Dhru Purohit Show - Top Hormone Doctor Explains How Chronic Stress and Yo-Yo Dieting Drive Weight Gain and What You Can Do About It with Dr. Taz Bhatia

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Air Doctor and AquaTru. Battling belly fat, navigating sleep disruptions, managing stress, and grappling with hormonal fluctuations become paramount concerns for women stepping into their late 30s and 40s. In the complex terrain of perimenopause and menopause, many brave through these challenges without a roadmap to clarity or actionable steps.   Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with board-certified physician Dr. Taz Bhatia to discuss hormonal shifts women face as they head into their 40s. Dr. Taz shares the five patterns women face that lead to changes in body composition, the challenges that come with hormonal imbalances, and the damaging lifestyle habits that can exacerbate these challenges. She also discusses the key reasons women may feel constantly hungry and how fasting can be damaging for a woman already under chronic stress. Dr. Taz gives us her hot takes on the social media trends that ignore the fundamentals and her thoughts on alcohol and GLP-1 pharmaceuticals.  Dr. Tasneem Bhatia, commonly known as Dr. Taz, is a board-certified physician specializing in integrative and emergency medicine, pediatrics, and prevention, with expertise in women’s health, weight loss, and nutrition. She is the author of Super Woman Rx, What Doctors Eat, The 21-Day Belly Fix, and the host of RadioMD’s The Dr. Taz Show. Her newest book is The Hormone Shift: Balance Your Body and Thrive Through Midlife and Menopause.  In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Taz dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Five patterns and challenges with body composition after 40 (1:51 / 1:51) Four solutions to address the chemistry associated with hormonal changes (7:44 / 6:13) The role of toxins and their impact on our hormonal patterns (14:56 / 13:07)  The five fundamental shifts that women experience (26:45 / 25:11) The most damaging lifestyle habits for women in their 40’s (33:58 / 30:35)  Four reasons why women may feel constantly hungry (46:26 / 43:20) Dr. Taz’s personal journey into practicing integrative medicine and healing herself (51:46 / 48:45) Social media themes that are missing the mark and skipping past the fundamentals (1:00:24 / 57:30) GLP-1 drugs and their impact on gut health (1:04:30 / 1:01:26)  Body composition versus weight tracking (1:09:45 / 1:06:40) The importance of women building and keeping muscle in their 40’s (1:12:45 / 1:10:0) Expressions of hormones for teenagers and what we can do to set them up for life (1:18:15 / 1:15:30) Dr. Taz’s view and concerns about alcohol (1:29:07 / 1:26:40) The 30-day hormone reset (1:31:16 / 1:28:20) Two habits to incorporate and two habits to let go of (1:34:05 / 1:31:00) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Taz’s new book, The Hormone Shift  AirDoctor is offering my community $300 off. Just go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ to clean up your home’s air and feel better today.   AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're talking about, you know, the woman I meet every day in practice who's just, I'm trying to lose weight, I'm doing what I know to do. Nothing's changing. Nothing's happening. What's going on? And then when we dial into the specifics, we can see that either the behavior patterns that are sabotaging her because of a hormone shift or the hormone shift itself that's driving the entire thing. Today, we're talking about all things women's hormones and what hormonal changes are at the root of weight gain and body. composition shifts at key stages of life, especially for women right around the 40-plus mark, and nowhere does it show up more than my audience tells me than belly fat. Hi, everyone, Drew Brod here. This week's guest is Dr. Tas Batya, board certified physician specializing in integrative and emergency medicine, pediatrics, and prevention with an expertise in women's

health, weight loss, and nutrition. She's written a bunch of books. She's the author of Super Woman. R-X, What Doctors Eat, and the 21-day belly fix. She's also the host of RadioMD's, the Dr. Taz's show, the Superwoman's Whole Health Fix podcast. Her newest book, which is the topic of today's discussion, is called The Hormonal Shift, Balance Your Body and Thrive Through Midlife and Menopause. There's a ton of incredible gems in it, and I know you're going to love today's episode. Dr. Taz, welcome to the podcast. A pleasure to have you here. I want to

jump right in to one of the number one questions we get on the podcast, especially in anticipation of you coming here. Okay. And that number one question that we have is from our female demographic asking what the heck is going on, especially right around the age of 40, that causes women in particular, not that men don't go through this too, but women in particular to have so much of a tougher time shifting body composition and losing weight. You made an incredible video on this topic. And it was called the five of the top hormone patterns associated with weight gain in women. Take us through

these five. Absolutely. And this is something I hear from women every day and I get it and I know how frustrated they are. But look, there's something really happening. Your chemistry is shifting and your hormones are shifting. And those hormone shifts are something that we all really need to understand. The first one is probably the common thread, the common denominator, is called insulin. resistance. It's when our blood sugar levels start to get higher. There are a whole bunch of different reasons for that, which we can dive into. But that is higher levels of blood sugar raise insulin. And so we end up storing more body fat, arm fat, back fat, all these things that really get us frustrated. Another pattern connected to that is estrogen dominance. That's where we start to store estrogen.

We're holding on to it. We're not able to metabolize it effectively. So that's a super common pattern. the really rears its head right at 40. In addition to that, kind of connected to that is low progesterone. So low progesterone often is starting as early as your 20s, but really exaggerates as you hit 40 or so. And as progesterone drops, those patterns of insulin resistance and estrogen dominance get worse. And then we've got the thyroid. So the thyroid is something that I feel like is underdiagnosed, you know, not checked enough. So many women are walking around in a hypothyroid state where it's just not working very well. and thus a huge player of a body composition change, but really again starts to show itself more so as we all turn 40.

And then last, and we could probably spend an hour on this one, certainly not least, is cortisol. The effects of cortisol on body composition are real and really change what insulin's doing, what blood sugar is doing, what all the other hormones are doing, and can really, no matter what we're doing with diet or exercise, sabotage, our best efforts. So these are all hormonal patterns.

But what are these hormonal patterns allowing to make the situation more challenging in the body? And are there lifestyle factors that are making these hormonal patterns express themselves in a worse off weight, right? Is diet, lifestyle play into any of this? Well, diet and lifestyle is absolutely a factor at any point, right? But what everyone gets frustrated with is I'm eating clean, I'm working out. Usually when I gained weight, I would go, you know, go back on my workout regimen or my diet regimen and everything would come right off. And now it no longer is doing that.

That's where it's really important to understand the chemistry associated with these hormone shifts. One of the fundamental things that are happening as these hormones are going in different directions is the first thing that gets affected is your gut health. So you're seeing a shift because of changing estrogen levels, because of changing progesterone levels, because of cortisol, you're seeing a shift in the microbiome. which is all the bacteria that live in our gut. And as that microbiome is changing, a lot of other gut factors are changing.

And as they change, we see blood sugar going up, we see insulin going up, and then we're dealing with weight and body composition issues all over again. Same thing with thyroid hormones. I always say cortisol and thyroid are kind of like on a seesaw. If you're stressed and you're busting it, you're going to drain the thyroid, right? So people, when they start to see women, when they start to see that they're gaining weight, they're like, oh, my God, I have to exercise harder. I'm going to do more.

I'm going to, you know, be more aggressive about this. Well, they're worsening cortisol and they're crashing their thyroid. So some women are coming in with this sort of cortisol adrenal imbalance. And that's really the chemistry that's blocking them from losing weight. So we've got a lot of chemistry involved, whether it is hormones impacting gut health, hormones impacting how the liver works and how we clear toxins, hormones impacting our sleep. And so the inability to really bring cortisol down because we're not getting healthy sleep.

But at the end of the day, you know, the hormones are the levers sort of, so to speak, that are driving this engine while everyone's sort of like scrambling, trying to figure out how to fix it, but not understanding that there's root chemistry involved with all of it. This episode is brought to you by Air Doctor. You probably think that the home you're in is pretty safe from air pollution, right? But did you know that indoor air is often two to five times more polluted than outdoor air? Crazy, I know.

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And you were walking through a few of the key things. I think there was four things you had in the video that were solutions and foods that play a role with each of these areas. Yeah. And those things just top level were, you know, balancing insulin resistance with protein. how to handle estrogen dominance with fiber. You slid in a little bit of one of your favorite foods, Greek yogurt. We'll talk about why if that's the case. And you also talked about the importance of protecting your liver from toxic overload

from a lot of the things that are hidden in our environment that are attacking it and our bodies and the impact of that on hormones, both for men and women, of course. So let's talk about these solutions and how they play into these five hormonal patterns, starting with the first one. Why is making sure that especially for women getting adequate amounts of protein in the day so important when it comes to insulin resistance? So one of the things a hormone shift will do is really mess with blood sugar. So as estrogen drops, as progesterone drops, if you're storing any of these hormones, you're seeing a lot of shifts in blood sugar. So your average blood sugar is up. It's not abnormal to the point of

being diabetic, but it's definitely up from where you were, probably five years, eight years, 10 years ago. The reason protein is so important here is it actually helps to push that blood sugar level down. That's one thing it does. It helps to stabilize the insulin levels. But the other thing that protein will do is it really helps with satiety. It acts like a GLP1 type medication almost in a way where you're feeling full, you're feeling satiated. So you're not grabbing constantly for something to manage those energy dips or those hunger pangs or cravings or any of these things that happen. What we're finding is that protein loading in particular in the morning, getting close to 30, sometimes even up to 40 grams of protein first thing in the morning

will dictate your metabolic health for the rest of the day. That's pretty powerful. And in addition to that, if we think about sort of this perimenopause period with hormone levels declining, right, including testosterone, then we know that protein is a way to build muscle. It helps us to hold on to muscle. It gives us the raw material for muscle building, regardless of what type of workout you're doing. So protein plays a number of different roles, stabilizing blood sugar, preventing cravings, helping us to stay nice and full, and then also assisting us with the muscle building that we really need going into the next few decades that continues to keep our metabolism humming. So the next one you went into was estrogen dominance and how fiber

in our diet actually can help remove and get rid of a lot of the androgens that end up damaging the body when there's excess amount of them in there. Can you make that connection? Definitely. So let's talk through this pathway. So we've got estrogen, we've got testosterone. When they get converted, they get converted into different metabolites. The metabolites of testosterone are the androgens. Sometimes excess testosterone gets converted into estrogen. So you've got the cyclical pathway happening over and over again. High levels of estrogen metabolites actually trigger insulin resistance. We see this pattern together over and over again. Women know they're having that issue because they've got issues like breast tenderness, heavy breast. They might

have gone up a cup size or they may be holding onto a lot more fat kind of in their hips and thighs. That estrogen dominance has to be sort of assisted by providing a lot more fiber because here's what's happening. As the hormone levels are changing, we are losing a really important gut bacteria that comes from fiber. It's called ruminococcus. And as our hormone levels are all over the place. We need more ruminococcus, but what's happening is we actually have less. So the solution needs to be have more fiber. We need 40, 50 grams of fiber per day. And we need a mix of soluble and insoluble fiber, which many women are not getting. The answer I usually get in practices, well, I'm getting salads or I eat vegetables. But sometimes that's still not giving you enough

soluble fiber that you might get from like cillium husk or chia seeds or, you know, some of these other seeds and things like that. So fiber helps the microbiome pick up those estrogen metabolites, recycle them, and move them through the body. If it's not present, if that bacteria is not present due to the lack of fiber, then we store, we hold onto those estrogen metabolites and in turn deal with all the different symptoms that follow. So that's why fiber is critical for any of us dealing with estrogen dominance and really plays a huge role in managing that hormone pattern, but indirectly managing the insulin resistance that we just talked about. We'll go deeper into fiber a little bit later on, but just a couple of your favorites you

mentioned, Sillium husk, chia, are there other things that are there that you also want people to be thinking about incorporating into their diet during this time? Definitely. I mean, we talk, if we're going to, again, I'm going to stick to patterns. So if we talk to estrogen dominance in particular, one of the big things we talk a lot about when it comes to food are getting in enough omega-9 fats that actually helps metabolize estrogen as well. So these are going to be found in avocados, olive oil, adding that into your daily diet. And we also want the cruciferous vegetables, right? They have something called meta I3c in them and

Indul3 carbonyl that actually helps us take estrogen from like estradiol, break it all the way down, helps the body eliminate it and recycle it effectively. We've got a great research that's showing how all of this works and works together. But for patients with estrogen dominance or anybody out there listening or watching who thinks that's their issue, those are your top three. getting in enough fiber, soluble and insoluble, getting in at least five to seven servings of cruciferous vegetables every week, and getting in about a tablespoon of olive oil daily or about a half, a quarter of an avocado to get those omega-9 fats in their system. You know, it's interesting.

You mentioned that, you know, really targeting that 40 to 60 grams of fiber. Yeah. If you would give a range of often the new patient that's coming into your clinic. Oh, wow. You have a clinic in Atlanta. Now in maybe New York, it's coming up. We have one coming up in New York. York and we have a couple locations in Atlanta. But yeah, and we see patients virtually too. But

the average. Yeah, the average people are coming in. I mean, I think I looked online and like whoever was putting out the stats, FDA, C, C, C, whoever it is. It was like the average American gets like 15 grams or less of fiber. I see a lot of people that are getting like five to 10 grams of fiber. The patient that's coming into your clinic, probably a little bit more aware, but still I would imagine just looking around their fiber intake is probably more around like 20 to the 30 grams. Right. I would say 20 is about where most of our patients, and these are patients that have really tried hard to learn as much as they can. They're still pushing the cusp of that 20 grams of fiber per day. So I think we're just, again, not aware of how little fiber we're getting in.

I think a lot of those patients, too, are not getting in enough protein. Most of them are under-proteined, you know, if that's a word. But they're getting in about 40 to maybe 50 grams of protein a day, which is simply not enough in sort of the environment of declining hormones. Let's just touch on for a second. Toxic load and the impact of the things that are going on in our homes, in the products we use. What is in those products and what are those things doing to our body? And kind of a third part to it, how is that impacting the hormonal patterns? Definitely.

So, you know, you've seen a lot wherever you turn about toxicity, toxic load, detoxing. Again, I feel like all this gets thrown around a lot. But here's what's actually happening. When we are getting exposed to a range of different chemicals, these include BPA, BHT, organophosphates, you know, there's so many, there's so many different groups, dyes, additives, MSG, I mean, I could probably go on. The body has a certain tolerance, right? It's sort of just like your bandwidth.

The body has a certain tolerance for taking all those chemicals, breaking them down, and moving them through. At some point, you top off. It's like, I can't do this anymore. That's your liver. This is too much. The load is too heavy. And then when you factor in other things like the genetics of an individual, the stress levels

of a particular individual, their environment, then you know that everyone has variable levels of toxic sort of ability or capacity. And so what's happening is as those levels are hit, the liver essentially can no longer filter those through. Those become estrogen mimickers. So whether you are male or a child or female, it doesn't matter, that same pattern is taking place. These toxins are becoming estrogen mimickers. So they're creating conditions of estrogen dominance across the board.

And that in turn is leading to lots of other conditions. First, the hormone disruption is anytime one hormone goes off, they don't live in isolation, right? They're all communicating. Then you have fallout with all the other hormones too. So as someone becomes more and more estrogen dominant from toxin, then in turn you're going to see high androgens. That's the reason high indrogens are things like dh T, DHEAS, testosterone, free testosterone. That is the reason that I believe that a condition like PCOS, which is polycystic ovarian syndrome, is almost an epidemic,

right? I mean, more and more younger and younger women are coming in with the symptoms and the diagnostic sort of criteria that meets PCOS. And this is, I think, an issue of increasing toxicity in our environment. That's paired to another issue that this toxicity and this estrogen dominance creates, which is precocious puberty. We're seeing girls go into puberty earlier and earlier, right? The average age used to be 12, 13, then it dropped to 11, now it's down to 7 or 8, you know. So we're seeing that shift downward, which is not what we want for our girls. We're seeing it in our boys. As they hold on to estrogen, what's the fallout for them as they hit their 20s with testosterone? So we're seeing declining levels of testosterone and men. So this idea,

The idea of toxicity and your toxic load is something I'm super passionate about people understanding because what essentially we're doing is shifting everyone towards a pattern of estrogen dominance, which in turn is impacting the rest of the hormone profile. We're going to go through all those key times that women experience these shifts. There's five in the book. Yes. By the way, your book is fantastic. It's the hormone shift.

We have the link of the show notes. Everybody can pick it up. Buy for a woman in your life that you love. Yes. Spread it out. Just a couple more questions here on the topic of weight loss. So we can put a little bow tie on that. Sure.

And then we can set up a little bit more about the book and some of the key insights on there. So the question that I have is that these hormonal patterns, you mentioned a few of them, insulin resistance, thyroid, androgens, estrogen dominance, cortisol, and stress. The question that I have is that do these, when the hormonal patterns are off, in particular, we're talking about women, right around that age of 40, right, my sort of core demographic of this audience here, when these are off either individually or together, do they create a situation where they could lead to, of course, poor metabolic health, right? Insulin resistance is part of that. But in turn, those things cause or are encouraging overeating or over-eating or over-consumption

in calories, right? Which fundamentally, then that would be part of the reason that. that somebody would be gaining weight? Or is there something unique about these five being off that when they're brought into balance, even if somebody was consuming, even though health is so much more than calories in and out, is there something unique with these five that the same amount of calories are taken and just simply bringing them into balance, so to speak, would lead somebody to losing weight. Does that make sense?

It does. A little bit of yes to both. All right. So let's break it down a little bit. So first of all, what do these hormone shifts just do to general metabolic health? Well, we know they slow down. Overall metabolism, they slow it down because the gut slows down, the liver gets sluggish, the microbiome shifts, blood sugar goes up, insulin goes up, we start to store weight,

body composition changes. That's the most simplistic way of describing that. So what these hormone shifts do, though, to contribute to that pattern is that, for example, if someone's got very low progesterone levels, typically they are having a lot more issues with blood sugar stability. So they're going to have cravings, right? I've been there, like salt cravings. They want chips.

They want popcorn. They want something to satisfy that craving. Or as for a lot of women, because their cycles are now all over the place, they're craving, they're actually craving magnesium. But what they think is, I want dark chocolate, right? How many women do you know that crave dark chocolate right around that time? So they're indulging and they're trying to self-medicate without knowing that they're self-medicating.

So salt is managing a low progesterone, you know, something like that. like dark chocolate is also managing a low progesterone. We know that if someone's got a lot of blood sugar instability, they're going to crave carbohydrates because they're getting that quick fix, right? They're like, I feel bad. I feel bad. My blood sugar's off. Something's wrong. I can't focus. So they're going to grab for something that very quickly satisfies them. They're fine for an hour, maybe two, and then they crash again. So they can zoom again. So you've got the cyclical pattern of overconsumption driven by this reactive hypoglycemia or insulin resistance that presents in women, kind of in their late 30s, early 40s. So all of these hormone shifts themselves trigger changes

in what we want to eat, how full we feel, and the choices that we make. Same with thyroid. When thyroid's off, you're tired a lot. You know, you're kind of crashing. You're falling asleep on the couch. So what do you do? You over-caffeinate to try to keep yourself up and moving. Too much caffeine spikes insulin, right? That spikes insulin. And again, you're driving this pathway all over again. So first part of the question is absolute yes, you know, the hormone shifts themselves, change or behavior, which influence our metabolic health. They impact sleep, right? That's a big part of metabolism as well. So when thyroid's off, when cortisol's off, when progesterone's off, when estrogen's too low, we're not able to sleep, whether that's falling asleep or staying

asleep. So you've got that whole, you know, kind of ball of wax to undo there. And then at the same time, let's say you are perfectly balanced and you're consuming, the gut is actually working better. The liver is actually working better. So between that gut liver dynamic, which goes all the way back to Eastern medicine, right, you are now able to metabolize your food much better. So you are absorbing fat. You have a more stable microbiome. You're moving food through the colon and through the body and the small bowel more effectively. So all of these things allow for a more efficient metabolic process. In addition to that, you're able to retain the muscle that you're building or the muscle that you had. When there's patterns of hormone depletion or any of those patterns

that we've talked about, you're actively losing muscle, which then again makes the metabolic component worse. So that's why, you know, when people are like, where do I start in this conversation? Like, where do I begin? I'm gaining weight. I don't feel good about myself. You know, what's happened here? They've got to start with foundational chemistry, which is getting their hormones checked and getting those hormones balance, working on the gut and gut help, because I think that interface between the gut and the hormones lay the basis for healthy metabolism. Only then can you then move on and start to get really nitpicky about diet and exercise and all these other things.

Now, having said that, you can't balance hormones, you know, from a laboratory standpoint and work on the gut and give somebody probiotics and all this other stuff that we do, but then they're consuming, you know, very poor quality diet and then they're completely sedentary and all that other stuff, right? But we're not talking about those extremes. We're talking about, you know, the woman I meet every day in practice who, or even when I speak, who's just, I'm trying to lose weight, I'm doing what I know to do. Nothing's changing. Nothing's happening. What's going on. And then when we dial into the specifics, you know, we can see that either the behavior patterns that are sabotaging her because of a hormone shift or the hormone shift itself.

that's driving the entire thing. No, it's a great explanation. I think that the nuance is important because essentially what you're saying is that calories do matter and they're not the entire conversation. No. And I think it's useful

and I think this is part of wellness movement growing up. Right. It's the Western and the Western side of things, right? Right. Because we live in a highly addictive world with carbohydrate sources everywhere. And they're highly addictive. And they tempt us.

to want to overeat. And I think it's easy to look at it if we're only looking from a holistic lens or only holistic is actually both. So I won't say that. We're only looking at it from a sense of, oh, if hormones themselves are just independently fixed, then I can eat whatever I want, man or woman, and it doesn't make a difference. Well, fundamentally, if you're going to lose weight, you're going to end up eating less calories typically. But the other side of the equation is that there's all these things, insulin resistance, thyroid, you mentioned you're not sleeping well. There's plenty of studies we'll link to in the show notes. You don't sleep well one night. You crave carbohydrates more the next day. You overconsume calories the next day. These things

all playing together. And that's why you want to look at them through the lens that you look at them. One last item here. What is hormonal belly and what is the root cause of it? Oh, hormone belly. So literally, I've experienced this. Many others have too. You literally see your belly pop back out at certain times of the month and then go back in at other times of the month. And you feel like either you're pregnant if you're in that stage of life, you're like,

oh my God, what's going on? Why do I look pregnant? And it just kind of, it's like a fluctuating belly is probably the best way to describe it. It's not the belly that hangs and stays forever. It's literally like a balloon. It's there. It's gone. It's there.

It's gone. It's there. everybody insane. They think something's wrong with them. Can I interrupt you for one second? Absolutely. Is it only for women who are actively getting their period or in a place of perimenopause where their period is still at least there in some capacity? It's worse than perimenopause. I feel like young women have it to a certain extent, but I feel like it exaggerates and it worsens in perimenopause. It sort of continues into menopause to a point, but it very much is associated with digestive health and what the hormones are doing to the gut at that particular week or phase of the cycle.

So low progesterone will create a hormone belly. High estrogen will create a hormone belly for sure. And that fluctuation between estrogen and progesterone is usually what's responsible for that. The one little caveat to that is that I do like anyone complaining of those type of issues or symptoms. I like them to get a pelvic ultrasound so we can look at the lining of the uterus and look and make sure there's nothing like ovarian cyst or fibroids or things like that. but that's what hormone belly is.

You know, we mentioned in the book, there are five key shifts that are there that women go through, these sort of archetypes of life stages that are there. The rock star shift, the hustler shift, the superstar shift, the superwoman shift, and the commander shift that's there. Let's take that age range right around 40, and I think it might be overlapping a little bit, plus or minus. Which one of these shifts is this woman, kind of in this archetype phase? are they in? And how would you describe this sort of phase of their life? So most of these women are

in what I call the superwoman phase. And there's a there's a very important reason why I labeled it that. Many of these women, sort of late 30s, 40s, you know, sort of mid to late 40s, many of them are walking into one of the most stressful periods, I think, of their lives, because they have grown or built a family, right, of some kind. So they have have some level of responsibility there. They have invested in a career typically, and that career has grown with responsibility. So oftentimes they're leaders or they have a team or these other things on their plate that they have to manage. At the same time, their relationships are at an interesting point. For those who have been in a relationship, you know, from their early 30s or even their late 20s,

when they hit sort of this superwoman phase, those relationships are kind of undergoing some changes, which are all good if they are handled in the right way. but they're sort of like a cleansing period for the relationship. And then they're aging parents, right? So this is about the time where a lot of parents start to have issues. So women are often the epicenter of all of this stuff happening, kids, family, career, parents, relationships. And so they're highly stressed and they're trying to pull all the pieces together.

So for many women, this is really where they feel like they're becoming unglued, right? this is where they're snapping more. This is where they're crying more. This is where they're getting super irritable. Or physically, they're seeing the changes for the first time, right? They're seeing like, why am I gaining weight? Why is my hair falling? What's happening to my skin?

I have joint pain. Sometimes they will ignore it. The most common thing for a superwoman to do in this, you know, this demographic is that they'll ignore things, right? They'll power through. They'll muscle through. That's the mentality. I've got too much to do.

I've got too much on my play. I'm just going to get through this, you know. and when I get to that point over there, it'll all be over and I can deal with X, Y, or Z then. Many times years go by, right? And they've got these symptoms. They've got these conditions. And there's a fallout. And that fallout could be how they feel, how they look.

It could be a diagnosis of some kind. This is where a lot of autoimmune diseases get diagnosed. This is where, of course, a lot of breast cancer we pick up. Or it could be in the form of a relationship, you know, catastrophe. they might get a divorce, whatever it is, you know. But this is a very, very tricky, tenuous time for women. And I think it's so important for them to be able to pull back and understand what's happening. Sometimes you're just not aware.

You think you're supposed to kind of go through the motions of life without a lot of thought or, you know, kind of thinking through it. But what I'm hoping is women will be aware that all of this is happening within them internally, emotionally, their changes to. And it's really important for them to be able to put those puzzle pieces. together so that when they're conducting themselves through a day, whether that's leading a meeting, dealing with a partner, raising a child, whatever it is, dealing with a parent, you know, they're doing it with a clear mind and with clear intention, not like they're just kind of running from task

to task to task. And so I think this is an important one. This is almost harder, I think, than actual menopause, you know, because I think the lead up, menopause, you kind of finally, you know, from most women or from most of the patients that I work with, they're like, I got this. I'm, I arrived. I'm here. I know who I am. I know what I need to do to take care of myself. You know, I don't, I no longer need to people please.

I no longer think I need to get everything done. But this perimenopausal time, the superwoman time, we're still learning those lessons, you know. And if we learn them and learn them well and learned them in a timely manner, life is amazing for the next 20, 30 years. But if we ignore them and we continue to try to power through them, then the body will teach us or our environment around us will teach us the lessons we're supposed to be learning. This episode is brought to you by Aquatrue. I've talked to so many experts about the importance of clean water as a foundation for great health. And this makes total sense because our bodies are mostly made up of water. So if we don't get enough, they literally, our cells literally can't function right. but tap water is no longer an option.

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The one I'm thinking about starts with the B, but I'm not going to say it by name. And Aquatru is made with BPA and BPS-free plastic, and they also recently launched a new glass craft container, which I'm a huge fan of. Right now, Aquatru is offering my community an amazing deal. Just go to Drew Filter.com, D-H-R-U-F-L-T-E-R-T-E-R-com and get $100 off when you try Aquatru for yourself today. That's Drew-D-H-R-U-Filter.com to get $100 off when you try Aquitru for yourself. Well said. So it seems that there's these independent stressors that a lot of women in this archetype go

through, go through, kids at a certain stage, career, the demands of a relationship, aging parents, all the items that you listed. And part of what you're talking about in the book is that because there's just been so little education around hormones for both men and women. Right. But in the particular case of women not being supported through the medical system and not having practitioners who necessarily understand of the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine and holistic medicine, there are lifestyle factors that get,

exasperated around this time. When you look at this patient that is coming in and you said it was the superstar? Superwoman. Superwoman. Superwoman. Superwoman archetype that are coming in. What are the most damaging types of habits, behaviors that most people look out in the world and they think this is normal. This is what everybody's doing. Right. That lead to this acceleration. Yes, the independent stressors are there. Life, family, etc. But there are. But there are. are also these lifestyle aspects there. So what are the common things that you see that are contributing to this being a tough time hormonally for a lot of women?

Definitely. I mean, I think some of the hormonal changes are happening. But here's where the body's saying something's got to change. First of all, I think the over-exercising, right? Many women get to this phase and they're like, I need to exercise and work out harder because they're seeing a physical change. So they'll engage in hit or marathons or, you know, something that's very physically taxing to the body. Those are fine and small spurts.

But for a stressed woman, you're actually making the cortisol sort of thyroid issue worse. So one of sort of the lifestyle things that I see change there is sort of this like workout culture where extremes are the only avenue to success. Right. So we need to come somewhere in the middle with that and have a little bit more fluidity around that where we're balancing what we do with movement. I think another one is our alcohol culture, right? So I think drinking wine nightly has been touted as a relaxation technique, as a stress management technique, where in actuality, as you hit sort of this particular phase, you know, with the gut already slowing down, we don't really have any alcohol tolerance.

We can't metabolize it. We can't move it through the body because everything is slowing down a little bit. So I think that leads to hormone belly, at least to estrogen dominance. It leads to all kinds of other things. we can talk about. So that's a habit that I see over and over again for sure. I think another one is simply not sleeping and that not sleeping can look different for different people. But one of the things I see is sort of like you're on your phone at night or you wake up in the middle of the night and you check your phone again. And what's happening there is that you're constantly

stimulating the body. You're messing with sort of the pineal gland that receives light. And you're not really allowing the body to go in a resting state. And one of the fundamental things I learned in my 20s with Chinese medicine is if we don't sleep as women, if we are not sleeping between about 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., we're going to disrupt the HPA or hypothalamic pituitary axis. We're going to disrupt that because it needs that critical time to rest, to reboot and to recharge. So we've got a lot of women, right, working until super late in the night, sending emails, you know, or rechecking things on a phone in the middle of the night when they wake back up and staying in sort of this exaggerated high cortisol state, hitting the day, skipping breakfast, right, not eating, fasting for extended periods

of time, which are not great for the stressed woman, and then not thinking through their food or planting their food. So they're kind of grabbing and going or waiting until they hit the evening to eat. And at that point, you know, they're either so ravenous that they're eating everything or they have now trained the brain to not eat. So they're under eating and not getting the protein and the macronutrients and things like that they need. So short-term, sure, they might lose some weight, whatever's happening there. Long-term, they shut down metabolism and they start to gain weight. So a bunch of things you mentioned there, if we could just take a moment to tease some of them out.

Let's start with the first one. It can feel like whiplash on social media and on YouTube. By the way, you have a great YouTube channel. Thank you. Everybody who's watching on YouTube, please follow Dr. Taz over here. We have the link in the show notes. It can feel like fasting is this magic tool for a lot of individuals. that all of a sudden allocks a whole bunch of things in their life.

And then they might hear from somebody else, like some guests in my podcast, that say similar to you, hey, there's these challenges, which is, okay, maybe if you're severely obese, there could be a time to tap into fasting, intermittent fasting. But if you are this high-stress superstar woman going through the shift, there's these challenges that come along with it. So why are you wanting to raise the alarm about, fasting and it's overuse right now. Well, I think it was such a trend, right? For a while,

it was like everybody who's fasting. I've got patients coming in all the time telling me that they're fasting and they're working on like 16, 18 hour intervals of not eating and shrinking their eating into a much narrower window. And what everyone needs to understand, you know, is that when you cut the window of eating so low, there are a couple of things that are happening. First of all, the fundamental problem for women in this superwoman phase is blood sugar stability, right? So these are our perimenopausal women, late 30s, through their 40s, maybe, you know, in that time frame, they're having a lot of issues with blood sugar stability. When we add stress, when we had lack of sleep, when we add overwork, over exercise, we are further

exacerbating this blood sugar issue, right? So blood sugar goes up. A lot of them have what I call reactive hypoglycemia, right, where their blood sugar may be okay, you know, depending on what their normal is, but then it bottoms out. It drops down into the 40s or 50s. Then they're medicating to get it back up again to feel good. That's what you see happening. Fasting for a patient like that or for a woman like that is detrimental because it doesn't allow for blood sugar continuity and blood sugar regulation and homeostasis. It is exaggerating this up-down pattern. And that up-down pattern is what we want to train the body out of. We want stability so that the body can go into the right metabolic state. So again, with fasting, what people,

might see is when they initially do it like, wow, I'm losing some weight because your calorie count is going down, right? You're eating less. You're probably consuming less. Calories are going down because you don't have as much of an eating window. But here's what we know about critical consumption or cutting of calories. Every time you cut calories drastically, you will see a short-term result. But after about six weeks, you've retrained the metabolic rate to be lower. So essentially, you're retraining your metabolism to set at a lower and lower and lower point because metabolism wants to rest at a particular place. So what's happening with a lot of these folks is that they are already stressed. They already have blood sugar instability. We're walking into fasting. Fasting triggers blood sugar

instability. It does allow for calorie cutdown, but more blood sugar instability in the long term. They drop their metabolic rate. Then they start to gain weight again. So it doesn't work for women with shifting hormones. It doesn't work for women that are super stressed. And I would argue it doesn't work for men that are super stressed either. You have to get the cortisol under control first. My own husband has tried this business. And he finds that he's all over the place every time he fast, right? Because his stress level and his stress load is so high. So for anyone with high cortisol, they need to be eating systematically to manage blood sugar, to keep it stable, to take that variable out of the equation when it comes to weight and energy. So eating every four hours,

you know, getting in that 20 to 30 grams of protein every four hours, keeping a 12 hour fast. Everyone should be able to do that. So if you cut off eating at eight, you don't eat again until eight the next day. You cut off eating at seven. You eat at seven the next day. That is manageable for everyone. But for the super stress woman with estrogen somewhere one day, progesterone somewhere another day, thyroid not able to decide where it wants to be cortisol up and down, fasting is not recommended past a 12-hour shift. That's great. I've seen you in multiple videos talk about the importance of, especially for women,

30 grams of protein every four hours or so. Right. I find that I was on a mission when my now wife, she was my fiance. Yeah. And even when we were dating, you know, she would skip breakfast. The first thing she'd eat would be around 11. She'd have like a light kale salad. Yep.

Right? And then she'd kind of be hardcore. or she was in investment banking previously. She's like falling into that archetype that's there. And just getting her, supporting her, supporting her to be able to have breakfast in the morning. Right. And seeing how when she feels like she's had adequate protein, fat, fiber in a meal, first thing in the morning, getting those hunger cues to be synced up again inside of the body. So important.

And her to feel mentally sharp for the rest of the day. Me, I feel like I can get away with like two to three square meals still hitting my 120 grams of protein, which is what I try to target, 120, 130 grams of protein in a day for me based on based on my goals and the things that I'm working on. But I find that for my wife, eating that much food is a lot to do in sort of one sitting and spreading it out over a period of time, which is kind of crazy because years ago, a lot of people would talk about, look, you don't want to be eating all the time. You don't want to be constantly in a place where you're your body is working. But really, if overall, again, not that it's all about calories, but just

using that as a benchmark, if overall you're eating an appropriate amount of calories from whole food sources that work for you and your body and your goals, you know, that's kind of like the most important thing. And a lot of this will just be self-corrected through you following your own satiety. I think where people run into issues is when they're constantly eating. but it's candy, processed food, Starbucks, all these hyper-stimulating things that put them on kind of the rat race when it comes to their metabolism, not super satiating protein and fiber and fat. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, your body will tell you what happens is like our hunger, like I told my young daughter this, who has some issues with eating, just like I told my husband

with this that has the opposite issues with eating, you guys have completely messed up your hunger cues. You can't rely on your hunger. because at some point, if you're not eating enough, you turn off your hunger cues. And if you're eating too much, you've turned off your hunger cues. You've messed up that whole leptin, grillin, you know, axis that exists in our body. So for a lot of folks, I'm like, you have to eat on a schedule, period, because you can't trust your hunger anymore. So you have to eat every four to five hours until everything kicks back in and can re-educate you. It's time to eat. It's time to not eat. It's time to eat. It's time to not eat. So that's where this four-hour eating, which is

different, by the way, when I started practice, when I started practice, we used to talk a lot about, you know, five meals, five mini meals. I don't know if you remember that, like have five small meals throughout the day. And that wasn't wrong, but I think what it did, just like intermittent fasting zone over here, I think it opened the door to overeating. Because when you're doing five small meals, it's very difficult to control the amount you're eating at every single meal unless you're really thinking about it and really conscious of the amount you're taking in. So those folks found that they would be prone to overeating. Whereas an intermittent And fasting, you know, you're not overeating necessarily, but many people have trouble with the

macros, getting the protein and fiber and all these other things in their system that they should be. So again, the balance, you know, for the busy superwoman, let's go back to her. She's running around. She's got 50,000 things to do. It's literally, I'll tell them, put it in your phone. You know, morning, 40, 30, 40 grams of protein. Have a protein shake, pair it with something else. That could be two eggs.

That could be three slices of turkey. That could be two slices of turkey bacon. you know, there's so many different ways to do this, but start the morning right. Because that morning, as you move through the day as a superwoman, 50,000 things get in your way. You're going to get a call to pick up your sick kid from school. You're going to get an employee that has an issue. You're going to have a work deadline. You're going to have something come up.

That's just the nature of having to multitask and manage many things as women do. So start the morning right and then time it because you're going to forget. Like put in your phone. If you had breakfast at nine, then buy you. By one, close to two, you should be eating again and getting in another 20 to 30 grams and then time it again. And then the other rule behind it, because you've got a lot of women in this phase with, you know, children my age, they're middle schoolers or teenagers and they've got a ton of activities.

So they're driving everywhere. So they're not hitting their home until much later in the evening. They're coming home at 7 or 8 o'clock at night and eating dinner then. That's too late because you need about two or three hours before you go to bed. So if you can work through the math of a day, there's so much you can. can accomplish with blood sugar regulation and body composition by thinking through, okay, I need to eat at eight, I need to eat at 12, I need to eat at four or five, then I'm done. That's it. You're done. You know, you may need a small little snack and hopefully you're in bed by about 10 or so.

You know, but that's the way to kind of start this rhythmic thinking about your day and that'll keep you with the macros you need and at the same time keep blood sugar where it needs to be. For the woman who's listening and saying, it's not that I'm not hungry. I'm actually too hungry and I feel like I'm constantly wanting more. What would you say are the top one, two, three, four reasons that you typically see with the patients who come in to see you that they are constantly hungry. Does it go back to number one being satiety? Their fundamental diet is not actually satiating themselves?

I think I can give you three quick reasons. Three quickest, maybe four, four quick reasons. Number one is not enough protein in their meals or their intervals of eating. so I would increase protein. Number two is not enough water. They're not drinking enough water. So that's a big factor in feeling hungry frequently. So make sure you're drinking the water to go with all that protein. I think the third is not getting enough fiber. Back to, you know, we're talking about fiber and the importance of getting enough fiber grams in. And then the last is overcaffeinating. I think when you overcaffeinate as a forms of sort of managing your energy levels, then you're indirectly messing with water levels and messing with a lot of this other stuff. And so it actually triggers hunger. So you have to be, a little bit careful. And overcaffeination is not just, by the way, coffee and tea, it's also sodas, all of these type of things. So they're going to drive hunger as well. So those are the four factors that I see most commonly are driving hunger. Once you've loaded up on protein and you're pushing the water, you can manage hunger for four to five hours. That should be your sign that your

diet is finally in the right place. But if you're getting hungry at hour two or hour three, then something's off with what you're doing at the meal prior. What about emotions? Where do they play into the story? Emotions, emotional eating. Again, this is not something that just women go through. All human beings go through this. Men go through this.

Yeah. But because we're tailoring the conversation to women and, you know, you have a lot of experience seeing all sorts of different women's and all of these archetypes, where is the relationship of emotions and food and the body come together? What do you see? I think at the most simplistic level, we can reduce it down to, you know, when women are not in an emotionally healthy place, and we can try to tear through that one and decide what that looks like. But when women are not an emotionally healthy place, when they have anxiety or depression

or grief or sadness or anger, you know, any of these major emotions, then what all of those different emotional states do is drive an undercurrent of high cortisol. So they're not, in a stable state, right? Externally, they might look fine and even and all those other things, but the internal holding of any of those emotions that I just listed out creates a higher cortisol level, which in turn will drive sort of the addiction to sugar, the addiction to alcohol, the addiction to carbohydrates, many of these other things that we see. It also will sort of prevent them.

So this is a very Chinese medicine concept, but it prevents them. it sort of increases liver burden and disrupts the HPA access. So in Chinese medicine, they very much connected that if you held onto anger, right, if you were holding it in, as many women do, many women actually, you know, don't express their emotions, can't have a conversation about their emotions, right, until it bubbles over and it's sort of at a breaking point. But if you're holding onto anger, for example, you store that in the liver. The liver is responsible at the end of the day for metabolizing hormones.

So many women with chronic anger or deep grief will often have issues with liver meridian stuff. And liver meridian is what dictates what's happening with the breast, what's happening with a lot of the reproductive organs. So I often see, I've always said this, it always gives me goosebumps. Like I'll meet a woman who's got a story. She's been through terrible things or, you know, she's been divorced. And as I look at her, I can almost time it that 18 months later we're going to be dealing with something if we don't help to release sort of this emotional burden.

So Chinese medicine very much connected, like kidney held fear, gut held worry, liver held anger, the lungs held grief. And so all of these organs would get taxed faster and earlier than they needed to if you did not deal with the emotional burden. And all of these emotions, if they're not handled or processed and put kind of in the right place, then they create a chronic high cortisol state. So when we look at families and we look at patterns, you know, people that have been through generational trauma or repetitive trauma, a lot of those people are in a chronic high cortisol state. So that is why they have earlier expression of so many different diseases, you know.

So the emotions are a big part of it. But, you know, without getting too out there, I think it comes down to, you know, how do you, especially as a superwoman, especially as somebody with a lot on your plate, how do you manage your emotions? Like, what is your time and space for that? Do you have someone you can talk to? Do you have a community? Do you have a modality, whether it's meditation or, you know, craniosacral therapy or energy healing or whatever it is? Like what's in your toolbox to help you with your emotional sort of burden?

And we carry that burden for families and communities. You know, that's the nature of what we do as women. And so I think it's really important for them to have that in place as well. You know, you've shared your story. Yeah. A little bit on social media. Yes. And you talked about this period of time in your life where you were in a high stress

state. Right. Believe you were your doctor, is that right? Correct. And running around, rushing to emergencies, rushing to the situation. Talk about that time and period in your life and how that influenced how you think of medicine today. That's a story.

So I, you know, I never expected to do the work I do today, right? I'm doing holistic medicine, merging Eastern and Western medicine together. I've been doing it for 15 years. We've probably seen probably over 40,000 patients across our locations and providers. And I couldn't be more like honored and joyous to do the work I do. I love it. But it definitely wasn't the path that I intended. I was an ER doctor.

I had come out of a stressful residency program, entered that residency program coming out of a stressful educational path and a family path. And so I had that undercurrent of cortisol that I'm talking about now. And through that journey, it's a 12-year journey, right, to become a doctor. Through that journey or to become a practicing doctor, you know, there were signs that I'm now aware of, but wasn't aware of then, you know, everything from acne, cystic acne, to joint pain, to trouble managing weight, and then to slow and then escalating hair loss. And so as I'm working in the ER and running around and, you know, trying to like, you know,

do my job and excited to be in my career, you know, at that phase of my life, I ignored my health. You know, I didn't think it was important. I ignored a lot of these signs and symptoms. I thought they would go away, you know, literally would close my eyes and I'm like, well, maybe it'll be better if I do X, Y, or Z, or maybe it'll do better. And then finally embarked upon the journey of trying to get answers at the urging of my, you know, now husband and my mom. And that journey, as I've written about and talked about so many times, was very unfulfilling. You know, I got passed around to different doctors, different specialists didn't get answers until I finally decided I had to take things in my own hands. So, you know, that opening up of what is holistic medicine? What is Chinese medicine?

What is Ayurvedic medicine? Wait, there's this whole thing on nutrition. We got maybe an hour of nutrition in medical school, you know, really then taking that deep dive and trying to understand that and then being able to heal myself. I mean, it took a while, but being able to kind of, you know, course correct, everything that was happening to me was sort of life-changing. And I finally did the fellowship with integrative and integrated medicine with Dr. Andy Weil in Arizona and continue to work in that line of thinking. And then as I've practiced and opened my practices and met all kinds of people, everyone from, you know, little kids to seniors and everybody in between, my thinking on medicine is that the only way to do medicine is to merge the best of Eastern and Western medicine together.

that gives you an expanded toolbox that takes into account the diet, lifestyle, emotional health, family health, community health, along with all this fascinating research and technology and all the other things that modern medicine has to offer. And when you put those two together, it's incredibly powerful. You really can set a patient, a community, a family on the correct course to healing themselves. And you can give them an energy and a power for them to be whoever they are in their lives. Unfortunately, what's happening, you know, as much information as we have today and as many people as are in our space and the wellness space, which is incredible.

When I started, it was much quieter and there wasn't, you know, the information that's available today. What's happening now is that there's just like now this sort of chaotic spread of information, right? So you still have the patient, the consumer, or whatever you want to call them, still struggling with how do I pull it all together. My acupuncture said this. My doctor said that. my nutritionist said this, my trainer said that, you know, my, this person said this. So you've got like

this, you know, blow up of everyone trying to weigh in on what is wellness, what is health, what is holistic. And for me, it's really the merging of the two. And you have to put the two together and we need everyone to understand that there's a time in place for a medication, a prescription, a procedure, you know, whatever it is. But there's also a time in place for a diet change, a hormone, you know, a hormone assessment, an emotional evaluation, and even looking at your life critically and understanding how you set those things up. And only when you can put those two together, do we have true healing and we have true wellness? Otherwise, we're band-dating on both camps, you know, the camp over here, this very natural is band-dating with a lot of supplements and

all that type of thing, right? The camp over here is band-dating with pharmaceuticals. So if we don't put the two together, we're just band-dating and giving people a lot of stuff. to do and everyone gets demotivated at a period of time. But where I, like my vision is, every person can spit back to me like I can spit to you about myself what their core issues are, what their core weaknesses are, and how 80% of the time they should be living their life. And the other 20% of the time, we're going to have a good time or we're going to go off track or something's going to happen. But we know where to course correct back to. And that'll keep us free of inflammation, free of gut dysfunction, you know, managing our nutrients,

balancing our hormones and really takes this conversation around health and longevity out of, like, okay, what are the five supplements I should take to what is really impactful and helpful for me and what's going to keep me healthy, not just today, but it's going to keep me healthy 20 years from now as well. So that's really what I imagine is sort of the new medicine and the new way that I'd like to see everybody moving. I love it. Preach. You mentioned Band-Aids. Yes. There's a lot of them on both sides. Yep. Right.

I actually think this is a useful topic just to pull on a little bit more. Right. You talked about one of the top band-aids on the wellness side idea of like, okay, what's that latest and next supplement that's going to give me that little boost that's there. And in fact, you know, you go to your friend's house or your family members house and the supplement cabin is overflowing. Full.

Yep. Falling out. And it's natural that even in the Western world, the holistic world, we want a quick fix. People want a quick fix and they think that they can get that from a supplement. Right.

And the foundational things that are there, I've seen you talk about this before, many people in this podcast talk about it before. It's all the core lifestyle things. Right. The core lifestyle things, not overeating processed food, getting adequate fiber,

getting adequate protein, strength training to some degree. We're going to come back to that because I want to talk about exercise and strength training. Sleep, emotional support, family,

relationships, community, et cetera, and I probably missed a couple others inside of there. Morning sunlight, I guess that's another one that added to the mix. By the way, on the topic of, I don't know if you've seen this with your patience, my wife, I could not figure out why she didn't feel hungry in the morning, and then we'd go on vacation and we'd stay somewhere, and she'd get sun in the morning, and then she would feel much hungrier. Yeah.

And obviously, you're on vacation. You're in a situation. and there's natural variability. I'm not trying to force my wife to start eating on my schedule. But I was just curious. I was like, what is it? And then I had a friend of mine, a doctor say, oh, you know what? Well, different people let go of melatonin.

And I want to ask, is this true? Yes. Right? Is this any true? Different people let go of melatonin the body at different rates. And it's when melatonin has kind of been removed or kind of taken out of the bloodstream that then you're getting the signal that you're actually ready to eat now. And my wife, who is more of a slower riser in the morning, kind of likes to chill in bed a little bit.

I'm more like pop out of bed, start the day type of person. When we would be on vacation and she'd get that sort of morning sun, maybe coming in through the window of the hotel room or wherever we're staying, she would wake up and she'd feel, oh my gosh, you know, like not right away, but she's hungry at least an hour earlier. Is there any truth to that? There is truth to that for sure. I think, you know, everyone's different, but our circadian rhythms, right?

Our biarrhythms are all variable, but they are dependent on this interplay between light and dark. So for some people, that light will trigger like, okay, time to eat. Whereas for others, you know, it doesn't do that as dramatically. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Just wanted to find out from the expert herself. So Band-Dates.

We talked about supplements. Are there any other couple? You're very prevalent on social media. I see you reply in the comments. So you know what your community is talking. about and asking about, you're popular on YouTube. Are there any other top band-aids you see in the wellness space that people are turning to in a way that's kind of missing the mark a little bit? Any themes, any trends, any other things right now that you might want to highlight just like

people overlying or thinking that a supplement is just going to fix their problem? Yeah, actually. So I see a lot of talk right now about colostrum and thinking that colostrum's going to fix everything. That's a trend right now. Colostrum is helping the gut, for sure. It's helping the overall immunology of the gut, but is it really going to fix the fundamental issue with the gut the way we've described it? I see a lot of... Can you just explain if you wouldn't mind colostrum for those people that are not familiar with it?

Yes, so colostrum is naturally produced by humans, you know, from breast milk, and it has a lot of great immune fighting properties, gut protecting properties that are great for the newborn. It has something called lactoferrin in it, which we know is actually a very healing gut protein in it. it. But one of the things I'm seeing kind of play up and all the stuff goes through cycles, right? But one of the things I'm seeing over and over again is take colostrum for X, you know, take it for everything. It's going to change your hair, your skin, you know, your hormones and all this other stuff. So while some

people do have benefit because they probably had gut dysfunction at some level, I don't think it's the cure all for everything that is being touted to be. So that's one. I think, you know, we constantly see new probiotics coming out. And I feel like this is really interesting. In fact, you know, one of the doctors on my team brought another one to my attention recently. But the idea that this probiotic is going to solve the issue with weight or it's going to solve the issue with hot flashes or those type of things. Those, I think, are maybe a little bit overplayed. They may help some. But at the end of the day, things like weight and hot flashes and night sweats are a little bit of a deeper conversation.

So I think those are ones that definitely get overhyped. We got to talk about the supplements for weight loss, right? The natural ozempic alternatives. I've done videos on that as well. So these are things like berberine and acetal cysteine. I think a lot of people are, you know, as soon as I said something about burberine, everybody jumped on the berberine, you know, bandwagon, and berberine's incredible. It acts like a sort of a natural metformin, so to speak, bringing blood sugar levels back down.

But in isolation, without like the right diet and the other things to go with it, Burmene is only going to be effective to a point. So I think, you know, people will jump on supplements thinking the supplement will take care of it, but not still understanding they need to pair it with some of the other lifestyle and behavioral interventions as well. And there's so many more. I've got patients coming in for a while. There was a beet product that was all the rage. Then I had patients coming in.

There's a CO-10 product that was all the rage. Then we have patients coming in. There's a new glutathione product that's all the rage. So, you know, all of these things, you know, I love that we're trying to be. trying to fill gaps in chemistry. I love that. I think that is something that has always been missed. And I definitely really get kind of riled up when you hear, you know, conventional doctors say, well, supplements are useless. You know, there's no point taking any. I definitely am not in that camp. But really what I want people to do is be in the mindset or on the journey at least,

because sometimes it takes a minute to figure this stuff out. Be on the journey of what are my core issues. What are my three main issues, right? Do I have a chronic thyroid issue, do I have estrogen dominance, do I have an issue with insulin resistance? And the supplements and the food and everything else should be tailored around those three or four main ideas rather than just sort of this grabbing that you see, oh, I read about this, oh, I read about this, you know, which you can do, but then you're going to end up with a really overful and overflowing supplement cabinet for sure. So that was in the holistic space.

Right. Because you mentioned it, let's go over to the traditional world of, you're going to, you Western medicine, pharmacology. And let's talk about the GLP1 agonist, which you've done many videos on. Right. Who could be thinking about these as one tool and toolbox? And where are they in the overhype, overblown, hey, this is a band-aid that's going to fix our obesity crisis?

Right. I love this question. So these medications, Ozympic, Wigobi, Majornis, ZepMed, whatever name, the latest one is on, you know, are all acting as GLP1 agonist, basically, which essentially means that they're keeping us full. They're bringing blood sugar down. But there is a price to pay. So while we have, everyone's getting results, it seems like people truly are losing weight.

But here is the concern. Again, like many things, this is a short-term fix. First of all, they're saying you have to stay on the medication, which is problematic. Secondly, it's changing how the gut works, right? Remember, I started with the gut is like the fundamental area to begin when it comes to health. So it's causing something called gastroporosis, which means we're not emptying or foods not moving through at the right rate through your bowels. So that's concerning because then that's going to change the microbiome. And as we change the microbiome, you are going to have more issues down the road with all the different conditions that are associated with microbial shifts, including inflammation, autoimmunity, all these other things. Just less. week, you know, the FDA came out with a warning on a lot of these medications saying that there is a higher suicide risk. There's a risk of hair loss. You know, there's a mental health component to it. So it's every couple of weeks we get like a new study now that these have been out for a while. So what is someone supposed to do because they really want to lose weight? I feel like these is always, and this is what

everyone needs to understand, it's always cost benefit when you're trying to make these decisions about pharmaceutical or supplement, either one. What is the cost and what is the cost? And what is the the benefit, right? So for someone that's got 30 pounds or more to lose, and they have already tried diet and exercise and all the things, right? It probably is a good intervention because many of those patients are now on a blood pressure medication, a cholesterol medication, probably some other medication for some other inflammatory disorder that they have. And, you know, for the men, they may, you may actually add on prostate medications, all these other medications, right? So by reducing weight from this over 30 pound down to one where they just have 10 or 20 pounds

to lose, you can probably reduce their medication list significantly. You can probably get rid of the majority of medications that these patients are on. That is a huge savings for the patient and is also incredible when we think from a public health perspective, right? So that's great. But now we're talking about the portion of patients that are under 30 pounds to lose, right? Is that common? Is that of gut health, gastroporesis, all the mental health thing, is it going to be worth it? Most of those patients aren't on multiple medications. This is a cosmetic issue for the majority of them, right? They're still kind of their numbers from a metabolic standpoint are still not at a disease

state. So I feel like, yes, let's use the GLP1 medications if you're in a disease state, absolutely. But if you're not in a disease state and you don't have a lot of medications that you're trying to come off of, this should not be your first go-to. You know, there's so much else you can do with a lot of the things we've talked about today that act naturally when it comes to GLP1, protein, fiber, foods, other supplements, that type of thing. Stay in there for a period of time, be patient with your body, and over time you'll start to see results. So I think that, you know, my take on it, it's there for the right person. It shouldn't be used the way it's used now. And that's

you have shortages, which everyone is running towards. I was at a dinner just on Saturday night with friends. And one of my friends was telling me that, you know, she was in a group of women. Nobody was over a size six or so. None of the women. They were all on Ozympic, you know, and they were all using it like, oh, yeah, like it prevents me from eating. You know, it keeps me kind of at a size zero or size two. That's not why we should be on these medications.

You know, to me, that's completely unhealthy. And, you know, I just have a lot of concerns about that. There's also muscle wasting associated with it. So again, cost benefit, short-term fix, what's the long-term cost, right? And are you willing to put your body through that as a question? You know, we started off the podcast talking a little bit about weight loss. Right. But we didn't go too deep into the body composition piece of it.

Right. Right. I'd love for you to talk about what do you tell your patients about body composition? From my experience, the vast majority of women and men, And men, by the way, if you would ask them, what is your body composition? What is your body fat percentage-wise? A lot of people don't know. Right.

They've never got a Dexas scan and in-body scan. And when they're thinking about weight loss, they're just thinking about the number on the scale. Right. And that number on the scale going down because they may not like how they look or they might have a number in their head of where they want to be. So when it comes to body composition, in the context of all this. beautiful world of hormones that you fundamentally work with people on. What do you share with your patients? I have goals for them. I mean, I think they're goals that we need to be looking at.

And I also think weight as a number can be super frustrating to look at because it's not taking into account changes in body composition and it can be very demotivating. So I usually tell women to, instead of tracking weight constantly, if you don't have access to an in-body or to one of these other scans, track inches, you know, like look at your waist or your hip circumference, your arm circumference, get a sense of where your inches are going, because the weight will show after a much longer period on the scale in terms of a number, but the inches will show first. So the goals we usually say for skeletal muscle, you want to maintain around 60 to 70 pounds

of skeletal muscle. So on the in body, we'll educate them and show them kind of where they are there. And then for a percentage of body fat, you know, really for women, for healthy women, they should be between 21 and 28%. Now, a lot of women in perimenopause and menopause are going to, you know, into the 30s, right? They're creeping over into that range. And that is where we start to see things like fatty liver and insulin dysregulation and all these other things that we've talked about. But staying in that 21 to 28 percent gives enough fat for the body to produce and manufacture

hormones effectively or to give a hormone buffer because remember all hormones are produced ultimately from cholesterol. So if you go too low fat, then you are also sort of exhausting the body's ability to manage hormones. So 21 to 28 percent body fat is what we're at. after. And we don't even really look at BMI because I think BMI is so variable across ethnicities and across body types. I think that's not really a fair number either. But waist circumference, skeletal muscle, body fat percentages, those are the goals that we talk about in practice. So when a patient comes into your clinic, do you guys do like an in-body scan? Yeah, automatically they get two tests. One is an in body and one is a metabolic test where they

have to breathe in and it looks at kind of their CO2 production. And both of those together help us give them a sense of their metabolic health. I bet it's eye-opening just as when I first started going down that pathway as what I would classify as a skinny fat Indian who grew up vegetarian, under-eating on protein, not strength training on a regular basis. You go in for your first body scan and you're like, okay, I get it. This is eye-opening. Totally.

This is eye-opening. At the same time, it's very motivating because someone will go and strength train. or have a really good program going, they'll get back on the scale and nothing has changed, you know. And they may be jumping on that scale too quickly, but then when they jump on the inbody, they can see they built muscle. They brought their inflammation down. Like all these other things are happening, right? So that can keep somebody kind of engaged and knowing that they're making progress. Talk a little bit about that.

You know, muscle, we've had a lot of people on this podcast. Right. Come on and really emphasize, especially for women. Yep. Why? It's both for men, but especially in this context of hormone, metabolic health, protective to the body. You have also been talking about, and it's one of the reasons that you mentioned that,

you know, you want women in particular to be having that 30 grams of protein. Correct. Every four hours or so. What are you educating your patients about and people in this book about when it comes to the topic of muscle? So we want them to build muscle, to maintain muscle. I think it's important. One of the tests that I was telling you about that we do in our practice,

as Center Spring is a metabolism test, and it'll show your resting energy expenditure. And a lot of times you can take that resting energy expenditure, and you can come over here and look at the in-body and see a direct correlation between that resting energy expenditure being low and the skeletal muscle being low as well, right? So that's where muscle keeps the energy that I'm burning, even talking to you, higher than it would if I didn't have enough muscle. So we feel like muscle health is incredibly important, and I agree with what, you know, a lot of the folks are saying out there. The challenge in the, in sort of the landscape of shifting hormones is that as testosterone goes down, you're having trouble building and maintaining hormone.

And also, if you're not sleeping, we're going back to the cortisol component, and you turn around and you start doing heavy load and heavy lifting the next day, it'll drive hunger up because it's actually a stressor to your body. So the dance of this, the balance of this is first get your hormones balance so that you're sleeping through the night, your cortisol levels are down, your blood sugar is a little bit more stable, at least through that period of time. And until then, you should be active, right? You should be doing activities that may build muscle in a very slow way. So yoga, Pilates, lightweights, you know, not a heavy, heavy load. And then as you stabilize, then you can move into heavy load, you know, picking up heavier and heavier loads with less repetition to actually

build the muscle that you have. So it's a transition. Now, if you're sleeping through the night, you're doing great. Everything's fine. Then yes, go ahead and start lifting heavy. But for the women who hear, oh my gosh, I'm in menopause or perimenopause, I need to build muscle and they go straight there. That can also be a very frustrating path for them because they get tired or they get super hungry. And it's almost like any progress they're making over here is getting washed away over here. So for them, they need a gentler approach, you know, to really building energy first before they jump into this heavy muscle building. Yeah.

And I think even with resistance training, seeing my mom, seeing my wife, my sister's in it. And my older sisters at this phase, 45 years old, right? She's like deep in the like waking up at night, sort of dealing with all that, you know, random hot flash, itchy ear. She's like, what's going on with my body? And she'll even say to herself, there's many nights where. she, her sleep has changed. Right.

Right. And I'm sure you have a little understanding of why that's the case. We can even talk about it here. And, you know, working with a good trainer, it's like, okay, today I'm going to go a little lighter. Right. Because I guess the thing that she's trying to avoid, and I'd love you to chime in on this, is that, you know, when she does work out, she sleeps better. Yeah.

When she does work out, she wants to eat healthier, right? When she does get in that resistance training. Right. What I'm hearing from you is that you don't want people to overdo it. Everybody's going to have a different definition of it. And we're really talking about these like intense like CrossFit type workouts maybe. But if somebody chooses to lift some weights, some resistance spans. That's fine.

That's fine. And you know, you can use there's so much tracking ability nowadays. You can use HRV tracking, heart rate variability tracking to understand what to do. You want your heart rate variability to be kind of 50 to 60. right so if you're waking up in the morning and you see that number super low like on a aura or a fitbit or any of these type of things then you know that you you don't have the reserve to go do heavy weight lifting right i'm not saying not to do weight lifting i'm saying you know the weight lifting that needs to take place to build muscle right to expand a muscle is a heavier load is fewer reps than a heavier load so you want to do like six to eight reps

of something that's very heavy that where you're getting out of breath by the time you hit that six you know have six sequence. And for a lot of women, if you're going into that when your heart rate variability and your reserve is low, then you are going to be over hungry on the other end of it with the cortisol spike, right? Versus if your cortisol is in a good place, your heart rate variability is a good place, you know, then you can go into that heavy load and you're not going to have this up and down a blood sugar and cortisol and all these other things that happen. So we want people moving and exercising, period. But it's the intensity that may need to vary depending on what's going on with you.

You know, a big part of the book is that it's not like you wake up at one stage of your life and all of a sudden you start thinking about your hormones. No, right? This is literally from the beginning that you want women. And of course, the men and maybe women who love them, you want everybody thinking about hormones and how it shows up over the course of our life, right? and how your relationship is, it's often explained. People have come on the podcast and said, well, a good indication of your sort of how perimenopause or menopause is going to be for you is kind of like, well, how are your periods beforehand?

And how was your pregnancy beforehand? And so everything kind of tracks into everything. So start us off in the beginning. You know, the book and the key five shifts that are there for women. there is this initial shift that starts as early as women when they're in there, like, 13, even though it's happening for a lot of women that are earlier. What's important for everyone, including mothers and grandmothers who are listening, to know about this time period?

Well, I think, you know, the message I really wanted in the book is that the earlier we start this conversation, the better. And the reason is the patterns are there all the way through, right? What's happening at 13 is the first signs of your hormones, sort of expressing themselves, showing what they're going to do, showing how they're going to be. So for somebody, you know, a teenager who's having irregular periods, heavy periods, painful periods, you know, typically we band-aid that with the birth control pill or something like that. That's the way of managing that.

Instead, my challenge would be like, we got to dig into that. What's going on? Is the gut health not where it needs to be to manage hormones and hormone cycles? Is there a liver story that we might need to dive into? you know, what can we do for our teenagers that will really help them, not only understand and really experience their periods better today, but really set them up for their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, and their 50s because those patterns aren't changing, you know. So I think you have that first phase, which is 13 to 19.

I called it the rock star phase because everything's everywhere, periods are everywhere, hormones are everywhere, but if you can ground them in a good nutrition and gut program, right and really help them identify like hey this made me feel good this made me feel bad and help them understand the importance of deep consistent sleep then you've set them up so that by the time they hit the next phase which is the hustler phase i called it that because we've all been there where you're up all night and working all day kind of burning the candle at both ends then you don't have the dramatic loss of progesterone that many women through this phase experience because they're so stressed, right? So you're setting them up sequentially for hormone success because hormones at the

end of the day for women are a superpower. If they're balanced, we feel amazing. We're on top of the world. If they're not, then that's another story. So, you know, from the teens, you go into your 20s, then you go into that superstar phase, which is where you're trying to start a family. If women have not identified kind of the fundamentals of their health, their nutritional chemistry, their hormone chemistry, then a lot of times this is where we see the first signs of a diagnosis, This is where thyroid stuff might show up in the form of Hashimoto's or other autoimmune diseases. This is really where I see like full-fledged PCOS endometriosis. Those diseases really demand expression and demand attention.

And then for a lot of women, this is where they're thinking about having a family. So, you know, getting pregnant becomes an issue if they're having issues of fertility and things like that. So again, I think the hormone conversation is through the decades. We've talked about the superwoman and the commanders already paramedopause and menopause. And the other part of it is for each of these phases, the hormones are not just about their reproductive capacity and their periods. It's also about their mental health and how we learn. We've got this mental health crisis here in the United States with teenagers, a big part of that.

And so much I see in the exam room, so much of it if you listen to the stories, is cyclical. And it's tied to their cycles. And so helping people understand this connection between mental health and athletic health and, you know, emotional health and all these other things and how it ties back to their chemistry, I think is really valuable information. And I think everybody needs to understand where they are. And as moms really trying to help our kids grasp that information so that when, like, I have a 16-year-old daughter, you know, before she hits college, she's kind of got a handbook on her.

You know, like these are the things that I need to be aware of, you know, as I go into the next few decades of my life. You know, when you were talking about your 16-year-old daughter, right, what are, since we touched on that stage, the rock star stage, what are the top lifestyle things that you see that a lot of 16-year-old girls are kind of going through? You mentioned the number one thing, which is that a lot of medicine and families who want this are sort of masking a lot of the simple. by putting young women on birth control early just to kind of quiet, quote-unquote, everything down. Right. Right. Separate from that, what are the things that are lifestyles, habits, interventions that are going

on there that start the story off kind of in the wrong direction, even if they're well-intentioned. What do you see? Yeah, I'm seeing a lot. It's so frustrating because I'm the mom, so she don't want to take advice for me, right? You're the mom and a doctor. Definitely doesn't want to take advice from you. Exactly. No, I don't know what I'm doing here. But anyhow, so, you know, one of the things with the kids of today is that they are on social media quite a bit.

So they're picking up on any trend, anything that anybody talks about. So she's into Celsius, which makes me cringe. Celsius is a drink with a lot of caffeine in it. And that is her thing. And so for me, like knowing that she has really bad gut health, you know, it's like I see those Celsius. And I'm like, oh, so that's one that all her friends are doing. She's doing. How much milligrams of caffeine is in there?

I think it's about, it's 200 to 300. Okay. So like a large cup of coffee. Yeah. I think it's too. It might be 200, but it's a very large cup of coffee. So she promises me she's only doing one a day. But I still feel like for a 16 year old, that's too much, right?

And so it triggers gut dysfunction. It changes the acidity of the gut. So there's that whole story, which is what it does to the gut. So that's one trend I'm seeing over and over again. The other one is that because they're in the age, of postmates and Uber eats, even though there's really great healthy food at home, before I know it, Chick-fil-A and McDonald's and all this junk food will show up in our house because once you develop the palate for a higher salt, you know, sort of this processed food, then it takes a while to untrain

that palate to eating healthy food again. So one of my big concerns of things we're working on right now is to get her out of this sort of fast food culture that she and her friends are in, right like they're out you know they study together they do this together whatever they're doing together so it's a Starbucks run and it's either a Chick-fil-A or we have a place in atlanta called willies like it's a run there and so you know the idea of eating at home and just coming home and eating at home is one that they push back on so that's another trend that I'm not very happy about and then after that it's a lot of like can I go on acutane for my acne you know it's a lot of like not understanding how to work from the inside out and really trying to get that message across.

And then just the phone. I mean, I think the phone is a curse. I wish it was banned for that age group because I know they're on at late. As a parent, we can put as many different controls as we want to. But that whole thing on the phone, getting the blue light, impacting the pineal gland, not getting deep, restful sleep. And it's all of them. They're all doing it.

They're snapping. They're on TikTok. They're on Instagram. there's just it's like it's too much for that young age for that developing brain so my concern is that you know the lack of consistent eating consistent sleeping eating poor quality foods it's going to catch up it's already showing its signs but like hopefully at some point she'll step into like okay i got to take ownership of this and you know with the other thing that the phone does that and social media does for that age group that i think is so concerning it's for the girls

but I would say it's for the boys too. It's a lot of awareness about their physicality. A lot of like, I'm not the right weight. You know, I don't look right. Is my jawline snatched? I'm like, you're freaking 16. Who cares? You know?

So it's just like all this like hyper focusing on physicality, you know? And I don't think it's healthy for our boys or for our girls. And so I think as parents, that's one of the so hard to manage and so hard to control. But it's a problem for this generation of kids for sure, for that stage in particular. Yeah. It doesn't seem like there's going to be anything that unwinds that. I know. Unless they ban it.

Unless they say you can't get on these phones until you're 18. Yeah. Which I don't see that happening. And I'm not sure it's exactly a good idea. I'm not a parent though. So I should have a limited insight on it. I feel like you're doing it right because you had to have gotten some bonus points for Guineapaltoe writing your intro.

Yes. Or is she like thrown into the boomer category and like young people don't care about it? I got a few minutes points. Okay. So what you're doing is the right thing, which is you're making health and wellness, sexy. You're making hormones cool. Right. And it's like, okay, as also a rebellious teenager who was probably eating all the junk and all

the stuff that was there. Definitely the phone wasn't around when I was, I'm 40 years old. I'm 41 years old. When I was, you know, you barely, I had like, I came into school one time with like the big, massive Zach Ron phone. Right. Right. And people are like, what is that?

You know? But we didn't have like the smartphones, of course. And I think every generation is going to go through it. And it feels like the only tool in the toolbox is to try to make it as easy, exciting, and try to make it as like cool and sexy as possible so that they don't hear from you because you're their mom. Right. They hear from somebody else.

Correct. Who's some TikTok influencer or something like that. Totally. Yeah, she's brought me, you know, she's, she's on her journey, right? So she's 16, she just turned 16. So I'm seeing sort of the turn where she's starting to get more curious and more interested. But she brings me lots of TikTok influencers that talk about PCOS and what you can do about

it and how your diet impacts your gut. And I'm like, oh, that's fascinating. Like, wow, I've never heard about that before. I didn't know this. That's amazing. That's funny. You know, I want to come back to a couple more things as we're winding down here. in the podcast.

You brought up alcohol and the sort of usage. I mean, I don't know if you saw, but the number one podcast episode last year was Andrew Huberman's episode that he did on alcohol. Right. And that got a whole bunch of people to basically feel like really there's no, the idea that there is upside on alcohol specifically as sort of a nutrient. is highly questionable. Right. There may be the social components, so the other things are bringing people together

and that was acknowledged. What's your take on alcohol and how has it changed over the years? You know, this might be oversharing. And you should share the honest truth because I'm not here to demonize alcohol. Right, right. I like more people talking about it honestly. Right. I'm kind of anti-alcohol, to be 100% honest. But that doesn't mean that I won't engage or I don't want other people to ever engage in it. I think I'm anti-alcohol. alcohol because I'm kind of fatigued on wine is good for me. This is good. You know what I mean? I had to hear that for years. Like, well, I heard a glass of red wine is really good every night.

And I'm kind of with Andrew Euberman in that most of what we've seen around alcohol is not beneficial, right? The stress reduction that you may get, you could get from some other activity or from some other behavior. Now, life is to be enjoyed. So we don't want to sit here and say, don't have any alcohol. But it should be like a treat. It should be something you do every now and then. It should be one drink maybe when you're out and about. But this idea, like even when we're out with friends, like have another, have another, have another, you know, like this sort of societal pressure, you know, I don't think it's serving anyone very well. At the end of the day, alcohol, to be the science geek, is shrinking our mitochondria, is shifting our microbiome to one where there's more yeast or candida.

That drives up insulin. That drives up blood sugar. It triggers inflammation. The mitochondrial dysfunction ruins muscle math, ruins cognitive health, all of these different things, right? And the hormones are kind of wound up in all of that. So for me, alcohol is a really, you know, it's not really, I don't want to pass a judgment on it, but I typically advise my patients to always be thinking about reducing their consumption

at first and half and then down to a celebration every now and then, but not a regular occurrence because I do think it is, it's an issue. You know, all throughout this podcast, you've given a ton of actionable tips. And in the book, you have a whole protocol that you put together. Right. It's a 30-day plan. Yep. Talk about why you created it.

And give us the big picture. As a little bit of a preview before people pick up the book, what are you putting together as part of this 30-day hormone reset? Definitely. Well, you know, I spent a lot of time in the book talking about some of the ideas we've talked about today, talking about the gut, talking about the liver, talking about emotions, you know, merging Eastern and Western medicine together. and it's one thing to talk about it, but it's another thing to have a system or a program that you can follow to really make it actionable.

So my vision with the 30-day reset was like, okay, if you're not sure where to start, this seems really overwhelming. You've used a lot of big words. We'll start here. And in the 30-day reset, what we're doing is really addressing kind of all those different issues. But the one thing I wanted everybody walking out of the 30-day reset with is understanding their dominant hormone pattern. because again, we're tripping over a lot of what we're hearing and learning about, really want that idea of personal empowerment where you can say, I'm insulin resistant, I have high androgenes, you know,

whatever the dominant pattern is of the moment of your life. And so that as you build everything else in your life, whether it's a food plan, a movement plan, a sleep plan, whatever it is, then you are doing it from that vantage point. You kind of know what to do at that point. So I wanted it to be the beginnings of a journey into these, concepts that seem are seemingly overwhelming, but are actually very simple when you put them into practice. So it's a practical way of taking all the information in the book and really allowing

someone to kind of walk through that journey. And I'm hoping it opens the door for them to start to pursue things even more and really become an advocate for their own health so that they're able to kind of monitor themselves and lead their medical team in the direction to really help them with the monitoring process. So the protocol, just big picture of the pillars that are part of it, would you mind explaining? Yeah. So we began it with a gut reset. We remove inflammatory foods. So we tackle the issue of inflammation. We spend some time on liver cleanup. We do kind of like a mind body reset where you're literally examining your own emotional kind of framework or vibration or bandwidth. And then there's a quiz to help you identify what your hormone pattern is. So the plan starts

with everyone kind of doing the same stuff. And then about that third week or so, we sort of split the group out into three different key hormone patterns and then customize their diet, their movement to each of those hormone patterns moving forward. I love it. Again, we have a link to the book in the show notes. You know, it's the beginning of the year. Yes.

And probably right around now, a lot of people are dropping their New Year's resolutions and, you know, deciding to move on with their normal schedule. And so many people, not just on this podcast, have talked about. but other places too, experts in habits and other stuff, have talked about, you know, instead of setting these big goals, sometimes just even thinking about daily habits that you can incorporate is a better way to move forward because those daily habits they add up. In the context of this conversation, one or two habits that people can walk away from, that would be a slam dunk to help them towards their hormone balancing goals this year, especially our core demographic

that we've been talking to. Right. And what are two habits to let go of? If you had to keep it to one or two, what would you leave people with? All right. I love, so two habits to start to incorporate, set 10 minutes in the morning to center yourself, meditate, regulate your emotions, figure out what's going on with you on that front, and then plan your food, you know, plan your protein, decide how you're going to get in that particular day. So those 10 minutes are for you to think through how the rhythm of your day is going to go.

So those are two things. And question on that, just for the clarity. Yeah. So you wake up, you're laying in bed. Right. Your husband's next to you. Your alarm goes off or you naturally wake up, right? Most people, first thing they do, reach for the phone. Right. Right. So don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Leave the phone. Leave the phone. Right. Leave the phone there. What are you doing? What is Dr. Taz doing? What? Here's what I'm doing. Physically. We're watching you. We're looking at a movie of you, a documentary. Wow. What do we see? You're doing. So it's so bored. But anyhow, I wake up. I don't grab the phone. Actually, I've had to train myself out of that. I will head downstairs. I'll have a cup of tea. You'll love that habit. That is my, that tea and quiet time for about 10 minutes.

That's my time. So that's my time. I usually, honestly, either journal, meditate or listen to a sound bath. That's what I'm doing. It sets the rhythm of the entire day moving forward. Usually I've planned my food already, you know, either earlier in the week or so I don't have to do that. But I'm thinking about somebody who's maybe not there yet.

Think about what you're going to eat through the day so that you're not in a position to grab random fast food and ultra-processed food. So that's how I start my day. And on the topic of communication, you mentioned earlier, how important it is. And for everybody, but especially women, to speak up in a society that maybe hasn't always encouraged that. Do you or does your family know, I'm sure now it's sort of baked into your life? Right.

But does everybody know like, hey, this is mom's time? Like, don't bug her. Did you have to communicate that? Oh, totally. Do you still get interrupted? Well, no, when you put a secret lock on your door that has a keypad and nobody can get in, you don't get in our own tips. Next level.

I like that. No, but they do know. So give us the Amazon link. We'll link to the keypad. No, the other part of this knows. I'm usually awake before everybody else. Okay. So that's another way.

That helps. That I've preserved that time. But there is a key code on the door, by the ways. I love it. I love it. Practical. I know. The habits to dump, I think, dump the wine every night.

I meet so many women who continue to do that. I think I would dump that one for sure. And then I think dump the negative self-talk. I know that's like maybe too woo-woo or out there. Let's get out there. But I think that we spend a lot of time in our heads, a lot of time like saying what we can't do or what we aren't and not what's actionable and what we can take control of. So whether you've got 20 pounds to lose, you're having hot flashes or night sweats, you can't get pregnant, whatever it is, just get out of your head. and just dump all that and be very practical, practical and actionable about all of it.

Has there been one or two things? You know, you seem like an individual who's tried a lot of stuff, read a lot of different things. Is there one or two things that's been most helpful for you for that negative self-talk quieting? Honestly, it's that time in the morning. It's the time in the morning. It's two things. I don't know why.

I do believe still in sort of this like hand-to-brain connection, right? what we write gets imprinted on our brain. For me, the most powerful thing has been to write. So whatever negative thought you're having, let's say, I look fat today. Let's take that as a negative thought, flipping it and saying, I can't wait to be in my fullest health or whatever, however you want to flip it, right? Or I am the perfect size. However you want to do that. But writing that over and over and over again, you move yourself away from fixating on the negative, move it to what you are. Because Remember, once you feel what you are, that's when things actually happen. If you stay negative, then you're going to continue engage in negative behaviors.

So for me, it's been, you know, that deliberate, that morning time is critical for me to stay positive, to stay sort of in the lane I'm supposed to be in. And it'll vary depending on where I am, whether I'm writing, I'm listening, or I'm just breathing through it. And then I do have a yoga practice as well that I'm highly dependent on too. but, you know, depending on what I'm doing, I might not make it to a yoga class. But that 10 minutes is something I can always do. Dr. Taz, this has been fantastic.

Thank you. I so appreciate you. Being in L.A., I know you're on the podcast circuit. Yes. Thanks for choosing our podcast as one of the places to talk about the book. It's out there. The hormone shift. People can pick it up.

We have a link in the show notes. And an opportunity for you to just leave the audience with the final message and just where they can follow you and be in touch with you. Definitely. I mean, I think I want everyone to remember and to understand that if they're feeling a certain way, it's not in their head. They're not old. They're not crazy.

And even if they're told that things are normal, to maybe challenge and push them a little bit to really dig deep into their health because your normal is your own and it's important for you to own that. And I talk about all this stuff over and over again on all my social media channels. You can follow me on Instagram. It's Dr. TasmD, DRT-A-ZM-M-D, or on TikTok and I'm on YouTube as well. And of course, my website is Dr.Taz.com. Awesome. Well, we'll have the links to all those in the show notes below. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Good luck on the podcast tour. And the book being out there, we're going to pick up a few copies and give it to the women in our lives that we love. Dr. Taz, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This.

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