LadyGang - Hormone Expert Candace Burch

Episode Date: August 7, 2017

Starting off the LadyGang Your Life series is the hormone health educator and founder of YourHormoneBalance.com Candace Burch, who comes to the studio to tell the Ladies about what's really going on with your hormones and what you can do about it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey guys, it's your Lady Gang, Jack Vanek, Kelty Knight, and Becca Tobin. Thank you so much for subscribing on iTunes, and thanks for supporting the great sponsors who make it possible for us to have this much fun with you every single week for free. Well, what is this? Welcome to the Lady Gang. That's amazing. Say that again. The Lady Gang.

Things are about to change around here. Each week, we catch up with Hollywood's hottest girl posse, Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jack Vanek. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Lady Gang. I am Becca Tobin, actress and blogger. Across from me is Kelty Knight, an entertainment journalist. You've got to stop that one. No, you've got to stop with the voices.

It's weird. To my right, Jack Vanek, clothing designer. Hi. Jack Vanek, clothing. We're very excited to be here this week. Question of the day is what? Do you think of these on the spot? No, I think of them in the car.

but because i'm elderly by the time i get in here you've forgotten them it's gone you can run my this was my one from today because something made me think of it what is your least favorite chore around the house like the like is it dishes is it taking out the trash like what is it i have a cleaning lady i do too yeah but you still have to do things in between her coming yeah putting away the laundry oh i was gonna say that oh hanging up clothes i don't mind folding clothes i hate hanging them up interesting yeah interesting it's like i don't mind blow drying my hair but i hate curling it it's just i don't know oh see i hate blow drying my hair and i don't mind curling it really interesting yeah we're opposites for once it's

true um my least favorite chore around the house is vacuuming like oh i don't mind vacuuming we rarely do it ourselves but when it needs to be done like if orly like brings in like whatever it's the worst the worst yeah i guess with a dog it is worse it sucks all right and now it's time for good week yes it is bad week oh no yep um okay so we have started asking you guys about your good weeks and your bad weeks on our secret facebook group and um we've chosen winners from both good week and bad week this week's good week winner is becky and her good week oh my god becky look at her butt her good week is that she spent three days drinking and eating with my family over the weekend and when i came home and weighed myself i hadn't gained any weight oh my god that

is a good week that's a great week it's coming for you though they say it it takes like two days or something so like get your stop weighing yourself now yeah yeah just don't do it again yeah um okay and eliza has won the bad week contest here it is i rushed my boyfriend and the kids out the door the other morning about 30 minutes later some random pre-teen comes knocking at my door in pajama pants important detail pre-teens i what i have not heard anyone referred to as a pre-teen in a long time i watched him from our living room window wondering what the heck he wanted he walked over to our driveway and looked at our backyard i was totally freaked out turns out in my rush to get the kids and boyfriend out the door i forgot the dogs in the backyard

with the gate slightly ajar they were loose in the neighborhood worst nightmare i feel you eliza i really pride myself on always knowing where my dog is like at every moment and it's like a child and we took her over to a friend's house that had a totally gated backyard next thing i know someone's calling my cell phone that my dog is running down the streets of los angeles they got out the gate so there you go um and our good week bad weeks who wants to start i'll start um i think this is very applicable that's the right word right you struggled with that applicable for this week um okay so applicable applicable applicable yes yes yes it's tomato language languages i know how to spell it i don't know how to say it okay um so i feel like

everybody deals with breakups differently yeah i have somehow dealt with my breakup like a guy which means having sex everywhere with everyone that's how guys do it well i've been going out all the time and drinking literally all the wine in the entire world and just like socializing and i never went out at night whatever so it's been i've been on a bender for a few months yeah so i finally decided that like it might be time to start taking care of myself yeah like maybe it's time for your wellness it's time for my wellness yeah it's now on to phase two of the breakup um i started sweat with kayla we're friends i know well i'm only on day two but my body is so freaking sore yeah it's crazy corpse like i can't move at all she needs to sponsor us

oh my god that'd be amazing her a lot of shout out we have can't wait to see your bikini body i know we'll see how long i can do it for are you doing it in your house like in your living room yeah cute i've only done the legs and then the arms arms and abs yes but i did legs today barely finish it because i have no muscle i hated doing it in my house did you where do you do it in the gym no i'm saying i only could do it at my house so i hated it oh if i like kelty like gets to go to a gym with her workout buddy it would be yeah it's nicer it would be a lot nicer much at home workouts suck i don't love it but you know whatever um okay my bad week so somebody posted this in the lady gang facebook group there is a swimsuit that is oh my god like a picture of like

a hairy man's chest on you it's so gross and like people are buying it that's no there's so many videos of these women it's basically the picture of like a fat no disgusting hairy guy's chest like sublimated onto a bathing suit no it's the nastiest thing i've ever seen especially the videos because it looks real and um i can't believe anybody has bought one so that's my bad so gross it's disgusting okay looks like um okay so my good week is i started watching handmaid's tale is it good next one i have to start watching it's amazing it's mind-blowing it sort of creeps me out because it's like kind of like could happen well i mean could happen like it's a stretch but like potentially in our dystopian world something similar you know

what i mean it's just it's so good it's so good and i feel like there's a lot of like really shitty tv out there and this is great and it's on hulu and everybody should watch it and this is not an ad um nobody paid us kayla and hulu please pay us we're just trying to create our own ads we should just bleep out the names of these things it's on if you want to find out pay us 20 unlock this next thing oh wait that's a good idea um okay so my bad week is that i've just been dead tired for like a week and i don't know why is it your hormones it's probably my hormones but it's like every i feel like every year as soon as it starts to become like officially summer i get dehydrated and i get like these weird like fainting spells i don't know what it is but

it's like not that much hotter outside but like even just it's not even hotter at all there have been hotter days and i just get like automatically fatigued it's annoying imagine if you lived in somewhere that it actually summer fatigue like arizona well i've been hospitalized for dehydration before because are you drinking are you sure it wasn't drugs i drink a lot it wasn't drugs exhaustion like all the celebrities i saw an article about selena gomez and like and her and being like all these celebrities who like are so exhausted and they have to go to like facilities for it and i'm like that's not exhausting imagine having like a real job can we clear that exactly that's what i want to know okay if someone was willing to give me a

million dollars to go sing and dance on stage lip sing and dance sing and dance on stage like i'm sorry there's no complaining no crying in that baseball yeah okay kelty all right i'll complain bad week i'm on the airplane and i want to let everyone know i was flying jet blue mint Which is like the crappiest business class I like JetBlue Mint It's like the budget business class It's not a first class, it's a business class And it's budget

So this is what I hear Coming from the phone in front of me as we land Yo man No you were supposed to be there an hour and a half I wrote it down, I transcribed it You were supposed to be there half an hour ago For a 30 minute massage And now we're waiting an hour and a half for this massage

If you can be there in 10 minutes, it's fine just so you know i own the biggest social media company in the world so you're really screwing yourself and then he goes i'm gonna send 15 thugs down to the w right now and when that bitch gets done giving my girl her massage i'm gonna beat the shit out of her whoa wait so this guy was like he was on the plane yelling at someone obviously the masseuse did not show up and then here's the kicker he ends it with man i miss my g4 so much man oh my god first of all if you own the biggest anything in the world you're not flying on jet blue mint i'm gonna let everyone know that like i own nothing and i'm flying on jet blue mint and that's why he's like the

bow wow challenge did you ever see that yeah it's when bow wow took an instagram of him like flying like on a private jet and then like 10 minutes later somebody saw him and coach like on an airline they're like okay bow wow it was amazing that's amazing okay the next thing i'm gonna say um is my good week is that i found out about a really nice exercise for you to do with your friends at brunch at brunch it's called the compliment circle nope where you start that's a no for both it's where you start like your sit down your visit by giving everyone a compliment so i know you guys the real housewife no it sounds like something you do at cafe gratitude yeah so i'm gonna start no i'm not there i really like you as a producer and i really think you're

great thank you for always hanging up our background for the photos this is like a team building exercise jack i really think your aesthetic on instagram is impressive and i'm constantly inspired by your work ethic don't you feel good no becca yeah i'm scared i'm so happy that i love your house and i love your husband and i really appreciate your attention to detail on the finer things in life through you i've learned to really love jewelry and not to buy crap and not to fill my life with crap you've really taken me to a lux level i really quality and not quantity yeah exactly okay that's the end of the compliment circle okay we're done with that we don't have to do it do we you don't you can but you don't have to okay well next time on the

lady gang i'm gonna pass uh we're gonna get our hormones right you guys stay tuned lady gang your life hormone expert is gonna tell us why we're crazy okay what's going on now here's the lady gang all right everyone our lady gang your life series today we have a hormone health expert and founder of your hormone balance.com with over 30 years of experience in this field she is here to lady gang us all and figure out what is really going on with all of our crazy hormones some of the things we've experienced in our lives not just saying me but all of us lack of sex drive crazy birth control eating your hormones all away and much more so please welcome to the lady gang, lady guru, Candice Birch. Candice, we're so excited. Why are we crazy?

Holy hormones. First of all, one of the funniest questions when I posted that you were coming on in our Facebook group was how do you even become a hormone expert? Well, okay, that's, I'll try to make a long story short. I am, I have a master's degree in health education. And when I went into menopause, I was a crazy lady scaring my children. They're sitting over there. I just remember the day when I was having hot flashes every 20 minutes and a mood swing in between. And I remember screaming at Ryan. She was about three years old. Or was she five? I was a late mom. I had my kids at 36 and 41. So when Jesse became a teenager, in fact, the day she got her period, I turned 50. Wow. So we had menopause and teens and tweens. And I just realized one day I'm

scaring my children. Brian looked at me like, so I decided I need to get a handle on this. And I started reading up on hormones, because being a health educator, I'd always been into natural, natural, natural, nothing artificial, nothing synthetic, I knew I wasn't going to do HRT. So I started reading up about it and I realized and learned that there was such a thing as hormone imbalance. It's not just about menopause or premenopause or at any age you can have a hormonal imbalance that can make you crazy, lady. So I studied up and I approached one of the gurus in the field of hormones, a scientist named Dr. David Zava, who had started a hormone testing lab in Portland, Oregon, which is where I was living. And I called him up and I said, can I just sit at your knee and learn from you?

And he said, yeah, come on in. And I had a job as the director of education at this lab for the next 12, 15 years. that's all I did is look at hormone test results and talk to people. And there's a lot of other stuff in between, but that's how it happened. So how do you know the difference between you're just crazy and your hormones are crazy? You know, I'm not really convinced that anybody that's really losing it, you know, that's anxious or feeling out of sorts all the time is actually that that's who they are. As I often say, people become their symptoms. Yeah, you know, you're bitchy you're itchy you're tired all the time you're psycho sweaty all those things the

seven dwarves of menopause what is it itchy bitchy psycho sweaty sleepy um you know it's like me i know people but you know how people say well i'm i'm this or i'm that and i have always had belly fat or my family is always we're all overweight or none of us ever sleep or my mother has thyroid issues and so that must be me i can't lose weight i'm just moody all the time And that is not, I don't subscribe to that notion. I think that if you're feeling that way, it's not okay to say, that's just who I am. Because who are you driving crazy? The people in your life that you love the most, you know?

Who are we most impatient with? Right. Yeah. That's true. How do we get our hormones checked? Like, I've never been to a doctor ever that's like, let me test your hormones. Well, you know, I have to, this is interesting because it's an easy test. And the standard test is usually woman goes into doctor, she's having hot flashes, she's gaining

weight, she's over 50, and he gives her, he, she gives her a blood test. And they usually will test something called FSH, which is follicle stimulating hormone. That is the signal from the pituitary in the brain to the ovaries that says make hormone. And if that signal falls on deaf ears, the level of that number, that FSH will be high. And yet that tells you nothing about the individual hormone levels progesterone estrogen testosterone dhea your cortisol stress hormones what are they doing yeah are they up are they down and to what extent are they up and to what extent are they down so uh the standard blood test though it's very common and is old school to do that doesn't tell women anything which is why women are always saying but well you know the

biggest question i get is why didn't my doctor mention that there's a saliva test that has now become very common and known you get the kit collect your hormones over the course of one day if you're younger you're going to collect during particular days of your cycle okay because you want to capture hormones when they're surging but it's a simple test you test four times in one day because we also like to test cortisol stress hormones and you need to know what your morning noon evening bedtime levels are so you can't do that in a blood test you can't stick yourself with the needle and expect to see what your stress hormones are because they're going to go out of the box so saliva being non-invasive the other thing to say about saliva is that it is

measuring hormones that have left the bloodstream because there's always that two to four percent that's leaving the bloodstream that's becoming active in the tissues of the body always we're all like we had no idea about that i did not know that every cell has like a receptor site they call them the receptor sites for hormones so think of the hormone as a key and the receptor on a cell is the lock hormone goes unlocks the cell goes in starts flipping master switches to control everything our emotions our moods our memory our sex drive our weight all of it so women are pretty much with the hidden hormone imbalance they are pretty much hardwired to be overeating or to have low levels of you know interest in attractive partner

so would you go to your gyno to get that test or would you just go to like a regular doctor who's the person? Well, I would recommend the IFM, Institute of Functional Medicine, is where all the doctors live and who study this stuff. Functional medicine is all about what's the cause of this and not just the symptoms. And functional medicine doctors are doing this more and more. People like me, I provide counseling and testing. What I like to do is provide the kit and a consult because I don't want you getting a test result back and not understanding what it means so it's better to work with someone like i'm a hormone health educator there are doctors but i have to say ob-gyns are like hen's teeth for there are very few of them that are on to this yet

rightfully there you know we're trying to educate them that's my role yeah trying to make a change so people are saying um a lot of girls that wrote unto us are saying you know their pms is so strong it ruins their life is this a hormone thing of the pass me the shotgun yeah exactly yeah like the it's just like listen there's there's bad moods and then there's the kind of pms that you want to like leave your husband and yes quit your job actually i was just talking to a gal the other day who said i love my my boyfriend i'm madly in love with him but some days i just want to claw his eyes out and poor him he doesn't know why but interestingly pms has about 150 different symptoms and one of the first and they're all these things we're talking about but there's a

long long list um but one of the very first experts in the field started by in in the hormone balance let's balance your hormones there's such a thing as an imbalance was a gal named katarina dalton out of the uk who studied pms because it was so ruins people's lives it's so severe and she found that there were some very significant hormonal imbalances in most women that had pms especially severe pms you're talking about high estrogen levels relative to low progesterone levels so that's one very very prominent hormone imbalance that we can that's hidden it's silent you're not going to know you're going to think i'm just you know i'm just i'm pmsing all over the place and have no control but when you get your hormones tested and you see

these levels you you know it's like it's a revelation so what's the fix then you know if you get tested and you're all over the map do you take a synthetic do you eat different what is okay no you do not okay well tell us tell us what to do so this is so you remember hrt yeah hormone replacement therapy is that what suzanne summers does i think no no actually suzanne gets credit for putting bioidenticals on the bioidenticals are you doing that no someone i know is doing that right now anyway okay so bioidentical means hormones that are made from plants and they are made to be identical in structure and function to the hormones our own bodies make so these are far more preferable than the good old hrt synthetic big pharma stuff where it's the same molecule the

same dose everybody got the same thing no matter you me all of us the woman down the street we all got the same dose that doesn't work anymore one size fits all it's not where it's at you have to be tested you have to determine the extent you know first you start with symptoms then you know we're trying to raise awareness on this podcast today about symptoms of what we're talking about are symptoms these are not things you have to accept and you know transform yourself into this person. These are things that are actually hallmark signs of an imbalance that you can test for, find out the extent to which you're out of balance, and then take action. And the action is holistic. It may involve hormones, but it's going to involve bioidentical hormones. If it's

a woman who's had a hysterectomy, she's going to need a full complement because she's had her ovaries and her uterus removed. If it's somebody like you gals who are in your 30s, you may need touch of progesterone a natural over-the-counter hormone you use a speck of it at night and it helps you sleep and it helps you lose weight and it balances estrogen that sounds real good can we put our ivy in um i do want to give a shout out to one of our lady gang members you've already answered this but i love the question so much all in caps how do i control my pms roller coaster of sadness i'm only 17 and i'm out of control with three l's um let's talk about natural ways to produce serotonin for depression. I know that when the hormones are

off, the serotonin can be off. Is that true? How do we not be sad? Well, I mean, this is a question for you, Kelsey. Yes, she wrote this. You know, our lady can remember me sad. Actually, 5-HTP is the precursor of serotonin. So 5-HTP is an amino acid. First, it breaks down into melatonin into serotonin, and then it goes to melatonin. So usually, you'll get a burst of serotonin. And then you can, you know, as nighttime comes on, and darkness creeps up, the melatonin will kick in, it'll help you sleep. So the whole thing is about calming, etc. But serotonin depletion is also tied to hormonal imbalances of estrogen and progesterone. So, you know, it's kind of like, let's go back people who, for instance, say, I'm, I never had a weight

problem. Suddenly I have all this belly fat. I'm gaining weight. It's got to be a thyroid issue. So they go to the doctor and they get a thyroid prescription without ever having tested the fundamental levels of these hormones I'm talking about. And not only testing the levels, but testing is there an imbalance between these levels? And so that's what you want to do first. You want to know before you start worrying about taking 5-HTP to make serotonin, you want to get to the fundamental. What's going on? All right. So our listeners range from, you know, 15 year olds to 65 year olds, but the core of our group, we need birth control. So we need to be doing something. And so the options out there for us are shitty foam or birth control pills, um, or

UTIs. And so IUDs, IUDs. I don't have one. You're right. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. And so people, you know, really just want one of the girls wrote in, you know, are the hormones in my IUD making me crazy? I've been so emotional since I got on it five years ago. My gyno says the hormone level is low, but I still feel crazy. I know earlier in the year, Jack was talking about, she went on a birth control pill. She like lost her mind. She went off it. What do we do? What is the secret to, you know, being safe, not having a child and using birth control, but not messing with our bodies too much? This is a vexed question. It's impossible, right? It is impossible. I have my two daughters sitting here. Okay, so first of all, if you are sexually active,

and you need to be on contraception, that's one thing. There are women out there in their 40s and 50s who are not sexually active who are using contraception because once they were put on it for irregular periods or acne. There are plenty of younger women using it for that reason. So first of all, that's a no-go because, yes, birth control, how does it work? It works by disrupting ovulation. You disrupt your ovulation, shut down your ovaries, and you're not making any hormone.

So that is a real problem. And then you're going to have all the symptoms of a menopausal woman. You're going to be low in estrogen and progesterone. You're going to have an imbalance of those. You may be low in testosterone. we don't know to what extent testing is the only way we can tell that your stress hormones may take over and overwhelm the whole shot i always talk about these hormones are like you know remember synchronized swimmers so if one swam off in another direction another dove to the bottom

of the pool and another one splashing all around what's going on we're out of sync we're out of balance so that's what how birth control works the key is to find a birth control method that is as low in hormone as possible. I prefer the, you know, I often suggest, first of all, talk to your doctor, find out what is the lowest possible dose of hormone. And that's, you know, that's the only way to go. And then there's also the best I think is to get an IUD if you can tolerate it, the copper Paragard, which is non-hormonal. And some women are fine with it. And that's really going to be the best thing because the copper is making the uterus It's uninhabitable for a pregnancy, but it's not messing with your hormones.

But is it horrible? Like, it's painful, right? Well, it's made my periods, like, atrocious. I have the worst cramps in the entire world. And for, like, the past two months, I've been, like, bleeding. Okay, so what's interesting is that I like my IUD, and it's the localized. Do you have the Skyla? Mm-hmm.

I think that's the lowest amount of hormones in an IUD, other than the copper. I stopped getting my period. I mean, I stopped bleeding every month, which I, like, feel weird about. I feel weird about that. Is that a good, like, as far as, yeah, I'm like, well, I mean, you know, people can have a period and not have ovulated anyway. You know, we often have periods and don't ovulate depending on the amount of stress in our lives.

Younger women often don't ovulate, especially people who are into an extreme, extreme exercise who are like spin cycling all the time, who don't, vegans who don't get enough protein, people who don't sleep enough, they may not ovulate anyway. and the iud can be a problem for some people but like what you're talking about heavy periods what you can do is use a little bit of progesterone natural progesterone so that help with the period yeah to help you know to help because progesterone's job is to balance estrogen you know estrogen is that that hormone in the first half of the cycle that is making everything it makes cells multiply grow and divide so it's growing the egg in the ovary and it's thickening

the lining of the uterus, the blood rich lining. Then when you ovulate, progesterone is produced. That's an issue. If you don't ovulate, you don't make any progesterone and there's no check and balance on that estrogen level. So you keep building, building, building. Your bloody layer is too big. Right. Too big. Way too big. I'm like, I don't know how I'm still alive with blood so much. Everything to do with these problems, heavy periods, painful periods, endometriosis, fibroids, uterine fibroids, fibrocystic breasts, all that lumpy, heavy bloody clots, all of it is

estrogen, estrogen, estrogen and down the road we're talking breast cancer, it's all about growth so progesterone is the hormone that checks that, progesterone is the great balancer, it calms everything down when we ovulate it says

estrogen you've done enough, thickening we don't need you anymore, we're going to now make the nest ready for a possible pregnancy we're going to feather the nest and differentiate the tissue here, calm everything down. And then if there isn't an impregnation, then progesterone drops, and that's the shedding, the signal to shed the lining. And so without progesterone on board, this estrogen just keeps thickening, thickening, thickening, and you can have the heavy painful periods. So that is an advantage of being on a non-hormonal IUD. You can use a little progesterone.

You can also, and I worked with many, many experts over the years, some of the experts in the field, because I've been in this for 15 years, and this is the revolution. And many of them, many of the experts and doctors don't think it's a problem to use a little bit of natural progesterone along with birth control. It's not going to cause you to become pregnant, but it's going to alleviate many of the side effects of the birth control pill. And when you say that, is that a prescription we get? Is that something we can get at the Whole Foods?

I mean, where are we picking up the progesterone for Jack's uterus? I know. Where am I going after this? The progesterone is, you know, Dr. John Lee was the guru of progesterone. He's the one that studied with Katerina Dalton over in the UK. His institute has a progesterol, which is one of the highest grade natural. I actually can provide that to people. At your site? At my site.

I don't have it up there now, but once we talk, if you need it. So we're talking after this. The bioidentical thing, by the way, is not just about hormones. It's about when you use the hormone, you're using it in only the amount. We're talking Goldilocks dose, not too much, not too little, just right. We are mimicking biology. We're mimicking physiology, and we're using plant-based stuff. But progesterone can also be bought at any health food store.

It's over the counter. It's so benign. And if you use it a little bit at night, like I'm talking a pea-sized bit that you rub in to different parts of the body, And when you still have your cycles, you rub it in on certain days because we're trying to mimic physiology. So you're using progesterone on days 12 to 24 of the cycle when you would have made it normally. So let's say, gals your age, you should be making the right amount. But the abundance of stress in our lives, not eating at the right hours and days. I mean, my daughter Jess is a health coach.

She deals with a lot of gals who don't eat. They don't have time to eat. And they don't realize that's what's causing the belly fat. The body's holding on to this fat. It's stress fat. The body's saying, my God, we're having a crisis here. We're not eating. It's famine time.

So we're going to hang on to whatever we've got. So people aren't eating right. There's all these different issues. And, you know, this is where you can calm it all down. Wait, so sorry. Are the hormones in like a cream form? They're not pills that you're taking? Progesterone is always best in a cream form because it is what they call lipophilic.

You rub it into the skin, it goes into the fat cells where it then steady state releases. So it's kind of nice. It takes up residence in the fat cells and it gives you this nice steady dose, which is also mimicking physiology. You know, when you take something in a pill, it has to go through what they call the first pass effect. So it has to go through the gut. It has to go through the liver. By the time you get what you need, you're down to, you know, you've had to take a wallop just to get, hopefully, get enough. wow right so and some things are you know with some people uh progesterone can be definitely

prescribed especially women who've had a hysterectomy let's say or in menopause they may need a combination prescription of estradiol which is the natural form with a little estriol which is a weaker estrogen with some progesterone and maybe even a little testosterone all in a cream but when you're younger you may just need a tiny amount of a cream that it it's all about absorption. Okay. Will that help with, so I'm somebody who my pre PMS symptoms, like physical symptoms are so extreme. Like my boobs hurt for two straight weeks. Classic sign of estrogen dominance. So I need to be doing, cause someone gave me, um, a pill called Estro clear and that worked wonders. Cause it was like, I obviously had like an overload of estrogen and that was

causing like the bloating and the boobs and the soreness and whatever but instead of that because i was weirded out by that because i'm probably going to try to have babies in the next you know couple years and i didn't want to be messing with my estrogen like that because i just didn't know you know long-term effects so you're saying it's more helpful to do progesterone to balance it that let's make it let me be clear i don't like to suggest you do any kind of hormone natural or not without testing okay right so you want to establish that because testing is this is this is what i mean put me on the soapbox but this is what i find such a scandal over the last 45 years women have been on hrt they were never tested this one level i was telling you about fsh nobody

tested all their individual levels and then put them on a hormone same dose for the next 30 years and wave them goodbye yeah now we're moving into a place where yes you're telling me about a hallmark symptom tender breasts so so tender if someone hugs you too hard oh yeah it's right worst yeah so a fear of hugging that's a sign that's a sign of hormone imbalance so much about back in these times i hate people it's all the hormones some of the girls wanted to know about PCOS, which is polycystic ovarian syndrome. They said traditional medicine has just been

put you on the pill. What happens if you want to get pregnant? What are your thoughts on that? And by the way, I'm finding this fascinating, so thank you for being here. Well, I'm happy to be here. It's amazing. It's about sharing this information. People that have PCOS

generally have symptoms of excess androgens, androgen hormones. Andro means male so men and women all have the same hormones we just have them in differing amounts okay so dhea and testosterone are androgens because men have heavier muscles heavier bones hairier bodies deeper voice all that stuff we hope okay yeah we hope not all the time but but some some women if they if what happens is that they're they have an imbalance of estrogen and progesterone And they are making more testosterone than the other hormones we're talking about.

And by the way, how do we know this? We've got to test to find out. But the symptoms are going to be excess facial hair, maybe excess body hair, lots of breakouts, acne, cystic acne. Long term down the road is infertility. But in the meantime, irregular periods, painful periods, because what's happening in the ovaries is that the egg isn't, that nice little egg isn't growing. what it's doing is branching off into all these cysts within the ovary that are making more testosterone. So this kind of thing is not necessarily caused by use of the pill, and they put people on the pill to try to handle it, but it doesn't really handle the situation. It

just exacerbates all the other stuff, the estrogen dominance, the lack of progesterone. It's not going to fix the problem. And another issue about PCOS that everybody needs to be aware of is that that most gals that have PCOS, unless it was genetic, which is the rarer case, it's generally caused by an excess of sweets, pastries, you know, the whites, white flour. Everything delicious is what you're saying? All the stuff that turns into high sugar, high insulin, because this is interesting. When, you know, insulin raises in the body when you're eating a lot of sugar, right? You need insulin to take that sugar and do something with it.

Well, if the cells are maxed out and they can't take anymore, sorry we got plenty of sugar and you're not exercising door is shut put it somewhere else the the body will do today it'll store it in the fat cells in the abdomen and it and the insulin will also cause the ovaries to overproduce testosterone so you are actually churning out if you're insulin resistant and sugar is not being funneled properly and insulin stays high ovaries will actually churn out more of this testosterone wow so it just gets worse and worse So one of the big things, so that's not talking hormones, that's talking about let's find out what imbalance you have and let's change the way you're eating, numero uno.

Which sounds no fun at all. The sweets are so good. People do want to talk about weight loss and hormones. So, you know, obviously when you're going through menopause, women, you know, they see this like giant weight gain during this. But let's talk about like, for us, if we're, you know, our listeners are like, I'm doing everything right i'm eating right i'm exercising and it's still not happening for me what could be the problem it's probably your hormones and in fact i've just put together um a new package

that is a weight management kit okay consult because there are key hormones that are very very linked to weight gain in fact if you have estrogen dominance and um if your testosterone is out of whack and your dhea is low and your cortisol hormones are high or not following the normal uh pattern which should be highest in the morning and take a high night cortisol high stress hormones at night you are going to be hardwired to be overeating and to be hungry all the time you are going to be putting fat on in the abdomen if your estrogen is high you're going to be putting weight on in the hips the waist the the the even the breasts you've heard of male the moob the moobs the moob wait did you know about moobs no but we need it

that's estrogen dominance in overweight men wow putting putting you know so there's a huge connection in fact um my daughters and i both uh we worked in a weight and national weight management um centers uh for several years working with women that were trying to lose weight and we had them all test their hormones and every single one of them had major hormonal imbalances and once they got a handle on it they were able to lose the weight the key here is yeah you can lose weight but you're going to gain it back right it's going to come back and you're going to wonder why the heck am i gaining weight i just was doing everything right i'm like you said i'm eating right i'm exercising wow that can be the issue okay last topic we really want to cover we have

lot of mommies in our group and there was a couple different things about um the hormonal links to postpartum what you can do to like sort of help yourself after giving birth to kind of get those hormones back up or what actually happens and then um people after they finish breastfeeding are like feeling that drop out too and being really emotional so they just kind of wanted to know um can you walk us through like you're pregnant first hormones then like you've just given birth and then you're breastfeeding like walk us through what we need to look out for so when you're pregnant that was the worst question of all time no i read like six questions at one time yeah thanks a lot it's all inclusive so pregnancy and hormones so pregnancy and hormones

so interestingly there is a 39.8 percent frequency of miscarriage among women that are low in progesterone. So this is a major reason for miscarriage. And it's sad that more people don't know about it. But progesterone is also absolutely necessary for maintaining a pregnancy in utero. So lack of progesterone, number one, when you're pregnant successfully, you know, when you're trying to get pregnant, they will give you natural progesterone at fertility clinics to help you get pregnant. When you're trying to get your periods back after years of being on birth control, you have to load with progesterone to get your cycles back on when you're pregnant successfully you are that that baby is swimming in a sea of estrogens and progesterone so you are you are

full you are that you know in those last few months when women are just radiant and feeling great that's all about you know you're just hormones hormones it's all about hormones you don't ever run into a pregnant woman that gets breast cancer generally we're because our hormones are balanced and it's a lovely suffusion of hormones. It's a lovely time with swollen ankles. It's a lovely time of balance. But when you give birth, you then lose

all that hormone. The progesterone, the placenta is loaded with progesterone. So when you give birth and you lose the placenta, you are now devoid. You are bereft of all those lovely hormones that you had and now the contrast can be pretty

serious postpartum depression. And that's another thing that we, and that's, I'm glad you raise that question because it's you know between miscarriage and postpartum depression women not knowing that how important to have the balance of hormones right at this point in time is huge i remember do you remember that woman andrea brady i think her name was she drowned her five children yeah yeah and i remember when that happened i remember my um mentor this dr zava walking out of his office and saying if that woman had been on progesterone this wouldn't have happened oh my god that's about and he's done research and studies and was you know i mean

it was just tragic so so yeah um putting a bit of the hormone back on board and progesterone's the first one i hate to make it sound like it's a panacea and again testing can be good but although testing right after your pregnancy isn't gonna isn't gonna be spot on because your hormones are still readjusting but in a few months when you've got your cycles back to some degree is a good time to test. And I don't think using hormone while breastfeeding is a good idea. It's not really recommended, but you can use a bit of it. I think you can use less. That's a good question. I actually need to look into exactly how much you can use. Okay. And what about the people who say, you know, they're feeling the hormonal changes while they're pregnant? Like you were saying on

the last few months, like everything's balanced and you feel great. What if you're not feeling right what if you're really emotional and moody and oh she's pregnant oh you mean before before you know if you're pregnant no this one of one of our listeners she's just pregnant yeah can we talk about the crazy hormonal changes that happen during pregnancy i'm pregnant right now and i feel like a different person well she probably does need some progesterone because she probably doesn't have enough i mean that woman may be at risk of miscarriage even if she's feeling all those signs and symptoms of hormonal imbalance. Yeah, that could be an issue.

All right. Or exposure to, this is another topic, exposure to xenoestrogens, the kind of toxic estrogens in the environment. In our milks. In the milk. There are 11 different kinds of synthetic estrogen in milk. Think about the meat and the chicken that are shot up with growth hormone. That's all estrogen.

If people aren't aware of taking that out of their eating habits, that's that's a big exposure goodie do you have anything any last questions i don't think so no but i'm like oh the placenta the people who put it in pill form is that the the reason because they're kind of putting putting it back into their bodies gradually does that really help with postpartum eating the placenta after i thought that's what you might be saying yeah you know i'm not i'm not sure and if the placenta is actually loaded with a viable right form of progesterone at this point in time so not sure that's just a hoax in theory well we need to interview some of those women that have eaten a placenta and see how they feel

yeah there we go so just to sum up before we move on to ask the lady gang you know go get tested go to your site get the kit so you can get a test well you can get the kit from your site is that where they get it from we have a lovely little write-up here you can go to my website yourhormonebalance.com to find the different packages that i offer including the most popular packages this hormone weight management kit is really there's a lot of demand for that okay and then there's a consult always and i have different gradations of this I have follow-up consults, and with this package with the weight, we have a consult with the health coach as well. Smart.

But people who go to my website can take the Holy Hormones symptom quiz. So that's the first step. Taking the symptom quiz, you want to identify if you've got the symptoms of a hidden hormonal imbalance. Yeah. And then when people do that, I'll send them a special offer to put towards the test kit. Great. Especially for your listeners. Thank you.

say ladies gang and we'll, we'll do amazing. Oh, we're going to have awesome. Guess what? You're going to be busy. We're crazy. I know. I'm so excited. Um, it's so interesting. Please tell us the next time you're in California, you'll come back because I think we have about like I have 5 million more questions. We just don't have time. Um, and thank you for being here and being so smart and educated. Cause I learned things and I've had a vagina for 35 years. I hope you continue to have it. I know I was about to get my IUD taken now And I'm like, well, maybe I can kind of salvage your life. We'll talk.

Yeah. Okay. Help me. All right. When we come back, ask the lady gang. Hey, ladies, get funky. Ask the lady gang. And we're back.

Thanks for having me. Oh, no, you're still here. No, you're still here. Come back. Oh, I'm still here. Don't leave just yet. You're staying. Before we start, ask the lady gang.

If you guys want 20% off jackvanek.com, use code ladygang. And actually, I made a new code. if you guys have already used lady gang use code ladies first for 30 percent off wow i know you guys i'm so good okay so for ask the lady gang our listeners writing questions and we try to give them somewhat decent sort of good advice but i think you're going to be really great with this first question especially because it's what we've been talking about yep so our first question comes from faith and faith says when i met my husband i weighed 138 pounds and i looked good i have curves i always have and i always will but i gained way too much weight during my pregnancy that went on

a crazy diet before i got married and lost 27 pounds in five weeks after i stopped this diet i gained all this weight and then some back and got into a very bad funk with all this extreme up and down do you know of any good diets that are the real deal i've tried meal replacement programs shakes and even cool sculpting i need advice health or liposuction okay or liposuction So at the risk of repeating myself, the key words in there were gained it all back. Right. So that's hallmark sign of a hidden hormonal imbalance, probably an imbalance of estrogen, progesterone.

The other words to note there are diets, diets, diets. My daughter's sitting over there, Jess, who's an IIN graduate, Institute of Integrative Nutrition, is it? Doesn't use the word diet. It's not about diets. It's a bad word. It's eating plan. it's eating properly you know what it boils down to stabilizing blood sugars being sure i have met

so many people i was just interviewed by a gal that writes for the daily telegraph and she's wondering why she can't lose weight and as as we drilled down to her eating habits she has coffee in the morning and then eats something at two o'clock in the afternoon doesn't eat that whole time so and and her deal was i want to stay thin i want to lose weight so she doesn't eat so these diets, whatever they are, they are calorie restricting, and that they send a signal to the body stress, stress, survival mechanism, hold on to the very fat you are trying to lose. And you know, postpartum post pregnancy, you know, imbalances can take hold, because now you've got a baby. I remember when I had my first child, I it's like, when do I get to go to the bathroom

here? Right? You know, it's just there's no time. So you add stress on to that. So I think knowing the extent to which the hormones are out of whack, and then taking proper steps to rebalance. And it's not just about hormones. It may be using a little hormone. It's about supplements, good whole vitamins and herbs and tinctures and eating properly, going green, eating grass fed beef, going off hormones in your food, avoiding hormones in your shampoo your shower curtain and you're never plastic you're never microwaving in plastic i mean it's a constellation when i send people an action plan it's got all of that in there

oh my god there's so much god thank god i don't have a shower curtain i do i bet it has hormones in it that's why your vagina bleeds for two months straight damn shower so much estrogen in your shower curtain it's cute too okay damn it our second question comes from laura Laura says, what's your advice on combining finances after marriage? Do you combine everything just a little bit or keep everything separate? Help an almost married lady out. What did you do, Becca? What did we do?

Our newlywed. Hmm. We combined. Everything. Yeah. I mean, well, like, in acting, you, like, I am a, like, I have a corporation, and so that's separate, because that's sort of, like, my business, but otherwise, everything else is combined.

So like if you buy him a Christmas present, he can see how much you spent. Yeah. I mean, I have one credit card for those sorts of things, like just my own personal. And I think that that's always a good idea is like keeping a Botox credit card, my Botox credit card or present credit card. So he has no idea. Yeah. Like I have that, but you know, I, I come from like a really old school, you know, and

we both work. So it's like, you know, we're both working. So there's no reason to put anybody on an allowance or like tit for tat keeping score. I think that sort of gets in like a little danger zone. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think having your own, you know, part of this whole thing is taking this is self-care. This is self-directed health and well-being and lifestyle and having, you know, the ability to make your own decisions about spending.

And what husband is going to understand why you have to buy progesterone or, you know, a good one? Yeah, a good one that wants you to be happy. Ralph's right here for three dollars. Right. Or why you're ripping the no more shower curtain. Right. I had to redo the bathroom with a glass shower. Why we are no longer you are no longer. Interestingly, I remember I do consult with men, too. And there was one guy who was doing so well on his hormones, but his estrogens kept being really high.

turns out he's a milk freak he's drinking seven glasses of milk a day milk freak is so gross so he doesn't get to be he so so what husband's gonna understand that we don't get to buy that kind of milk anymore right so because you're a milk freak jesus there are there are so many men that are just they're still drinking i feel like milk is so like gross old-fashioned yeah people still drink milk isn't that like smoking on an airplane drinking milk is like the same if you're on a date like someone's like at dinner they're like i'll have a glass of milk i'm like and goodbye sounds like something that would happen to me definitely i think that's your next podcast yes milk man the milk man what were you gonna say

wait i i forgot to ask about if you have if you're feeling like you have a low libido what is that oh we didn't even i skipped it i'm so sorry it's very important okay we can talk about that instead of what's usually the the cause okay so this is very interesting what i'm seeing in a lot of younger women is high stress hormones high cortisol levels in the especially evening and bedtime that's not good does that um that has does that make you gain weight too or hard to lose weight that's when you go on instagram you realize you don't have any followers or likes and you get sad and stressed right before you go to bed right before you go to bed if you're healthy so so high cortisol hormones actually deplete testosterone so you have to think of hormones as seesaw the

seesaw effect with imbalances you get one that's way out of x out of whack and the other one goes slamming down you're slammed to the ground so high stress hormones are going to deplete testosterone over exercise sorry excuse me does testosterone is the thing that makes you horny yeah sorry but stress takes away the sex stress takes away this yeah you could say that and and testosterone also is it's not just about libido it's also about stamina and but so that's all about libido too actually it is isn't it because testosterone is drive um it's endurance stamina strength because testosterone is all about the strength of your bones and muscles it's about you know how how your body wears fat where your curves are where you know so if you're feeling

unattractive because you're gaining weight and you're instead of having lean muscle you've got fat that is rushed in to replace it that's a sign of low testosterone that may have been lowered by a high stress stress hormone so now you got belly fat and you've got you know flying squirrels for arms and you don't feel very attractive there's all the body image right besides the fact that you know you may not have enough testosterone to actually fuel the the libido so that's pretty serious i'm seeing a lot of young women a lot of young women who are saying i'm crazy about my husband but yeah you know so do i just take testosterone what do you take no you get tested kelty you do not test out you know if you had had a hysterectomy and you're never that's one

way you might consider but for people to just go straight to the testosterone is is a big mistake yeah there are many different ways to raise testosterone levels and one of the first and most important ways is to reduce stress hormones and to take up some strength training but not at night before bed. There's so many of these gals I'm talking to that are spin cycling like crazy people two and three times a day and sometimes in the evenings. That's going to raise

your cortisol level way high and drop the testosterone. So there are a lot of things going on. Again, back to what are the imbalances and to what extent are they out of balance? So basically Elle Woods was right. Exercise gives you endorphins. Happy people don't kill their

husbands. Well, exercise gives you endorphins, but too much exercise actually gives you stress or exercise belly fat and a low libido. So that's why, you know, that's, that's, that's a bad bit. So I say to people, just do your straight, just do your spin cycling earlier in the day, spin cycling. What do you call it? Spinning, but you're so cute. I like spin cycling. It's like the dryer, right? Candice, we can't not thank you enough for being here. So everyone, please go on over to your hormone balance dot com all of her

information is there her packages how to get a consultation how to get a test you can take the quiz which if you're listening you're crazy so you definitely have a hormone they're already taking the quiz right now yeah people are taking the quiz you've already let us know how it goes yeah let us know how it goes and thank you for being here

I learned a lot I know my girls did too and happy hormones everyone yay thanks so much hope it makes sense see you next Tuesday Join the Lady Gang every Tuesday at iTunes and at PodcastOne.com. That's PodcastONE.com. Thanks for listening.