're getting a little too, just frail to me was the term that they lose not so much strong or healthy. And so I hit a dead end road.

Speaker 3 (18:26):

My hormones were in a really bad place. I lost my cycle. I felt really bad. I didn't feel good, I had horrible energy and I was spending so much of my day in the gym. I started to question, can I sustain this? I'm gonna be working full-time, I wanna have a family, I'm gonna have a household to maintain. There's no way. And so when I hit my dead end road, I had to stop doing everything that I was doing, including the cardio for hours, the undereating. And that's when I said, okay, I need to lean into what I know and what I'm literally, you know, learning through my own training and education. And that's when I started to walk at a steady low st, no, no steady state cardio, just at a leisure pace is what I would call it. Mm-Hmm. several days a week.

Speaker 3 (19:16):

And I started weight training three times per week and I took away all of the hit all of the extras and I went to basic functional strength training. And that's what I leaned into three times per week. I periodized my strength training programs to ensure that my body was going to change and I was gonna work my muscles in all of the necessary ways. So endurance training, hypertrophy training, which is muscle building and strength training. And I really leaned into progressive overload. My body started to transform and slowly but surely my hormones started to rebalance, my cycles returned, my energy came back. And instead of looking like the skinny slash, as my clients would even say at times frail version of myself mm-hmm. , I started to have more muscle mass on my frame. I started to physically be able to see my strength correlate over into other things.

Speaker 3 (20:17):

Like, wow, well now I can lift more weights here, I could pick up seven grocery bags or 10 at one time even. And it was a really amazing experience. And so I really leaned into that and since then I've been now lifting weights for over a decade. And it's been amazing. I mean, it's helped me stay strong through my pregnancies, it's helped me stay, stay strong postpartum. And it's just for me now, it's the number one thing I lean into weight training and walking. Those two things are the, in my opinion, you can do the ex, you can do cardio once you have that foundation built. And similar stories from my clients, I will say a lot of women come to me with more of the cardio mindset where they need to do cardio to burn body fat. And again, I personally have nothing against cardio.

Speaker 3 (21:07):

When you are utilizing it correctly and you have a strong foundation built for strength training, if you are a woman perimenopause or menopause, in my opinion, weight training needs to be a part of your program. You cannot only be doing cardio and expect to sustain your muscle tissue. And as you even mentioned, when your muscle tissue decreases, your metabolic rate also decreases. So you start to see why it becomes so easy to gain weight. And so my client's very similar. Cardio was all that they did. Dieting, excessive, you know, just chronically dieting all the time. And for them, I will say the biggest thing that they realized is that, wow, this is a lot easier than I realized. I'm actually falling in love with weight training and the feeling that I get from doing it. I'm strong, I'm capable. I also have a place here and wow, I wanted to lose inches off my waist.

Speaker 3 (22:10):

Here's how I do it. I wanted my glutes to look rounder and nicer. This is the secret to doing that. And so you start to see that as well. And so I would say for them, their competence, their body composition transforms. I'll see clients lose anywhere from 10 to 20 inches within a course of even three to 12 months depending on that client and the health of their metabolism when we got started. But could you imagine 20, and it sounds like you've had an amazing transformation yourself, but 20 inches off of your frame, that is significant fat loss.

Speaker 1 (22:48):

It is. I've even noticed in times where maybe I don't have access and I don't take the time to do weights for a while, and then I enter them back into my program, all of a sudden within a couple weeks, my clothes are all too big. And it really does get your musculature up and running where it just starts contracting around your frame and giving you more shape even for the same weight. Maybe you don't lose weight. So I just wanna say amen to everything you just said. You've got to have the resistance training. It's so key and really it's, it's what gives you that shape that you are looking for for your clothes. It's not always that you need to lose fat, you need to shape what you've already got,

Speaker 3 (23:34):

Right? That's right. You can and you can. And that's where you can focus on body recomposition. Not so much losing scale weight, it's more about maybe maintaining your current weight and just working on your muscle to body fat ratio. So bumping up that muscle mass, decreasing that body fat slowly. Mm-Hmm. , you can do that only by consistently strength training and eating enough for your body. But just like with weight training, it should be customized to some level to fit your goals and where you are and your nutrition should do the same. And when you put those two together, even if you're in your forties and fifties, actually I have a client that's gonna be 77 in December, she's been with me my whole career almost. And I will say she's still getting stronger. Still getting stronger. She's doing 17 body weight pull-ups. It's

Speaker 1 (24:29):

Amazing. Wow. That is amazing. At that age 17 body weight pull-ups. Whoa, shout out. That's amazing. .

Speaker 3 (24:37):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (24:38):

Can we, that's amazing. Can we also talk about body fat percentage? Because body composition is something that I love to use with people. I love the scales that give that information. And actually a little story about that. So after I lost the hundred pounds and had this transformation, I got, so I was so zealous about working out and weights and exercise and I said, oh, I wanna lower my body fat to 10%. So I was working with this trainer at the time and he looked at me like I was crazy and he said, I might have to kill you to get your body fat to 10%. And I didn't really understand, even though I had had, I had two sisters who did bikini competitions and they would go through their whole eating program and weight program before their competitions. And I watched them and it looked a little extreme, but I thought, oh, I can do that.

Speaker 1 (25:32):

And so I said that to him, he's like, that might just, I might have to kill you to do that. And then he explained to me what I was gonna have to do and I promptly decided, no, I don't want 10% body fat . Yeah. I don't wanna do. And I was sharing this in my hormone bliss challenge last week with the women in it as an example of your why has to be strong enough to get the outcome and to do the things that you're gonna need to do to get the outcome that you want. And, and I'm gonna use this to segue into talking about something else that I know we both are passionate about, which is dreams. But can you talk about what is an appropriate body fat percentage for a woman at 40 and above? And what should be we be aiming for? You know, we talk about weight loss, but really it's not weight loss because we could be losing muscle mass, it's fat loss that we want. So what should we be shooting for?

Speaker 3 (26:27):

Yeah. So you're right, 10% body fat. I'm happy you had a great trainer because that was really great advice. It would be, it's not impossible. A lot of times when you see maybe like your sisters when they were doing the bikini competitions or the body builders as women, a lot of them will even be under 10% body fat. But as you know with hormones, it is very, very difficult even eating in a deficit and working out six, seven days a week to get your body fat that low. And for us, it has a lot to do with our sex hormones, your estrogen levels. And generally when we start to lose body fat to that level, which is something I did, which was also why I lost my cycle. Mm-Hmm. is it's really hard for your body to, if you don't have enough fat storage to produce those sex hormones that we need your estrogen, your progesterone.

Speaker 3 (27:17):

And so for me, when my fat storage went down, it's really interesting. On my hormonal testing, it very much so showed my estrogen levels were way below normal ranges. Mm-Hmm. and other hormones were also very depleted. So for women it's difficult for us to get our body fat that low. There's a lot of, I would say almost like with the B M I charts, I would say that body fat sets differently on everyone's frame. So for exa, for example, you know, if you're five eight and you have 25% body fat and let's say you're within a healthy range, it may look a lot different than someone that's five four and you know, with a SMUD smaller frame. So I think the thing that I like to say when it comes to body fat percentages is there's always gonna be some wiggle room. I would say as a female, even in the teens is pretty difficult to get, especially if you're perimenopausal or menopausal.

Speaker 3 (28:12):

If you're thinking about, Hey, I just wanna get down to 15% body fat or 18% body fat, that's very much so in the athletic range, right? I would say a lot of my clients in their forties and fifties, and I've worked with hundreds of women over the last 17 plus years I've been doing this, most of them are at their healthiest when their body fat is within the 20% range, varying from mid to low twenties, which again, more people probably vary more to mid twenties, a little, you know, 24, 20 5%, that's where they're seeing their bodies start to change. When they get to the lower twenties, that's when they're seeing a lot of definition sculpted shoulders, AB muscles start to come out. I would say teens, you're getting into more, you know, athletic performance based body composition. And then as you probably know below that, you're getting into competition, stage it or you know, stage ready as they like to call it.

Speaker 3 (29:11):

And I don't think it's necessary for women to be that low in body fat percentage. I honestly think having some body fat's healthy, your hormones need it. I think that as a woman, you look nice with personally. Now everybody's opinion's different, but there's nothing wrong with a healthy amount of body fat. I know I worked really hard to get my body fat back up because I didn't like the way that I felt when it was that low. Mm-Hmm. . So for me, I would say, you know, when I'm coaching my clients, that's something that I look at and we pay attention to. They also, some of them will utilize scales. I wanna share something with you though, and this goes back to something you mentioned right before. Mm-Hmm. . So before I moved my company online, I worked as an in-person nutritionist and personal trainer at a health studio.

Speaker 3 (29:56):

So we only worked one-on-one with clients. We weren't like a big commercial gym where you could come and go as you please. There were group fitness classes. This was only appointment based. It was myself and the owner of the gym. And then he even built out a team a little bit larger as his business grew. And so we would do body fat analysis with caliper's on our clients. So as you know, there's room for error with all of these mm-hmm. forms to measure your body F. But if you have one person measuring you consistently utilizing the same CalPERS under the same circumstances and they've been measuring you for a while, you can really count that as accurate data to truly gauge a range. Now always keep in mind there's room for error with even the scales. You have to just keep that in mind, depending on your hydration and the time of day and all of that.

Speaker 3 (30:48):

I would have clients that I've been working with for let's say five or six years, measuring them every week or every other week at times, they would go through phases where they would miss a lot of workouts, they wouldn't eat correctly and they would come in, their scale weight would be up or the same and their body fat percentage would not be any lower. And then when we looked at their muscle ratio, muscle mass ratio, it wasn't any lower. And so, you know, sometimes when people would lean into the measurements, we would see different all kinds of data. At times we would see people's weight lower, but their body fat percentage higher. So that would really get the client, they would say, oh, well why is my weight lower? But my body fat percentage in muscle math, my body fat percentage is not lower and my muscle ratio is still not in a great place. And a lot of that turns to the type of training you're doing and the way that you're eating. And the point that I wanna make is that a low number on the scale doesn't always mean that you're losing body fat and building muscle mass,

Speaker 1 (31:52):

Right?

Speaker 3 (31:53):

Weighing the same or even gaining a little bit of weight when you're lifting weights consistently and dialing in your nutrition doesn't always mean that you're gaining body fat. And a lot of women think that it's like, oh, the scale's up a pound or two mm, I've gained a bunch of weight. And I'm like, no, no, no, hold on. Let's really assess the data. Doesn't mean that you've gained body fat just because the weight is up a pound or two.

Speaker 1 (32:18):

Yes. Wow. This is all such important information and I'm so happy to really have you on the show and dive into this topic because it's super important. And I will say it hands down, is one of the top five things that women miss over 40 in balancing their hormones, boosting their metabolism is a weight training y'all. So do it. Just do it right. Like Nike says, just do it. Just get started. Do it and perfectly do it today, do it and get started. As always, I love, I love a good quote. And Ashley, you shared some great ones. So I wanna dive into something else that's super important, which is talking about how do you achieve anything in your life a dream. So, well, why might you wanna have resistance training or weights in your program, in your health program? Because you want brilliant health, right?

Speaker 1 (33:15):

Because you wanna feel amazing at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 beyond. You wanna live a long life, you wanna feel great, you wanna have great sex, you wanna look great, you wanna function great, you wanna be healthy, you don't wanna be bogged down by disease. So those are dreams because the only reason we have time on this planet is because we have a body. And when this body expires, which I, I consider your first home, your time is done and then you get that date on the second side, half other half of your tombstone, right? You get a beginning date, a dash and an end date. So it's all about dreams. What is the dream for your life? And that's why I was talking to my women in my challenge about their why. It's not what you want, it's why you want it, that will help you get there. And so you share this, dreams don't work unless you do. And I absolutely love that. Is that something that you say regularly and what does it mean to you?

Speaker 3 (34:10):

Yes, I say that all the time because it's a reminder. It also is a great reminder to help you take radical responsibility. And it gives you the power to know that you are in control of your life and the choices you make today can make a positive impact on your life or a negative impact on your life. And I noticed some that can make you feel scared or afraid to even go there. But truly for me it was very empowering to say, wow, if I want this, I have to do the work. There's no one else in my life, not my husband, not my children, not my friends that can do this for me, but I have to be the one to want it. And if I want it, I can make this happen. And truly believing that is a part of this. And I think this goes back to the confidence you have within yourself and being able to do hard things and walk into the gym or invest in help or start a new program or literally break down every thought that you had about how you should reach your goals, how you should heal your hormones and go into something new to say, you know what?

Speaker 3 (35:26):

Those things aren't working. I'm going to do what I need to do so I can reach my goal. Because dreams don't work unless you do. And it comes down to you being the one to take the action. And I learned that very early in my life. And it serves me not only in my professional career but personally just as a woman. Because like you said, even being an expert in leading programs and helping women, we have to also feel great to be able to show up like this and tell other women what to do and how to do it. And so I always remind myself, hey, you need to make sure that you're taking care of yourself. So whatever dreams and goals you have, identifying them, that's just the start. The next part is mapping out a plan. You don't have to have it all figured out, but you just need to know the next thing, the next step. That's it. What's the next thing you're gonna do today after listening to this podcast? What's one thing you can do after this show ends to help get you one step closer to your dream and goal?

Speaker 1 (36:31):

One thing, right? Every journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. But what's stopping most of us gets to this other quote, you shared fear, right?

Speaker 3 (36:42):

Yeah. Everything you've ever wanted is setting on the other side of fear. What if it doesn't work? What if? What if I fail myself again? What if right? There's with fear, there's always that. What if big bolded letters that's stopping us in our tracks, but like you said, we get one opportunity, one life, one chance, one body. Sometimes you have to go before you're ready cuz if you're waiting for the fear to go away, it may never go away.

Speaker 1 (37:13):

Yeah. So how do you, so we're afraid we're gonna lose time, money, it's not gonna work. We're gonna gonna be able to do it. What if I do it wrong? Like we have a million fears and so we sit there and we do nothing and we have this dream and the years go on and our health deteriorates. I call it circling the drain. That's how I felt, right? Every day I would get up, it would be something different. And I'm like, oh my gosh, if I'm this bad now in my forties, where am I gonna be in another 10 years, another 20 years? How have you navigated fear in your life and with your clients? How do you suggest that people start to navigate around fear or work with it so that they can work on their dreams and actually achieve what they want in their life?

Speaker 3 (37:56):

Yes, I do. I talk about this a lot with my clients. I talk about this a lot on my podcast. And the biggest thing I would say is that there's also nothing wrong with doing a little bit of homework. I'm never telling clients or people to just literally jump blindfolded and not have any idea. I think we all should do a little bit of homework. You know, being in this space, I will say that not every coach is the same. Not every profe per you know, professional, you think, oh well, you know, a nutrition coach, coach, a nutritionist, a personal trainer, no, not everyone is the same. I think it's worth your time listening in. One of the number one fears is what if this doesn't work? What if the person doesn't know what they're doing? Do your homework. I'm always a big fan of, go to my website, check out testimonials, ask me questions, let's hop on a call.

Speaker 3 (38:46):

Let's talk if we need to, let me help you work through some of your concerns. And then that gives you more information, which can also help you overcome fear information and real facts. Not just stewing on the fears and you don't really know, is that a fact or is that an emotion? And so for me, one of the things I tell ladies is, please do your homework before you maybe make that big investment or do that scary coaching program. Make sure that you feel comfortable with the person you're investing with. But even taking it back a step, you know, fear is good. It's not a bad thing, it's our mm-hmm , our bo our minds wanting to protect us, right? And we all have our own reasons for being fearful or scared of things. But I will say that it doesn't serve us though. We have to learn.

Speaker 3 (39:39):

It serves us in a sense of, hey, be aware of the fear. Do your homework. You know, maybe don't, don't be afraid to ask questions, but don't let it stall you out. Especially when it comes to reaching your goals and your dreams. And I'll say, you know, when I was 15 years old, my mom suddenly passed away and I was on my own. I didn't have a dad, I didn't have a family. So for me, facing fear was something I had to face head on. I had no other opportunity or choice. It was either you go ahead, you take responsibility, you know the next step and that's it. And then you'll figure the rest out as you go. Or you could stay here and do nothing. But when you are going through your life, so if you're listening in, weighing those options out, what if you stay here?

Speaker 3 (40:27):

What does that mean for you? That means your health isn't gonna get any better. That means your quality of life isn't gonna get better. Like you said, if you're already in your forties and you're feeling that type of way, what does that mean for your fifties and your sixties or even six months from now? What does that impact have on your, your professional life, your intimacy with your partner, your, your relationship with your children? What's the cost of all of that? So literally when fear hits you think about those things. And then on the other side of fear, what if you take action? What's gonna happen then? So weigh out the pros and the cons. Every time in my life, the pros have always outweighed the if I stay here scenarios. And so for me and my clients, that's one of the things I've always leaned into is that's how you get over those fears is you lay it out and you work through that. And I would say most people listening in would say that taking that chance is worth it compared to staying where they are. When they truly walk through that, well what if I stay here? What does this mean for my health? What does this mean for my intimacy? What does this mean with my co for my professional life? What's gonna happen? It's not just gonna magically get better on its own, I'm gonna have to do things differently.

Speaker 1 (41:48):

So true, your health does not magically get better on its own. It doesn't magically get better cuz you take a medication to suppress a symptom, it gets better when you look at the underlying causes and address them, which is what we're talking about. I love this other quote that you shared. You're braver than you believe and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. And if you're hearing those words, that's you were talking about. And we'll close out with that if you wanna talk a little bit about that, Ashley, and then I'm gonna have you share all the wonderful places that everyone can find you and interact with you. But yeah, I love that you're braver than you believe and stronger than you seem and smarter than you

Speaker 3 (42:29):

Think. Yeah, and that's something that I as just kind of leading into what I finished talking about, that's something that I had to remind myself at a very young age. And I allowed that to stick with me through all of the phases of life that I went through, through, you know, starting my own company, healing my own body and metabolism, starting a family, moving to a new state. All of the adventures in life that we go through. And I think that's really true. And when you're listening into this, even if things didn't work for you before, it doesn't mean that you're broken. It doesn't mean that things can't work for you. Now think about my client that's 77 years old almost, and in the gym and working out lifting weights four days a week and doing 17 pull-ups and you know, lifting heavy dumbbells for herself and barbell dead lifts and all of the things.

Speaker 3 (43:19):

You have to believe in yourself and you have to know that you can do this, you can do this. And I think your story is also a great testimony to say, Hey, in my forties, this is when I literally transformed my life and my health. And so just don't give up that hope. It's never too late to start. You can start now. I don't care if you're 50, 60 or whatever age you may be, you can get started now and you know, just, you've gotta believe that you can do this. And that's what I love about the that quote.

Speaker 1 (43:51):

Yes, believe, go lift heavy things, make your dreams happen and believe. Thank you so much, Ashley, for joining us today and sharing your very, actually, very powerful story, your journey, what you offer for women, your dedication to women's health. Ashley has some an e cookbook she's going to offer to you for free and a meal plan and a free trial of her program. So tell everyone about all the freebies you have for them. We'll have all the links in the show notes and then where they can connect with you online and find all your things.

Speaker 3 (44:24):

Yeah. So one of the things I would love to gift your audience with is I have a great e cookbook and meal plan. It's not customized to the individual because I do believe we all need some level of customization when it comes to amounts of food we consume and what we consume on a daily basis. But if you're looking for a great template of what does it look like to eat for strength training, metabolic health, and just really wanting and even weight loss, what is, what is a sample week or meal plan look like and what types of foods can you eat and lose weight? This is a really great resource for you. It's an e cookbook. You'll download it immediately, you'll get access to it immediately and you can have it forever. It's a free gift, tons of recipes, all gluten-free recipes, all healthy protein-based, lots of different options.

Speaker 3 (45:14):

I'm a mom, so they are also kid-friendly and easy to make because I don't have a lot of time to be in the kitchen right now. And then the Trial to the Rise program. So RI the Rise program is my workout membership, and with this program, you get access to my workout app within my workout app. Every four weeks you get a brand new program. All of the things I highlighted throughout our podcast, periodized strength training, progressive overload that's taking place within this program. Also, exercise demos are right there, so you don't have to, as I was listing out all of the names, I was getting a little worried about that person that maybe is thinking, I have no idea what she's talking about. A squat, a deadlift, a bench press. Well, my app will give you real-time demos, 10 seconds or less. You look at everything on your phone, there's no confusion. The workouts are compatible for at home or the gym. It's something that I love. I actually created this really affordable program for women that wanted to get in the gym or work out at home, have a plan that was affordable and not have to think about or worry about their workouts, but know that a professional with real experience is taken care of so your audience can have a free trial to that as well.

Speaker 1 (46:31):

Nice. Thank you so much for all those valuable resources. I hope if you're listening, you will take advantage of what Ashley is offering and get started. Go lift heavy things, make midlife marvelous, boost your metabolism and get your first house, your body in order so that it can serve you with the brilliant health that you deserve. Thank you so much for being here today and sharing all this valuable information. Ashley,

Speaker 3 (47:00):

Thank you so much for having me on your show,

Speaker 1 (47:03):

And thank you for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kien. Hopefully you've learned something today that you can take action on and put in place in your life to start moving towards the brilliant health that you deserve. I thank you for joining us, and I will see you again for another episode next week. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all. Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible

Speaker 2 (47:28):

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 Ashley Fillmore's freebies:

FREE E-Cookbook & Meal Plan - click here 

FREE 30-Day Trial to her workout program RISE - click here

 

► Feeling tired? Can't seem to lose weight, no matter how hard you try?

It might be time to check your hormones.

Most people don’t even know that their hormones could be the culprit behind their problems. But at Her Hormone Club, we specialize in hormone testing and treatment. We can help you figure out what’s going on with your hormones and get you back on track.

We offer advanced hormone testing and treatment from Board Certified Practitioners, so you can feel confident that you're getting the best possible care. Plus, our convenient online consultation process makes it easy to get started.

Try Her Hormone Club for 30 days and see how it can help you feel better than before. CLICK HERE.

 

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review The Hormone Prescription Podcast on your preferred podcast platform. Your support helps us reach even more listeners, allowing them to benefit from our expert advice and knowledge. ✨

 

 

Using Human Design To Balance Your Hormones & Cultivate Self-love

Welcome to the latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast where we explore the amazing world of Human Design, and how it can help you achieve hormonal balance and cultivate self-love! Our special guest today is Nanxi Chen, a Human Design expert who shares her insights on this holistic approach to well-being, and her own journey towards self-awareness and wellness.
  
Human Design is a unique system that combines elements of astrology, the I Ching, the Kabbalah, and the Chakra system to give you an intricate roadmap into your true self. By understanding your individual Human Design, you'll be able to unlock the key to living in harmony with your body and mind, thereby achieving hormone balance and increased self-love.
  
In this insightful episode, Nanxi shares her personal experience with using Human Design to improve her hormone health and overall wellness. She explains how her journey of self-discovery began with exploring her own Human Design chart, which led her to create a more holistic and self-aware approach to managing her hormones.
  
As we dive deeper into the conversation, Nanxi shares some remarkable insights, such as the importance of self-awareness in self-healing. Understanding the intricacies of your Human Design can bring forth a newfound awareness and appreciation of your body's needs and signals, empowering you to make more informed decisions for your well-being.
  
Along the way, we also get to hear some fascinating anecdotes from Nanxi, including how the knowledge of her specific Human Design played a crucial role in her everyday life – from managing stress to creating harmonious relationships and prioritizing self-care.
  
Are you ready to explore Human Design and start your own journey to better health and self-love? Don't miss out on this life-changing episode!

 

► Get Nanxi Chen's video/audio resources - CLICK HERE.

 

► Feeling tired? Can't seem to lose weight, no matter how hard you try?

It might be time to check your hormones.

Most people don’t even know that their hormones could be the culprit behind their problems. But at Her Hormone Club, we specialize in hormone testing and treatment. We can help you figure out what’s going on with your hormones and get you back on track.

We offer advanced hormone testing and treatment from Board Certified Practitioners, so you can feel confident that you're getting the best possible care. Plus, our convenient online consultation process makes it easy to get started.

Try Her Hormone Club for 30 days and see how it can help you feel better than before. CLICK HERE.

 

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review The Hormone Prescription Podcast on your preferred podcast platform. Your support helps us reach even more listeners, allowing them to benefit from our expert advice and knowledge. ✨

Estrogen Is A B*tch But You Are Already Enough - How Human Design Can Help Liberate Your Health

Welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast! Today, we're diving into the world of human design, hormones, and how these two intertwine to impact your overall well-being.
  
We're delighted to have the brilliant Kate Vazquez on our show today! Kate is a Physician Assistant, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Mindset Coach, and the founder of Radiant by Design. She's also the author of the empowering book, Estrogen Is A B*tch, and the creator of the transformative program, Already Enough.
  
In this episode, Kate shares her unique approach to hormone balancing that combines functional medicine, human design, and nervous system regulation. She discusses her experiences with estrogen management and enlightens us on the connections between human design and our hormones.

Main Themes Covered:

• Understanding human design and its role in individual health
• The role of estrogen management in hormonal balance
• How Kate's unique approach helps women overcome anxiety, stress, and imbalances
• Learning to embrace our radiant selves by tapping into the power of human design

Episode Highlights:

• Introducing Kate Vazquez, our inspiring guest for today's episode
  The story behind Kate's journey into the world of functional medicine and human design
• An overview of human design and how it can transform our understanding of ourselves and our health
• The crucial role of estrogen management in hormonal balance and overall well-being
• Kate's unique approach to healing, blending functional medicine, human design, and nervous system regulation
• Real-life stories of how Kate's method has empowered women to overcome anxiety, stress, and hormonal imbalances
•  Embracing our radiant selves and the power of Already Enough
• Call to action and where to find more from Kate Vazquez

 

Speaker 1 (00:00):

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others - Maryanne Williamson, In this episode hears from Kate Vasquez, how discovering human design helped her health and helped her liberate herself from her own fear.

Speaker 2 (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 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.

Speaker 1 (01:12):

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today. Really excited to share my guest with you today, Kate Vazquez. I'll tell you a little bit about her. I met Kate at a mastermind Halloween party with JJ Virgin a year or two ago, and I was really drawn to her and this is the first time I've really had a chance to talk, speak at depth with her. And we discovered that we have so much in common about how we view women's health and energetics and nervous system function and all the things as I like to say. So we really are kindred souls and super excited to have you here to hear this discussion because it contains some vital information for your health that you're not going to hear everywhere else. Starting with, we're gonna talk about something called human design, which isn't something I've talked about on the podcast, but really has been pivotal in me creating the health that I'm enjoying and really could help you as well.

Speaker 1 (02:23):

So I'm introducing it today and then actually next week my human design analyst is gonna come on the podcast and really talk nuts and bolts about what human design is and why and how it impacts your health and how you can use it to help improve your health too. But today we are talking with Kate and we're gonna give you actually a really close, upfront look at how human design has helped both of us transform our health. She has some beautiful quotes to share with you. This one from Maryanne Williamson that I stated in the teaser is beautiful. We talked about that. We talk about Shakespeare and his view on what makes things good or bad. We have a great quote from Peter that people in circumstances are revealing where you're not free. And so I'm gonna invite you to listen to this episode and really take it in and bathe in the energy of it and start to notice where you are not free.

Speaker 1 (03:27):

Where are you not allowing yourself to create the health that you deserve that's possible for you? What could be some of the blocks in your way? Maybe listening to some of Kate's story will help you to start to identify that and listening to the information. So I'll tell you a little bit about Kate and then we'll get started. Kate is a physician, assistant functional medicine practitioner and mindset coach. She's the founder of Radiant By Design. She is the author of Estrogen, is a and Creator of Enough, already Enough. She blends functional medicine, human design, and nervous system regulation for a unique approach that cultivates a deeper healing of the mind, body, and spirit. She helps women overcome anxiety, stress, and imbalances in their body to embrace the radiance of who they truly are. So we are gonna dive into it with Kate now. Welcome Kate to the Hormone Prescription.

Speaker 1 (04:26):

Hi Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much. I'm just so honored and blessed to be here and I'm just really excited for our conversation today. I am too, because you love the same things. I love you, love hormones, you love working with women, you love nervous system regulation and you love human design. These are all things I'm passionate about too and I'm wondering if you can share with everyone your journey towards discovering all these very unique tools, right? Functional medicine, root cause resolution is not the standard and it's not common. How did you discover that? How did you discover that nervous system regulation was important? How did you discover human design and really how it's impacted your health personally and the women that you work with? So if you could share that, that would be awesome. Absolutely. My story really began back in, in 2016.

Speaker 1 (05:16):

I was working as a physician assistant at the time in an, in an urgent care and just newly, newly married with my husband. And at the time I, I looked like I was happy on the outside, but deep down inside I was really struggling. I was just stressed out, anxious. I had about six to eight migraines a month, a lot of digestive issues, constipation, blo, I was even taking birth control just to keep my skin clear. And as a newly married couple, it was very challenging that first year cause we were still learning a lot about each other's. Like you go from like thinking about yourself to now you have to think about the other person. Plus I realized I was, I was just stuffing all my emotions down. Like I was stressed out at work and I'd come home and then I would sometimes vent it to my husband, but then we'd end up in, in arguments and get triggered and yeah, it was, it was a lot that was happening at that time and it just got to a point where things were really escalating to the point where I remember the stay very clearly in 2016 where I was sitting, my husband and I were sitting on his old ugly leather bran couch, which is all we had at the time.

Speaker 1 (06:22):

And I remember him looking at me and just with so much pain and just sadness in his eyes and saying, I don't know how much longer I keep doing this. And when he said that, it just tore me apart. Like I was so heartbroken to hear him say that. Cause I'm like, no, this can't be happening. This is my soulmate and , you know, what did I do wrong? What's, what's going on? What, why can't I make him happy? Why am I not good enough? You know, all these thoughts were flooding in my head, but deep down inside I knew like divorce was not an option and I was willing to do whatever it took. And I knew that something needed to change, something needed to change with my health, something needed to change with my mental and emotional state and something needed to change to, so that way we could, we could save our marriage, you know, and looking back, I I realized like at that time I needed to take responsibility and that what needed to change was myself.

Speaker 1 (07:16):

And so my husband at the time, he sent me off to, to Tony Robbins, at least the power within. And that's when I really learned a lot about mindset and personal development and learned about the limiting belief that I had, which was, I'm not enough. That was basically like running my life and was creating a lot of stress and anxiety at the time. And within a couple years I discovered functional medicine. So I dove into that. And at the same time I was starting my certification at, with the I Institute for Functional Medicine. I also started my own business, my own practice, radiant Health at the time. Because I realized there was definitely a better way, a different way to not only heal myself, but to help other people. I set out to heal my own issues improved, you know, my gut issues healed.

Speaker 1 (08:05):

My, my gut, I balance out my hormones coming off birth control or cortisol. But at the time I still, even though I physically started to feel better, I still mentally, emotionally wasn't feeling my best. I still was experiencing anxiety and also having migraines at the time. And so, you know, as a entrepreneur and business owner, I had jumped into a couple masterminds over the last couple years and, you know, being in a part of those groups, you get a lot of like strategies thrown at you and it's like you're, you're told to just like, go, go, go and do, do, do. And so I was doing a lot of these things to like really build and grow the business so I can impact more people and serve more people. But at the time I just, I was so burnt out, I was exhausted and I wasn't even enjoying what I was doing anymore.

Speaker 1 (08:52):

I felt like I was back at the urgent care where I'm like, I became a PA and now I'm like not happy. And now I'm like, I started my own business and now I'm not having, like, what is going on? You know? So I started learning about nervous system regulation and just diving into the subconscious mind. And I was doing yoga and meditation at the time and doing all the right things, you know, eating healthy exercise, taking supplements, but it just, it wasn't enough. And so diving into nervous system regulation into the subconscious mind to really uncover like my fears and beliefs and conditioning really helped me to do that. But I think the most pivotal change, the shift that I had was learning about human design. And I don't remember how I came across it. I think it was like something on Instagram that was like talking about human design.

Speaker 1 (09:37):

And I took the little, the quiz or filled out my information and I discovered I was a projector. And when I discovered I was a projector, I was like, oh, what does this, what does this mean? And I realized like as a projector, they're like, I'm here to guide. I'm not here to be constantly doing, to, to be generating or to be initiating things. And that really explained a lot for me, explained a lot as I looked back over my life. Like I had been conditioned to be a certain way and that way just didn't feel genuine, didn't feel authentic to who I was. So it's like when I discovered human design discovered I was projecting this is how I was supposed to live my life, it finally gave me permission to be who I am. To be me. Yeah. so liberating to be you.

Speaker 1 (10:24):

And if you're listening and you've never heard of human design, you're probably going, what, what is this? What do you mean permission to be me? So can you talk a little bit about what human design is and why someone might want to know their design and how it might help them? What, what is it basically like your energetic blueprint, like how you're designed to, to show up in this world and certain types are able to generate their own energy. We ha there's like generators and manifestors generating, manifesting generators, but then there's the non-energy types which are reflectors and projectors. And we're basically here to just guide and, and reflectors reflect back, you know, how others are. We're just here to be more of like the support system. Whereas the manifestors and generators are the ones taking action and and and generating things. And so, you know, for me, understanding my human design just help me understand how to support my health better because you know, for a projector we need a lot of rest.

Speaker 1 (11:28):

And so I started changing, changing how I saw clients. Like instead of working from nine to five, now I work from 10 to four. And in between my clients I make sure I schedule time in to take, to take breaks to rest, especially when I start to feel my energy dip. Because if my energy dips then I can't show up as my best self and help guide my clients. So I've been more in tune with that. But also just winding down before bedtime has been a big, big game changer for me because I used to wake up and just go, go go from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed and I realized that was impacting my sleep. And when my sleeps impacted, that impacts my energy and that impacts my health. So, so really understanding your design can help you understand, okay, how do I show up?

Speaker 1 (12:15):

But also it can improve your relationship with others. Cuz understanding my design and my husband's design, he's a manifestor. He's go, go, go, I'm not . So I realize too, like I want to guide him but I can't guide him unless he asks me for my advice. And that's also been another game changer. Cause you know, as projectors, like we're very knowledgeable, we want to help so many people and I used to give advice and I was met with resistance and it wasn't well received. And in human design when that happens, you ex as a projector experience a lot of bitterness. And I was definitely a lot of bitterness because I didn't know, I didn't have boundaries around like, okay, no, I have to wait for someone to ask for my advice cuz when I received the invitation it's well received, you know, and people are more likely to be open.

Speaker 1 (13:04):

And so it's really changed a lot for me as my like who living life as who I am, but also how to better serve my clients and hold that capacity, you know? But also improving my relationship with my husband as well and, and my health. So right. And so, and and in human design there there are only four energy centers. And so something that I want everyone listening to just think about and I am doing an interview later today with my human design analyst, Nancy. So we're gonna really get into the nuts and bolts of what is human design and how it impacts your health and how you might wanna know your design. And it that might help inform you about choices you might want to make that are different from the ones you're making regarding your health. So if, if you're a non-energy type or even if you are an energy type, right?

Speaker 1 (13:58):

Generators aren't either, they're also not meant to go out and make stuff happen. They're meant to respond to what comes to them. And if you don't realize that you could expend a lot of energy trying to make things happen. And so if you're operating in a manner that's contrary to your design, basically you're going to have issues. And a lot of times those issues will show up as health problems. So how do you integrate, well first I'm just curious, so what type of projector are you ? Because I'm a projector too and discovering that I'm a five one projector emotional projector emotionally defined really helped me understand a lot of things that I've known about myself my whole life. But I really couldn't grasp or know how to incorporate, like I'm extremely emotional. Emotional. Yep. All right. And so I didn't understand that and everybody would look at me and go, gosh, you're so emotional.

Speaker 1 (14:54):

Yeah, it's my design so now I understand it, I can accept it and I can just go, yeah, it's just who I am. So ta talk a little bit about your design. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm five one projector as well, but my authority is splenic, so I'm very, very intuitive and , I used to not listen to my intuition, but when I didn't listen to it I would always say I should have listened to my intuition . So I've definitely been more in tune in in listening to that. And yeah, that's what I love about human design. There's something called the authority. So once you understand what your energy type is, whether you're a projector, manifestor, manifesting generator, reflector, you know, et cetera, there's the authority and the authority is just like this, this feeling, this sensation. Or like in your case you have this emotional wave, so you don't want to make a decision when, like for you, when you're in an emotional wave.

Speaker 1 (15:47):

And yeah, growing up, yeah, the emotional types were told or yeah, a lot of people are just wondering like, why are these people so emotional? Like there's something wrong with them when in fact there's nothing wrong with you at all. That's just, that's normal. It's normal. And I think it's beautiful to be able to experience the, the variety of emotions. And that's another thing like I learned like we, we look at emotions as certain things are, emotions are are bad, but it's like no emotions are just, you know, our body processing information and a lot of times we don't allow those emotions to pass. And if we stuff them down, they get suppressed, repressed, that's when they start to effects the body and put us into yes sympathetic state. So for you recognizing your emotional wave and knowing like, okay, I'm experiencing this wave right now not to make a decision because if I make a decision, it's probably not gonna be the best decision for me.

Speaker 1 (16:40):

So once you come out of that wave, now you have more clarity as what is best for you, what person's best for you, what is your next step, what is your next move? What is the best, you know, decision? For me, it's just really tuning in cuz my, my intuition comes very quick. It's a very quick sp spontaneous, like inner knowing and it can be easily missed if I'm not in tune with that. Which looking back yeah, I wasn't always in tune with it. Didn't always listen to it and then the like wishing I had. And so it's just this, this inner knowing, yeah, it's really hard to describe but it's just this, this sensation that I feel when I know something's right and when I know when something's not right. So having that level of intuition can really affect like your, your health but also as, as projectors, what I find fascinating is that because oh, as since I have this splenic authority, I'm very, very in tune with a lot of different smells, .

Speaker 1 (17:39):

So I'm very, very sensitive to smells. And like the other day my husband went and got his hair cut and he told the guy don't spray his hair and the guy forgotten he sprayed these toxic chemicals all over his hair. And then I hop into the car cuz we were gonna go off and run errands together and I couldn't, I couldn't handle the smell . And that's very, very typical of of, of someone with a splenic authority. They're just very sensitive to smells in their environment. And I call it like my toxic, my toxin radar , yes. Because yeah, I'm just like, anything that's, yeah, just like cigarette smoke and yeah, just synthetic fragrances, anything that's not natural, I'm very, very sensitive to, in fact, it's given me migraines too in the past. So, so for me, like really like when I smell something, it's like my instinct is to run away because my body's protecting me, you know?

Speaker 1 (18:29):

So I think it's, it's a beautiful thing to have and understand like what your authority is cuz it's, it's, it's meant to, to protect you, you know, and help you when it comes to making the best decision for you, like in, in every area of your life. Yes. You know, and as you mentioned it, I have splenic definition also and I have that, that toxin radar smell also. So I have the spleen, but I am emotionally emotional authority. And so how do you incorporate that into the work you do with people? How does it help inform how you advise people knowing their human design type? Yeah, that is such a great question. I, I love learning about each person because when someone's coming to me and they're experiencing a lot of stress, just helping them to see like, are they living in alignment with who they are?

Speaker 1 (19:22):

Because if they're not, that's gonna generate a lot of stress. That's gonna be the reason why they're experiencing a lot of anxiety or depression. Why they have a lot of imbalances in their, with their hormones, with their adrenals, with their gut, with their thyroid. And so having that understanding, you know, we can start pulling, pulling apart like who's their not self. Cuz in human design there's that not self theme, right? And that's the theme that's been, or the self that's been conditioned from society. So really pulling out these pieces and that's where this nervous system regulation and subconscious work comes into play too, is just understanding like what are the thoughts they have and what are their beliefs and what are the patterns and conditioning that's not who they are. So now when they build that level awareness, now we can move them into embodying who they really are.

Speaker 1 (20:09):

But also, yeah, taking the concepts the core concepts and like understanding their strategy and understanding their authority and how they're gonna show up in their life. Because that's what made the biggest difference for me is like, yeah, other people can make decisions on the go. Like I believe it's manifested or manifesting generators can decide very, very quickly. But sometimes, yeah, for me I just, I have to tune into my intuition if my intuition doesn't feel right, you know, even though it may feel right for someone else, I have to listen to that cuz it's, it's always guiding me. Mm-Hmm. . But but yeah, using that has been a game changer cuz it's like I get to see my client for who they are . Yes. And help them to, to recognize like this is who they are and it's okay to be who they are.

Speaker 1 (20:57):

Yeah, I think that's key. And I, I'm just wondering cuz people probably come to you because you know, I know in functional medicine probably 80% of our clients are women over 40 because we suffer more than anyone with our health cuz we've got those, you know, wireless moving hormones that are changing and we've just got so many obstacles to navigate as we age. And one thing that I try to help all my clients understand is that it's not just about your physical health. You know, some people say, just tell me the supplements I need to take. Tell me the diet I need to eat, tell me the exercises I need to do. I don't wanna change anything in my life. Kirin, I just want you to tell me those things so I can plug them in and be fine. And I really step back and say, yeah, it's more than that.

Speaker 1 (21:45):

It's how you're living your life, how you're showing up, how you're making decisions, how you're setting boundaries are not. So do you find that most people are open and receptive to hearing this information? Or what, what is their reaction and how do you navigate it if people say, yeah, I don't wanna know any thing about that Kate . Well, the good thing is, you know, I'm very upfront with, with someone before they, they work with me and if, if someone's not open, you know, I let 'em want let them know like this is a part of the work that I do. And so not everyone is open to that. And, and that's okay. You know, I know everybody's on their own journey and so I work with my clients as as, as best as I can, meet them where they're at. And sometimes I'm like, okay, if we need to work on the physical things first, we can do that.

Speaker 1 (22:34):

But for the most part, everyone that has worked with me, you know, is really open into diving more cuz they understand that yeah, it's not necessarily just the physical healing that ne needs to happen. It it, there's a, there's a deeper healing that needs to happen as well. The mental, the emotional piece. And so the clients that work with me, they, they really want to get to the bottom and are open and and willing to do whatever it takes, even if it means diving into what's happening with the subconscious mind and helping them to regulate their nervous system and doing things a little bit differently than they've done before. Because obviously, you know, what they've done before wasn't working. And so yeah, they're coming to me to, to get that guidance and see things. And that's another thing as a productor, we see things from a different perspective, these little tweaks, these little changes, little things that they can do that they can add that's going to Yeah, give them profound effects in their life.

Speaker 1 (23:30):

Right? Yes. I mean that's something I bet that you've been doing this your whole life and you didn't realize that this was a special gift that you've been given , it's like your superpower then you can, people can come to you and you can really, you just see it and people are like, oh my gosh, you're brilliant. But it's just how you're designed. You're designed to truly see people at depth. And one of the things, I know you just mentioned nervous system regulation. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I don't know that that's something that most people are aware of also. So how, is that something that you use to help educate clients and guide them and help them to heal? Yeah, so the first thing I ask is what emotion are you experiencing consistent daily basis? Because emotions are basically, the language of the body is what Dr.

Speaker 1 (24:20):

Joe Dispenza likes to say . So I'm a huge, huge fan of his work. But yeah, emotions will, will give us a clue as to the state that our bodies are in. And the state I'm talking about is, are we in a sympathetic state or are we in a parasympathetic state? Cuz I believe like most of us are operating in that sympathetic state, which is that that fight or flight response. And when we're in that state, you know, most of us are in that state chronically, which is not good. It does affect our health long term because I really truly believe like our nervous system is what's influencing the health, you know, affecting our gut. It's, you know, slowing down the signals affecting our digestion and how we break down and absorb our food. And elimination, it's also increasing the signals to, you know, our adrenal glands ramping up cortisol levels, which can also affect our glucose.

Speaker 1 (25:08):

And then it's also slowing down the signals to our reproductive organs. So there goes the hormonal issues, , you know, and women especially, they're going through menopause, you know, their hormones already are imbalanced and so the cortisol is spiked, you know, that's adding even more to the hot flashes and, and then yeah, and then there's the immune system. It's also impacting our immune system. So that's where a lot of autoimmune disorders pop up. And when it comes to autoimmune, you know, and actually any issue really any imbalances we have and chronic issues, it's, I was thinking about this the other day. I'm like, every like chronic disease, you know, lists all the risk factors and every single one of these diseases and disorders have stress as a risk factor. But we're not really taught how to adapt to stress. We're not taught how to like master our emotions and how to, you know, respond calmly in stressful situations.

Speaker 1 (26:01):

Instead, we just immediately react because of the conditioning. You know, growing up my, I love my mom, but she was all, she was just stressed out, anxious all the time, constantly reacting . And that's how I learned like, oh, like when this happens, freak out, you know, . Yeah. But that's not a healthy stress response. And so when it comes to nervous system regulation, it just started observing like, when I'm under stress, what is happening? How, how do I feel? You know, mentally, emotionally, how does my body feel physically? So it's, it's building that awareness and recognizing, wow, I've, I'm like, I'm just constantly in this, this state of fight or flight. And I remember as I was starting to work on this regulation piece, I remember sitting here at my desk as, as we are now, and just like tuning in. I'm like, I'm not even stressed out thinking about anything, but my abdominal muscles were really tight, my neck muscles were really tight, my jaw was really tight.

Speaker 1 (26:56):

I'm like, what is going on ? And I, I realized, I'm like, wow, my, you know, I'm, I'm in that sympathetic state. I'm in that fight or flight state. And so, so it was just starting to build that awareness and, and tuning in and basically reconditioning my mind and, you know, changing the thoughts that I was having. So I recognized a lot of those thoughts were, were causing my body to go into that state, but also recognizing patterns and, and how I was reacting and starting to train myself to actually respond calmly instead of immediately reacting and going into that, that fight response. Cause you know, with the stress response, I, I realized like we all, we all respond in different ways. There's, despite where we automatically go into defensiveness, we wanna prove we're right, you know, and, and that's where the perfectionism comes in.

Speaker 1 (27:46):

And that's definitely the where I used to live, you know, and, and that needing to be perfect and everything that I did. But there's also the flight where when people are stressed out, they will distract themselves from feeling a certain way. And so they'll use like food or alcohol or even scrolling on social media, different things like that just to distract them from feeling a certain way. And then there's that freeze response where they just want to completely, like, they're, they're paralyzed, they're frozen, they completely avoid conflict, you know, when they're under stress. And then there's that font type where they go into people pleasing and people that you know, excessively apologize. And there's a statement I I once read as like, you know, over apologizing is basically saying, sorry for just like existing. And I'm like, whoa, . Yeah. Why are we apologizing for just being human and for existing?

Speaker 1 (28:35):

You know? But we tend to over apologize, you know, for so many things, you know, for whatever reason, you know, because we, we feel like we're being a burden. We're we're being too much, you know? But at the end of the day it's like, no, that's that fond stress response. So starting to recognize the patterns can help us start to, to regulate our nervous system and recognize like when I respond to stress, is this a healthy response or is it an unhealthy response? And, and how it's affecting our body. But you know, going back to the emotions, you know, I recognize like when we are experiencing, you know, anxiety and depression and or feeling so in, in human design, I find it fascinating cuz when we're in our not self being, so for example, generators will experience a lot of frustration. Manifestors will experience anger, projectors will experience a lot of bitterness, resentment, reflectors, disappointment.

Speaker 1 (29:25):

And that's because we're in that sympathetic state. Because we're not operating in alignment with our design. We're not operating as who we are. And so we're gonna experience these what I call low vibrating emotions, which is our sympathetic state. But if we can switch out of that, you know, into a parasympathetic state, now we're gonna experience more love, more happiness, more joy, more peace, more fulfillment. And so the key is to like, okay, how can we get back to that state and experience more of those emotions? Cuz we're, and we are experiencing more of those emotions. We know that we're in that parasympathetic state which then supports our health long term. That's is the state that's gonna support healing. Cause we can't really support our healing if we're still stuck in that sympathetic state. Yes. So getting that switched back from paras, from sympathetic to parasympathetic is key.

Speaker 1 (30:19):

I'm wondering if you might share just one strategy that people might try to help regulate. Like say they're listening and they're noticing like you did. Oh yeah. My abdominal muscles will try, oh, I'm shallow breathing and woo. Yeah, I'm probably in sympathetic state. So one thing that they might try to just dial that down and step into that parasympathetic state. Yeah. More fully. Mm-Hmm. . That's a great question. Well the simplest thing and the most easiest and cheapest is, is tuning into our breath. Going back to breath work, you know. And just when I was in that recognizing like everything was tight, I just started focusing on breathing and I was telling my body at the same time, like, relax, it's okay, we're safe . Because the reason why we're tight intense is cuz like the body thinks we're not safe. And you know, all these perceived threats and demands, you know, and needing to do everything on our to-do list can be a perceived threat.

Speaker 1 (31:21):

You know things that are happening with people around us. And so I remember just closing my eyes and taking deep breaths and just telling my body, relax, release. And that's another word, release release. Cause sometimes we're holding onto things and so just saying that and saying, it's okay, I'm safe, I'm okay. You know, can really bring that body back into that, that parasympathetic state. Mm-Hmm. the breath. So key. And you know, when I pay attention to my breath, I find how many times a day I actually stop breathing. Yeah. I love dancing. And so I, I do dance lessons or like zu and Zama and my dance instructor's constantly telling me, breathe, , breathe. You're not breathing. And it's like, oh, I'm focusing on learning the new steps. And to me that's like a very anxiety producing cuz I wanna do it right.

Speaker 1 (32:16):

Right. I wanna do it perfect Lee. And, and then I hold my breath. Mm-Hmm and I make myself in this sympathetic nervous is the state, which is not conducive for learning. So I'm really shooting myself on the foot. So yeah, I wanna encourage everyone to breathe, take some deep breaths. Breathe. I, I love this. Yeah. This quote you shared with me from Peter Cro Life will present you with people and circumstances to reveal where you are not free. And it just stuck out to me right there because everybody listening, maybe these are some places and things that you needed to hear where you could re it could reveal where you're not free. So can you talk a little bit about what this means and actually who Peter Cro is? I don't even know, but I love that quote. I love Peter Cro. He's known as the mind architect if that doesn't say anything.

Speaker 1 (33:09):

. Yeah. But he's so good about just like pulling out the constructs of our subconscious mind and helping people to see like the way they've been and how they can live their life. And I love this quote cuz on my journey, this quote, life will present you with people and circumstances to reveal where you're not free was eye-opening quote to help me recognize my triggers every time I'm triggered. Instead of blaming someone that you feel a certain way, it's like, wait, no. Like why do I feel triggered right now? Because I recognize my triggers was not because of something someone said or something did, but because of the limiting belief I had in that moment, I felt like I wasn't good enough or I felt like I wasn't worthy or I felt like I was doing something wrong and then I could go back to something that happened in my childhood, you know, where there was something that happened then that, you know, cuz it's like these triggers are linked to our past experiences and the more experiences we have, the more they get linked together that just validate these beliefs .

Speaker 1 (34:17):

So yeah, I love that quote. And it's, it's a quote I use with my clients often to help them recognize, like, especially when they get triggered and something's bothering them or if you're feeling resistance, it's like, okay, where are you not free right now? Like it has nothing to do with the other person because yeah, the other person may be reacting because they have stuff that you know is going on inside of them. It's just been a really, really powerful quote for me. It is super powerful. I'm gonna have to look into Peter Krone and it reminds me of this podcast I just came across yesterday called It's not You, it's your trauma .

Speaker 1 (34:55):

Which I love that because you know, I think part of getting your physical health straight is you've got to disassemble this stress response and yourself. And part of it is that you're getting triggered, we're getting triggered all over the place and trying to fight with the external world to be different so we can feel okay inside when the truth is that's not possible. The only person you can change is yourself and to disassemble the triggers, the trigger buttons that you have where you're not free and change yourself so that the external environment isn't stressful. That's really something I think sooner or later that we each have to, to do if we are to get our cortisol under control. So here's where the hormone prescription comes in, y'all, you know, I tie everything to hormones, it's all about clean cortisol and if we don't serve her and we don't give her what she needs, which is a safe, comfortable life where we're not reacting to everything and everyone, then we're just never gonna achieve what's possible for us.

Speaker 1 (36:01):

Right? Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. Personal experience right here, , right? Same for me. It's like I'm in the process of really disassembling these triggers and it's, yeah, the lessons are never ending. But I do love this quote you have from Shakespeare too that follows exactly to this. Nothing is ever good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Yeah. So do you wanna talk a little bit about that? Yes. Another really powerful quote that that's helped me on my journey, because I realize at the end of the day, everything is a perception. You know, everything that a thought we have is, is really based on our, our perceptions. Whether we think something's good or we think something's bad because what we think is good, what we think is bad, another person may think the opposite. And you know, and that's okay. We all have our own thoughts and our beliefs and our perceptions and we also have, you know, based on our perceptions create these stories.

Speaker 1 (36:57):

And if we can recognize like these stories is what, you know, puts us, sends us down this, this path of like, yeah, going down in, into a sympathetic state or being in a parasympathetic state. Like it really all starts with our thoughts. And that's something that I, I talk a lot about my clients and actually first thing I have them do is like start tuning into their thoughts. What are their thoughts? What are they thinking about themselves? What are they thinking about their health? Because say I have someone who wants to lose weight, and I'm like, okay, well how much weight do you wanna lose? And they're like, well I wanna lose this much weight. Well, why do you wanna lose that much weight? Well, because blah, blah blah, blah blah. And I'm like, well, have you ever been at that weight? And they're like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:37):

And so I got curious. I'm like, well, when you were at that weight, how did you feel? And they're like, well I was stressed out . And I'm like, well, how do you feel now? Well, I'm stressed out trying to lose weight. I'm like, okay. So I'm like, obviously when, when we're thinking about, you know, something like losing weight like that. Yeah, that feels very stressful. And so instead of focusing on losing weight, what's a different thought? How about like, I want to just feel healthy, I want to feel vibrant, I wanna feel energized, like I wanna feel strong. So what are the action steps you're gonna take to do that? Versus like, oh, I wanna lose weight, so now I gotta eat a salad and now I gotta exercise. Like it's, it's a completely different energy. So for me it's like, yeah, let's tune into our thoughts because yeah, whatever's happening in our life, it's not good or bad.

Speaker 1 (38:25):

So can we like start to neutralize the things because you know, when we are triggered it's because yeah, we're, we're perceiving it as as bad . So can we take a step back and, and yeah, going back to the the other quotes like recognizing, okay, where am I not free in this moment and, and what are my thoughts around that? And can I start to shift? And, and my favorite tool when it comes to perception is, is doing a, a reframe, you know, seeing things from a different perspective because there's so many different lenses of perspective that we can look through. We're only looking through one, but if we can start to shift and see things from a different perspective, it really starts to shift how we feel energetically and physically as well. So well said. It's beautiful and you know, I could talk to you probably for hours, but we'll keep it short.

Speaker 1 (39:12):

Maybe we'll have you back, we'll talk more human design. But this other quote from Maryanne Williamson that you shared, I love Maryanne Williamson. If you are listening, you don't know Maryanne. I definitely recommend looking into her because she has so much to teach about living in love versus fear. You know, her book Re Return to Love is one of my favorites. And so the quote is, as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. And I I wanna say that, you know, the first time I met you at JJ Virgins, her mind share conference, so everybody listening, it's a conference that a lot of health printers go to and she has her mind share collaborative where we support each other. I remember meeting you at the Halloween party and you and your husband had the most amazing costumes, but I felt so drawn to you and you know, this idea of our presence automatically liberates others.

Speaker 1 (40:09):

I felt that from you. So can you talk a little bit about how this shows up in your life, what this quote means to you, and really your journey from liberating yourself from fear because it's fear that keeps us in that flight fight, freeze font response. So I'd love if you could share that before we wrap up. Yeah, absolutely. Now this, this quote is just a piece, I think it's the last piece of a bigger quote. So I highly encourage, if you're listening, go read the entire quote cuz it's just so powerful. And I love this quote so much and my husband does too, that we, we, I like, I bought a picture frame so we have it in our home, in the middle of our home so we can see it every single day. But this quote is so, is so powerful because it's true.

Speaker 1 (40:55):

I realize at the end of the day, the reason yeah, why we are in a sympathetic state is because we're focused on fear. And that's really been just like the found foundation, like all there is is is love or fear. And if we can recognize like every, every thought we have, every, you know, action we take, you know, every decision we make, every everything that we do, is it around fear or is it around love? Because if it's around fear, it's obviously yeah, going to put us in that sympathetic state, it's going to make us feel certain emotions and then if we're in that state long enough, it's going to impact our health. So for me, yeah, recognizing like I was, yeah, definitely operating from that place of fear and shifting back into love has been so powerful for me and that's why, yeah, I love Maryanne Lewis and that's one of my favorite books as well.

Speaker 1 (41:45):

Return to Love, Dr. Joe Dispenses, another incredible humane being who is on a mission in, in helping people just reconnect back to love. So if you guys haven't checked out his work, I highly recommend he's got three incredible books. But yeah, this quote has been powerful for me because I realized like I needed to go through everything that I went through, you know, experiencing the anxiety, experiencing the migraines, experiencing almost losing my, my soulmate because of everything I needed to experience the pain mentally, physically, emotionally, so I could learn the lessons that I needed to learn and be here to share, share everything I've learned on my journey, you know, the, the insights, the tools to help people step out of the conditioning, step out of the fear, step out of the limitations and step into who they really are. Because when you're living in embodiment of who you are, you are in your best health, you're, you're, you feel incredibly, you know, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

Speaker 1 (42:51):

And when we're in that place, like it just makes life worth living. We have so much peace, so much freedom, fulfillment, you know, and, and that's my mission, that's my goal. I want women to have access to this. Like we all have the tools, the power within us, you know, to heal, to, to live our best life. We just, we haven't tapped into that yet. And that's my goal is to help women to tap into that. So that's why this, this quote has been really, really powerful for me. And I, I appreciate your, your statement cuz that's my goal. I'm like, I want women to see me like being liberated. And so that allows them, gives them the permission to, to liberate themselves, which in fact is what my next book is going to be called is Liberated . Yes, I love it. Yes. So as you shine your light, you allow you give others the permission to do it.

Speaker 1 (43:47):

I'm so glad that you have done this work and had your, the journey that you've had. I know it wasn't easy , you know, having followed somewhat of a similar path, it's really arduous, but I think that as projectors, it, it's what allows us to have the grit and the insight to actually help to guide others on their journeys successfully. So thank you for that and thank you for all the wonderful resources that you have to share with everyone. If you wanna tell them about your stress response quiz, we're gonna have a link to that in the show notes. We're also going to have a link to your already enough course. Do you wanna tell everybody what the we'll find with these resources? Yeah, absolutely. So you can find a lot of these resources on my website. It is currently your radiant health.com. But because of this journey, , I'm transitioning from Radiant Health to Radiant by Design because yeah, it's not just just functional medicine anymore, it's it's nervous system regulation.

Speaker 1 (44:50):

I'm adding in the human design piece, like we're healing different parts of ourselves, we're diving deep into the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual elements. And so, so yeah, it's radiant by design right now. Or excuse me, you're radiant health.com, but eventually we'll be radiant by design.com. But yeah, you can access those resources there. You also, I have my, my quiz and already enough is a podcast course which I created because I recognize a lot of women are busy on the go. And so I just recorded all the insights, the tools, five to 10, 15 minute episodes to dive into a subconscious mind, the nervous system regulation, emotional regulation piece, and also the tools to help them move out, that stress response into that sympathetic or flow state is what I call it. So they can start embodying, you know, being, being already enough. And you can also find me on Instagram at the Kate Vasquez and that's Vasquez with Double Z's, V A Z Q U E z.

Speaker 1 (45:52):

And I post a lot of content there. And also if you have any questions or just, you know, have anything to share, just, just send me a dm. I am and I'm always on Instagram. I love chatting with, with my followers, so yeah, please, please reach out to me if you have any questions or, or curious about anything. You know, I'm, I'm always there and always available. Awesome. Thank you so much Kate Vasquez for joining us today on the Hormone Prescription. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared. It's been a beautiful episode. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's been awesome. And thank you for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. I know for sure you heard some things today that are going to inspire you to take the next step, do something differently, and move towards the brilliant health that you deserve. I'll see you next week for another episode.

Speaker 2 (46:45):

Until then,

Speaker 1 (46:46):

Peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

Speaker 2 (46:49):

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.

Ready to delve deeper into the connections between human design and hormone balance, and uncover the radiant version of yourself? Don't hesitate—tune in to this episode now! 🎧

 

► Get Kate Vazquez's Stress Response Quiz - click here

 

► Feeling tired? Can't seem to lose weight, no matter how hard you try?

It might be time to check your hormones.

Most people don’t even know that their hormones could be the culprit behind their problems. But at Her Hormone Club, we specialize in hormone testing and treatment. We can help you figure out what’s going on with your hormones and get you back on track.

We offer advanced hormone testing and treatment from Board Certified Practitioners, so you can feel confident that you're getting the best possible care. Plus, our convenient online consultation process makes it easy to get started.

Try Her Hormone Club for 30 days and see how it can help you feel better than before. CLICK HERE.

 

If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review The Hormone Prescription Podcast on your preferred podcast platform. Your support helps us reach even more listeners, allowing them to benefit from our expert advice and knowledge. ✨

Stop Band-aiding Your Headaches And Get Rid Of Them Once And For All

In this week's episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, host Dr. Kyrin Dunston sits down with Dr. Margaret Mill to discuss a topic that affects countless individuals - getting rid of headaches once and for all.

 

Dr. Mill shares her knowledge of Functional Medicine and her proven E.A.T. Method to help listeners understand how to identify and address the root cause of their headaches, boost energy levels, and restore mental clarity without resorting to drugs or overwhelming protocols.

 

Key Topics Discussed:

• Ending headaches & migraines
• Increasing energy
• Restoring mental clarity
• The E.A.T. Method

Key Takeaways & Learnings:

• Discovering root causes
• Personalized support
• Embracing a healthier lifestyle without drugs or overwhelming protocols
• Simple daily additions for better living

 

Dr. Mill's passion for empowering individuals to take control of their health is evident in her informative and engaging approach, making this episode a must-listen for those looking to live a healthier life. 

 

Dr. Meg Mill is a Functional Medicine Practitioner, bestselling author, podcast host and speaker. In her virtual Functional Medicine practice, she works with patients worldwide to heal the root cause of their health struggles through advanced diagnostic testing and personalized support.

 

She has been seen on Fox News Channel, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Reader's Digest, Health Magazine, and on many podcasts. In her podcast A Little Bit Healthier she discusses simple things you can add to your life every day to live a healthier, more fulfilled life.

 

Meg is particularly passionate about helping people end headaches and migraines, increase energy and restore mental clarity without drugs or overwhelming protocols with her proven E.A.T. Method.

 

Don't miss out on this insightful discussion and find out how to stop band-aiding your headaches by tuning in to this episode now.

 

► Watch the webinar Headache Freedom by Dr. Margaret Mill - click here.

 

► Feeling tired? Can't seem to lose weight, no matter how hard you try?

It might be time to check your hormones.

Most people don’t even know that their hormones could be the culprit behind their problems. But at Her Hormone Club, we specialize in hormone testing and treatment. We can help you figure out what’s going on with your hormones and get you back on track.

We offer advanced hormone testing and treatment from Board Certified Practitioners, so you can feel confident that you're getting the best possible care. Plus, our convenient online consultation process makes it easy to get started.

Try Her Hormone Club for 30 days and see how it can help you feel better than before. CLICK HERE.

 

This Is Your Brain On Food: How The Gut Can Cause Mood Disorders

Is your mood being impacted by the food you eat? Are you struggling to find answers to why your mood swings so drastically?

 

In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Dr. Uma Naidoo joins us to unravel the mystery behind how our gut health affects our emotions and mental well-being. With her expertise in nutrition psychiatry and functional medicine, she dives deep into how food can be a powerful tool for healing or destruction when it comes to balancing hormones and emotional regulation.

 

Dr. Uma Naidoo is a Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist, professional chef, and nutritional biologist & author of the national & international bestseller: “This is Your Brain on Food.”

Michelin-starred chef David Bouley described Dr. Uma Naidoo as the world’s first “triple threat” in the food and medicine space as the nexus of her interests have found their niche in Nutritional Psychiatry.

Dr. Naidoo founded and directs the first and only hospital-based Nutritional Psychiatry Service in the USA. She is the Director of Nutritional and Metabolic Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital & Director of Nutritional Psychiatry at the MGH Academy while serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

She serves as a regular media contributor at CNBC and is on the Harvard Health Publishing Editorial Advisory Board. She has been invited by the World Economic Forum to consult on their New Frontiers of Nutrition initiative. After being one of only four US physicians to be invited to meet personally with HRH The Prince of Wales, she was asked to collaborate with HRH and the UK College of Medicine on a public health Brain Food project.

She is currently developing the first and only CME-based educational program at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard to educate other clinicians globally about nutrition for brain health.

Dr. Uma has appeared as a Nutritional Psychiatry expert on Live with Kelly & Ryan, Today Show, 700 Club, ABC, and been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast The company, Thrive Global, Harpers, Shape, Parade, Boston Globe, AARP, and more.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How our gut health can affect our moods and emotions

- What foods to eat and avoid to support balanced hormones and emotional regulation

- Nutritional tools for improving your mental well-being

 

Tune in now as Dr. Uma Naidoo helps us unlock the power of food on our brain, hormones, and emotional stability. Join us as we dig into how eating healthier can lead to a happier you!

 

Happy listening! :)

 

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Joy Is Your Justice - Why You Need To Reclaim Yours Now To Improve Your Health

Is joy the missing piece of the puzzle in your life? Do you want to feel more energized and connected to yourself? In this special episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, our guest, Dr. Tanmeet Sethi, will help midlife women to reclaim their joy and use it as a powerful weapon to improve their health. Tune in to learn more about the importance of joy in your life, why you need to embrace it now, and how you can start reclaiming yours now!

 

Tanmeet Sethi, MD, is a board-certified Integrative Family Medicine physician who has spent the last 25 years on the frontlines locally and globally practicing primary care and trauma work with the most marginalized communities. As a mother, she has received the impossible news that her youngest son has a fatal degenerative disease. She weaves together the expertise of both acquired knowledge with lived experience and translates them accessibly through the blend of ancient spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience. She is trained in Psychedelic Medicine, Integrative and Functional Medicine, and is a clinical researcher of psilocybin at the University of Washington. TEDx talk on gratitude.

 

You will learn:

 

- Why joy is essential to your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

- How to recognize when you are missing out on joy in your life.

- What tools and techniques you can use to rediscover and reclaim your lost joy.

- Strategies for incorporating more joy into your daily routine for improved health.

 

Don't miss this inspiring episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast with Dr. Tanmeet Sethi! Join us as we discuss why joy is your justice - why it's so important to reclaim it now and how doing so can improve your health. You will leave feeling inspired, energized, and motivated to create the life of joy that you deserve! Tune in today!

 

(00:00): What your mind can't resolve, your body will hold onto Dr. Cei. Find out how to let go and reclaim your health now with joy.

(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.

(01:12): Hi everyone. Welcome back and thank you so much for joining me today for the podcast. So glad that you're here, my guest, you are gonna love and be inspired by her. She has a powerful story and you know it's a shame that sometimes our purpose comes from our pain and sometimes that's where the greatest gifts come from. If we say yes to the call, to the invitation of the pain, to lean into it and find the answers, when we get those answers, we can then bring them back to our tribe, all of you and me, to help them overcome similar struggles and improve our health. I think that almost every doctor and healer that I've had on the podcast has a journey of pain that led to some breakthrough that caused them to seek new answers. And then that's what they're doing here is bringing them back to the tribe, which is kind of brave and revolutionary.

(02:11): So I think you're gonna really love my guest today. I know I did after meeting her and speaking with her. So I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. But first, the title of the episode is Joy is Your Justice. And I know some of you are like, do I wanna listen to this? What am I gonna get out of this? What does this have to do with my health and my hormones? Well, she's gonna tell you because she too brings the science and that's why I love the incredible guests that I have on the podcast. Cause they bring the science that brings the truth and then you can just cut through the nonsense and know what's true about your health that you're not hearing elsewhere. So I'll tell you a little bit about Dr. Tanmeet Sethi. She's a medical doctor and board certified in integrated family medicine.

(02:59): And she spent the last 25 years on the front lines locally at globally practicing primary care and trauma work with the most marginalized communities as a mother. She's received the impossible news that her youngest son named Zin, has a fatal degenerative disease. She weaves together the expertise of both acquired knowledge with lived experience and translates them accessible through the blend of ancient spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience. She's also trained in psychedelic medicine. We're gonna have her back another time to talk about that cuz that's a whole episode in itself. Also, she's trained in integrative and functional medicine, and she's a clinical researcher of psilocybin at the University of Washington. And she has a wonderful TEDx talk on gratitude. So please help me welcome Dr. Tanmeet Sethi to tell you why joy is your justice and why you need to reclaim yours now to improve your health and many other things. Welcome Dr. Tanmeet. 

(04:07): Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

(04:09): I'm really excited to have you. We had Dr. Ellen Vora on and she was amazing and lovely, and she recommended having you on and told me all about you, and I said, yes, absolutely, please. And I know you have a book that you're getting ready to publish, and so it was kind of challenging to get it set up, but I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for joining us.

(04:37): Oh, thanks. I'm so excited to really spend some time with you and your listeners.

(04:42):

And the first question I have to ask you is, as a physician, how did Joy become the topic for your book?

(04:53): Yeah, well, there are a couple of different reasons. One is that as a primary care physician for the last 25 years, I've really found that a lot of what I do is really managing spiritual needs in the exam room. People really feeling lost and disconnected and feeling like they've lost meaning in their life, and also managing all the physical symptoms related to stress and really trying to help them navigate how they refined meaning and joy in their lives so that they can actually have a better quality of life. And so that was an ongoing theme in my visits as an integrative physician, I do a lot more counseling around lifestyle and spirituality than most docs do. And so I was really doing a lot of that. And then on top of that, you know, something happened in my own life that was really tragic, which is that my second child was diagnosed with a fatal disease.

(05:50): So he has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which is for your community, is like an a l s for children. So it's degenerative and fatal. And he was diagnosed when he was three and while I was pregnant with my third child. And so I really had a really big milestone in my life where I realized that as doc who had been practicing and advocating for patients and doing a lot of social justice activism in the community, that this was finally something I couldn't really fight against. There was no cure, there was no hope. It felt like, and I really had a point where I realized how am I going to truly have joy in this life? You know, sure, I can fake it or I could function, or I could, as people were saying, think positive, which really drives me crazy, which you'll read about in my book. But I finally had to figure out how do you hold joy when you have something that is completely unchangeable? And that really was an ongoing theme for a lot of my patients who are managing trauma, oppression and suffering. And so it really culminated in my personal and professional lives.

(07:02): Yes, I'm sorry to hear about your child having that. And I can imagine that reaching for joy and figuring out a way to do that is al almost, it's a spiritual practice. And that I know having worked with patients clinically for many years, that it's not so much the physical ailments, but I actually was hearing Dr. Gabo matte, I love him, talk about instinct, the myth, myth of normal the other day, and the statistics on really that all physical illness is emotional, spiritual, mental, it, all of it, almost a hundred percent right? Except for the, the less than 5% of genetic disorders. And the fact that mainstream medicine completely, almost completely, let's say, ignores this fact in this day and age is, is really a travesty and does a disservice. So I want everyone listening to know that all of you should be treated not just your physical body. And there are clinicians out there who can work with you on that life, Dr. Tanmeet. So you had a tragedy and were trying to figure out how to find joy. And so what were the steps that you took to figure that out?

(08:25): Yeah, . Well, I feel like that's the whole book, right? Is all the tools I used. But what I would say is that what I really, just to give everyone a sense of how it all started is that I think it really started with one really big milestone question, which was right after Zin was diagnosed, and I talk about this in the book, is that my husband and I were sitting there kind of going through the expected and normal, why me, why us? Why him? Why, why, why? Feeling unfair, feeling like we didn't deserve it, feeling like there was no way out, which is what we all say, why me to everything, right? Whether it's traffic in the morning or it's a devastating diagnosis, right? And it's natural. It feels like how could this happen? But there was a pivotal moment there where we looked at each other, and we still can't remember who said it first, but we said, why not us?

(09:22): Why, why not him? Why not us to lead this life and still find joy and meaning. And also you can see how, why me is a very victim, powerless role. Mm-Hmm. , you can feel your body even contract and hunch when I even remember saying that. And when I say, why not me? My body opens up, I feel expansive, I feel powerful. And it defeats all those really kind of ridiculous, if you think about it, ideas of why me? Because it kind of insinuates that tragedy comes to those who deserve it. You know that why me as I deserve this, when you realize that bad things just happen, bad, bad, bad things happen. And it's not because we deserved it. It's not cuz we did wrong or did bad, it's because we're human and we're leading this human life. And why not me opens us up to also the humanity of all of us who are suffering and managing that which we cannot understand.

(10:25): And so that was really the beginning of this journey, I was really saying, why not us? Why not us to teach all of our children that life does not need to be dictated by the length of our lives or the dreams that were now shattered that we had conceived of, that he would play sports or go to college, or, you know, have a family, kind of the general things we think of and why not open ourselves up to the dreams that can be created once we let that go. And once we did that, it's not that it was easy, let me tell you, it wasn't an easy journey. Joy isn't an easy practice, but it is actually quite simple. And every day, if you commit to it as a healing practice, it becomes a way of life instead of a destination to get to. I

(11:13): Love that you, you turned it around to why not us. And I've heard people say that, and it's by no means on the same level, but even just this morning, the airline ripped apart my luggage and I just, I went to pick it up, the carousel and the whole handle that, that you're supposed to drag it with on wheels just came flying out and it was a big gaping hole. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I've seen people spin out about a wheel getting broken on their luggage, and I just, it's not worth it. It's just luggage. It's different when you're talking about human life. And so I think it's, it's such a testament to you and your husband's fortitude, insight, openness to be able to make that pivot with such rapid pace. And I know that you talk about the crucial distinction between joy and happiness, and yes, people sometimes will say, well, I just wanna be happy. I just wanna be happy. What is the difference?

(12:12): Oh, it's so big. It's really so big. And I'll tell you, I was much happier before my son Zubin was diagnosed. But I am way, way more joyful now. So I'll tell you the difference is that happiness is a cognitive evaluation. It's a sense of how things are going, and it's attached to outcome. I will tell you, there's nothing, let me preface this by, there's nothing wrong with happiness. The more the better, right? It's a pleasurable feeling. Mm-Hmm. . So I'm not discounting that happiness is wrong or bad, but there is a difference because happiness being attached to an outcome and how things are going, keeps it in the brain. Also, it's a very mind, head, heady kind of feel, experience. I shouldn't say feeling. And joy on the other hand, is a deep embodied feeling. My, one of my favorite quote quotes is actually from Rumi, who says, when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in.

(13:07): You are a joy. Because joy is that deep, deep primal experience that no one can take care of us, take away from us. Happiness is, you can think of it as being given to you because it's attached to those things and that outcome. And they're all good like jobs or families or whatever. But joy is something no one can take away if you really dig deep down into the core of your body. And that's what a lot of the practices in the book explain that if you can lightly step into your body exactly where the pain lives, you can access joy. Because joy actually draws on the same deep well as your pain and as meaning in your life. So if you can really meet your pain with love and acceptance, you can actually feel a joy like you've never felt before. And so really, I also wanna just tell people, I feel this very strongly.

(14:07): I'm someone who's worked with marginalized communities for my whole life. I myself experienced racism throughout my childhood, death, threats for my family, all kinds of things. I'm also still a brown woman who looks like a terrorist family to everyone in this country. You know, that kind of thing lives on. And at the same time, I have the right, not just to suffer as a human, but to live with joy. And so joy is my act of resistance. It lives in my body, and every time I access it, I'm actually boldly saying to things that have taken my power away, that you may have done that. But I still stand here and I still rise despite that.

(14:47): It is so powerful when you, you, some of the things you just said, I get got chills all the way through my legs, that joy draws from the same deep well as your pain. And that's so powerful. And joy is something no one can take away. And happiness Yeah. Is given to you by things. I'm happy because things are working out the way I want. But are you joyful? You know, even if you have a cancer diagnosis on your way to the doctor, are you enjoying the people that you meet and the sunrise and the trees? And I watched the movie Soul from Disney recently. I don't know how I missed that one. I

(15:22): Haven't seen that.

(15:23): And oh, it was amazing. A friend recommended it this weekend. And it basically is about exactly what we're talking about, finding the joy in a leaf, falling off a tree onto the ground, finding the joy in the simplest of things. And you're right, no one can take away your right, your ability, your desire to, I see it as a gratitude practice, really. Yeah. Because you're appreciating these small parts of your day in the now, and that can tap into the joy of just being alive.

(16:02): Right. And there's another big difference, and you can feel, it seems so simple, but it's hard to see it until I could see it, right? Is that happiness feels very binary. So people think, if I'm sad, I can't be happy, and if I'm happy, then I don't, you know, I'm not sad. So it's very binary. And so it is a way because of the confusion between happiness and joy. People feel joy is binary, but it's not because the thing is, joy actually acknowledges all the pain, the sadness, the grief, the, the hard and all joy is not a solution. It's not a binary, I am joyful or I'm not. It's a way to hold everything. So I can be deeply sad in one moment about, I'll take, give for example, my son. You know, things aren't so, it's not like it's easy. He's actually declining steadily.

(16:53): It's getting harder and harder. And I have grief every day, things that we lose every day. And I can be deeply sad about that. And in the same moment, I can feel joyful that I'm alive and can feel that sadness and that I'm so, my humanity has not been stripped away from me. Because one thing that trauma, oppression and suffering do is strip our humanity away and make us numb to life in general. And if I can feel the joy of that leaf falling, the walk, the fresh air in the same moment that I'm crying about my son, then I have won. You

(17:31): Sure have you really have. And I think we can get so tied into the, the purpose of our existence is this materialistic. I've got more stuff, I've accomplished more things. I win, I'm happy as, and anyone who's done the things and earned the money knows that doesn't bring joy. Usually . It's not what happens. And so I've heard people say we all have, well, you should look on the bright side. Yeah. Find the silver lining to the cloud. And you say that that's not going to bring joy. Can you talk a little bit about that?

(18:08): Yeah. And it's actually one of the big reasons, you know, I mean, my book is really about joy in this whitewashed wellness world of these contrived positivities, this toxic speak of look on the bright side. I mean, you can't think yourself on the bright side of oppression and poverty. Come on, give me a break. Right? You can't think yourself on the bright side, out of deep hate and racism. I mean, this just doesn't work. It doesn't work. So, you know, people get your mind on straight, you know, that's easy for someone with a lot of privilege, but not for someone who's either in a marginalized community in poverty or, I mean, I could name all the things, right? What I really talk about is how that kind of toxic positivity actually is so harmful. I think it's dangerous because what it does is it doesn't let you be seen, right?

(18:59): So anytime that I'm really sad, of which there are many, many, many moments, , and someone says to me, at least you have, oh, I mean, the amount of time at least you blah, blah, blah. Oh, I can't imagine. You know, they go on and on about they're trying to be good. Really they are. I have empathy for them, they just don't know what to say. But every time they do that, no one's acknowledging that I'm angry or sad or frustrated, and that's all I need to feel in that moment. And actually, a true joy practice is feeling what you feel and then allowing that to move through you. There's good science I talk about in the book that shows that if you suppress those feelings, you actually activate your threat centers more. And so we think, look on the bright side, just push that away.

(19:50): But actually we're stimulating all those threat centers in our amygdala, in our limbic system, which then stresses our sympathetic nervous system out, which causes more cortisol release, which reeks havoc with our whole body. Right? Our hormones, as you talk about a lot, right? I mean, so brightness, looking on the bright side, toxic positivity, I feel is actually quite dangerous. I honestly will tell you, I never ever tried to cheer someone up. What I do is try to sit with them in their pain and hold them so they know that they're not alone. Because actually the isolation of sadness and grief is damaging. Right? And so when someone says, look on the positive side and you can't do it, what do you feel more excluded, more stressed out, more unseen

(20:39): And ashamed.

(20:40): Exactly. Exactly

(20:42): Right. And we really do have this almost toxic avoidance of negative emotion, sadness, particularly for women. Anger, grief. We don't know how to grieve. We don't know how to be sad. And so I think that's what, when people wanna placate and say, oh, well look on the bright side is they're uncomfortable with their own grief and pain and sadness. So they can't sit with you in their, and I love what you're saying about how it affects your limbic system. And you know, everybody listening, I talk about hormones all the time, but one thing I can't talk about enough is that it's not a mind body connection, it's a body mind. You have a body mind, right? . Right. And it's psycho neuro endocrine immunology. Right? It's all one system. So you are affecting your hormones when you don't allow free flow of emotion.

(21:37): Yes, exactly. Exactly. You're actually, you know you're actually getting more stuck in physically, energetically, and biochemically, and most of your listeners probably know this, but the more cortisol we make, the less we're able to make our reproductive hormones and manage our testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. I mean, all of those come from the same precursor as cortisol. So the more we're stressed out, right? And people will say, well, I can't change the stress. No, we can't change what's in our lives, but we can change how our nervous system receives it, and we can change how our body feels it. Right? And so it's why I'm sure you've experienced this many times clinically, but people will often tell, you know, I I manage a lot of symptoms that frankly don't get a diagnosis, right? Mm-Hmm. , I mean, there frankly not an answer. And so people will say you know, I just don't understand, I don't understand.

(22:34): And I always say, what your mind and heart cannot resolve, your body will hold onto. And that's something to understand that it's not making it up. Your body is actually holding onto what you have been unable to navigate. And that doesn't mean that you were wrong or bad, it means you just needed more time. You, your, your nervous system does what it needs to do to protect you. It's a beautiful intricate system, but sometimes it serves us for too long, you know? And then we need to help our nerve, our nervous system, come to a different place. So it's really about joy as an ongoing practice. It's really, if you ask me, been underestimated and under really realized in this wellness world of that you just find joy. Have you found joy? Right? I found joy. It's,

(23:29): I found it at the Walmart . Yeah. It's

(23:32): Seeking joy every day, every time you can, because the more you swim in joy, the easier it is to hold the hard. And the more you swim and remember the joy and hold onto that, it reminds you that there are ways that you can come back to it. It's like a soothing mantra, right? It's not meant to be, I realize a destination, a place you get to like some nirvana land. So that's why I can say I cry a lot. I scream, I'm angry. I'm angry a lot. Let me tell you, this world is not easy. This world me off every day. The amount of violence in inequality, oppression, ongoing hate and division, it's really quite frustrating and stressful. Right? And at this, no matter what side, quote unquote, you're on, this is not about who's right and wrong, right? It's just, it, it is easy to suffer in this world.

(24:31): That's what I would say. But my anger, or my stress, or my frustration around that is actually held by my joy. Because my joy allows me to feel all that and know that I'm also flowing in between that and gratitude, love, self-compassion, and my breath, you know, all and on and on. Mm-Hmm. . And so I just think that people need to understand that joy is really a revolution. It's not a place to get to. It's an ongoing act of resistance. And it's your way of actually boldly calling out to this world that you are actually good and you deserve to be here,

(25:10): And you deserve to have grace and flow, and I'm gonna say happiness, but in the moment, the joy. Yes. Yes. Right? So what does that look like for you on a, on a day-to-day basis? I have a friend, and she shared with me something that she and her husband do every night at the end of the day before they go to bed with their pillow talk, is they ask each other, what was your favorite part of the day? What part of the day or what happening or thing in your day brought you the most joy? And they share that with each other. I

(25:47): Love that.

(25:48): So yeah, they don't do the gripe session, they ask mm-hmm. , you know, what brought you the most joy today? And I love that. How, what does it look like for you?

(25:56): I'll tell you what it typically looks like, and I'm also gonna tell you, some days it doesn't look like this at all. I'm gonna be real with you. And then some days I forget to do things. Or some days right? It's just too hard. And those heart. And so I'll, I'll tell you what I do is that in the morning, I really try to commit, and it, it happens most mornings to sometime alone in the darkness of the morning. And in that time, I use breath and some movement to really help me come to my center. It's a time for me to check in with myself actually. And I tell people this, it's my form of resilience. I really don't like the way resilience is handed to us. And my form of resilience is to check in with myself and say, what do I need today to be who I need to be, be today?

(26:43): And maybe that's more breath, maybe that's more exercise, and maybe that's none. Right? Maybe it's such a busy day that I just need to remind myself to breathe a little. I really check in with myself every day. I also do a gratitude practice at dinner with my family. So we do an up and a down and a grateful is what we call it. So what was our up of the day? What was our down? And that's the best way for me to find out what's really happening with my kids . And I think it also just models that sadness is there, things let us down, you know? It's okay. We don't need to brush them away. But I'll have some nights where, you know, one of my kids, mostly my son actually will say, I don't have a down. And I'll say, okay, you're, you don't have to have a down, but you have to have a grateful mm-hmm.

(27:29): . There's just no way. You cannot leave this table without a grateful mm-hmm. . And, you know, and they never do. But those are the ways that we institute it in our family day-to-day. But it is much more insidious than that. So it's, you know, when I take a walk, I try to take at least a short walk every day outside so I can re sort of convene with some greenery and the fresh air. I live in Seattle, so that's challenging. But I try my best. And it is often just a simple feeling my feet on the earth and reminding myself how grateful I am that I got. One more day, I got a day where I got to walk outside my house. If it's been a very hard day, and I've done no gratitude practice, no breath, no movement. That's a rare day. But it happens where I've done none of that.

(28:17): I go to bed at night, I close my eyes, I take a few breaths, and I do a little, I guess you could call it a prayer, but I do a little meditation to the river gods, I call them mm-hmm. . And I say, you know, I did not flow down this river the way I wanted to today. May I flow tomorrow in a different way? And I really just give myself that grace and that self-compassion. And so it really comes in just at all points of the day, something bad will happen, my luggage or you know, whatever, something bad will happen. I'll get upset, I'll get annoyed, I'll get stressed, and then I will come back to my breath or a walk or my gratitude practice pretty quickly, you know, and just use those as ways to hold them. It doesn't mean the sadness passes or the anger passes right away. It just reminds me that it's all okay. Mm-Hmm. , whatever I'm feeling. Does that make sense?

(29:16): Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I love those times of intentional practice at different times of the day that you're mentioning. For me, nature, it's all about nature. , the way the sun filters through the blinds or drapes, the way the trees sway in the wind. I mean, it's just the simple, oh, and birds. Birds so much

(29:39): Fun. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So, I mean, there's so many ways, right? And I mean, you know, some days I could almost cry that hot water comes outta my faucet when I want . You know? And you know, you can really have awe at so many things in this world. And at the same time, you know, we can get swamped in our suffering, right? Because suffering, what it does is create such a narrow sliver we can't see past it, right? And it's all about these practices that I talk about are really about expanding ever so slowly, gently, that sliver so that you can see more. And really, joy practice is all about that. It's about seeing more. So yes, I'm angry, yes, I'm grieving, but can I just see a little more, can I see a little more today? And really, you'd be amazed at how that can change your life.

(30:34): Yeah. I find that the more, more I appreciate, the more I get to appreciate more things come into my awareness. And you shared this quote from Alice Walker that I, I would love for you to talk about the grace with which we embrace life in spite of the pain. The sorrow is always a measure of what has gone before. Can you talk a little bit about what that means?

(30:57): Yeah. I mean, the reason that quote means so much to me is that for me, it really embodies a very deep reverence I have for ancestral lineages. Hmm. So you know, I actually really feel strongly, there's actually studies to show and, and epigenetics and studies to show that trauma lives in our bodies, right? Mm-Hmm. the trauma that our ancestors have experienced lives in our bodies as well, and we can do things to change that. But just, I also think their re their persistence, their resilience lives in me. I also think that everything that my ancestors have gone through has helped shape who I am and has given me the privilege to be here on this earth. And I actually not only mean my blood lineage, which I, I have deep reverence for, but I mean my global ancestry. And so I think of everyone who has ever fought for justice and what they have taught me, that that is the reason I have the privilege to stand on this earth and fight for justice myself.

(31:58): I think of everyone, all the mothers. Sometimes I just sit and do a meditation when I'm feeling very hopeless or sad, I do a meditation to all the mothers who have suffered before me and yet moved forward day in and day out. And I gain strength and love from them. And I say, I too have the privilege to stand here and do that. You know? So for me, the grace of, I mean, the ancestry of the land I live on was not my, is not mine, right? It, it was taken from people who toiled and tended, in my case, as the Duwamish people where I live, have still toil and tend to this land and yet get no equity. Right? And so everything I have the land I live on, the soul I inhabit, the ability and capacity I have to fight for myself and others is all a measure of the grace of those who have walked before me. Always. And if you think about it, that's a gratitude practice, right, too.

(32:58): It is. And I, I think it's something that we don't think about that often most of us or talk about, but the, the idea that everything that we've received in this lifetime is standing on the shoulders of everyone who came before, I think. And, and I think having to be intentional about gratitude is necessary. I don't know that it's the default in, at least the way I was raised, it, it wasn't the default. And as I've gotten older, it's something that becomes more and more the default . It's like, oh my gosh, you know how much I have been given in this life, this human body, this ancestors who did all this hard work, and yes. Did they pass the trauma down? Yes. But they also passed a lot of other things down.

(33:51): Right? And I will just give the caveat, because I think gratitude, you know, really becomes a contrived platitude. And, and actually people really get turned off whenever you say gratitude sometimes. Mm-Hmm. , because they say, well, I, I don't wanna be thankful right now. Like, that's contrived positivity, right? So I get a lot of questions around, how is it that you want me to be grateful right now? How can that be possible? And I, and I always say a couple of things. One is it's just an invitation. So really no one should feel forced to feel grateful again, that's not okay. Two, I actually, I did a whole TEDx talk on this. So it, you know, I feel very strongly about it, but I was taught by a mentor to thank my son for his disease and for this pain in my life. Now, I'll tell you, when she told me to go say thank you, Tim, every night after he went to sleep, I said, there's no freaking way I'm doing that. You know, like, how could a mother be thankful that her son is suffering and will not be here? That felt like blasphemy to

(34:54): Me, right? Yes, I get that. And

(34:56): At the same time, , you know, I was like, well, what the hell I got nothing else. And also, you know, this sucks. So I'm gonna try it. And I tried it. And that's what the Ted talk is about, is it opened me, I had never once in my life thanked any pain in my life, ever. And what happened for me after that was monumental, because thank gratitude is not about contrived positivity. It's about saying, here is what is, and here I am with it. It allows you to say thank you, means you actually face what's happening. You don't resist it. You don't say, I wish, wish it weren't happening. You say It is happening. It's horrible, it's tragic. It's actually the most devastating thing for me. And yet it's happening. I cannot change that. Now, when you look and face that you can have more clarity, you actually, there's neuroscience around this that you actually feel less threat. You dampen that threat center, you get more clarity in the parts of your brain that need that, and then you get compassion for yourself. It's, it's actually quite a intricate beautiful process. And then after that, you really understand that it's not the pain that I'm, I'm not thankful my son's suffering. That was contrite, that I thought that was trite, that I thought that was what she was saying.

(36:23): Right?

(36:23): It's that I'm thankful for the gifts that I now see despite the suffering, right? And so it's not that I don't believe in this. Everything happens for a reason. I actually don't believe that. I don't believe it's all good. You can find a silver lining. I don't believe that. What I believe is we have suffering and then we make meaning out of it. And that's what leads us to joy. And so my meaning is big, you know, my son. It is a constant grieving process for us. And at the same time, I mean, I would not be who I am today. I would not be the teacher that I am. I would not be the physician I am, I would not be the mother that I am. I would not, my children have a deep sense of compassion and understanding in this world. I am not saying it's great, it happened, but it did happen. And now what can I make out of that? Mm-Hmm. . Because none of us deserve pain or suffering, but we all deserve the right to make meaning and joy out of it.

(37:27): And I guess that is the ultimate justice, right? Yes. What, yes, exactly. What could destroy you, you're going to turn and churn and use to support your joy in this life. I think that is the ultimate justice. And I know that you talk about how the vagus nerve creates a literal link between joy and justice. How does that work? Well,

(37:52): The vagus nerve, as many people might know, is the main nerve of our parasympathetic nervous system. And a vagus comes from the Latin for wandering. So it wanders from the base of our brainstem all the way through our chest to the deepest organs of our gut. And there's more traffic from the vagus nerve to the brain than the reverse. And what that really means is that our nervous system is giving us information constantly. Our body is giving us information. And so it's not about changing your thoughts or making life, right, because you think it's right. It's about noticing that if you can settle more comfortably in your body, more peacefully in your body by activating your vagus nerve. And there's a vast amount of ways that I describe that, and I'm sure people have heard about meditation doing that and so forth. The more you can calm your body through your vagus nerve, the more information you can send to your brain about how to interpret and translate this life as one of justice. The more you can stand boldly in this world and say, I am peaceful and calm in my skin and I'm here to stand up and be here in this world other, rather than contract it powerless, oppressed all the time, right? The bo the world will continually oppress us, will continually try to strip our power away. And the way to take our power back is in our body, period. I just really believe that.

(39:22): Yes, I agree. And the parasympathetic nervous system and hormones are intricately linked together, like you mentioned cortisols. Do you wanna tie that in for everyone so they get a really clear picture of what, when they're not in joy and they're not in gratitude and appreciation and they're in that victim mentality, how that affects the nervous system and the hormones?

(39:46): Yeah. So there's different hormones. There's the neurological hormones of serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and so forth. And then there's the reproductive hormones, right? A progesterone, estrogen. And there's different ways that it does that. One is, as we described, that the stress hormones go down. And so then we can put more energy into making our reproductive hormones. It's why people, you know, people will say like, oh, you don't have a libido cuz you're stressed out and people will think that's all in your head. It's actually not. You cannot, you know, I had a patient once where, you know, we looked and I showed her, you know, with testing to show her her hormones, what we were saying, I said, look like there's no juice here. Like there's just no juice, right? Like, how would, it's not your fault that you don't wanna have sex. It's your body saying, we don't have time for sex.

(40:35): We're trying to take care of danger. Right? And so there's this intricate relationship between our nervous system and our hormones. There's also an intricate relationship between our serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin. The more you practice these tools that calm your vagus nerve, the more you stimulate dopamine, which brings reward into the brain and asks us, it puts us, you actually said this in the beginning, I thought about it when you said this, that the joy builds on itself. The neuroscientists actually called a spiral of joy. The more you notice, acknowledge and swim in the joy, the more dopamine is secreted to remind you to want it again, to look for it again. The more you do these practices of gratitude, self-compassion, et cetera, the more you produce oxytocin that makes you want to connect and tend to not only others but yourself, right? Mm-Hmm. . And so there are ways that our vagus nerve and our nervous system are the main regulators of every way that actually leads us to wellbeing. All the things people talk about, all the medications, all the practices, they start right there. I would imagine many of your listeners are very much wanting to feel more energy, feel more alive.

(41:57): Yes.

(41:59): , right?

(41:59): Yes. I mean people, women, there's such an epidemic of, I hear this so many times, I've lost my joy and I don't know how to get it back. I don't have the joy. I mean, sure, there're what I call midlife mayhem. The 60 or so symptoms that women start experiencing once they hit 40 and above, sometimes in the thirties. And they're those physical complaints. But the result, and I guess it's compounded because the hormonal poverty is what I call it that they go into and that includes neurotransmitter poverty. Cuz neurotransmitters are, were intimately, they're brothers and sisters to hormones. Yes. Is that there's no joy.

(42:40): Yes. Yes. I love that description. Hormonal poverty. I'm gonna remember that one. I love that. And I also love it because what we don't realize is that it's such a form of justice when we can replenish those hormones as well. Now we don't, I'm not saying everyone can solve all their problems with tools, mind, body medicine tools, but you sure as hell can help them and sometimes solve them. So you really just reminding people when they say, I can't find the joy. I would say, you know, it's time to step into your body. It's time to get back into your body out of your head and into your body so your body can mind your mind. Right. I mean, , I think it's more like you said, body mind than mind body. It's just, you know, Bessel VanDerKolk has well established this concept that trauma lives in our body. Mm-Hmm. and I actually, you know, I explain to people all the time, patients and people I work with in trauma groups, that trauma lives in the body. But that's also where it can heal. Understand that, that you actually need to get into your body to heal it. And so we need to do certain practices to step back into our body. It's not just thinking ourselves out of everything. In fact, only that will not do it.

(44:01): Right. I love this conversation and I'm gonna encourage everyone to get the book. We'll put all of your links in the show notes and I'm gonna have you share with everyone, and I agree with you. I just wanna be clear that neither one of us is saying that if you do a joy practice, you're gonna solve all your hormonal, neuroendocrine, immunologic health problems. But I say you have to do all the things. They're so tired of me saying that all the things , it's like a puzzle. And if you're missing any one piece, it won't work. So a joy practice, I would say is necessary but not sufficient. Without it, you'll never achieve what's possible.

(44:40): Yes. Yeah. And I think that's the main thing to, you know, Brian Stevenson is one of my justice mentors. I don't know him, but he's my mentor from afar. He says hope is about seeing the unseen. And I really believe that he's really helped me feel that, you know, because he fights for against the prison slave system. Really? And I mean, what more, what could be more hopeless at times, right? Mm-Hmm. . And what he says is, the reason I can do this work is because I commit to seeing what cannot be seen.

(45:13): Yeah. Isn't he the one who did the a Ted talk with something more views than he's like in the top 10 of all TED Talks?

(45:20): I'm sure he is. His TED Talk's amazing .

(45:22): Yeah. Right. Yes. So I think it's super powerful. I think your story is super powerful. Hopefully you're hearing what Dr. Theit is saying and if she can do it, we can do it.

(45:38): Yes. Right. I'm not, I'm not special. Yeah, for

(45:41): Sure. Yes. And how is your son Zubin doing?

(45:44): You know, his spirit seems to get stronger the more his body breaks down is what I would say. But he is declining. Yeah. So we're in a hard place,

(45:54): But I'm sorry to hear that. And, and in the same breath, it sounds like you have a powerful, grounded spiritual practice that will hopefully help.

(46:05): Yeah, and I appreciate that and I would encourage everyone to really understand that. I get a lot of people who say, I can't imagine, you know, what you're doing or how you do this. And in on the days where I have the energy to not just say, okay, I'm walk away. I tell people, you know, I would urge you to imagine, I would say imagination is the bridge that you need to imagine my pain will allow you to become closer to yours. So saying I can't imagine is also not seeing what's possible. If I can do it, I'm only human, then you can do it too with whatever your pain is. So build bridges of imagination every chance you get.

(46:44): That's so powerful. And as you were saying it, I'm thinking that's what the capacity of empathy is that you can imagine. Yes. And then you can be with someone in their pain and in their devastation. That's so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yes. And please tell everyone where they can get the book and where they can find out more about you and connect with you.

(47:08): So the book is Joy is My Justice, and it's on every book Online seller or in your bookstores. Or you can go to my website, which is www.ceimd.com. I'll give you that link. Yeah. Okay.

(47:23): Either we'll have it either show notes. All right. And on social media.

(47:26): Yeah, I'm mostly on Instagram, so I, I love to connect with people there. So my handle's md, so yeah, that confined, please. I would love for people to tell me what their biggest takeaway is, and maybe let us both know and feel free to tag us, because I love hearing from people who are moved. And I mean, you know, I'm sure you felt this in your career, Karen, but story is medicine, right? And that's how we really connect to each other and how we also heal. So when I hear people how story moves them, it's really a healing practice for me too. And so I really would love for anyone to connect.

(48:06): Yes, please do. And as we were talking, it was reminding me of, is it Rachel Naomi Reman at my grandmother's table? Who, yes. Is that the book? Yes. So if anyone's listening, also another second book to get is her book. It's Beautiful Stories. Yes. That will really warm your heart. And not in a cliche way, but in a soulful way. So definitely look, get joy as my justice and read it, but I'm excited for its release. And thank you so much for joining us today.

(48:41): Oh, it was really an honor to be with you. Thank you so much.

(48:44): And thank you for listening today and joining us. We're so grateful that you chose to spend your time with us today, and hopefully you heard something that you can use to positively impact your life, and by doing that, you'll impact your hormones positively. And you know I'm all about the hormones. Thanks so much for joining us. I'll see you again next week for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

(49:15): 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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The Mystery Of Your Quantum Biology Explained And Why It’s Vital For Your Health

What do you get when you combine cutting-edge science and ancient holistic health wisdom? You get a truly enlightening conversation with Dr. Kyrin Dunston and Dr. Catherine Clinton on the latest episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast: "The Mystery Of Your Quantum Biology Explained And Why It’s Vital For Your Health."

 

In this fascinating discussion, listeners will learn how incorporating quantum biology into their wellness practices can help them reach their full healing potential. Using her background in both conventional medicine and energy work, Dr. Clinton shares unique insights from her years of experience helping people recover from chronic illnesses like Lyme disease and autoimmune disorders. Tune in for a thought-provoking exploration of the powerful connection between quantum biology and our overall well-being!

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What quantum biology is and how it can impact your health

• The key principles of energy medicine and how they can help you heal

• How to use quantum biology to create balance in the body and restore harmony in the mind

• Proven tips for boosting your energy levels naturally

• How to tap into the power of your subconscious mind for healing.

 

Explore with us how unlocking the power of our quantum biology can lead us to a new level of physical, mental, and spiritual health - tune in now! Don't miss out on this transformative conversation. Be sure to subscribe today so you never miss an episode.

 

(00:00:00): Life is water dancing with the rhythm of the sun. Dr. Catherine Clinton confused about what that means for your health and your hormones. Stay tuned. You're gonna find out some of the most revolutionary information for your health that you haven't heard before.

(00:00:18): 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.

(00:01:12): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today. Om g I'm so glad you are here for this. This is revolutionary information that you are going to hear explained by a master who is brilliant and has synthesized complex research into common sense knowledge that you can use to implement to help transform your health today. And that is not an overstatement of the promise of this show. I am going to shoot shout from the rooftops about Dr. Catherine Clinton and she has a book coming out. It's revolutionary information that you are not hearing anywhere even from me. So you're definitely gonna wanna hear this and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her and then we're going to get started. Let me tell you, she makes the woo-hoo real cuz she comes with science and she avoids all the esoteric talk that sometimes we use, including myself, to talk about these topics about why sound and sunlight are vital and water certain types of water to our health and vitality and mitochondrial function.

(00:02:26): So Dr. Catherine Clinton is a licensed naturopathic doctor. She spent over 15 years helping people overcome their health issues. She was diagnosed herself with two autoimmune conditions and Lyme disease. While in medical school, she began the long and difficult journey of a healing path that led to the commitment to help others to not only heal physically but to return to the relationships that we've evolved over millennia for a deeper sense of health and belonging because it's science by healing herself in patients like her, she discovered that true health comes from our relationships. Dr. Catherine has learned how our quantum biological system is intimately and inseparably connected to the world around us. Our relationship with the dirt beneath our feet, the sun, the wind, the water, the plants, the seasons, each other, that is the real medicine. Her mission is to empower as many people as she can with this knowledge to encourage the paradigm shift we so desperately need. And that is ongoing. It is a revolution in health and healing and medicine. Please help me welcome Dr. Catherine Clinton to the show.

(00:03:34): Thank you so much for having me. It is an honor to be here talking about some of my favorite topics with you.

(00:03:41): I am so excited to have you on the show and talk about your favorite topics because women aren't hearing about this, almost nowhere are they hearing about this. And it actually is information that is so vital to creating the optimal health that women over 40 deserve. That if you miss this piece people, you're not gonna get to the level of health that's possible for you. So I wanna just start out by asking you so we can give people a framework to where they're going, what is quantum biology ? Can you just explain what it is and why it should matter to

(00:04:25): Them? Absolutely, absolutely. So when I was in school and actually this model is still being taught in school, we were taught that biology ran on chemical processes. So we learned that it was all key and receptor locks. So you have these receptors and you have the keys floating around in the cell, outside the cell and they're bumping around into everything and eventually they find they're perfect receptor in that key in the lock model and then biological action can happen. Now that's true, but now we have much more sophisticated imaging and technology that we can tell that there's actually a whole nother layer to our biology and it's quantum in nature. We're actually now able to measure things on a nanoscale, which really talks about the interactions in a quantum physical way. And so it's a really exciting time because what we grew up with learning in school, it's practiced in medical school, is really this Newtonian biology, this Newtonian physics that boils everything down to chemicals.

(00:05:44): And what we're seeing now with the research is there's another level of interaction that's happening in our biology on a quantum level, on a nano scale. And what's really exciting about this is that it interconnects so many different pieces of the puzzle that have been missing for so long because we know that every cell in our body and we have trillions and trillions of cells e each and every one of those cells is completing over a hundred thousand tasks each second. It's completely impossible using that Newtonian model. So what quantum biology offers us is a new understanding. It doesn't negate that these lock keys fit into the locks and adjusts the shapes of the protein and then chemical reactions occur. It doesn't negate that it adds a deeper explanation of what's happening on a quantum biological level. And this is exciting for a deeper understanding, a deeper depth of knowledge. But it's also really exciting because it interconnects so many different pieces that stood isolated in the other model. And in quantum biology it's so interconnected.

(00:07:01): Yes, so important. You know, and I just wanna kind of summarize for everyone you've been taught, we were all taught that our bodies are basically machines, biochemical and physical machines that act like a train or act like making aspirin in a laboratory. And that it's as simple as simple as chemical reactions and mechanical reactions. And that's just not true. We are very complex human beings to a smaller particulate level like Katherine saying. And so it's this nano or quantum level that is the missing key in your healing. And this is why it's vital that you listen and pay attention and start learning about it. I know some people when they hear quantum physics, their eyes glaze over and they go, oh, it's complicated. I can't understand this. Yes, you can understand this and Dr. Catherine is going to help you understand what it is, what it means, how you understand it, how you work with it, with your health, and give you some specific instances like with the water that you're drinking so that you can start using this in your life today to start improving your quantum biology.

(00:08:19): And she's got some great programs we'll tell you about later and some great free offers that will start you on this path. But it's super important. So how did you become interested in this, Catherine? Because you're a naturopathic doctor and I know a lot of wonderful naturopathic doctors, I always say I had to be an MD first to get enlightened to go and be, get the training that naturopaths get by doing the functional metabolic anti-aging medicine. And I guess I consider all naturopaths smarter than MDs cuz you knew about it before we did and you went that way. But how did you become interested in this? Because it's not something that most naturopaths even are aware of or teach

(00:09:04): About. That's so true. It's really, really cutting edge and anybody over 40, I'm 47 should know this information to help with their hormonal health. It's really absolutely foundational and quantum physics does immediately sound complicated and hard to understand. But it's really, really simple steps we take. And there I was in naturopathic medical school and I was diagnosed, it was my second year, it was sort of that initiation year, long hours, long clinic hours. And it was this proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis was, which is an autoimmune condition that affects the colon. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto thyroiditis was is an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid gland. I had multiple GI infections, and I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. It was really a healing crisis. So I was able to take time off school and heal. I was in the perfect place, right?

(00:10:11): I was going to naturopathic medical school. I was right down the hill from a very open-minded, alternative minded allopathic school for MDs across the river from an acupuncture school. So I had so many modalities at my fingertips and I was able to put the physical pieces back together so that I could go to school again, finish my clinic hours, start my practice. But as anyone is listening who has suffered from chronic disease, they know that getting back to that picture you were before you were diagnosed might mean that you are again productive member of society. But it's not the picture of vital health. And so that's where I was sort of existing and I started researching psycho neuroimmunology and mitochondrial function and it was really at the crossroads of those two subjects. And psycho neuroimmunology is just a big fancy word for how our thoughts and our emotions impact our immune system, our inflammatory state, our hormonal state, our neurological state and wiring.

(00:11:21): And so from there I started looking at mitochondrial function and it was like the doors to quantum biology just flew right open and I haven't left because it's such an amazing piece of medicine. You know, we've really, our western society has really kind of extracted us as humans out of the ecosystem. You know, we are the explorers, the investigators, we extract things from the world around us. And what this whole journey has really taught me and learning about quantum biology has taught me how interconnected the world is and how, you know, for years and years I would go out to nature to get my vitamin D, to get my vitamin N right and ground with my feet on the earth to get those electrons. All these different quantum biological actions. But I wasn't in relationship with the world around me. And that was really the piece that started to piece the whole puzzle together.

(00:12:28): You know, I often talk about it as like, you know, we've all put together puzzles and you've put in a piece that's in the right spot, it's in the right spot in the puzzle, but there's one little piece, one little edge that's kind of flipped up and not down in the puzzle. And that's kind of how life was before I started really adopting these quantum biological practices. It was, I was in the right spot, I was doing okay, but there was this constant irritation from not belonging to the world around me. And quantum biology really helped open up that window. It helped me see that I don't end at the barriers of my skin, my hormonal makeup, my physiological state is based on the information that my body receives from the world around me. From the temperature, from the sun, from the weather, from the ground. I mean it's absolutely amazing once you start putting the pieces back together. And that's where I am and I love to talk about this.

(00:13:34): Awesome. So as you're speaking, psycho neuroimmunology is something that I think is super important, how your thoughts affect your body processes. And I think that people almost use that as a platitude and then they dismiss it. They're like, oh, thoughts become things. Oh, think positivity. And I actually interviewed this wonderful doctor, Dr. Theit Sethi, and she has a book coming out about joy and kind of the biochemistry, the effects of joy on the body and how it affects the body in terms of your nervous system. And she touches on immunology as well. So this is a great conversation to have shortly after her podcast comes out and I work in my programs a lot with heart rate variability and blood sugar and insulin. And people start freaking out about why is my heart rate variability not better? Usually most of us women, ours is tanked by the time we're over 40 and has very low variability.

(00:14:40): And with our, their insulin, it's so labile. And they'll say, well I didn't eat anything with sugar, I didn't eat any high sugar items. What's wrong? And I go, go, well what was your emotional state this morning? What were you thinking about? What are the thoughts, conversations you're having in your head? I think it's estimated we think 70,000 thoughts a day or something like that. Most of them are the same all the time. So if we kind of grow up having a fearful stance to life, fearful thoughts, if we have a angry stance, they're angry thoughts and that we circle these, these thoughts continually, we recycle these emotions and we have kind of, I think it's said three to five emotional states that are our go-tos. And what people don't realize is that's affecting your health through quantum biology that affects your blood sugar and your insulin that affects your heart rate variability, that affects everything. And you're saying mitochondria, which I didn't even know. So how do you help people understand that the thoughts they're thinking, the emotions they're feeling, how connected or not they feel to the external world and other people in nature, how safe they feel? How do you help them to make that shift from understanding that this is real and measurable and it's something they need to pay attention to?

(00:16:02): Yes, absolutely. I usually, in my patient visits, the first one I start with education. You know, as a society where really right-brained, we like to analyze, we like to have the facts in front of us and myself too. And so that's usually where I start with patience. I let them know the facts about it. I mean, Martin Picard has done amazing research showing that our emotional states impact the amount of a t p, the energy currency of the body that the mitochondria make. It's absolutely fascinating. So what I do is I walk patients through some of the science around that. I talk about how our emotions have predictable effects and you know, so many of my patients, myself included, either are dealing with some level of anxiety or depression and when they hear that our thoughts impact our health on such a fundamental level, there's a resistance or a fear about that, right?

(00:17:11): I recognize that because as someone who has dealt with anxiety in the past, and I'm sure I will in the future again, is that, you know, there's this idea that negative emotions, we need to get rid of them. But I think what heart rate variability and what heart Math Institute has done such a wonderful job with research is that it's not so much that we're not meant to feel these emotions of anger or fear or frustration. We are, we're humans, right? With this full spectrum of emotion. But it's when we get stuck in one of those emotions that we have this one way drive in our biology. So if we're always anxious, if we're always angry, if we're always fearful, then we will always be propagating that biochemical response in the body. And it's not just biochemical, right? There is a predictable heart rate variability to it.

(00:18:14): There is a predictable mapping of emotions that people have done just with electrical conduction and infrared heat showing that, you know, some of the more depleting emotions actually map cooler on the body so that there isn't this conduction electrical conduction throughout the body. It's absolutely amazing. So Karen, what I do is I really look at the science behind it and I try to pull in their brain first, right? A lot of people that come to see me are usually on their last doctor, they've seen specialists, nothing has worked out. They're coming with a lot of resentment and frustration on, on how to get better. But at the same time, they've been doing the work, they've been researching, they've been looking for answers. And that's where I start, here are some answers. Here's what your body does when it's angry, here's what it does when it's calm in a state of gratitude.

(00:19:17): And from there I can pull them into a situation where I, maybe they came in for autoimmunity, maybe they're dealing with hormones. And what I'm doing is I'm laying down some science for them to get that mind on board. And then what I'll do is I offer them a challenge. And we haven't quite gotten there yet, but the most common challenge I do with my patients is getting up and seeing the sun for 10 minutes before 10:00 AM and lowering the lights at night and I'll see them in a week or two. And honestly, I've never ever had anyone come back saying, okay, I did that circadian alignment and nothing happened and what now, you know, everybody comes back and reports a difference because what we know are these quantum steps like aligning with the sun and having circadian alignment with the sun allows for such ease in our body.

(00:20:26): It actually initiates and stimulates a whole cascade of biological action, including our hormones, right? Our hormones are sinking with the sun. And when we're out of alignment, that quantum biological action that happens from one photon hitting our retina, being propagated to all of the circadian clocks throughout the body, just that one action can sink those hormones in a way that other therapies can't. And so that's what I do is I lay the science out for them so they know that when I'm saying quantum, I'm not talking about crystals and sound healing, although those aren't bad. I'm talking about what's happening on their body on a nano scale and that it's real and that the science is finally catching up to what we've al always felt right. We've always intuitively felt a difference in our body depending on our motion. But now we have the science to show it.

(00:21:32): We always knew that we felt better waking up in the morning and going to bed when the sun went down. But now we have really robust research showing how that affects our home loan health, how that affects our biological cascades throughout the body. So I usually start with sciencey stuff to get their mind on board cuz I know that they've been researching and looking for the answers. And then I give them a practical, easy, free, accessible step like aligning with the sun so that they can see that quantum biology in action so they, they can feel it and experience it and then they're on board,

(00:22:12): Right. Appealing to people's logic and minds. And I'm just wondering though, I mean you haven't stepped on anyone's toes in terms of religion or anything like that. I find that sometimes when I bring up these more esoteric concepts, and maybe I need to do what you do is just bring the science, , bring the science. But I find somewhat sometimes people say, well that sounds woowoo in new age and you know, I'm a Christian so I don't wanna hear about that. But you've expressed it in a way that doesn't step on that because as I view the literature and the science, quantum physics has bridged the gap between spirituality and I'm not talking about religion with that and science and it is this level of our health that kind of explains these forces that go between human beings among are a universe in a very tangible way. Have you ever gotten any pushback from that arena, from people?

(00:23:18): Honestly, I have not. And I think the reason is quantum physics and quantum biology opens up, like you said, that meeting place of science and spirituality and then wherever the person in front of me is at Christian, Buddhist, atheist, all of it, they find meaning in that and they can place their religion and their beliefs in that that because it's not coming with any, the only thing it's coming with is this deeper understanding that there's much more at play in the world, in the universe, in our bodies than we're giving credit. And people are happy to plug that into their worldviews and say where that's coming from. We still don't know as a science and I'm not sure we ever will, right? There's this gap that we have as humans where we always think that we're onto the final truth and it's always just the to the next thing, right?

(00:24:23): So I think it's a beautiful, quantum biology is beautiful in that if I always spoke about it in a woo way, but I try to really stick to what the research is saying and how that impacts our biology and that leaves the door wide open for people to plug in their own belief system. And boy do they ever, if you look at my social media, we've got people from all different religions and backgrounds that find a place for quantum biology in their belief system. So I think that's the beautiful thing about it is it really doesn't come with one, but it comes ready to plug into anybody's

(00:25:05): Life. Okay. Oh, I love that. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna shift and go more to just presenting the science and then allow people to let that go where it will. Kind of like when you pour water into an ice cube tray, it fits the mold of the ice cube tray. And then people can have whatever shaped ice cube they want to assimilate the information. And maybe I've presented it in a way that has immediately butted, which is my nature as a New Yorker, I come head on you. Some people don't like that. And so I will more stick with the science. I'm wondering if you could say more about quantum biology in relation to mitochondrial function. I think that mitochondrial function is something that's often overlooked by a lot of people even who do a root cause resolution approach. They don't, they talk about hormones a lot, they talk about detox, they talk about gut health, but they don't talk about mitochondria. And that's one reason why I created a program that includes that. How does quantum biology, you talked a little bit about how it works with mitochondria and the thoughts that you think. Can you say more about that?

(00:26:13): Yes. You know, I would love to talk about mitochondria and it will be much better if I can talk just a little bit about structured water before. 

(00:26:23): Oh please. Let's talk about, well first tell everyone what structured water is and please talk

(00:26:29): . Okay. So thank you. I, we just need to get a little bit of meat under our belt before we go onto the mitochondria. So structured water, the idea that there's a different phase of water beyond the solid ice, the liquid water we drink or the gaseous steam we see on our teapots, there is a fourth phase of water. It's gel-like, it's more viscous and people, researchers have been talking about this for a very long time. But it wasn't until 2003 that Gerald and his team out of the University of Washington identified this fourth phase of water and he termed it easy water, which means exclusion zone water. And he did that because as this gel-like viscous water starts to form on ourselves, it excludes things, it pushes them out. And what he found was that the water we're used to drinking H two oh turns into H 3 0 2 against our hydrophilic surfaces.

(00:27:36): So hydrophilic water loving that would be our cell membranes are vessels, our fascia. All of those things are covered with this fourth phase of water. And what Paula and his team from the University of Washington found was that as this structured water forms against our cell membranes, it forms one sheet. And the hydrogens in this structured water are more tightly bound. They create this lattice sheet, it's hexagonal almost like a honeycomb. So as one sheet of this gel-like water forms on our cell membrane or our vessel or our fascia or d n a or our mitochondria, it acts as a template for more layers of structured water to build. And what researchers have found is that, you know, if you're very math minded, you would've noticed that H 3 0 2, it's missing the hydrogen. And as the structured water forms on our cell membranes, it kicks out a proton, a positive hydrogen and creates what researchers are calling a proton rich zone or a proton wire.

(00:28:56): And what researchers have done, they put electrode in the structured water that's forming on the cell membrane and one in this proton rich zone. And what they found is the separation of charge, just like the separation of charge in a nine volt battery, the separation of charge between the structured water and this proton rich zone is enough to light a battery. That's what they found in the research lab. And it's enough to create biological action. And so this has been validated and reconfirmed by scientists across the globe that we have this fourth phase of water that is the structured water that is lining our cell membranes, our vessels, our fascia, and our mitochondria. And our mitochondria are very interesting. They're a wonderful study in quantum biology because they have the structured water that forms on the outside of them and the inside of them. And if we can remember back to our middle school biology class, our mitochondria, those little bean shaped organelles that are inside of our cells now a heart cell might have thousands of mitochondria keeping our heart working.

(00:30:15): It's high energy. Same with the brain, right? So it's not just one mitochondria perce, we have lots and lots of mitochondria in our cells and these are what are creating our A T p, our energy source. And Dr. Wallace Douglas Wallace has done amazing work with mitochondrial function and demonstrating that any dip in mitochondrial voltage or a T P production presents as chronic disease cancer, autoimmune conditions. I mean he's really looked at almost every disease we know of and it has this mitochondrial component. So when we're talking about health mitochondrial are foundational to our health and coming from that Newtonian bio biological perspective, you've got mitochondria that take energy from food and create a t p. This is true, but looking at them from a quantum biological perspective, we see that these organelles, these mitochondria are covered in structured water on the outside of them and on the inside of them.

(00:31:30): Now the inside of our mitochondria has the inner mitochondrial membrane and that membrane holds the proteins of the electron transport chain. And that E T C, that electron transport chain is where that A T P is created. So if we look at what's happening in the mitochondria from a quantum biological perspective, what we see is that these electrons from our food are not just bouncing down the chain like we learned in middle school biology or in medical school, right? What's happening is there's fundamentally a quantum biological action happening. These electrons in the E T C of the mitochondria are quantum tunneling, meaning that they are using quantum phenomenon to move. They are not being kicked over an energetic hill like a soccer ball because of their quantum nature. They're able to travel in multiple different paths. Now this is what we saw with some of the quantum biological research that came out of Berkeley and M I t with Seth Lloyd.

(00:32:47): They were looking at photosynthetic bacteria and that's exactly what they saw. These electrons were able to take multiple paths to the photosynthetic center to create energy for the plant. They were able to take multiple paths because of their quantum nature. And that's why photosynthesis, that's why mitochondrial production of a T p is nearly a hundred percent efficient because it utilizes these quantum phenomenon. So what we see is that our mitochondria and those proteins in the E tc, they are actually utilizing quantum tunneling. They also, when we talk about mitochondria, you've got the flow of electrons, but there's no a T TP unless protons are going through those proteins as well. And what we see clearly is those protons are being shuffled down that structured water zone that's lining those pro proteins in the E T C. So in the mitochondria you've got quantum tunneling of these electrons, you've got protons jump conducting on the structured water that's lining the proton proteins in the E T C and you have the ability of these proteins and the structured water that's covering them to capture photons of light and utilize that to make more a T p.

(00:34:25): So what we're seeing now is a completely expanded vision of our mitochondria where it matters about that structured water zone where it matters about the ability of our proteins in the E T C to come together so those electrons can quantum tunnel. We see that those structured water covering these proteins plays a fundamental role in our A T P production via that proton jumping. I mean it's absolutely phenomenal and it shows us that there's an interconnection on a much deeper level. You know, when we talk about mitochondria ATTP is what we think of, but our mitochondria are actually also creating deterioration depleted water and infrared energy with the spinning of that a t P Synthes. And what those two things do, they structure the water inside the mitochondria and outside the mitochondria so that we can create more energy. We're starting to see the picture expands so that it's not just food that's driving atp, we could have told you that, right?

(00:35:47): Looking at what happens with too much food, there is another way to create energy in the body and it has to do with this nanoscale movement of electrons, of protons, of photons of light or phonons of sound. There's amazing research out there showing how sound impacts our A T P production in the mitochondria and how would that work? Because that structured water, that fourth phase of water covering the proteins in the e tc, in the inner mitochondrial membrane, as well as the structured water covering the mitochondria, have the ability to pick up on this frequency information and use it for biological action. It's really, really amazing.

(00:36:41): Absolutely fascinating. So we make our own structured water that facilitates our mitochondria, but photons can stimulate it and sound. How does that work that, how do photons get to our mitochondria? How does sound impact it? Just through the, can you talk about that?

(00:37:00): Absolutely. So when we are talking about mitochondria and when we're talking about quantum biology, a lot of interchanges happening on the electromagnetic frequency that's given out, right? So that's where phonons of sound come from. They actually can change the shape of a protein and we know that that's where biological action starts, right? Is with the changing of those proteins. Let's see, John Stewart Reed and professor son G of Korea have done amazing research with sound and its effect on our body. They've shown quite clearly that sound creates that infrared energy. And what are all these researchers using to build that structured water zone? They're using infrared energy. So when I talk about Gerald and his research looking at the structured water and he sees it building, he's looking at something inside of water and he's shining an infrared light on that. And our biggest source of infrared energy on this world is the sun.

(00:38:17): And so our mitochondria, like some other things in our body, our fascia, our D n a, have this unique liquid crystal ability and here we go with another woo sounding terminology. But liquid crystal is what we use in our technology. It's a term that describes something between a liquid and a solid that acts as a collective, right? So these computer screens, TV screens are smartphone screens. The reason we can watch these beautiful pictures on them is because the liquid crystalline structure of the screen is hit by polarized light and collectively changes to create these beautiful pictures. The same thing is happening in our body. Our mitochondria are able to pick up electromagnetic frequency and change biological action depending on what that frequency is saying to the mitochondria. Again, back to Martin Bacard and his work with mitochondria and emotional states and how that impacts health and mitochondrial function.

(00:39:34): He also did research on music and different hurts of music and how that impacts our mitochondria. And it does, it does dramatically impact the production of a t P and energy. And it's all because of the ability of the mitochondria to pick up on this subtle frequency information. Whether it's a phonon of sound, whether it's an E M F, electromagnetic frequency of thought, photons. We actually get through our skin and the options in our skin as well as the option in our retina. So what's beautiful about our bodies is that in our hypothalamus we have the su cosmic nucleus, which is sort of our, our timekeeper of the body. So when light hits our retinas, it goes right back into the S C N and the hypothalamus are master clock and then that vibration, that photonic frequency of light depending on what kind of light it is, that frequency travels throughout our nervous system via the vagus nerve and hits all of the other circadian clocks that are throughout our body.

(00:40:59): And this is all a frequency exchange of inter information. And it's really, really exciting once you start teasing it apart and getting it down because it completely opens up a new view of the body. Not only do we have that central timekeeper in our hypothalamus, every single one of our cells has a circadian clock. It has its own relationship with the sun and the rhythm of the sun. And what we see in modern day life is that so much of our living and lighting is working against that natural attunement. But these mitochondria, same with our fashion, our D n A, they're liquid crystalline in nature compounded by the structured water that is also liquid crystalline in nature. Simply meaning that it responds as a collective to frequency information in the environment. Whether it's a phonon of sound, a photon of light, an E m F of a thought. It's really, really exciting that science is starting to validate some of the things that we've always intuitively talked about, right? Oh that person's vibe makes me feel this way or ooh, that music just completely soothes me or, or has me on edge, right? These experiences that we've had as humans now the science is finally catching up and it is an exciting time to be alive.

(00:42:39): Wow, this is so fascinating and so wonderful and I'm gonna tell everyone about the courses that you have. If you wanna learn more, I'm for sure gonna take 'em cuz you explain it in a way that is so make sense that I've never heard someone explain it with clarity and in plain English that's beautiful and it's science backed. I do wanna ask you a couple more things and I know that you offer way more in your courses in terms of how can someone start attuning to these different sound and light frequencies. You mentioned visualizing the sun and being out in the sun. Are there other methods that you'd like to

(00:43:22): Share? Absolutely. I'll give you my top three.

(00:43:25): Okay, great.

(00:43:26): . So, and they are all free. There's so many wonderful supplements and devices out there, but I rarely talk about them because I really want people to experience this information in a way that's most accessible and that's free. So my first foremost is aligning with that sun. So what I tell people to do is seeing the sunrise is optimal if that's not going to fit into your daily life. Getting outside for five, 10 minutes before 10:00 AM sets us up with so many different things. The frequency of light when the sun is rising or setting is full spectrum and it's heavy on the redder tones and the redder frequencies. And what these frequencies do is they initially some of that hormone health and those hormone cascades, we see that that light in the sun in the AM before 10:00 AM sets us up with a big surge of serotonin.

(00:44:42): And that is hitting us on many different levels. We think of our mood right and our productivity and our creativity, but serotonin is also working with our hormone health, with our immune status, our inflammatory status. We see that this early am sunshine is also setting us up with our dopamine release and that ability to stay focused and stay happy. Now when the lights lower as the sun goes down, if we can lower our lights inside as well. This sets up the flip side of that, that serotonin that was dumped in the morning and hasn't been used gets turned into melatonin. And this is our ability to sleep well as well as you know, those are really melatonin kind of serves as these sentinels. So with proper melatonin, our mitochondria can get rid of the cells that are tired, broken down, cancerous that shouldn't be in us.

(00:45:50): So it's really important to be getting both sides of that yin young rhythm of the sun. Now I live in the Pacific Northwest in Oregon. It is gray. A lot of our, a lot of the year we don't see the gorgeous sun, we just see the gray. And that is medicine too. It's the natural full spectrum light. It does not have to be cozy, tropical, wonderful sun. It just has to be the sun where you are at, there is medicine in those gray skies as well. And just to add to that, being in Oregon in the winters, it gets dark around five o'clock. So do we go to bed at five o'clock? No we don't. What we do is we transition to more of those lower frequency lights. So I use salt lamps. My kids have these little red light readers so they can be in charge of their own light.

(00:46:52): We have incandescent bulbs in the kitchen in case that needs to go on. But the shift from lowering those lights and getting that am sun is dramatic. So that's my first and foremost is aligning with the sun in that way. Getting out in the sun as many times as you can throughout the day. Taking your 10 minute break outside, this is going to have effect on your biology that you can feel. And so that's where I start most people with because I love the ones that you can feel immediately cuz then I can add more stuff on there, right? So yes, that's my first one is aligning with the sun. And it has that bright and dark phase. So we wanna get that am sun and we wanna lower it in the pm. Now if we could stack another habit onto that exposure of the sun, it would be some grounding.

(00:47:53): So getting bare feet in on the ground touching a tree. What we see is that our earth is lined with an infinite sea of free electrons. And when we come in contact with it, our body can actually collect these electrons and use them in the electron transport chain for more energy in that mitochondria for more structured water in the mitochondria and outside. So that is one that is really, really small but profound. And again, it doesn't have to be ghost down barefoot in the snow because you live somewhere that's snowy for months out of the year. That can look like touching a tree, sitting on a tree, a rock, the beach, the sand. Anywhere where you can come in contact with that infinite sea of electrons that's covering our earth. Another way to do that, if all of those options are not an option is coming in contact with negative ions.

(00:49:02): So let's say we're somewhere very cold and we have to stay bundled up and all we can do is walk around in the snow and in the snowfall, that snowfall has negative ions that impact our biology in a positive way, help structure that water as well. So those two, getting outside, being aligned with the sun, tending to that relationship with that circadian rhythm as well as grounding. And then the third one is probably my favorite and easiest one to do is using something gratitude practice, a mindfulness practice. My favorite is the heart math institute's heart coherence exercises. And they are walking you through exercises where you create, create this coherence in the body. Quantum coherence refers to two or more objects vibrating and resonating and working at the same frequency. And so when we're talking about heart coherence, we're talking about our actual human heart working in coherence, working in the same frequency as our mind.

(00:50:28): So when we are in a state of heart coherence, we see that we are innovating our frontal low, making calm, rational decisions. And we're not innovating that amygdala that's in charge of fear and rash decisions. Our blood pressure changes, the whole state of the body changes in response to this state of coherence, of quantum coherence. It's absolutely amazing. So if anyone out there is listening and wants to expand on their gratitude practice or their mindfulness practice, I love heart mouths, heart coherence exercises. Youtube has tons of 'em. And simply when I can't get the time to do that, I will take 15 seconds to take stock of what I am grateful for. And that energy of gratitude actually initiates that state of coherence and that coherence can be measured with heart rate variability and we can talk very sciencey about it. But on a very basic level, an emotion like love or gratitude when we embody it with breath, can actually change the state of frequency and coherence in our body and heart Breath Institute has done a great job researching that out and giving us lots of science behind it.

(00:51:52): But the basic idea is that taking a second to tune into those emotions and feel them completely rewires our physiology in a state of coherence so that we're able to have that quantum biological flow of information. And so those are my three favorites. Having some kind of practice to bring coherence in, whether that's mindfulness, meditation, gratitude, heart coherence exercises, having some relationship with the world around you where you're grounding and coming in contact with the earth, with nature, with the plants. And then aligning with our biggest source of energy, our sun, and aligning with that in the morning throughout the day and then following its lead and lowering the lights at night. This is something that I wish every single ob GYN would be talking about with their patients, not only for fertility, but what this is what has a massive impact on the state of our hormones as we enter into that perimenopause menopausal stage in our life. And so I'm really excited that you are talking about it. That we are talking about it. I love to get this information out there.

(00:53:18): Yes. And what makes you say that it's particularly important for perimenopausal menopausal women? Is there a special reason just cause we're so struggling with our hormones or

(00:53:29): Struggling with our hormones? Yep. That circadian alignment with the sun sets up that cascade of hormones from so many different levels. Our cortisol, our leptin, our serotonin and melatonin, our dopamine and our mitochondrial function, right? Our mitochondria are making that pregnenolone that turns into our sex hormones and our testosterone and our estrogen and and all of those things that we start to really examine once we're past 40. They have a foundational root in our relationship with the son. And I would even go so far as to say that a lot of the struggle that we're seeing hormonally in women and men has a layer in that disconnection of circadian rhythm, krono disruption they call it in the research. It has such a fundamental role in the proper release stimulation and propagation of these hormones. It's, it's really phenomenal.

(00:54:48): Absolutely fascinating. I could talk to you for hours, but I know people will probably say, Karen, you're talking way too long. I do. We're gonna share about all your things with everyone, but I have to ask you about this wonderful quote that you shared with me before we started. If you can talk about what it means. Life is water dancing with the rhythm of the sun.

(00:55:10): Yes, absolutely. And so that is talking about how, whether it's our biology, our cells, and our mitochondria like we are talking about, or whether it's a giant sequoia tree pulling water up to the very tip top branches that's being powered by this beautiful interchange that we see with structured water and its ability to pull energy from the sun and use it for biological action. It's not just us, it's the plants, it's the animals, it's our own bodies. Utilizing this dance where that structured water can pull in a photon of light and create biological action, create biological movement because of the two interacting together. And it's something that I, that's the riff on a quote from Albert St. Georgie and he was a Nobel Prize winner that went on to research exactly what I'm talking about, this so-called water battery in our, our body and how it is what's powering life here on this planet. It's absolutely fascinating. And each day, each week that rolls on, there's more and more validating research about this beautiful dance between water and light and how it powers life.

(00:56:44): I love that. I love you and I'm so grateful that you are on the podcast talking about this. Everybody listening, you just got a gift. You are getting a gift right now. And Dr. Katherine has more gifts for you. She has a Rewilding, our Terrain guide and then also our structured water guide. We'll have the links in the show notes. Do you wanna tell them a little bit about those?

(00:57:09): Sure. Yeah. Those are a couple free guides that walk you through how to kind of facilitate this relationship with the world around us and some of the obstacles that might be getting in your way to having that relationship. So Rewilding is just about how to do that, simple steps to create that relationship. And the structured water guide is just as it sounds, it talks about what I'm talking about when I talk about structured water. There's lots of like devices out there talking about structured water, lots of marketing. And what I'm talking about is different as it always is the case with marketing and marketing budgets, right? , right? The biggest gets the most attention. But this structured water guide is talking about what I'm talking about, this biological water that's inside of our body, inside of ourselves, and really empowering this biological action. So both are just ways to facilitate this change in looking at the world around us as part of us and utilizing it for better health.

(00:58:28): Thank you so much for those. I invite everyone to please, but if you're not driving, click the link. Go download these guys and get guides and get started. And Dr. Katherine, tell everyone where they can find out more and interact with you. Tell 'em about the courses that you have. Tell 'em all the things.

(00:58:48): Absolutely. Well, my name is Dr. Katherine Clinton and that's where you can find me on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube. And my website is Dr. Katherine Clinton dot com. Same name everywhere. Keeping it easy. And I offer classes, I'm constantly sharing information on social media because my goal is to get so many of us acquainted with this information and stronger and more resilient so we can sort of demand the changes that we need to see in the in medicine and healthcare in general. So both of those social media tags, all Dr. Ka Clinton, my website, and I've got a book coming out at the end of September. Well,

(00:59:38): I was say, please tell me you have a book coming out . So wonderful. Does it have a title yet?

(00:59:46): It does. It's called Interconnected.

(00:59:49): Beautiful. And I want everyone to know it's Catherine with a C, not a K. So make sure you spell it right. And what is your favorite social media hangout? I

(00:59:59): Think I'm most active on Instagram.

(01:00:02): Awesome. Thank you so much for the journey that brought you to this place, that you have this wisdom and brilliance to share with other people, especially other women, and make it accessible to them so that they understand it and they can start using it and really achieve what's possible for their brilliant health and especially in the latter part of life and for sharing it on the Hormone Prescription Podcast. Thank you so much. Thank

(01:00:35): You so much. It was an honor to join you here. I love your work. I love what you're doing. So thank you so much for having me today,

(01:00:43): , and thank you for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Thank you so much for choosing to spend your time today with us and learning empowering information that you can start using today to improve your hormones and your health. I look forward to talking with you again next week. Until then, peace, love,

(01:01:04): And hormones. Yo, 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 your copy of  Dr. Catherine Clinton's latest guide "Rewilding Our Terrain."

CLICK HERE.

► Get your copy of Dr. Catherine Clinton's latest "Structured Water Guide."

CLICK HERE.

 

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Secrets To Boosting Longevity - It’s More Than You Think

Living long and living well are two essential elements for a happy, fulfilled life. But, how can midlife women achieve this? On this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Dr. Suzanne Turner reveals the secrets to boosting longevity and how it’s more than you think.

 

Dr. Turner is the founder of Vine Medical Associates and the VMA Residency. Double Board Certified, her thriving practice treats executives and athletes from around the world. Practicing Cellular, Longevity, and Performance Medicine, Dr. Turner has special interests and experience in bioidentical hormone therapy, metabolic medicine, neurodegenerative disease, and human performance optimization. She also has earned Advanced Certification in Endocrinology and Peptide Therapy. Dr. Turner is the leading expert in peptide therapy in the Southeast. She is an award-winning teacher of medical students, residents, and physicians while on the Faculty of Emory University. She has also served on the faculty of A4M, IPS, BioTe, SSRP, and ACAM. She has been featured on several podcasts including Super Human Radio Network, TRT Revolution, Relentless Vitality, Younique Medical, and Health Matters. Dr. Turner spends her free time with her husband and family, studying cellular medicine and Christianity, managing her urban farm, and powerlifting.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

 

• How to understand the different approaches to longevity and health

• Why bioidentical hormone therapy is important for midlife women

• What are the implications of metabolic medicine, neurodegenerative disease, and human performance optimization

• Dr Turner's top tips for leading a long and healthy life

 

Don't miss this enlightening episode with Dr. Suzanne Turner as she reveals the secrets to boosting longevity – it’s more than you think! Tune in now and start living your best life today!

 

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review The Hormone Prescription Podcast! We appreciate your support!

 

(00:00): Muscle is the currency of aging. Carl Lenore, what can you do now to boost the life in your years? Find out next.

(00:11): 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. 

(01:04): Everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Thank you so much for joining me today. You are gonna love, love, love my guest today because I love her after just talking to her for a few minutes and you're gonna hear our conversation. She, like me as a medical doctor who went from the corporate sector into enlightened medicine, is what I call a functional approach, root cause resolution approach. Her story's a little different about how she got into this, so you're gonna wanna hear that you've heard a lot of my other guests share their stories. I'm always fascinated by how people evolve their viewpoints in the world. And so you'll wanna hear hers. She has a wonderful practice in Atlanta and helps people heal and she loves to focus on longevity and she has a ginormous toolbox of modalities to help you maybe increase the years in your life, but definitely increase the life in your years.

(02:10): She's gonna talk to you about the difference between health span and lifespan and most importantly, how do you test to know what your aging status is? Are you older physiologically than you are chronologically? She's gonna tell you how to know and she's gonna share with you some of the best tools and strategies in her toolbox that you can start using today to put more life into your years. I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. Dr. Turner is the founder of Vine Medical Associates and the VMA Residency Double Board certified. Her thriving practice treats executives and athletes from around the world practicing cellular longevity and performance medicine. Dr. Turner has special interests and experience in bioidentical hormone therapy, metabolic medicine, neurodegenerative disease, and human performance optimization. She also has earned expert in peptide therapy in the southeast and is an award-winning teacher of medical students, residents, and physicians. While the faculty of Emory University, she's also served on the faculty of a four m i p s, Biot, S S R P and Aamp. She's been featured on several podcasts including Superhuman Radio Network, T R T Revolution, relentless Vitality, unique Medical and Health Matters. Dr. Turner spends her free time with her husband and family studying cellular medicine and Christianity managing her urban farm and power lifting. Please help me welcome Dr. Suzanne Turner.

(03:42): Hi Kyrin. Thank you so much for having me on today. I'm really excited to get to talk with you.

(03:46): Yes, I'm very excited to talk with you. We both were in Atlanta probably at the same time, but I never had the pleasure of meeting you. We have colleagues and friends in common and I love what you're doing and what you offer women. So let's dive into talking about longevity for women and what's involved with that. But first I wanna start because you are also traditionally trained physician, right? Yes. If you could share with everyone kind of your journey from what I call corporate medicine Yes. To enlightened Medicine. What happened there?

(04:24): Well, actually I think it was mostly patient driven. So the practice that I started, I had probably half and half men and women and several of the women came to me and said, Hey, will you write these bio identical hormones? And I said, I don't know what that is, but okay. So I wrote for their hormone therapy and the the compounding pharmacist called me up and said, Hey, we love that you're writing for these but you clearly don't know what you're doing.

(04:52): . And they said, well, can we send you to a class? So they sent me to this little quick weekend course on biodentical hormones and it was really just a very skim introductory course called get Out of Line. It was about how do you stop following the person in front of you and really be the leader in what you're doing? So I just got all of a sudden this hunger for learning about hormones and learning other ways. I've heard you talk about your toolbox got bigger or you added things to your toolbox and that really is how I feel about it. I'd gotten a bunch of people better, but there were several that were just hanging on and not quite continuing to do well. And so having this whole new thing where I could help patients with both, with adding in hormones and then as I went on, adding more things, the whole perspective of this not being disease centered, but being cellular or organ centered and how do we manipulate the way that the body responds to its environment?

(05:54): It was a completely different way of thinking about medicine. I think I just continued. So then I found the American Academy of the anti-Aging and regenerative medicine like you and spent many years learning layer after layer after layer of complexity, adding things to my toolbox learning from other people. I think we spend a lot of time learning now, speaking with people like you, with other friends that really help us to learn other ways. We've just added ozone therapy and neurotherapy to our practice, which have been huge benefits. So there's so many things we can do for that patient that's just not getting better and oh, okay, well then maybe this is a matter of looking at how your cells process energy, how your cells speak to one another or communicate how your nervous system controls the way that your organs work. So it's been a fun journey.

(06:47): Yes, it is. And I love that you learned out from a wanting more place. So many of us learned from disasters and then when we couldn't find answers we had to seek elsewhere. So it's very inspiring to hear your story and I want to talk a little bit about longevity. There have been some experts in the more mainstream medical field who have said, no, you can't really impact longevity except don't smoke, don't drink too much, and kind of the usual party line that everyone hears. You know, eat the sad diet, exercise more, right? All the things we hear, but there really is so much more that you can do to impact longevity. So how did you become interested in

(07:38): That? I think it's because the patients, again, it's the patients who came to me and said, how do we make sure it really, the specific patients are the ones who are the entrepreneurs or the head of household or the family member who says, I want to, I've seen my mother much like you. I've seen my mother or my father go through this horrible end of their life that they, I didn't want them to go through. How do I keep myself from getting there And I have, they have a passion about something they're doing. Like maybe they own a coffee company or maybe they own a skincare line and they love what they're doing and they're passionate about helping people in that way and they wanna be able to continue to do that. So when my patients come to me and tell me those stories, it really inspires me to provide them that opportunity to continue to be so, I see myself as one of their team members in helping them to be able to continue to pursue their passion as long as possible.

(08:34): I'm not necessarily talking about increasing their number of days or years, although that is something that everyone's rushing to, to, to find the research for and maybe probably has been doing for, has been for years. I'm really talking about changing the shape of your health span from a long oval type shape into a square so that you increase your health, you stay at that lovely, improved health all the way until you're ready to pass and then you go so that there isn't this sort of long drawn out disease state at the end of life that we continue to see. I would hope that you would be able to continue to do things that you're passionate about, speaking in front of audiences and teaching about hormones until right up until the day before you pass and that that you would not have that long drawn out, prolonged ending. So when I'm talking about longevity, I'm really talking about longevity of health span. Although the research is out there and currently being done on improving the length of life, I feel like if my length of life is, if my life is not full of health then I don't really want the extra length of life.

(09:46): I totally agree , we don't wanna live in a disease state and currently so many of us once we pass 50 are in a disease state. I think it's over 50% of us are on five or more medications after the age of 50, which represents chronic disease management and all the risks that chronic disease carries. So increasing our health span, and I know some of you listening are thinking, you know, Dr. Kyrin, my health is a mess right now and I'm in midlife metabolic mayhem. Or I, you know, I can't lose the weight and I can't sleep. I'm not worrying about increasing my health span. But actually the same tools that Dr. Suzanne and I are gonna talk about are will also help you get out of midlife metabolic mayhem and correct and reverse disease and improve your overall quality of health. So you definitely wanna listen cuz she's gonna share some tools with you that we haven't talked about on the podcast before and I think you're gonna wanna hear this, I have to ask you first, you have this wonderful quote on your Instagram and I love your Instagram cuz it really shows who you are and your life.

(10:58): So everybody, you definitely wanna check it out. We'll give the link at the end that muscle is the currency of aging. Muscle is the currency of aging. Can you talk about what that means?

(11:11): I have to confess, I stole that from a friend Carl Leor who's a wonderful podcaster as well. This is about, we have to realize that the exercising muscle, it's not just that your doctor's telling you to exercise. Wow. Wow. That's true. Okay, I know about that. This is actually, we know that the exercising or the contracting muscle secretes signals that tell the rest of your body, this is a young person begin to unfold the D N A unfold, the protein processing that in a way that is much more youthful. So an exercising muscle will communicate to the rest of the body that this is a young person and that youthful things need to be happening. So even if you are unable to exercise, there are other things that we can do to help with that. There's a relatively new device called M sculpt that works on helping people who are unable to exercise.

(12:06): Now it's marketed for weight loss, but what's exciting about this device is it's able to help with people who are unable to exercise or have injuries to actually as behave as though they were exercising. So it gives that same release of youthful signals that you get. I think most people are able to do some form of activity and even if you are, you know, walking to your mailbox standing up or sitting down at your desk, I tell my 96 year old patients that one of the things they can do is just standing up and sitting down from their dining room chair. Just getting that kind of activity is going to be beneficial for your overall health because your muscles as they move and contract are sending signals to the rest of your body to be more youthful and to produce proteins in a more youthful manner.

(12:54): So then all the things that happen with age where we collect more junk in our more trash in our cells where we damage the cells to the point where they become like zombie cells, all of those things are less likely to happen because of the signals that our cells are getting from the exercising muscle. So there's a reason to exercise this, not just my doctor says I need to exercise or I'm trying to lose weight. Although both of those usually are present. The biggest reason is because of this youthful communication that an exercising muscle will give you.

(13:28):Where are women getting it wrong over 40 with maintaining or building muscle mass? How are we getting it wrong with our hormones with the exercises we're doing or not doing? Why do we struggle with losing muscle mass? Cuz that's a huge problem for women. So where do, yeah,

(13:47): I love the new, it's one of the hashtags I love. It's it's strong, not skinny. I love that because it's, it moves the focus away from being very, very thin to being very, very healthy. And the idea that one of the things I hear my patients say a lot is, I don't want to do any weight training because I'm afraid I'm going to be too bulky. And that makes me a little bit sad because I think it's one of the easiest, fastest way for women over 40 to lose weight. And so patients that I can finally convince, okay, you don't need to be in the gym, do on the treadmill for 45 minutes every single day. You can do a hit exercise program that's just 15 really probably we can get away with four to five minutes of high intensity interval cardio and the rest of the time you can do some weight training because that's where we get our fat burning.

(14:39): Again, that's where we tell ourselves to choose to burn fat as an energy source. If is in that 70% maximum heart rate range, it's not in killing yourself on the treadmill, it's in that lovely 70% max heart rate range, which we usually will get with a good weight training program. Now I definitely recommend people use a trainer, especially if you've just started doing weight training. I have been doing this for several years and I still use a trainer because I wanna make sure I don't injure myself. So injury is a little bit worse of course. So I would rather not have that. I want longevity of my ability to exercise as well. So I have someone who guides me through the things that I do in the gym, the way women are because we don't have a lot of testosterone and particularly as we approach menopause or in that midlife mayhem, we will deplete ourselves of testosterone.

(15:33): And so it's actually testosterone and the way you train that will build a bulk of your muscle. It's pretty difficult for women to build bulk. They really have to eat a lot and they have to do exercises in a particular way in order to bulk even at that. Most of the women who you see that are that bulky kind of bodybuilder look, those women usually have, they have given themselves some sort of hormonal treatment, not, not like menopausal hormones but additional hormones that will allow them to be that size. Otherwise women are less likely to grow what we should see to hypertrophy or thicken the muscles. Like you talk about bulky, what we instead will see is more definition of the muscle because you're burning the fat around the muscle, so you're maintaining your muscle mass, you're burning the fat around the muscle to be used for that muscle to contract. So typically I recommend that women over 40 really put the majority of their energy in exercise toward muscle, toward lifting weight, some sort of resistance exercise.

(16:39): Okay. Yes. And I find that maybe it's post Jane Fonda aerobic exercise era when people say exercise, like we have in our minds says women over 40, oh Jane Fonda, right? But I think it's time that we changed that visual and I don't have a visual representation of who represents probably Deborah Atkinson , you know, flipping 50. She talks about that all the time. And you don't need more aerobics, you need more resistance training. You mentioned testosterone and that's something that I'm very passionate about because you know, the official corporate medical statement summary on testosterone use in women is basically no. And it's so vital for our brain function neurotransmitters, our bone mass, our muscle. Can you talk about the importance of getting your testosterone tested and treated?

(17:37): Yes, over our lifetime, even including in our twenties, testosterone is one of the greatest hormones that's produced and I mean greatest in volume of hormones that's produced by women's bodies, which doesn't seem to be, that doesn't make a lot of sense in our minds, but this is the reason why it's so frustrating. So I just competed in a power lifting competition and I was required to come off of my testosterone in order to com do that competition. I think this is a travesty because this, I'm gonna spend the next several months dealing with my midlife mayhem again as I cover the loss of testosterone and coming back, getting back on it again. And I don't take a huge dose of testosterone. I'm, I'm really just at a moderate appropriate dose because without it, my testosterone, of course I'm 50, my testosterone is very low with testosterone, I sleep better, I'm more calm. Things around me don't bother me. And that's the case with most of my patients. Much like you I'm sure is that they're able to sleep better at night. I tell women things like socks on the floor don't bother you .

(18:46): And it's because if you think about it, your husband doesn't, it doesn't bother him. When he sees socks on the floor, he walks right past it. It's because our minds are so diffusely aware. If you're familiar with the work of Allison Armstrong, we have such diffuse awareness when we're in that estrogen cycle and if we are on testosterone, it really helps with bringing some focus to our activities in our day. So I'm a big fan of testosterone and again, not in a, an overdose or super physiologic dosing, but in a necessary for functioning to day-to-day. The dose I take is about one 10th or one 15th. The dose of that I give my husband, it's a way smaller dose, but it's perfect in just what I need in order to function properly in on day-to-day.

(19:31): Right. And I love that you brought up Alison Armstrong. I'll just say a little bit about her for everybody listening. She's basically, I guess a woman's dating coach, but she really is very clear about the different psychological profiles that is related to hormones for men and women and how we function differently because of the our hormonal milieu. And so I love that you shared that about our brain because testosterone is super important for that dopamine and the focus and the drive and not only our muscles and our bones, but it's very important. All right, so what else is important when we're looking at increasing our health span?

(20:15): I think several things are important. One of the ways that muscle also works. And so this is, it's, I'm gonna tie this into what we just talked about is by increasing the ability of your cells to produce protein and increasing the ability of the cells to produce energy. So I hear a lot of women that are in that midlife mayhem talk about being fatigued. So one of the things that we can use, there's a old drug that was found on Easter Island that is sort of like an old antibiotic, although it functions differently than that. It's F D A approved for use for kidney transplant patients and that's in a fairly high dose. When we use this in a much lower dose, we can find that that we are able to turn off the go, go, go, go, go mi mindset of ourselves and turn on the rest and repair mindset of ourselves.

(21:10): Those two aspects of how we see and use energy in ourselves need to be in a really good balance, the calm down, rest and relax as well as the go-go, let's build, let's grow, let's develop. We want that, but we also want the rest and relax. It needs to be in this good balance. Much like we've probably talked about with the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Those all exist, those dichotomies exist at the cellular level. So one of the things that it's drug is called rapamycin. It's used in much, much smaller doses and there are some really interesting studies about it improving the longevity and the number of years of mice and sea elegance, which is a worm that has very similar D n A to ours as opposed to dogs that don't have similar the for using animals for research rats or mice.

(22:03): And the sea elegance has a very similar d n A to us so we can use those to study and rapamycin, because it's been around for a long time, it's been used for many, many years treating kidney transplant patients. We're using this in really, really tiny infrequent doses for every once in a while to give your cells a rep and a chance to recover from all the things we do in a day. So that also sort of, so rapamycin is one option, but we also use that rolls over into the idea of how important sleep is. So one of the things that's the tenant of health for me is going to bed at eight 30. And the reason this is important is because during sleep, this is when your brain opens up what we call the glymphatic drainage system. This is sort of the trash or the sewer system of the brain.

(22:52): It's closed during the day and at night while you're sleeping. It opens up as long as the body's not doing anything like digesting food. So this is one of the reasons why your Dr. May say for you to wait at least two hours from eating to going to bed because that gives your body time to handle the food and then it can focus on that recovery and repair. During sleep is when that glymphatic drainage system opens up, all the trash can be cleared away. The immune cells can take the trash, bundle it up, put it out into the glymphatic to be moved away. The systems can be all things can be filed away like where they're supposed to be in the brain and the next morning you can wake up refreshed because all of that was able to happen. So in our patients who aren't sleeping, we need to be really focused and helping them to make that a priority, not only as far as setting aside the amount of time that's necessary, but also in providing them ways to help them with sleep.

(23:52): That list is very, very long, but getting adequate number of hours of sleep and the research is around seven to nine hours per night and then also getting enough of the kinds of sleep we need. So the same thing happens during sleep on a nightly basis in the brain. That can happen during the day with using something like rapamycin. The other interesting thing is doing a 12 hour fast overnight. And that's probably the only thing that's been proven in humans to promote longevity is calorie restriction. This is really hard to do long-term, so it's not something that we, that we definitely recommend for everyone, but one of the things I do recommend for everyone is a 12 hour overnight fast. This is, it seems like 12 hours overnight. That seems like it would be easy. Well if you eat dinner at six o'clock at night and don't eat anything again until six o'clock in the morning, that sounds pretty easy.

(24:46): But most of my patients have a hard time getting that 12 hours in. What's interesting is if you fast for that 12 hours, we know that the brain will begin to produce a protein or a fat rather called butyrate and butyrate is used by the cells as an alternate fuel source and it triggers that same response as the rapamycin does to help the body with that process of autophagy or rest and relaxation. So an overnight fast of 12 hours is cheaper than getting rapamycin of course, and is a really simple way that everyone at home can be involved in their own longevity is by setting aside that time not only for adequate rest but also for fasting overnight

(25:30): Regarding fasting because it's very popular right now all kinds of fast dry, fast wet, fast water, fast juice fast. But intermittent fasting is a huge topic and there's several best selling books on it. What about longer intervals of fasting? What is the research saying about that?

(25:50): It's, I think the research is still up in the air and what really works in the research is fasting in the morning and is early, I'm sorry, is is evening fasting, which is much more difficult for most people to do. Most people don't mind fasting in the morning, but they have a really hard time fasting in the evening and as we just talked about, it runs right into your ability of your body to rest and and recuperate and especially the brain to repair the things it needs to overnight if you're bumping that up too close to your sleep time. So I really encourage people if they can, to push that fasting window up against their dinnertime and make that dinnertime be earlier in the evening. Then you get that full 12 hours of overnight sleep, I mean of overnight fasting for the brain to be able to begin producing butyrate so that it can cause all the healing that the cells need through that time when it's produced.

(26:46): Okay, alright. I want us continue on tools to improve longevity, but I wanted to ask you about how do people know how old their body thinks they are? I mean sure we have a chronological age, but for some of us, and I've seen some inventories where people can do answer questions about their health and then it spits out kind of what their, and I forget what Eric Braverman calls it, their true age and your, you can find out does your, is your body functioning at an older age or a younger age or your age appropriate? Where are you? But there's some clinical tests that can be used, correct?

(27:27): Yes. So I think the simplest way for us to look at that is there's a couple of simple markers that are probably on everyone's last lab test. They're not going to give you a specific age, but it is something for you to monitor over time and it's again, something probably everyone's had done on their most recent lab tests. If you look on your complete metabolic panel, one of the tests that's on there is called an albumin. The goal for albumin is for the level to be four and a half or greater. If you're four and a half or if you're less than four and a half, your risk of aging and your risk of mortality from all causes goes up. So I just encourage people to watch their albumin level. We wanna see that it's either staying the same or improving and that's a general good marker of how well your health overall is.

(28:20): The second easy simple marker is in your complete blood cell count and that is a lymphocyte count. We want that lymphocyte count to be greater than 35. When you, as we age, one of the things that causes us aging is that your immune system declines in its ability to function optimally. We know that this has happened with our most recent virus that's gone through and most of the people who were unable to tolerate that were people who were elderly or over 75 80. And part of that is because their immune system is also aging. One of the ways we can look at that is looking at the lymphocyte count, which is look is one of your immune cells and we want that level to be greater than 35. A less than 35 is concerning that you will not be able to fight off viruses or cancer should the two of them come your way.

(29:12): And so those are two things you can monitor generally in every lab test. Now a little bit more specific are two different tests and one is called a beta-glucan assay. This can let us know whether or not you also gives you an approximation of what your age is because we accumulate this as we age. There are specific labs that do this. The second one is called true age and it is an epigenetic test, which means you know, you have, you know about people who have genetic variations in their D N A from birth and they have changes that make them more susceptible to things like down syndrome for example. Well those various genes and all of our genes will change the way they are expressed based on what's happening in your environment. So a more appropriate environmentally induced aging marker is this epigenetic test. They're looking for specific changes on specific pieces of D N A that are more common with aging and they can give you both a rate of aging as well as an proposed current age based on all the patients they've had do the test.

(30:25): And so there are several companies that do a test like this. I use one called True Age, there are lots of others. And they look at your epigenetics to see whether you are how quickly you are approaching aging. I really am concerned about the rate of aging. So for every one year of age, how many years older are you? And I'd like to see that number be one or less so that you are not continuing aging. And again, one of the ways we can fix that is what we've already talked about with contracting muscle and adequate sleep and overnight fasting.

(31:00): All right. Where are we with telomere length at this point clinically? What are your thoughts on that?

(31:06): So what's interesting is telomere length, it tends to be associated with aging. We know that again with the most recent virus that people lost a good bit of telomere length. The jury is still out whether extending telomeres will affect your longevity in the long run. So we are still looking at that research to see whether or not there is a benefit. We know that a shorter telomere length is associated with a shorter lifespan, but it's not necessarily correlated with a lengthening of that. Telomere is not necessarily corded with a lengthening of lifespan. So again, the jury is still out. There are several companies that have products that are beneficial in lengthening T telomeres and I am not convinced of the information yet. It's the jury is still out about whether that telomere lengthening will extend lifespan.

(32:00): Right. And just for anyone who doesn't know whatt mirrors are, they're kind of like the binding on your end of your shoelaces that you have on all strands of D N A that kind of holds it together and they shorten over your lifespan and like Dr. Suzanne was saying, you're at increased risk for certain diseases when they're shorter. So that's what telomeres are. Alright, so we're working out at the gym doing, getting our muscle mass, we're doing resistance training, we're sleeping, we're doing a 12 hour fast. What other things have been shown or clinically

(32:38): Proven to help us improve our health spans? There was a big study that was done called the trim study that's probably the most significant one that's out there. And it was done with growth hormone, growth hormone and the, the study was intended to see whether or not growth hormone would improve lifespan and giving people growth hormone would improve their lifespan. Well one of the side effects of growth hormone is increase in blood sugar. So they also gave those patients metformin to cut counteract the increase in blood sugar from the growth hormone. The other thing that growth hormone is known to do is increase cortisol or stress hormone. Who needs that? So they gave those people D H E A to help counteract this, the ef, the growth hormone side effect of raising cortisol. So the study was done with growth hormone, D H E A and D and metformin.

(33:31): So this is one of the places where the hype around metformin began. Metformin has some benefits in, this is what I was getting to. Metformin has some benefits in improving lifespan in animal studies. The concern I have with metformin is its mechanism of action. Number one, its mechanism of action is at the mitochondria or the energy generating level. This interferes with the ability of cytochrome one, which is one of the little things that helps your mitochondria to make energy. It interferes with that function. So I don't want any of my mitochondria to be fun to be messed with. I get concerned when I see that when I hear about mitochondria because mitochondrial dysfunction is one of the causes of aging. So it just doesn't jive in my mind to use metformin, although there's a lot of research out there that's very interesting and ongoing about using metformin for longevity.

(34:26): It just makes me nervous because of its mechanism of action. The second thing that metformin does, mechanism of action-wise is affects your microbiome. Which if you have a terrible microbiome might be a good idea if you have a great microbiome. I don't wanna mess with my microbiome. I think our intestines speak volumes to our entire bodies. I think the food that we put in tells the microbiome to be what it is and it will send signals back to our body to be more youthful, to be more energetic, to be more calm. All the things. I listened to your last podcast about anxiety and she was right on about the microbiome really affecting our anxiety. So I get concerned about, about messing with the microbiome if we don't have to. So metformin is a little concerning to me. The study was done with growth hormone and last I understood they were actually looking at using an a peptide called liraglutide, which does not have the glucose raising or the cortisol raising effects of me of growth hormone. So I'm interested to see the research on that. That's still pending lilu most people are probably familiar with it as as Victoza or Saxenda, which are, which is used for weight loss.

(35:37): Okay, awesome. All right, so what other tools are available? You mentioned peptides, you are an expert in peptides, you have all book coming out on this topic. What we've covered a little bit of that on the podcast, but can you speak to peptides that might specifically improve health span?

(35:57): It's one of the things I think is really interesting and helpful because of how they work. I think there's two in particular that would be beneficial and there's several of them probably that would be helpful. But let's just talk about two, I think thymus and alpha one, which is comes from your thymus thymus gland and can help to rebalance the way your immune system functions. When we get a vaccine, when we have an autoimmune disease, our immune system is really shifted over to one side where it's primarily focused on making antibodies. We don't want our immune system to be focused in that direction because then it's unable to fight things like viruses and cancer. And this is an oversimplification of the way our immune system works. But there, if we're talking about in binary language, that's really what we're looking at. So if it's busy making antibodies, it's not gonna be busy making things, what we call natural killer cells that can fight off bacteria, I'm sorry, viruses and cancer.

(36:53): Oh, I'd love for it to be more balanced. And one of the ways we can do that is using this peptide that's naturally occurring in the thymus gland. It's depleted in patients we know that have things like rheumatoid arthritis, MS for example. And so we love having that extra ability to give ourselves depleted thymus and alpha one if we are able to find it. That's a little bit of trouble right now. I like it because it works on that immunosenescence or the aging of the immune system that occurs as we age. The thymus gland, which is where your T-cells come from. Everybody's familiar with this conver you, I couldn't have had this conversation several years ago cuz no one would know what we were talking about, but right. The recent virus we have all this, people are familiar with these terms. You are a thymus gland where your T-cells come from gets replaced with fat as we age.

(37:42): And so that's part of the problem with aging is your immune system's unable to fight off things that used to be able to. So if we can give you something like thymus and alpha, we stimulate your baby T-cells to become cells that can fight things off, then we have this better balance. So I think thymus and alpha would definitely fall in my toolbox of anti-aging. The second thing would be to use a growth hormone secretagogue. The reason why I like the instead of growth hormone itself is because they're increasing the ability of your body to produce its own growth hormone. Again, as we age, we know we hit that midlife mayhem and we deplete our bodies not only of testosterone melatonin, estrogen, progesterone, but also growth hormone. And so if we can allow our bodies just to make the amount of growth hormone that it would've made in our twenties and thirties, that it would na you won't overdose on the growth hormone because you're not giving yourself actual growth hormone.

(38:40): You're giving yourself an it's, they're usually analogs of growth hormone releasing hormone, which is also naturally produced by the brain. We know that these are associated with improvement in longevity, especially in animal studies. And so this is one of my favorites to help to put people on for improving their longevity. And we can follow that again with a true h test and see how they're chronologically versus biologically improving in their age. So those would probably be my number one. And number two, anti-aging. If we're talking about appearance as aging, one of my favorites is using the copper peptides. And so growth GH HK is the amino acid sequence that it's called. Most of the peptides have a letter and number name on them because they're, they're still in research use. And so G H K has a copper p attached to it, so it's blue when you see it.

(39:31): You may see several skincare lines that have a G H K that have a blue coloration to them and these can really help to restore the skin. They have been compared against re A and vitamin C with better than re A and vitamin C outcomes in the research. So very interesting anti-aging for the skin. What's very interesting recently is I've been recommending these topically for people to use for hair loss and we've had several patients lose their hair in this most recent pandemic. And if they use this on their scalp with a derma roller, we do it a couple times a week. Many of these patients will, we're seeing some really amazing results with restoration of hair. And this is not even using p R P, it's just using the, the DRO and the the medical grade J H K C U serum.

(40:25): Awesome. Yeah, this is so much good information and I know you could go on probably listing things. I'm thinking, oh, we didn't even talk about oxygen therapies, but I'm gonna tell everyone they just need to read your book , where you're gonna talk about a lot of this. And I thank you so much for joining us. I want everybody listening to really hear that you can improve the quality of your health throughout your life. Juries is not in yet on whether we can actually increase our years, but we can certainly increase the life and the years that we do have. So where can everybody find out more about you?

(41:08): My website is Vine as in grapevine medical.com on Instagram at Dr. S Turner, d r s Turner. I'm on Facebook, vine Medical on Facebook. That's the best places.

(41:21): And talk a little bit about your book. What are they gonna find there?

(41:24): So it's pretty exciting. I'm about halfway through. We're expecting it to be published in November. It is about how to restore your youthful self, recognizing yourself in the mirror again, there I am. And particularly with use the use of peptides.

(41:42): Awesome. Well we look forward to that. And thank you for the wisdom and information that you've shared. Thank you for your passion and for your willingness to get out of line. I too started with Dr. Taylor and for everyone listening, Dr. Taylor Eldridge Taylor used to run a program called Get Out of Line for physicians who really recogniz that particularly as women in medical weren't being served properly. And he started by teaching other doctors about natural hormone therapy and then expanded. And then both Dr. Suzanne and I went onto the A four M residency, as she said, or fellowship. So thank you so much for your bravery. A lot of people lay, people don't realize how brave it is for doctors like you to get out of line and say no to the drug and surgery paradigm and walk this path. It's very courageous and I thank you for doing it. I'm so grateful that you just said yes and that you continue on this path. Thank you.

(42:46): Thank you Dr. Ki. I appreciate you so much

(42:48): And thank you all for listening to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. I know that you loved the information that Dr. Suzanne shared and that you two appreciate her path and are looking forward to her book. So definitely check out her website, check her out on social media, subscribe to her channels so that you can be one of the first to know when her book is available. And I hope that you learn something today that you can implement in your life to change your health and transform your life to what you deserve it to be. I will see you again on next week's episode. Until then, peace, love, and hormones

(43:27): Y'all. 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.

 

► Learn more about Dr. Suzanne Turner - CLICK HERE

Follow her on Instagram.

 

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What If It’s Not Depression?

It's horrifying!

 

But when life throws a curveball as it did for Dr. Achina Stein, she faces that challenge head-on and learns to understand, accept, and even embrace the unexpected.

 

Join us as we explore how to recognize if you're experiencing something other than depression and how to transform your experiences into feelings of empowerment. Dr. Achina will inspire you with her own journey of transformation and self-love so that you can walk away feeling grounded, inspired, and encouraged in your own life no matter what challenges come your way! Don’t miss out on this inspiring conversation—tune in today!

 

Dr. Achina Stein is a DO physician, Board Certified psychiatrist and has been in practice since 1994. She is a certified practitioner of the Institute for Functional Medicine, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and an Azarias Energy Healer. She was awarded the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award by NAMI-RI in 2008. Located in Rhode Island, she is the co-owner of private practice, Functional Mind LLC.

 

In this episode you'll learn:

 

• How to recognize if you're experiencing something other than depression

• What steps can be taken to transform experiences into feelings of empowerment

• Dr. Achina's inspiring journey of transformation and self-love

• Tips for maintaining resilience despite life's challenges

• And much more!

 

Don’t miss this empowering conversation with Dr. Achina Stein—tune in today! You will be inspired, encouraged, and motivated on your own journey of understanding and acceptance. Join us as we explore how to turn crisis into opportunity and find the strength within ourselves - no matter what comes our way. Together, let's start creating a new normal!

 

(00:00): Every crisis is an opportunity. Dr. Achina Stein, what would you do if your 14 year old stood on the balcony of a five-story building, getting ready to jump off and kill himself? Find out what this doctor did next.

(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.

(01:09): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I'm so glad you chose to join me today. You are gonna love this delightful conversation with my friend and colleague, Dr. Achina Stein. She has an incredible story of healing and transformation. She talks about how she turns crisis into opportunity, how she maintains resilience despite many challenges in her life. And you're really gonna learn from this cuz midlife can be a challenging time and our resilience can be tested. Am I speaking the truth or am I speaking the truth? Yes, it's true. So you've gotta have some skills. Dr A has got skills, and a lot of this was honed through her childhood. She's gonna talk a little bit about that. But she came to this real turning point where one day her 14 year old had a fight with his brother, walked into the other room and got on the, the ledge at a five-story building with the intention of jumping off to commit suicide.

(02:10): How would you handle that? Well, as a board certified psychiatrist, it completely became an inflection point for a unique direction that you're gonna benefit from today as to how she views mental health. And if you're suffering with depression, anxiety, or just even a little dysthymia, you don't feel like yourself. These are very common symptoms of midlife metabolic mayhem. You wanna stay tuned and you wanna listen to what Dr. Aina learned, how she turned that crisis into an opportunity and all the resources that she has available for you. Because I'm telling you, you, you wanna listen, you just wanna listen. , she's really a light of hope and a beacon for what's possible at midlife and beyond when you do the work. So I'll tell you a little about, bit about her and then we'll get started. So, Dr. Aina Stein is a physician who's a board certified psychiatrist.

(03:06): She's been in practice since 1994. She's also a certified practitioner of the Institute for Functional Medicine, a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, A and Energy Healer. She was awarded the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award by NAMI Rhode Island in 2008, and she's located in Rhode Island where her practice functional mind L L C is located. She is the number one Amazon International bestselling author of What If It's Not Depression, your Guide To Finding Answers and Solutions. She has a YouTube channel and podcast by the same name and has been a keynote speaker and interviewed about her pioneering work as a functional medicine psychiatrist on many podcasts and summits. As a companion to her book, she offers programs to find and reverse all the root causes of your depression like symptoms. It's a perfect alternative to medication for people with chronic mild to moderate depression like symptoms that do not spread respond to antidepressant medications. And she also offers a course on how to manage antidepressant withdrawal symptoms and how to taper off SSRIs Footnote, please do not get off any medications after listening to this podcast. You must always consult with your physician before doing so. Welcome Dr. Aena Stein. Oh,

(04:24): Thank you for having me. It's always exciting to be here.

(04:27): I'm really happy to have you on this show today. I remember when I first met you and I learned that you were a psychiatrist who was also functionally trained like I am. And you told me the story of how you got into becoming functionally trained. I think that it will really speak to a lot of people. As everybody heard in the intro, you're an expert in psychiatry, you're an expert in functional medicine, and you really take a very unique view about what if it's not depression. You know, and maybe we should actually start there before we get into your story. Depression is really at, would you say epidemic levels? Talk about why do we have such a problem and what is the scope and degree of the problem?

(05:17): The amount of people that are suffering from depression is always skyrocketing. It seems like it's never ending because even, you know, 20 years ago or 25 years ago, depression rates are increasing, depression rates are increasing, and it seems to be a problem every year that does not get addressed. A lot of it has to do with access, some of it has to do with stigma. Some of it has to do with the fact that the only solution provided is medications and psychotherapy. Mm-Hmm. , you know, which is where, you know, I come in. It's, we're not looking at the root cause of why people are having depression and anxiety. We're just going through a decision tree through a book called the D S m diagnostic Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Illnesses. And it's going down this decision tree to arrive at a diagnosis and then just basically matching a pill to an ill.

(06:13): And you know, there's a place for that. There's a place for prescribing medications because there are situations where you need to shut down certain symptoms acutely because it can lead to serious things like psychotic symptoms or suicidal ideation or an attempt. So you really, there, there is a seriousness to it where it can, it can be lethal with some of these mental health issues, but there is a limitation as to what these medications can do. And we we're finding that on a long-term basis they start failing or they are not taking care of all of the symptoms or, and or there's a whole slew of side effects that people suffer from when they take these medications. And so it's, it is finding arriving at that diagnosis is important, but then also understanding why is this happening? What's going on in the body, mind and spirit that came together and manifested as the these symptoms and that it's not all in the head .

(07:20): For years we've, you know, assumed or made this, this decision that everything is in the head when no, there's lots of things that are happening in the body that affect the brain, which is your hardware, which then can affect your mind, which is your software, right. If you wanted to use, you know, computer analogies and so they're connected, you're not walking around, there's not this head bouncing around without a body. It's all connected and there are lots of things that can happen in the body that can affect the brain and the mind. So we've, as psychiatrists, as traditional psychiatrists and as well as other mental health professionals have been trained to just look at the biology of the brain, the psychology and the social aspect of how we are interacting with the world and how this, how the world you know, affects us. And just those things. And so psychotherapy does help to work on the psychology and the social aspects and the medications are meant to work on the biology, but that's just not enough. It's not enough. And there's so many tools, so many tools out there that we can use to bring the body back into balance, body, mind and spirit back into balance.

(08:42): Right. And so you were trained traditionally in a traditional medical model, what I call a corporate medical model like I was . And it basically is following protocols, follow the recipe to make the diagnosis and then give the drug or do the surgery. Very reductionist viewpoint. And a lot of diagnoses are actually symptoms. Like depression is a symptom. It's not telling you what is causing the problem. Irritable bowel syndromes another one of my favorite categories cuz it's a symptom. It doesn't say what's wrong or what's causing it. Mm-Hmm. . So I had my journey of really questioning are we really helping anyone because nobody seemed to get better despite what medications we gave them or what surgeries we did. They just had this ever, ever spiral downwards down the drain of more and more symptoms as they aged. And this really half lived life as a result. And I, I started questioning and then my own health was failing, which everybody listening probably has heard me talk about that, so I won't go into it again. But what drove you to say, okay, it's more than just depression is a diagnosis and we give you a pill to control the symptoms. What made you start digging deeper?

(10:04): Well, you know, I was one of those psychiatrists that I think spent more time with patients than the 15 minute se sessions. I never took a job that required me to see patients for 15 minutes. So I would really dig deep in terms of getting the history and trying to connect the dots. But again, it was still a biopsychosocial model and it came to a head for me when my son at the age of 14 overnight, literally overnight had a tiff with his brother and was suddenly out on out the, had gone out the window of this flat that we were staying in. We were in France actually when my husband had sabbatical that time we were staying in this flat and he had suddenly disappeared from the room or the, the stu you know, it was like a two bedroom small area. And I was looking for him, I'm gonna look out the window and it's like, oh my gosh, he's on a ledge standing on the ledge ready to jump.

(11:01): He had a sudden urge of suicidal ideations and wanting to jump off this ledge. That was five stories up. And that came out of the blue. He had a little tiff with his brother and what typical teenagers have , you know normal stuff with your siblings. And then suddenly this was his reaction and it all came suddenly. And here I am a psychiatrist. There was no no way for me to know that that was gonna mm-hmm , there's no signs of this other than typical adolescent boy stuff, you know? So there was just a absolutely no signs of this. And so when we returned home, obviously I was flabbergasted and my wheels were starting to turn and trying to figure out what went wrong, what would I do, what did I miss, why didn't I see this? Got him to see a psychiatrist and ultimately he ended up being on four medications.

(11:53): He was given a diagnosis of major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, a d d, and had sleep problems. And some of this was due to medication side effects and Okay. Yeah. His mood was better. And he was seeing a therapist as well, but he was a zombie. I mean, he was no longer suicidal, but he was a zombie, this guy. Mm-Hmm. , this kid could not function. And there was this symptom though, that he had. And, and I always wonder, would I've done what I did to find more, more solutions if, if this symptom dis didn't exist was a neurological symptom because I was still, you know, in deep in the whole, you know, traditional model. It was a neurological symptom that he had that was double vision. He no longer could read books. Mm. And this was a kid who had never had a d d, he had a photographic memory.

(12:46): He, you know, he could read something and no knew it. He wouldn't have to ever read it again. And he couldn't even read anymore. And here like, oh, what's going on here? There's something going on here. And I would ask about this, well what about this? Why can't he read? Why can't he read? Oh, you know, he has a d d like, wait, no, you don't understand , he was reading fine and this is now different. Like just trying to even explain what happened was like brushed aside and I'm sure a lot of your patients and my patients have felt brushed aside or symptoms minimized. And it's like, you're not listening , you don't understand this was a kid that was perfectly normal, you know, and here he is like a blob. Anyway, it was really eye-opening experience. So I started hitting the books and trying to figure it out.

(13:35): And serendipitously came upon functional medicine. I had no idea what functional medicine was. and found a functional medicine doctor, had him, had my son see him and you know, did the whole functional medicine approach starting with diet. And we started with him on a gluten-free and dairy-free diet and it within, and we did all this testing. But in the, in the time before we even got the testing back, my son felt considerably better considerably. In fact, you know, when I say he was normal, I thought he was normal. But he had years and years and years of constipation y severe constipation to the point where he sat like a bird on the toilet seat so that he could have a bowel movement. And constantly being told to give him laxative, he had severe eczema to the point that his knuckles bled and he looked, his hands were so raw that we basically, cuz he was so into dinosaurs and we told him he, that he was part dinosaur at the age of four, you know, because like, oh, you're just like a dinosaur . That's why your hands look that way. And it's like, so I mean it was, this is how long he'd suffer from that and that just became his normal. So, but that's not normal. It's not normal to have knuckles bleeding. It's not normal to sit like a bird on the toilet. That's not normal , but

(14:55): Right. But in our American culture that is tolerated as normal, it's very common for kids to have that, for adults to have that where they don't poop every time they eat, which is the way nature made us where they have chronic constipation and they think their doctors aren't concerned. So I shouldn't be concerned if you're listening, that is not okay y'all. Yeah. And it's not okay to have eczema. Right. You just shouldn't have it. And you know, what you're saying is what you said about him having difficulty with the reading because of his vision. We as doctors lead people to believe that symptoms are not related to each other. . Right, right. And they just come out of the blue. And I always like to say they don't come out of the blue, they come out of the oblivious. Cuz we are clueless. And unfortunately as doctors, we mostly are.

(15:44): So I just wanna highlight that for everyone because women at midlife, she's using the example of her teenage son. But if you're listening, this is you. Right? Right. You think your hot flashes are not related to your hair loss. And that's not related to the fact that you only poop every other day, or you drink coffee every morning to poop, or that you need coffee in the morning to wind up and wind to wind down, or that you just don't feel like yourself. Or you're carrying their 30 extra pounds or you have irritable bowel or you get migraines or you have anxiety. You think they're all not related. So you're running around going to this doctor and that doc, you go to the psychiatrist, you're going to the neurologist, you're going into the gastroenterologist, you're going into the gynecologist. And what you need to do is realize everything is connected

(16:27): . It is, it's all connected. And you know, and it's good that they're going to these specialists just to rule out the biggies, the big bad things and say there's nothing wrong with you. That's good news as far as I'm concerned. But, you know, getting back to my son, you know, we put him on a gluten dairy free diet and literally within a month or two, his eczema and constipation cleared up. Okay. And at this point, my son was on board like, wow, this was a huge change. And he was completely on board to do the whole nine yards. And so we found with the testing that he was also soy in soy sensitive. So once we pulled the soy out, that's when things really started changing. And of course, with, and he had celiac disease, I forgot to mention that. Oh yeah. So we, we learned that he had celiac disease and because of that, for years he was malnourished and not eating, not getting the nutrition due to the celiac's disease, but also he only ate white food .

(17:21): So when you're not eating all the, the good healthy foods that in order to get your nutrition, you're gonna be nu nutrient deficient. For sure. And of course he had a gut dysbiosis and you know, all of the other things that we find when we, when we dig deeper and deeper. But ultimately he was able to come off all of the psychiatric medications completely. And by two years, at the end of two years, his diplopia, which is, you know, the double vision cleared up as well. So, and that the reason they're all connected is because his whole body was inflamed. And the reason this all happened at the age of 14 and not at 2, 3, 4 and earlier when he had these other issues, was because he hit puberty. This, this hormone surge occurred. Right. So, you know, hormones really tipped is what the, what tipped the him over in terms of having this explosion of these symptoms that were really brewing under the surface the whole time and not knowing it.

(18:19): So of course, you know, once you see this happen, you just can't unlearn that . And and so I did a deep dive and functional medicine and became certified. And that's all I do. It's all I do is functional medicine. I have a handful of psychotherapy patients, but it's really, that is what I do day in and day out. And I can't see it doing it any other way. Yes, there's patients that I give medications to, but, but it's because, you know, they can't function. It's because they're suicidal. It's because they're psychotic. It's, it's gone, gone. You know, they have serious, serious issues mm-hmm. . And so for me, medications is the last resort, or if it's in an emergency as opposed to, I think functional medicine should be the primary start of everything that is mental health. Absolutely everything.

(19:10): I totally agree with you. It would've saved me a lot of time in agony and, you know, really what you describe, you know, it was, it's it's a huge crisis in your life. You, your 14 year old son is going on the balcony to jump off. That's a huge crisis. And it, how you describe your path through that really resonates with me. The quote that you shared before we started about every crisis is an opportunity. And you, you recently you were sharing with me before we started recording some other crises that you've had recently and how you really take a different attitude from a lot of people about the crises in your life. And I, I think that how you live your life is very instructive for other people. You're a role model. So can you talk a little bit about that?

(19:58): Yeah. So Yeah. Recently, I've actually had a lot going on last year. Besides my website being hacked, I didn't even mention that my website was hacked. My active campaign was hacked where, you know, bills were run up from someplace in the Philippines. And I had literally $58,000 on my credit card because it was hacked. It was so many one thing after another. And then going to France and traveling there and changing my schedule and coming back from this trip where my husband was on sabbatical and I was seeing patients from there. Just a lot of change. A lot of change. A lot of change. And then coming back to find that my office was flooded. So I had to, the only thing I could recoup was a few pieces of furniture that I put in storage. So, you know, when things happen, I always believe that things happen for some reason.

(20:52): You know, I, I may not know what the reason is, but I, I look at it as an opportunity to sort of reassess, okay, what's going on? And, and how can I pivot from this? So how can I pivot? How can I make this, how can I use the situation to make my life better? And I tend not to react or overreact to a situation. Sure. Change is hard, but, you know, it doesn't have to be a crisis. It can be an opportunity for reassessment breathing into what's going on right now. Maybe this happened for a good reason and how can I use it to open, open another door as opposed to feeling trapped. You know, a lot of times people feel trapped or they feel stepped on or they feel like this is the end, you know? Right. Life is over, you know, and it, it doesn't have to be that way.

(21:42): It's all a, it's really about a mindset change. And I've always lived in this mindset always, even as, as young as the age of 16, always had this. And I had a pretty tough ti a childhood. I, a very, very tough upbringing. Whether my mother was very ill, I was the oldest of four. I had to raise my brothers and sisters . I had a very volatile father, you know, so it wasn't, you know, I was not born with a silver spoon, but sometimes people have accused me of that, of a silver spoon in my mouth because, because I'm so optimistic and, and mm-hmm. how I approach the world. So they think, oh, I must have, I must have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. . So, but that's not the case. No. I've been around the block a few times. Mm-Hmm. . So. Right.

(22:26): So we were talking about this concept of resilience and how you seem to have an abundance of resilience. How do you think that other people can cultivate that? Because I think at midlife in particular, which you're, I think that you're at midlife also. Yes. That it can just seem overwhelming. The myriad health problems, maybe for some people career and or relationship problems, maybe not, but the myriad health problems, which I call midlife metabolic mayhem mm-hmm. that start accumulating as we pass 35, 40, definitely 50 and beyond. And I see so many women, particularly in my hormone bliss challenge, who just, they feel so overwhelmed, they don't even know where to start. They've lost that sense of resilience that you're talking about. So how can women at midlife cultivate resilience?

(23:20): There is a long answer to that, that question. And people are interested in knowing my whole approach. They're welcome to download the five Rs of emo of emotional restoration. I, we have the five Rs of gut restoration. I created the five Rs of emotional restoration. And it really starts with breathing, you know, that's it. You know, you want to breathe and notice what's happening around you without any judgment and to sort of observe, observe what what's happening around you. Maybe journal, somehow write it down, put it down on paper so that you can look at it later. But just sort of almost like emotionally have it fall out of you onto paper as best as you can without any judgment, without any analyzing. And to, you know, come up with one thing that's a low hanging fruit that you can start with. If you have a lot of stimulation, things coming at you, one after the other, and you're overwhelmed, I mean, it's usually overwhelm occurs that you're not able to process what's being thrown at you, so to speak. Right. So you wanna just start with one thing, and breathe through it. So use your breath to notice all of the things that are coming at you. Write it all down, write it all down, and then start with one thing and put one foot in front of the other. You wanna act. Once you know what that one thing is, then you want to act because it's actually more overwhelming to be in limbo, you know? Mm-Hmm. ,

(24:50): I act. That's so true.

(24:51): Right. It's horrible being in limbo, and I actually use that word with my patients a lot. You're in limbo, , and then, then, you know what I mean? Because, you know, they have all this stuff in front of them and they can't choose. Or if they choose, they don't act. It's like, just put one thing in front of the other, one thing in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, and then you, you'll actually accomplish those things. You'll accomplish it. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

(25:15): . Okay. Yeah. And I think it's, it's also this concept of learned helplessness and, and there are some women I'll talk to and they're like, oh, I wanna, you know, work with you to get this my hormone straight. And they're like, but I'm gonna wait until I retire in three years , or I'm gonna be on night shift for the next six months. And so now's not a good time. You know? And so I just find that it's not often our health problems that are keeping us, holding us hostage. It's our beliefs about our health problems. How do you help people to unpack their beliefs and really open 'em like a suitcase full of clothes and look at them and see which beliefs serve them and which don't and help them get rid of or transform the ones that are keeping them from moving forward in life.

(26:03): I love this quote that you wanna live as if your life depends on it. People, when they learn that they have cancer or they learn that they Right. So many things go out the window , right. And you know, when you have something come up like that, your whole life priorities change. And that's how I think if you can start looking at it like, you know, that woman that you mentioned, oh, I'm gonna wait till I retire. You could be dead by then, . You

(26:32): Know? Right. Exactly. That's

(26:33): What I, that's the first thought that came into my mind. Like, why are you waiting? You know, you could be dead. My mother was very, very ill and she died at the age of 63. And you know, I don't know about you, but I think a lot of people when they think about aging, that they think about when their parents, you know, passed away if they, if they have passed or how long they're living and how well they're living because you're, you know, genetically, you're kind of can fall the same pathway, follow the same pathway, but you have a lot of control over making those changes. You actually have a lot of things that you can do to improve your path. I turned 60 this year and so I'm thinking, oh my gosh, in my, the first thing that pops in my mind is like, I got three years left .

(27:19): So I am literally doing a whole life review now. I know that most likely, cuz I am pretty healthy, I'm very healthy, I play ultimate Frisbee. I work out, I have a very busy practice. I'm very active and I know that I'm gonna live beyond that. But it makes me think like, wow, that's like, wow, I'm, I'm gonna be 60 this year and I'm gonna really change everything that I can to make, to live the life just the way I want it now. , right? And so if that, and health is so important in terms of your quality of life, you know, so very important. And so it's looking at those things and if you look at life that way, your priorities will change so quickly. Yeah.

(28:07): It's so true. When you speak of cancer, that's what everybody's afraid of and that, you know, one in two of us will get it in our lifetime. So you've got a 50% chance. I remember this story about a woman who was a general surgeon in the town where I practiced gynecology for many years and she, one day I saw her at the health food store in our town and I had never seen her there before and I was in there all the time. So I said, well, what are you doing here? And she said, oh, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Hmm. And I'm looking for supplements that can help me. She literally said that and I felt so sad because maybe if she had been at the health food store looking at supplements and really improving her health 5, 10, 20 years before, who knows, then she wouldn't be there after the fact.

(29:00): And it's true that when you get a cancer diagnosis, people are willing to change everything. So like when I do the salivary cortisol test and someone comes back like I was when I first did it what, 15, 14 years ago, and I was a flatline, cortisol stage three of genome fatigue. I'm like, you need to act like you have cancer. That's how serious this is. Right? And the people who get it, they get better and they go all about their lives. And the ones who don't, they just keep dragging, dragging, dragging and living half of a life usually emotionally and mentally as well.

(29:36): Yeah. Cause there, and usually the thing that that, that it's those beliefs that I'm not good enough, I don't deserve it. I'm not important, I'm not lovable. There's all of these reasons that people have in that's operating in the background that they don't even have a conscious connection to. But you have to sort of look for that. And a lot of it is rooted in trauma, whether it's a big tea or a little tea, you know. So if you don't have your needs met at certain critical points in your life that can feel like you, you know, aren't lovable or not deserving or if they're, if you had a hypercritical parent or a judgmental parent or a micromanaging parent, you know, which translates sometimes as I don't believe that you can do it, so I have to do it for you, kind of kind of thing.

(30:25): So then you have a loss of confidence in yourself or doubts about yourself. There's all of these experiences that people have in their earlier childhood or even teens and young adulthood that can impact you. And so it's looking for those threads as how that's connected to now. And so when you're finding that you're not moving forward, let's say you are working with someone, a health coach or a doctor, and you find that you're not moving forward in your plan to think about what's going on with me and, you know, that is getting in the way and sometimes it's a part of you, I don't know if you were familiar with internal family systems, which is mm-hmm. part, some people call it parts therapy. Yes. It is tuning into tuning into what is that part of me that's getting in the way? And a lot of times these parts are there to protect you because they protected you at a, at a younger age.

(31:20): And so avoiding something or not doing something is generally a, a pro going into protection mode. And what you need to do is tune into that part of you and recognize, okay, you protected me then, but I, you're not really protecting me now. You're just getting in the way of me accomplishing my goals. And so it's trying to figure out how that part is protecting you and asking to step aside and almost give it another job, so to speak. So in the same way that if you had a 20 year old company or a 30 year old company and you know, the environment changes, the culture changes, and you have to sort of, you know, maybe move staff around. So you might have an employee that has had a job for 20 years and that's going to be phased out because of technology, let's say.

(32:10): And you have, you don't wanna fire them and you by the way, you cannot fire a part. It's very hard to do that. It's better to give them another job, . And so you want to put them in a different department and give them another job and thank them for all their years of service. , you know, you kind of even wanna talk to that part of you because what happens is that people get angry at their, at their parts, they get angry and they at themselves and it's like, I can't believe I said that. What's wrong with me? You know, as opposed to, oh no, the reason I said that was because I defended myself. Because when I was younger, you know, my father yelled at me and, you know, I needed to defend myself in order to protect my little br like there's all these stories mm-hmm.

(32:54): , right, that are connected to the past about why you had a certain behavior. And so because you're older now and have more control, more independent, you can make decisions that you couldn't do when you were a child. You have to sort of give that part of you that protected you during that situation and sort of glean into that part and let him or her or it know that things have changed. I'm older now and I need you to change with me. And here I'm giving you another job to support me in my endeavors so that you can flow, you know, and not have these barriers. Mm-Hmm. constantly being hit by these barriers. So everybody has a whole host of parts that interfere in their ability to reach their goals. Whole host.

(33:44): Yeah. Thank you for going through that. And for anybody who wants to look more into that, I believe it's Richard Schwartz who developed Internal Family Systems and ultimately that was a part of my recovery too. But first I had to get my body not inflamed to get, cuz I always tell my story, but I won't go into it again. Yes. About, I was on five psychoactive medications, so cleaning up my body, fixed that and I got off the medications, but then had to do a lot of internal family systems work and things like that. But for everybody, we, Dr. Aina has some wonderful freebies. Before we wrap up, we're gonna tell you about those, but can you talk about the absolute necessity of hormone balance and gut health? The two are intimately related for helping depression, anxiety, all mental health problems.

(34:31): Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned cortisol. Cortisol is a major piece and that's unfortunately not even looked at in the conventional world in the way that we look at it. They only look at it as, as an extreme, as Addison's disease or Cushing's disease, and they just do one morning test. And if it's not high, then they, or too low, then it's like off the table completely, unfortunately. But, you know, adrenaline surges can cause all sorts of problems due to stress, which then releases cortisol chronically. And if you're a child that's been traumatized at a young age, or have lived through very difficult situations, those cortisol levels start at a very young age being chronically elevated at a very young age. And that can affect your development as emotionally as well. So there's higher rates of depression and anxiety as a result of chronic cortisol production from stress alone.

(35:32): So when you're tapped out, then it does cause you to have, you know, absolutely no cortisol and sometimes people need to be put on medications to raise their cortisol levels. So that in itself causes a change in sex hormones. So in order to, in order to, and your, I'm sure your audience already knows that, that when cortisol's high, then there's a drop in the sex hormones, progesterone and testosterone and, and estrogen. And so what we don't realize or don't really connect with when it comes to mental health issues is that there are certain periods in our life when those, there are changes in hormones that that can lead to depression and or anxiety and even psychosis. And what we should be doing is even in an acute situation, is looking at the hormones and, and providing hormones right there on the spot. I had a patient who had two miscarriages because she did not make the progesterone that was necessary to pro, you know, the, the baby, right? You need proje, progesterone is pro gestation, right? Right. So you need high levels of progesterone and she would lose the baby because the progesterone levels dropped. So they put her on progesterone, high levels, high doses of progesterone through pregnancy, and it was a viable pregnancy, delivered it. And then once she delivered it, they stopped the progesterone and she became a acutely psychotic and depressed. It's like, and then what did they do? She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital multiple times and all they used was antipsychotic medics, like just put her back on the progesterone.

(37:14): Oh. I mean, like, how does nobody

(37:17): See that? Like, how does nobody see that? And so I put her back on the progesterone when she came into my door, like, oh my God, you need progesterone . And I put her on h you know, like 200 milligrams of progesterone. She felt significantly better and obviously we had to adjust it, but like right from the get-go, I put her on progesterone . So

(37:37): I know, I I I just wonder if people listening get how once you're trained in the functional root cause model, like Dr. Aina and I are, we look at the way we were trained for mainstream medicine and it's absolutely insane. It's like nobody's thinking , nobody's paying attention. What are you doing? So anyway, proje, I love progesterone. I

(38:02): Call it the I do too. If

(38:04): You feel good sleep well, anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, lose weight, diuretic happy hormone.

(38:09): Yeah. I tend to use progesterone from the get-go for c certain women, especially if they're a perimenopausal or menopausal, if they're having anxiety and sleep and mood changes, especially if those symptoms occur, you know, soon after having the hormonal changes that are part of life, you know, part of a woman's life. And so to make them comfortable, but ultimately, I don't want necessarily to just leave it at that. I, I do the, the whole gut restoration. There's a reason why you're even going through that. You right. There's the hormones were already off even before those changes. So you wanna find out, well why, why are they off? So, so much so that you even need these hormones. So there's hormones for the person who's inflamed. Right? Right. And then there's hormones for the person who wants longevity. And those are two different kinds of people I think, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that person who's inflamed isn't gonna stay on hormones. They might, but they might not need as many hormones or as much Right. As, as you're taking care of the root causes of inflammation. So you would probably know that better than me because you do that. Oh, day, day, day to day. But

(39:22): Yes, I mean, as you clean, get what I call clean quote unquote, and uninflamed your hormone needs can change. Absolutely. Yeah. But talk a little bit about gut health, because that's was a big issue for your son. And I think we can never emphasize enough for everybody listening because people really don't get this anywhere else. That your gut health is directly related to your hormones. They are besties, they walk down the street holding hands and kissing all the time every day. They are intimate partners. If you'll never get your hormones balanced, if you don't fix your gut. So can you talk a a little bit about that as we wrap up and then we'll definitely tell everyone the resources that you have for them, but can you talk about

(40:10): That? Sure, sure. I mean, the gut is where 80% of your immune system is, and it's also 80% of where your serotonin and dopamine and you know, the neurotransmitters are made. And so if your gut is inflamed and there's lots of reasons why it can get inflamed, it can get inflamed from foods chronic infections, toxins, stress, all of these things can disrupt your gut lining, causing increased gut permeability, resulting in a whole host of problems. So when you have increased gut permeability, that's when foods can cross over into the gut lining causing your immune system to be activated. And that can result in food sensitivities. It opens, it can cause certain pathogens, bact, whether it's bacteria or viruses or candida, parasites, they can all get into that gut lining and again, activate that your immune system. So there's, you have your immune system that's very vigilant and when there is a breach in that lining, different things can surpass that.

(41:21): And the toxins are the last thing, you know, that can surpass that lining and basically get your active, your immune system activated and causing inflammation. So what we do is initially remove, do what we can to remove those foods. And the top two are dairy and gluten, but there's many others that I won't get into. And we wanna remove those infections, we wanna remove whatever toxins that might be in your environment or what you're putting into your body that could be causing inflammation. And the last thing is stress. So, you know, I've talked about the shift, what you wanna shift your body. It's looking at stress hormones, , infections, foods and toxins. Not necessarily in that order, but looking in those five categories about what could be impacting your immune system. Mm-Hmm. . But the gut is where we want to start and we, you know, removing those things, replacing what's been missing.

(42:20): Cuz many times when there's inflammation in the gut, you're not able to absorb the vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients that your body needs. We wanna reinoculate the gut because that's where your second brain is. It's your gut microbiome. is, that's your second brain. And I always wonder if that's really the first brain sometimes. Yeah. So we wanna make sure that your microbiome is healthy. So reinoculating it with probiotics and eating fermented foods, sometimes prebiotics, feedback, gut lining, and on the repair of the gut lining, close off that leaky gut or, you know, decrease that permeability. So, and then it's really looking at what were the factors that caused all of this to happen in the first place. So in order to rebalance it and know where your points of vulnerability are, everybody is vulnerable in different places and everybody has different strengths. So it's knowing where you are vulnerable and kind of padding those areas.

(43:17): And so if you are an anxious person and, and you get stomach aches anytime you're anxious, you see that gut ring connection, it's usually the gut. A lot of times people think it's the brain or the anxiety causing the, the gut symptoms. It's really actually more often the other way around. It's your gut that's causing the anxiety. So, so making that connection and you can definitely do things to improve that connection. We call them vagal nerve stimulation exercises. But even taking cold showers, singing, humming, there's all sorts of things that you can do to strengthen that connection. So that's a lot

(44:01): Yeah. Say,

(44:02): Yeah, that's a lot. So I don't know if I fully answered your question, but that's I think that's it in a nutshell,

(44:10): In a nutshell. And, you know, I just wanna add for everyone, your enteric nervous system, the nervous system around your gut, that Ives your gut has as many nerves in it as your brain in your cranium, right? So it really is a fully functioning brain and it directly is communicating with your hormones and your immune system. And so you've got to get your gut straight to get your hormones straight. But yes, no, thank you for going through all of that.

(44:41): Yeah. It's, it's all connected, like you said.

(44:43): Right. And so Dr. Aina has her book, she's got the first three chapters of her book for you. What if it's not depression or bestselling book? And we'll have the links for all of these in the show notes. So please don't try to write them down if you're driving or doing something or you're operating heavy machinery. And then she's got a couple other resources for you, another freebie called Food for Your Mood and the five R's of Emotional Restoration Workbook. Do you wanna tell them a little bit about what they'll find there?

(45:13): Sure, yeah. I mean, the food for your mood is something that, and anyone can just start, I, everyone should start with a change in their diet. That's the first thing that I have people do. And so that's a great place to start if they want to know what foods to eat that will help improve your mood. And the five Rs of , I'm trying to remember name of my, my own thing, , the five

(45:38): R, I do it all the time.

(45:42): Is basically a workbook that you can do download and do, it's ba the five Rs for the are reflect where you improve your awareness and be conscious of what's happening around you. We talked a little bit about that reframing what's happening by removing and replacing negative thoughts and emotions. Resetting. So reset. And that's where the balancing the microbiome and the gut brain access comes in and resisting, resisting. And it's finding the internal and external roadblocks and rather than acting past them and often making not the best decisions to notice and take in what's happening for me that we're, you know, it's, it's noticing an emotional resistance and also looking at your external roadblocks as well. That's getting in the way of you meeting your goals and then repi. So it's breathing and meditating and connecting with your spirits. And so all of these things are really important to strengthen that physical health, mental health connection.

(46:46): Awesome. Thank you so much for these wonderful resources. Again, everybody listening, we'll have the links in the show notes. Go start with your food. Always. I always start with food too, and five hours of emotional restoration workbook. It sounds very valuable to me. I'm thinking I'm gonna go download it. And I know your book is absolutely wonderful and I, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, how's your son doing now?

(47:12): Oh, he's doing great. He actually did really well two years, like I said, two years after. And he was off of medications. And then, you know, this is something important for your audience to know is that, you know, he kind of fell off the track a little bit because he became a college student and what happens in college, right? Yeah. You, you drink, you stay up late at night. So his sleep was off and you know, he's putting toxins in his body. , pizza, pizza eating pizza. Exactly. He was no longer gluten or dairy free. And, and then the stress of being in school, pulling all those all-nighters, just trying to ac you know, finish your task. By the time college was over, he was a wreck. . I mean, he was a wreck. But the thing is, he knew exactly what he needed to do to get back on track and within six months he was back feeling well again.

(48:01): So, you know, that's the beauty of functional medicine that you, you know, when you learn these things and you have these habits in place that you know that are working for you and you, it's really, really, really important to journal about this because you are not gonna remember really important to journal about what it is that, that were your big things that made a shift in your health. Because there's going to be a point in your life where things, you're gonna get off track, things happen, right? But if you know what the top three things are to get back on track, it's like you go right to them and that's really, really important. And so he knew exactly what he needed to do, , and he did them. And it didn't take that long, you know, instead of two years, which was an a culmination of 14 years, it was six months.

(48:53): Right. Oh, that's awesome. I'm glad to hear it. And thank you Drena so much for coming and sharing your light and your brilliance and your journey with us today. A lot of people listening who on listen, regular listeners of the podcast, you kind of get about a root cause resolution approach. But one thing you probably don't know is how brave and courageous it is for physicians like Dr. Aina to step out of the line and say, I don't agree with what's being done, and to actually create their own path to do something right that helps people. It's extremely brave, extremely courageous, extremely hard. So thank you for doing what you do and being here.

(49:36): Oh, thank you. Thank you. That really touches my heart. When you said that , it really is like, like yeah, you know, that was hard, .

(49:44): It's very hard.

(49:47): Was hard. Yeah. Yeah. That was, thank you so much for having me.

(49:51): So thank you so much and thank you all for listening and joining us today for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kirin. Hopefully you learned something that you can use in your life to start to transform your health and your life to the high level, the brilliant health that you deserve. I look forward to seeing you next on the show. Until then, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

(50:18): 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.

 

► Download Dr. Achina Stein's first 3 chapters of her book - CLICK HERE. 
Food For Your Mood - CLICK HERE
5Rs of Emotional Restoration Workbook - CLICK HERE

 

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