Realfoodology - 61: Everything You Need to Know About Women’s Hormones with Candace Burch

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Candace Burch, M.A., is a Hormone Health Educator and founder of Your Hormone Balance, with over 25 years experience in the field. She helps people of all ages detect hormone imbalances that wreak havoc on their quality of life, longevity and sense of self, and teach them HOW to get back in balance using natural rebalancing techniques.  We talk all about women’s hormones: what hormonal imbalance looks like, what balance looks like, how to get your balance back after birth control, PCOS, estrogen and breast cancer, the implications of overeating and under eating, lifestyle and diet changes for optimal hormone balance and so much more! Show Links: https://www.yourhormonebalance.com/ - CODE : REALFOODOLOGY for $50 off  https://www.instagram.com/yourhormonebalance/ Books:Womancode :https://amzn.to/3EZMlScBeyond the Pill: https://amzn.to/3ufV8ug Supplements she and I mentioned: Chaste Berry (Vitex), Glutathione, Calcium, d Glucurate, DIM

On today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. But breast cancers are looming down the road after years of hormonal imbalance. These are major disease risks that we have to be aware of. Diabetes, insulin resistance, breast cancers, endometriosis, fibroids, all the things that plague us are offshoots or results of an unaddressed, unresolved, undetected hormonal imbalance. Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. I am your host, Courtney Swan. I am the creator behind Real Foodology, which is of course this podcast. It's also an Instagram and it started out as a website 10 years ago. Today's episode is all about women's hormones. This is one of my favorite topics to

talk about. I've actually had a few other amazing experts on the podcast talking about this as well, because I think it's such an important conversation. I think finally the conversations are starting to come around and we're really starting to understand the importance of our hormones, but for a really long time, they were super misunderstood. And I, I feel like really minimized just to conversation around women's cycle, but actually hormones play so many important roles in our body. And men also have hormones, which I mean, hopefully by now, you know that, but it just kind of seems like often that is left out of the conversation. Um, hormones are so much more than just women having PMS and periods. They truly control like every function in our body. So I brought on Candice

Birch today, who is a hormone health educator, and she's the founder of Your Hormone Balance. She has over 25 years of experience in the field, and she helps people of all ages detect hormone imbalances that wreak havoc on their quality of life, their longevity, sense of self, and she teaches people how to get back in balance using natural rebalancing techniques. We cover so much. We talk about hormonal imbalance and what it looks like, what balance looks like, how to get your hormones in balance back after birth control, PCOS, estrogen, and breast cancer, the implications of overeating, also undereating, lifestyle and diet changes for optimal hormone

balance, and so much more. Before we dive into the episode, I want to take a moment to address this. So we do talk about vegan and vegetarian diets pretty briefly. And Candice made a comment that many people are now going vegan and vegetarian for environmental reasons. And I do want to encourage you all to listen to some of the earlier podcast episodes that I have with Anya Fernald of Belcampo, as well as my episode with Rodale Institute. There's a lot of propaganda going around right now saying that the only way that we're going to get out of this climate change or this climate crisis is by going vegan and vegetarian. And this is actually a lot of propaganda that is being paid for by these large companies that want to sell us more fake meat.

I am not arguing that every human could do better on eating a little bit less meat, but the problem that I have with this narrative and this propaganda that's going around is that what really is going to help our climate crisis the most is if we focus on regenerative farming and with regenerative farming, you need cows, you need animals. And this is a really important part of the conversation that's being left out. I also highly recommend you checking out the documentary Kiss the Ground. I also brought both the founders of Kiss the Ground on my podcast. So you can listen to those episodes as well. And we really dive into why going vegan and vegetarian just simply for environmental reasons is actually not really, it's not the solution.

What the solution is, is regenerative farming, which means that in this process, we are capturing carbon from the atmosphere and bringing it back down into the soil. So not only are we reducing our carbon impact, but we are actually reversing it. It felt very important for me to mention that because I know a lot of people are going vegan and vegetarian right now because they think that it's going to help our climate crisis. And unfortunately, that is not the whole story. However, that all being said, I want this podcast to be an inclusive podcast. So if you're listening and you are vegetarian or you're vegan and it's working well for your body, I fully respect that. And I fully support you. I believe that everyone needs to find what works

best for them. No matter what any expert is saying, you can listen to me. You can listen to any of the experts on this podcast. You can listen to doctors and nutritionists and dietitians, but ultimately at the end of the day, you're going to have to take whatever works best for you and then leave the rest behind. All I'm trying to do with this podcast is to provide you with resources and information so that you can be well-educated and therefore make well-informed choices that are best for you and your body and your health. I wanted to clear that up because I have a hard time with this conversation when I hear people saying, oh, you have to go vegan and vegetarian to save our world and reduce the climate crisis and our carbon footprint. But this just isn't true. And if that's the only

reason that you're going vegetarian or vegan, then I would highly recommend again, checking out Kiss the Ground and buying organic grass fed meat from a regenerative farm, because that is going to have much more of an impact. Of course, if someone is vegan or vegetarian for moral reasons, for ethical reasons, for, um, for the animals, I will never argue someone on that. I am in full support of that. I think it's a very worthy cause and very respectful. So now that I have said my piece, let's get into the episode with Candace. It's a great one, guys. I can't wait for you to hear it. Do you want to hear the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging? Of course you do because all of us are concerned about aging. There is a class of ingredients called senolytics

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well. And I more recently replaced all of the bowls and plates in my kitchen because I really needed an upgrade. My other ones were so old. So I got some from our place and they are so beautiful. The ceramics are beautiful. The colors are amazing. Like I said, everything is like a piece of art. If you want to try any of the products from our place, go to from our place.com and enter my code real foodology checkout to receive 10% off sitewide. That's from our place.com code real foodology. Our place offers a 100 day trial with free shipping and returns. Yay. Okay. I'm so glad that we got this to work out because Candace, I'm so excited to have you on today. I want to dive into all hormones specifically for women. And before we do that, can you just give my audience a little bit of background on you and

what you do? Well, I'll try to keep a little, there's a lot and a little, and thank you for having me, Courtney. This is fun. I'm glad you and my daughter are friends and that you connected so that you could get me on here to talk hormones because there's nothing, nothing more exciting or important. I mean, it's pretty fundamental. and have been a journalist and a speaker writer for a long time on the whole thing about how do we stay healthy? How do we prevent disease? And when I got into my perimenopause, I was in my late forties. And that's pretty much when women can expect to see lots of changes and symptoms and things going on that make them feel less like themselves. And I was very much, or maybe I was, I was less like myself or more like somebody else, but I was

really moody, was having mood swings every 20 minutes and a hot flash in between. And at one point, my daughter, Ryan, who was probably five at that time, and I was a late starting mom, just looked at me with tears in her eyes and I could tell she was afraid of me. So, you know, the Jekyll and Hyde mood swings of perimenopause, if you're an older mom, can really be devastating on your kids and your family. So I, being a health educator, I thought, okay, this is about hormones. I've got to address this. And I, this was back in, I mean, this is some years ago, 20 years ago now. So you can guess my age, but I was, yeah, I was in my late forties and I started reading. The first book I read was Dr. John Lee's, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause. And I just learned

in reading that book, and it's a good book for everyone to read. And if you're younger, he's got one out called What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Pre-Menopause. But I started reading that and the tears were going down my cheeks. Oh my God, he's speaking to me. And I decided to obviously get my hormones tested, not realizing before that, that there was such a thing as a hormone imbalance that you could test for easily and find out to what extent your hormones are wobbly or, or spiking and dipping and all of that. So I did that. And I had several declining, fluctuating hormone levels that I took action to rebalance.

And we can talk about that as we go. But the upshot of it all was that I became intensely interested in hormones and decided to specialize in that part of health education and wellness. So I wrote to Dr. Lee and asked him if he would take me on. I said, I'm a health educator. I'm in menopause. I'm having hot flashes and I'm scaring everyone. And can I come and study with you and learn at your knee? And he wrote back, well, I'm retiring, but there's a great lab in Portland, Oregon, near where you live that is run by my co-author, Dr. David Zava, who's a biochemist and a cancer

researcher. Why don't you talk to him? So literally, long story short, I had a job within that week because I got in touch with Dr. Zava and he had started the first hormone testing lab that reached out to women, like individuals saying, if you have hormonal imbalances, you can test your hormones at home. And he had made the hormone testing available through saliva, non-invasive testing, and had started this lab and needed an educator. So I became the director of education at his lab. And then for 10, 12 years, stayed in that position. And the thing that was great about it was that that was when everything was exploding. Suzanne Summers wrote her book,

The Sexy Years, which really put bioidentical hormones and hormone imbalance on the map. The Women's Health Initiative was published in 2002, talking about the great risks of synthetic hormone therapy that so many women had been on for 30 years. And if you looked at the data, breast cancer rates were rising in tandem with the use of these synthetic horse derived hormones. I mean, we women are not horses. So anyway, I learned from those that were forging a new path towards taking care of women's hormonal issues in natural ways, with natural approaches, with bioidentical hormones, with herbs, with vitamins, with testing, with finding out where are you, who are you individually, biochemically, we're all different, and you can't be applying the same one-size-fits-all

treatment for every woman. So I'm in that world and have been counseled and mentored and learned and looked at thousands of test results having had that opportunity at ZRT. So I kind of have a very, I have a very particular kind of background because I was personally mentored by all these functional medicine doctors that were creating a new space in women's health. So, and here we are today. I'm not, no longer with ZRT, but I use ZRT test kits to test my clients and it's all, we have Your Hormone Balance online, a family run business. My two daughters are in it with me. Jess is the, is a hormone health coach. Ryan is, my younger one, is the business developer, my co-founder. And we do this together as mom and daughters reaching out to women of all

ages to let them know, hey, it's not normal to have horrible heavy periods or to be screaming at your boyfriend every time you get a cycle or breaking up with them or whoever your partner may be, you know, so, so that's kind of in a nutshell what's happening now. I love that so much. Well, I'm just so glad that, uh, in general, we're starting to have these conversations more because when I was younger and I know that this is still happening, but I think it's happening less and less because we're really starting to have these conversations and how important hormones are, but you know, they would, doctors would just put women on birth control and say, Oh, you're having hormonal imbalances, you know, 12, 13, whatever it is, we're just going to throw you on birth control.

Thank God. I remember when I was younger, I begged my mom to be put on birth control and not even because I was sexually active. It was because all of my girlfriends were on it because they were, their doctors were putting them on it at like 13, 14 to manage their like heavy periods or whatever it was. I, I never had a heavy period or anything like that. I just was like, all my friends are on it. I want to be on it. And looking back now, I'm like, thank God my mom didn't let me because now we know the effect that these synthetic hormones are having on our body, like you mentioned. And that's kind of what I want to dive into first. So what is a hormone imbalance look like? Like, how do you know that you're hormonally imbalanced? And then let's talk about birth

control going into that. Okay. Well, smart woman, your mom, because there's something around 52% of women who are on birth control are not on it for contraceptive purposes, but are on it for the very reasons you were just talking about. It's kind of that default. And you know what? That hasn't changed that much, unfortunately. I talked to a lot of women and they're all so often put, I shouldn't say all, but so many have been put on birth control for just that, heavy, painful periods, mood swings, and acne. And some of those women stay on that for 20 some odd years. But back to the definition of a hormonal imbalance, it is that basically our hormones should be in pretty good balance throughout our reproductive years. So all the

years you're having cycles, first part of your cycle, the follicular stage is that egg growing in the ovary and the blood rich lining, the uterine lining thickening. And that's all driven by estrogen. So estrogen is that potent growth hormone that we have three estrogens actually, estradiol, estrone and estriol. But estradiol is the most potent of the growth hormones. It's the one we measure. And it grew all of our female organs. I mean, this is big, this is angel of life stuff, grew the breasts, the uterus, the ovaries. And then into the normal, into our cycling years, as I said, growing that egg in the ovary and the uterine lining that we shed as a period. So estrogen is absolutely essential. It also protects our bones, our heart, our brain.

So for women in menopause who will often say, well, do I really need to use any hormone? I mean, I'm in menopause, but the point is now women live to be 90, 85. My mother just passed in her early 90s. We're living another third of our lives. And to go without any kind of hormone replenishment when these hormones have functional roles to play can be a real problem for women in aging. But sometimes I see women who've been on birth control for years having the same exact symptoms as women in menopause because of the depletion of hormones that birth control causes. It shuts down ovulation. But in younger women, we would hope

that our cycles would be normal and that we, on the second half, when estrogen has done its thing and we ovulate, we then produce progesterone. And progesterone is that hormone, the great balancing hormone that is the benign hormone that is essential for pregnancy and also essential to tell estrogen, okay, you grew the egg, you've thickened the lining, now we don't need any more growth, now we're going to get ready for a possible pregnancy. If there is no fertilized egg, that cycle progesterone says, okay, no pregnancy this cycle, let's shed, and progesterone drops, and that signals the lining of the uterine lining to come away and to have a regular period. So that's the way it should happen every cycle.

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what we call xenoestrogens or endocrine disruptors that actually get into the cells of the body and act like an estrogen, but they're not an estrogen, they're an imposter, but they can actually get into the cells and start overstimulating the action and get in the way of naturally occurring hormone levels. And the way they do that is that these hormones can actually, whether they're natural or toxins, sometimes they can attach to the receptor side of the cell and just hang out there. Like the unwanted guest that comes to stay with you and won't get off the couch and you can't kick them out, they can elbow out naturally occurring hormones. And we can talk more about xenoestrogens and which ones to avoid, but because of all of our exposure, and then also because of

the abundance of stress in our lives, whether it's good stress or bad stress, a good steady, you know, drip, drip, drip of that accumulating. And before the COVID, I remember people always going on about, oh, I'm just crazy busy. Everybody was crazy busy with all that they had going on. And I thought, is this really admirable? I mean, crazy busy means disruption of cycles. Crazy busy means maybe you're not sleeping well, you're overbooked, you're overcommitted, your stress is overwhelming the system. And when that happens, just too much cortisol, stress hormone cortisol can disrupt

your period. And then all that I was talking about, that natural follicular phase where estrogen is supposed to be doing its thing and then ovulation can be just disrupted. So you don't make progesterone or maybe you don't make enough. And then you got symptoms of maybe no periods, irregular periods or heavy painful periods because there isn't enough progesterone on board to control the thickening action of estrogen. And then you get these horrible, heavy, painful periods every cycle. So that's not normal. Neither is, you know, to have horrible crashing PMS,

where, as I was saying, you're breaking up with your boyfriend, you're scaring your kids, you can't stand your job, you hate, you know, nobody should talk to you, whatever it is. Don't look at me like that, you know, hypers talk to you, whatever it is. Don't look at me like that, you know, hypersensitivity and crying at commercials and, you know, and worse than that, far worse. I've talked to women that describe Jekyll and Hyde mood swings and marriages that are going south and, you know, and problems at work because they can't focus or concentrate and low libido and no interest. How many women

tell me I have zero, I'd rather delete emails, you know, than have, than have, than have sex with my partner. So, you know, there's, there's a lot that we have to understand is not really normal. I think a lot of women, and I have said this too often, but women become their symptoms. They're tired all the time, or they're said this too often, but women become their symptoms. They're tired all the time, or they're irritable too much of the time, or they don't wake up in the morning feeling rested, and then they can't fall asleep at night. They are not having normal periods. They have horrible acne. They've been on birth control for 20 years. When you have symptoms that are persistent and troublesome, and they go on for months, days, years, days, weeks, years, that's not normal. And one has to start becoming aware of, just like being aware

of the seven warning signs of cancer, we women need to be more educated about what are the warning signs of hormone imbalance. And I think so many people think that just, I remember being in college at CU where you went to college too, evidently. And my neighbor, my roommate, what was her name? Natalie. She would be rolled up in a fetal ball in horrible pain every time she had a period. And we'd all go off saying, oh, poor Natalie. We'd be going off to the frat parties and she was back in her room suffering. And we all just thought, well, you know, that's the way it is, but that isn't the way it is. However, I mean, that's not the way it should be, but we have years and years of,

of exposure to these birth control pills. I was just with a friend I've known for, since the Colorado days, since the Aspen days. So I've known her for 40 years. She got a really tough breast cancer that almost killed her. She was one of those women that was on birth control for many years. And then she went right to HRT when she was in her forties. And lo and behold, some years later, she got a galloping inflammatory breast cancer that nearly killed her. But she was lucky because it was a particular kind of breast cancer that they found an antidote for. But breast cancers are looming down the road after years of hormonal imbalance. These are major disease risks that we have to be aware of. Diabetes, insulin resistance,

breast cancers, endometriosis, fibroids, all the things that plague us are offshoots or results of an unaddressed, unresolved, undetected hormonal imbalance. Wow. You know, and I've been hearing this a lot recently and it really hit me the first time I heard it is that these things may be common, but it still doesn't mean that they're normal. And you know, I, yeah. And I read recently that one in four women now are struggling with PCOS and that has to do with blood sugar dysregulation and obviously hormonal imbalance. And, um, it's, it sucks because like you mentioned with your roommate, it's become so commonplace now that we just kind of brush it off as like, Oh yeah. I mean,

that's just, that's just what happens. It's just our fate, uh, being a woman instead of actually having doctors or people, um, say like, wait, let's figure out what's going on here. Let's get to the root cause of this. And that people need to be having more of this discussion so that we can get to the root of it. And so many women aren't left just suffering with no answers on what to do. So someone listening that is really struggling with, let's say, you know, everything you mentioned, like low libido, weight gain, fertility issues, more specifically what we were just talking about, like PCOS and stuff, what would you say, like, what is the, what's the protocol to do when you feel like you have hormonal imbalance? Oh, PCOS is a huge thing. And it's,

it's really largely undetected too. So, but it can be, if you have symptoms of hormonal imbalance, and I'd say the main things are, if you're are if you're having horrible periods or you're on birth control for different symptoms that we're talking about here, terrible skin, terrible moods, inability to concentrate and focus, all of those things, ADHD, women are put on birth control for. If you suspect that these are any of your symptoms, if you have excess hair growth on your face or body, if the acne is unrelenting, if your skin is oily, if you're edgy and aggressive all the time and biting people's heads off when they just look at you wrong, then you know you've got something going on. This isn't you. You could be feeling and acting a whole lot different. As I was saying in the early days when I was scaring my children,

I was an angel after I got my hormones tested and started using some adaptogens and herbs and a little bit of progesterone, bioidentical, natural-based progesterone. My kids would say to me, because you take a break from it, you take a little hormone holiday when you do replenish those hormones. And they'd say to me, because you take a break from it, you take a little hormone holiday when you do replenish with hormones. And they'd say to me, mom, where's that cream?

Were you going to rub that cream on again? Because you're really nice when you rub that cream on. But so the point is, if you have symptoms, now you can get tested. It's not that uncommon. You can test through us, your hormone balance. I use ZRT, as I mentioned, I was there for so many years and I watched my mentor, Dr. Zava put his brain on the page. It has a fantastic comment field that connects the dots. So we don't just do a test that says, here's your, you know, here's your level by we we put your level, you know, you'll see all your levels, you'll see the corresponding comments, but we will match up your levels with the hormone imbalance that is detected through the testing and with your symptoms that you're suffering.

So that's the first step. And the test is, it's very simple. I'm in the saliva testing camp. Now, many women get their hormones tested in blood. There's a popular test. I'm in the saliva testing camp. Now, many women get their hormones tested in blood. There's a popular test. I'm great friends with the guy that runs the Dutch testing, Mark Newman. He used to be the head of our saliva lab at ZRT. He has started dried urine testing of hormones and that looks at hormones and their metabolites. So that gets really complicated. I find that using saliva is the simplest, most direct way to get to what's happening. Shed light, roll back the curtain and say, what's going on here with my hormones? And what we test in saliva, four tubes, you wake up in the morning, you collect first

thing in the morning within 30 minutes of wakening. So something called the cortisol awakening response. So you want to know, are your adrenals working for you? Is your cortisol highest in the morning as it should be? The same point in time, we're testing estrogen, progesterone, and the androgens, testosterone and DHEA, which have so much to do with our drive, our sex drive, our competitive drive, our structure, our bone strength, our metabolism. They're huge, those hormones. And then the cortisol. So we look at cortisol four times over the course of one day. So you'll see four tubes in the kit. And on that day, if you're a woman like you, a young woman who's still cycling, we want you to test during days 19 to 21. There's a three-day window where all hormones should be surging.

And we want to see, are you in that window? Are your hormones hanging out there in the normal range? What is to be expected? And that's what we're looking for. So if you're a cycling woman, that's when you test. You can collect one of those three days. You fill the tubes four times, morning, before lunch, before dinner, and right at bedtime. Then we get the test result in seven days, usually, five to seven days. And we go through, I look at your test result, and then we talk on the phone. Either to me or Jess is doing a lot of the reviews of our rebalancing guide. What we often do is people test, and then they get a of our rebalancing guide. What we often do is people test and then they get

a very comprehensive rebalancing guide that says your testing showed estrogen dominance. Now let's take estrogen dominance. That's a really common hormonal imbalance. It is usually because there's not enough progesterone being made to balance estrogen because either we're not ovulating or if we're ovulating where the production is disrupted or we've been on birth control for a long time or we're still on birth control or we're in menopause or we're in perimenopause and our hormones are fluctuating. There are all kinds of reasons why women don't ovulate. And when that happens, or don't ovulate regularly, when that happens, estrogen becomes excessive because there's no

progesterone to balance it. And that's what we call estrogen dominance. Now, some women are high in estrogen. They're usually, often women who are overweight and have a lot of extra body fat will be actually very high in estrogen because body fat is another producer besides the ovaries. Body fat cells make estrogen. So that's an important thing to understand. Sorry to interrupt you, but I read something and I'm curious to know if this is true. I read that you can tell when a woman is in estrogen dominance, specifically when she has a lot more right around the hips and the butt. Is that true? Yeah. There's an estrogen fat pattern distribution. So if you notice that the weight you're gaining is, you know, and I hear this so often, I'm doing everything right. I'm eating clean.

I'm not eating tons of carbs. I'm exercising, you know, trying to avoid certain things. And yet the weight keeps creeping on. And usually in the estrogen pattern, it is hips, thighs, bottom, upper back, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. And even if you have that body shape, you'll still see that's where, you know, that's where the weight is going to accumulate into, if it's surplus weight, that's where it's going to go. If it's weight that is based, if it's kind of fundamentally linked to stress hormones and a toxic stress situation where the cortisols are not where they should be and your body is not, your adrenals are not handling things well, that's when you see a lot of fat around the belly, weight gain around the waist and around the

belly. And that'll be And that will be linked to cortisol imbalances. And all of this, we will point out and explain how that happens. So yeah, that's the other big sign of estrogen dominance, weight gain in those areas and bloating as well, or weight gain around your period. So estrogen dominance is very common for a lot of reasons. And it can be, you know, sometimes people do need to, this isn't just about taking things either. It's about changing lifestyles so that the things that disrupt ovulation in younger women, that's what we need to be aware of. We're lucky where we are now in life. In LA, you've got Erewhon and all these wonderful health food stores. When I was raising my kids in

England, I was so fortunate because the EU did not allow hormones injected into the foods that we eat. But how many mothers are unwittingly giving their children dairy and meat that's processed and been shot up with estrogens, you know, horse hormone to make those cattle grow fat faster. And when we eat foods that are injected with those hormones, we grow fat faster. It transfers immediately and, you know, pegs onto our cells. So very important to avoid, you know, this is what I mean when I'm talking lifestyle, you get into that store and you've got to read labels and you want to make sure that any dairy or meat, if you're still eating those foods, that they clearly say these animals were,

the label, the best label would be these animals were raised without hormones, or it should say at least no artificial hormones. It's not good enough for it to say no added hormones, because we don't know if that they could be injected, but maybe they're meaning no hormones added to their feed, but they could still be injected. So, you know, we've got lots of choices now. So that's great. Organic too. Organic is a great one. Just go organic. Exactly. I sometimes hesitate to say that because I know some people, I don't hesitate to say to talk up organic, but some people can't afford that. But if you can do anything, at least find someone in your neighborhood that may grow grass fed beef. They may be raising grass fed beef or alternatives that are not shot up with hormones.

That's really important. And that applies to dairy and cheeses and all of that stuff. So anyway, so hormone imbalance, the most common, I'd say estrogen dominance, that's where you get the weight gain, the heavy bleeding and the mood swings and the bloating and all those things that make us so unhappy. And, you know, for a lot of women in PMS, the woman that discovered PMS, that put PMS on the map and defined it in a British medical journal

was a British physician who had had migraines all her life. And she noticed that when she got pregnant, the whole time she was pregnant, she didn't have any migraines. Interesting. And so she started making a study of, well, what are the hormones that are coursing through your body?

You know, when you're pregnant, you're making extraordinarily high amounts of progesterone because back to that early scenario, I was saying, if there's no fertilized egg, progesterone says, okay, let's have a period. If there is a fertilized egg, now we start to get lots of progesterone being produced to support and maintain that embryo in utero. In fact, progesterone is hugely important within the first trimester of pregnancy. So many women I test are, you know, young, younger women that have gone off birth control finally, and they they're getting engaged, they're getting married, they want to think about planning a family, they're thinking about conscious conception. And that's where progesterone, if it's low in a test, is a real wake-up call. Like, okay,

I got to do everything I can to bring back ovulation and to start having regular cycles and to avoid this estrogen dominance. And that also means eating plenty of good protein and good fats because those two nutrients are absolutely the building blocks of hormones. We need good, you know, you're not going to make any, you're not going to make many hormones at all, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, or cortisol, if you're restricting those foods to a fault. And I've gotten in trouble before for sounding like I was saying, oh, you don't want to be a vegan. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, make sure if you are a vegan or a vegetarian, that you are really good at combining proteins or that you get a good smoothie in there,

a good protein powder, pea protein that will get you enough of that instrumental protein that we all need. People who are down on carbs, don't be totally down on carbs. We got slow carbs that break down slowly and give you energy and don't create that insulin pattern that is so linked up with PCOS and infertility. We can talk more about that, too. You know, it's interesting that you you said about being vegetarian and vegan. I have a personal experience with this. Actually, I was vegetarian for five years. And towards the end of it, I was so sick and hormonally imbalanced that I had a nutritionist. I mean, I literally cried in her office because she just looked me straight in the eyes and she goes, Courtney, you have to start eating meat. And I was like, I never will.

I never will. And I got to a point where I was so sick. I was dreaming about it. And now look, yeah, I mean, I was literally dreaming about eating meat. And my mom at one point was just like, Courtney, please, I'm begging you. Your body is like screaming for this right now. And what's so interesting is in those five years that I had been vegetarian, like I said, I was really struggling with all the classic signs and symptoms of being hormonally imbalanced. I had

just relentless cystic acne on my chin that wouldn't go away. I had a weight gain, I had low libido, I had really low energy and just like, just overall really didn't feel good in my body. And I, what were your periods like? You know, I'm, I'm trying to remember because I think back then they were not, for some reason I've, I've been really blessed that for the most part, my periods have been pretty normal my whole life. So I'm trying to remember if they were that different then. Um, but I don't really remember them being that different. For some reason, that was the only thing that they were pretty normal. I'm just wondering how your moods were too. Did you suffer from PMS during that time?

Probably a little bit more than normal, but that's another thing too that I've been really lucky. For me, it was more that I noticed like weight gain, acne. Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. It was horrible. Well, and to someone finally directed me to a doctor because I'd been struggling with this acne for almost five years. And finally someone, I don't remember who it was, but was like, you need to go get your hormones checked. Sure enough, my progesterone was so low that I had to start taking bio identical progesterone. And, you know, at the time I was like 25 or something and not really, you know, like I shouldn't have been in that position. And then sure enough, when I started incorporating meat back into my diet, I mean, it was a whole different ballgame. I completely balanced my

hormones. I lost weight. Um, I was able to, yeah, like I had my libido back and everything changed for me. The acne completely went away. Never had to deal with that again. It was really interesting. Oh, and another thing I will say, I had a professor. So I have my master's in nutrition. I had one of my professors in school. Actually, two of them told me they were practicing nutritionists at one point before they were

professors. And they told me that every single woman that they've ever seen in their practice that had a history of being vegetarian or vegan had hormonal imbalances. Now I say this only because when if I had known this when I was younger and had gone vegetarian, and I knew the signs and symptoms to look for, then I may have not put myself through this hell of five years. And this is not for everyone listening to say, like, if you're a vegetarian, vegan, and it's working for you, and your hormones are great, and you feel great, great. I'm in full support of that.

And I love that. But I do believe that we're not, we don't talk about it enough. And a lot of women are unaware and in the dark, and they don't understand what all these symptoms are and why they don't feel good. And so maybe one of the things you need to look at is your diet. Well, yeah. And, and, you know, don't be mad at us for saying these things because plant-based eating is certainly important. Point is wherever you get your protein, you've got to get it. You have to, it doesn't have to come from cows. It doesn't have to come from pigs. My husband doesn't want to eat pigs. He, they're intelligent beings and he doesn't feel to come from pigs. My husband doesn't want to eat pigs.

They're intelligent beings and he doesn't feel right about that. This is usually an emotional choice, often an emotional and an ethical choice. And one of my best friends was the head of the Humane Society in LA for many years. And so I understand the arguments and I myself haven't eaten beef in a long time because I had an experience with a little cow that made me cry with his big eyes and his flapping ears and I can't do it. can be the fatty fish that we should be eating three times a week at least because they are full of the omega-3s and the fats that we need to build hormones and to make progesterone and all those good hormones that we need. We just need to, you know, and not to become underweight. That's another thing about eating plant-based. There's two ways that it goes, it seems to me, with women I talk to. They'll either admit that because they're vegan, and it takes a lot of prep and time to eat right properly with vegan,

their go-to is often carbs. And often carbs are not necessarily the best kind of carbs. And I started to say, don't be down on carbs because multigrains and, you know, they have the multigrains, they have the B vitamins, they have the fiber and the protein that we need. So we're talking about legumes, lentils, chickpeas, you know, all those, those black beans, all those great things, flax seeds, edamame beans. There's so many good ways, sweet potatoes. Those are good complex carbs that break down slowly. They in fact, keep sugar from hitting your gut to the point where it impacts your blood sugar and creates an unstable blood sugar insulin situation. So you actually want to

eat those things to stabilize your blood sugar because unstable blood sugar, and you know this, Courtney, I'm speaking to the choir, but the unstable blood sugar is the eating or not eating, the intermittent fasting for 14, 16, 18 hours, then the going for too long without nutrition is a huge disruptor of ovulation. that right there. If you're underweight, if you are, you know, extremely thin, I grew up in LA. I know what it's like to be, you know, it's so important to be thin, but how thin are you? I mean, what, do you have any body fat on your bones at all? Because if I see women that are really, you know, I, we ask for your weight and your body BMI and all of that. If, when I see that and people tell me my hair is falling out, I can't sleep, and I haven't had a period in two years,

that's the lack of protein and good fats that our bodies need to even make hormones in the first place. My thing really with younger women is look to your ovulation. What are the things that promote ovulation? A steady blood sugar insulin relationship, which means, yes, you can do intermittent fasting if your adrenals are not shot. If you want to do 12 hours, my trusted resource Aviva Ram just wrote a great book called Hormone Intelligence, and she's not down on intermittent fasting either. It can be great for controlling insulin levels and for getting your blood sugar

and insulin into a proper balance. But if you go too long, it's the side of that. So just do 12 hours. And most of it's while you're sleeping. Exactly. regulate the sleep-wake cycle. And so that means the adrenals need to have their steady blood sugar situation. They need progesterone, by the way, because the adrenals make cortisol, the master stress hormone, to regulate blood sugar, insulin, the sleep-wake cycle, and our immunities. And their catalyst for that, their precursor is progesterone. So that's another, it's kind of a double whammy when women are estrogen dominant, their cortisol adrenals are often off because they don't have enough progesterone to provide the adrenals with the source material that the adrenals need to make enough cortisol to get you up in the morning and get you out of bed. How many women do I talk to

you that say, you know, I'll ask them, do you feel rested in the morning? Nine out of 10 women do not feel rested in the morning or they can't fall asleep at night. You know, there's so so there's all of that that is really important. I find one of the big culprits is the being on the laptop, cell phone screens before bed. You'd be surprised how many people are not aware of the fact that the blue light coming off the screen. And a lot of people are aware because there's blue blocker glasses out there and there's flex program to turn your phone down

to a lower light source at night, but do it because, or ideally turn off your screens an hour or so before bed because anything that jacks up your cortisol late at night, and that would include drinking wine too late at night or eating sugary foods too late at night. Anything that jacks that up is going to keep you awake or you're going to wake up, you're not going to be able to fall asleep, or you're not going to be able to stay asleep. And also, so then the long story is not enough sleep, another cause of disruption of ovulation. So you don't want to be, as a young woman, you don't want to be doing things that put you in a state of menopause when you're only 28. Or you were saying you had to take some progesterone. Progesterone in bioidentical

formulations is very safe but at your age like you say you shouldn't have had to and i definitely suggest it for many women who have been on birth control too long they're now wanting to come off it but they can't get their period back their ovaries have been shut down for so long that it takes them a while you know it can take six months to a year to get your to get your um your circuit your cycles back uh read the book um woman code or in the flow by aviva rom which is brilliant about getting their your and my daughter jess jess sucan go to her website she's done a whole she's talking about cycle syncing quite a bit. There are so many things that we can do to support ourselves at the different cycles,

the different phases throughout our cycle. So it was to prevent hormonal imbalances from taking hold and then creating this pattern of symptoms that we suddenly, not suddenly, but we become habituated to and don't even realize we're walking around with a hormone imbalance that is sabotaging our best efforts to lose weight or to be a nicer person or to, you know, be able to get up in the morning and go work out with some energy without feeling, you know, tragic or running out of energy during the day and just having to crawl under your desk. You know, it's not funny, but it's just, it's so, it's too predictable. Yeah.

Yeah. But as you said, common is not normal. And when I review test results with people, most test results, they'll say, if something's within range, people will look at it and go, oh, that's within range. Great. No, because if a cortisol level, all those four levels, if they're not following the normal pattern and they're low normal or high normal, that needs to be pointed out. That's an early warning sign of an evolving adrenal fatigue that is causing a lot of the symptoms you're experiencing. Well, and I'm so glad that you pointed that out. I talk about this a lot, but in conventional medicine, oftentimes they won't

really say anything until it's too late. So like, for example, when you said, you know, you're, you'll look and your numbers are a little bit low, they're on the lower side or on the little bit higher side. And you have symptoms. Exactly. And you have symptoms. And instead of a doctor saying like, okay, we're starting to see this. Let's look at your lifestyle. Let's change up your diet. Let's start, you know, doing X, Y, and Z to get those numbers back to normal. They wait until it's full blown in that zone. And then sometimes you can't go back. Like for example, with Addison's disease, once you're there, you can't really reverse that. Addison's disease where cortisol actually needs to be supplemented because your adrenals have become so exhausted. They just can't pick up the pace anymore. And I wanted to mention about PCOS,

it's so important, it's much more than a mention, but all that we're talking about here with disruption of ovulation now causing a lack of progesterone, which then causes an excess of estrogen. And while at the same time, it's hurting the adrenals ability to produce cortisol, as I mentioned, and it's causing, it's allowing the androgens, testosterone and DHEA to, in a sense, become dominant as well, because we don't have the right balance of estrogen and progesterone, the master female hormones, then the androgens can suddenly start to hold sway over the whole picture. There's no, there's no adrenal action. Underperforming adrenals are just managing to maybe drag you out of bed in the morning and hopefully keep you from getting, you know,

every flu bug that comes along, including COVID. But the androgens can stay pretty stable. And if we're talking about, you know, balance and ratios, now suddenly we've got an improper ratio of testosterone, let's say, which is going to be linked to if it's high or relatively high because your other hormones are down, then you're going to start getting the oily skin and the breakouts with the acne. And you're going to start maybe having oily skin and the breakouts with the acne. And you're going to start maybe having, not everybody has the same symptoms, but I mentioned excess facial or body

hair, feeling edgy and irritable all the time, irregular periods or missing periods. You know, interestingly, and I think this is pretty commonly known, but women who are marathoners or Olympic athletes who train constantly all the time. And this is another conversation around over-exercise also disrupts ovulation. They're famous. Those women are famous for having anovulatory cycles, no periods. Women who are, in fact, I was just on a podcast with Gabriella Reese, who's a famous volleyball player. And she's, she's married to the guy who's the big surfer guy, Laird Hamilton. And she was telling me when she was in her high, she's now a woman, I think she's, she's got three daughters and she's moving into menopause herself. But she said at least 50% of the women she trained with never got their periods. So, you know, so, and those are the, those are the symptoms of PCOS,

but another symptom of PCOS that gets back to nutrition. And I know your show is about nutrition and you being a nutritionist, the, the, the kicker here is that why, so we were talking about depressed hormones that allow the androgens, particularly the testosterone and DHEA to gain an ascendancy that then starts to take over. At the same time, if you have a diet that is high in those simple carbs, processed foods that are causing, you have a high intake of foods high glycemic fruits like you know mango banana pineapple all the things that hit the gut with a lot of force and cause a spike in blood sugar which in turn causes a spike in insulin if this goes on if this is the way the pattern of your eating without good fibers good fats and protein in there

to create a balance then we start to get a situation where blood sugar stays high. That's where you start and insulin stays high because insulin, as we know, is just trying to process that blood sugar and put it into the cells that need it and turn it into energy. If you're not getting enough exercise and you're eating that way, insulin tends to become a fat storage hormone. That's where you start to get weight gain around the waist. And the kicker, as I started to say, is that insulin, when it's elevated over time, will cause the ovaries to overproduce androgens. So that's another cause of low estrogen,gesterone and low adrenals now

the the ovaries are going oh we got lots of insulin which is feeding the production and the churning out of testosterone and dhea so now we've got way too much of that maybe we're not growing a nice egg in the ovary instead we're growing lots of cysts that are creating more and more androgen action as well. And that can be checked out with a transvaginal ultrasound. But keep in mind, not every woman has that classic string of pearls that they can see in a transvaginal ultrasound. But there's a huge connection between your diet, particularly one that creates a high level of blood sugar and insulin, because that is a perfect formula for an excess of these androgens that cause the skin to break out. And when you

were a vegetarian, probably that lack of protein and good fats. And I don't know, were you sort of going to the carb side as well, just to keep yourself fed. That may be where the acne was occurring because you had a high insulin, blood sugar, or a dysfunctional relationship between those two. I'm sure that's what it was. Yeah. I mean, I had just started getting into healthy eating, so I didn't know as much as I know now. Well, and you know, it's very hard in general to be vegetarian and not eat a lot of carbohydrates, you know, and not saying that it can't be done, but you really, it is, you have to be very mindful of the carbohydrates that you take in and not to vilify carbohydrates. We definitely need them, but we need to balance.

Yeah. Especially the slow ones. And in the Aviva Romberg, she's talking about buckwheat being a seed actually versus a grain, but a perfect kind of fiber to get into your diet. And also, I mean, there are many things if you're listening and you think you have PCOS or you know you do, and changing your diet is an obvious thing. And I know some people with PCOS think, oh, well, they just told me to change my diet. But there are other things. There are the myo, myo-d-chiro-inositol is a form of B vitamins that is now in, I just did an interview with a compounding pharmacist talking about the virtues of a nice combination myo-d-chiro-inositol,

which can really help to counter high insulin. It's just a natural substance. And then there are things like DIM, which is an extract of cruciferous vegetables, which can not only help to metabolize excess estrogens and get rid of some of the toxic estrogens that come in through the environment, but actually help to metabolize excess hormones, including testosterone, down the pathways that these hormones are. They move down the pathway. You know, with hormones, you want to use them and lose them. You don't want them to accumulate in your body. You want the liver to be able to conjugate them and then excrete them from the body. But if they start recirculating because we're not detoxifying properly, it's very helpful to use

things like DIM, which is like eating two pounds of broccoli. I mean, do eat cruciferous vegetables all the chance you can get. Dark green leafy vegetables, saute them. Sometimes they're thought to maybe disrupt thyroid, so it's good to steam or saute the Brussels sprouts, the cauliflower, the kale, the, what's another one? Collard greens. Broccoli. Broccoli. Great stuff to eat. But a DIM, if you have acne issues and high androgens in the rebalancing guide I send you, DIM is going to loom large. It stands for dindole L-methane. You don't need to remember that, but it's an indole. It's a substance that helps to control that. And it's been shown to do that.

And then also there are things like calcium deglucorate that assist in detoxifying that phase two detoxification that's so important. There are many things. We don't want to be vitamin D deficient if we have PCOS. Vitamin D deficiency kind of goes with the territory. And how many people are D deficient, even in California and Florida, the sunshine state, because we're indoors, we work inside. And we wear sunscreen a lot. And we wear sunscreen and we work out inside. And then we've had this lockdown for so long. That doesn't mean you can't. I remember in the beginning of COVID, my daughters were telling me they couldn't even walk on the beach, that they were closing the beaches, but find a way to get outside in nature and get out in the sun and all that. But I just

want to encourage people with PCOS. It is not incurable. It is not something that you can't, you know, it is not cured by, it is not a birth control pill deficiency. You know, it is not, that is not the cure. It never will be, nor is spironolactone, which people are put on to lower testosterone to help with the acne. There have been so many women that I've worked with that have had of that insulin fat storage just by changing the diet and increasing without, you know, without losing a lot of weight, just changing their diet can make a huge difference in insulin levels and a huge difference in PCOS symptoms. So don't, you know, never fear. And also, of course, you'd want to know if your androgens are high and your progesterone is low, perfect formula for this problem. And we can turn that around. Yeah. Another huge one is cutting sugar. This helped me a lot was really

being mindful of how much sugar I was eating because, you know, with PCOS, it is a sugar regulation issue. And so if you can cut down on your sugar, cut down on the impact of insulin on your body, that's really going to help. And, you know, I'm so glad you brought up calcium D glucrate, because I forgot about this. When I was dealing with this acne and the hormonal imbalance and everything, I was taking calcium D glucrate and glutathione, because I read that both of those are able to trap excess estrogen and push it through the liver so that you don't have all these circulating excess estrogens. Yeah, and yeah, definitely.. I was going to say, well, the blood sugar insulin relationship is inseparable. It's the intake of sugars that

causes the elevation of insulin, that causes elevation to stay elevated. We don't want to turn that switch to be on. Then that, of course, affects adrenal function too, because the adrenals are trying so hard to maintain your energy and your immunities against illness and to regulate that sleep wake cycle. When I see high night cortisol in some people who've been, I was mentioning maybe eating late. Some people eat too late, drink too late, are exposed to the blue screen too late, and their night cortisol is high. Because the cortisol and appetite, how do I want to put this? Appetite hormones operate on the sleep-wake cycle.

They're on the same circadian rhythm as the sleep-wake cycle. So if your cortisol is high at night and you're not sleeping, it throws the appetite hormones off. So if you're one of those people that finds that you're kind of hungry all the time, even though you shouldn't be, you just don't feel full. You have food cravings, you have sugar cravings. You are, this is part and parcel of this whole scenario that this vicious cycle that we're talking about. You're not sleeping well, your adrenals are down, you're gaining weight around your waist, and now your hunger hormones are kicking in. Your ghrelin, the hunger hormone that says you're hungry goes up and leptin, the hormone that says you're full goes down. So now we're constantly feeling hungry. So now you're hardwired to overeat. And this is where, you know,

people are hardwired in this way by their undetected hormonal imbalances and thinking, but I'm trying to, you know, to do all this right. And then that gets into another part of that conversation is the trying to eat right. And also exercise. And then sometimes exercise becomes the issue because too many people over exercise. And I touched on this talking about Gabriella Reese and her, her training, you know, her high trained marathon friends that aren't getting their period, but overexercise is another disruptor of ovulation. It can be considered a stressor to the body. If you're one of those people that hates your belly fat so much that you're on the

treadmill, you're on the spinner, you're doing exercise high intensity, five, six, seven days a week, and you're not taking a break in between, your body is now going to hang on to the very fat that you're trying to lose. Because the body in its wisdom will say, wow, stress, big stress here. We don't know what it is, but we're going to hang on to some fuel and we're going to put it right here in the abdominal depot to help her get through whatever this stressor is. I mean, stress can be good stress. It can be that you've got a great career success and everybody you're in demand and everybody wants you. It can be kids and Christmas and birthdays, and it can be all the obvious negative stressors like moving across the country, COVID, losing your job, breaking up with your boyfriend, financial woes. It all goes in in the

same biological way that the adrenals have to perform and still keep you going. And they can't perform well and they won't perform well if we're expecting them to keep up a pace that is after a while becomes draining. Many women I talk to will say, wow, I thought my cortisol levels would be off the charts. I thought they'd be really high. I have so much stress. And often, you know, they aren't high at all. They're low because the adrenals have already caved. They're not keeping up.

There's this whole, that's a larger conversation, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. There are all these, there's a huge involvement with how the stress response goes. And some people question the idea of adrenal fatigue, but the main point is that the adrenals, they don't always rise to the occasion. They can't keep up the pace if the pace is too much. Too much exercise, not enough nutrition, not enough sleep, not enough ovulation going on every cycle. So trying to sum it all up is not easy, but the testing tells us a lot. And that's the first place to start shedding some light so you can get some answers. Because people

will say to me, well, you're telling me, what do I do? And that's what you do. You know your symptoms, become aware, get tested, and then decide, okay, what are the things that this is telling me and what are the changes I can embrace in my life? Nobody is perfect. Nobody's going to be in balance all the time, but I'm telling you, you can get your period back. You can get pregnant, even if you were on birth control for many years you can have skin that looks like Courtney's because I'm looking at this gorgeous radiant skin on her you would never know that she had acne it was bad too thank you yeah it was really bad you know I will say another thing it's so funny you're touching on so many little things that I, this was a long journey for me to get to my, my skin to this place, my health, health to this place. And like you said, I am by no means in like perfect health or anything, but I've really,

I feel I've found a pretty good balance. One of the best things that I could have ever done for my hormones was I stopped doing the insane spin, the high intensity, all the crazy cardio. And I just go for a walk every, almost every single day now. And going from the high intensity, all the crazy cardio. And I just go for a walk every almost every single day now. And going from that high intensity to now going to just these like, low impact hikes that I do every day, they still get my heart rate up because I'll go in incline and you know, get a little bit of sweat and movement in, man, I mean, it's night and day, it totally changed my body because I'm not holding on to all this stuff specifically around my waist. And it also really helped me with my stress. And I, you know, I find I live in the Pacific Northwest and we've, our summer has been way too hot.

So I've had to wait till the evening. But when I go on a walk, I don't take my cell phone and I know that's bad. And while maybe I shouldn't say that because that's when most people listen to podcasts. So nevermind, I didn't say, no, but I just- Just put it on airplane mode. Yeah, exactly. Just put it on airplane mode and don't be checking your messages

and go out there and look around, notice birds in the trees and the changing color of the leaves, get out in nature. There's a whole thing about outdoor deprivation. We're not outside enough to, but it's just so calming and you get a good six, you know, four to six mile walk. And when you're young, you can really get out there and stride. And it helps you take your stress in stride things that, or swimming. I love swimming. I get into the swimming pool and I feel like a fish. You know, I can't, my inner whale woman comes out. I cannot think, I can't think about things that disrupt my, my calm. I just start, you know, I get in the pool at first and my mind's going, oh,

and she said this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then about three minutes later, my, I'm like Zen, Zen doubt. It's about breathing. So all those things like swimming, yoga, stretching, walking are so important and you can do high intensity. I mean, in fact, you know, two times a week, maybe three, but not overdoing it. Strength training is also very, very important, especially for women that have low androgen levels, the opposite of PCOS. We also very, very important, especially for women that have low androgen levels, the opposite of PCOS. We also have, you know, with lack of ovulation, maybe you're not making enough testosterone and DHEA.

And then in that case, then that's usually linked to adrenal stress. And in that case, your libido is down or you can't, you know, you have, like I said, women that would rather delete their emails or do anything, but have sex. And then there's along with that, but it's not just about libido. When your androgens are low, you have no strength. You have no stamina. You have no you have no cognition. You can't think straight. You can't process information. You have brain fog. Focus and concentration is like a lost art. So that's where strength training can be very helpful because if you increase lean muscle through strength training, the body sends a signal. She's working out. Let's raise her testosterone a bit to support that growth of

lean muscle. And lean muscle will increase your metabolism. It will reduce insulin. It will help you stabilize blood sugar. But see, this is all information you can use to make a difference in how you feel every day and how you age. I mean, I'm now in my early seventies and I feel like, you know, and I remember when I had kids so late, it was always, well, what's, what's it going to be like when I'm in menopause? And, but apart from scaring them for a little while, I think they're okay. They never had to go to a shrink. His mother got herself on bioidentical progesterone. And, but you know, it's like, it's not just about, you got to think about just like the younger women that are thinking about conscious conception now. And when you

start a family, you also have to think about who you're going to be as you age, you know, how you're going to age. And do you want to be one of the young old, or do you want to become decrepit? And, you know, and you can, because these hormones have a role to play, man. And if you don't have enough of them circulating, you do start to falter in ways that are often very unpleasant. And women get very depressed. They get vaginal dryness. They have hot flashes and night sweats. They have no libido. They have no patience. And their skin starts to crumple. And that's not necessary. You know, that doesn't have to happen. So for women of all ages, becoming savvy about hormone balance is a major important thing.

I'm really happy that you're wanting to talk about it, Courtney, because it's a huge over ongoing topic forever and ever, huh? Yeah. The forever topic. It's one of the things that affects us the most, I think. And it's really not talked about enough. I feel like everything you said in this entire episode is going to be pretty surprising to a lot of people just because it's not really common, commonly known. I feel like whenever we talk about hormones, generally it's just, you know, it's reduced to women ovulating.

It's like, oh, they're hormones or whatever. And that's the only thing people really, I think at least think about hormones when actually they play such a huge role throughout our entire lives. And like you said, it really helps with aging, cognitive function. There's so many things that we don't even really think about that are driven by our hormones. And this is why they are so important to pay attention to. We are not just a walking womb. This is, you know, we've moved, we've moved beyond that definition of women. And, you know, women are still, you know, there are still not enough studies. Most studies are done with men because our periods and our pregnancies and all of that are considered aberrations that can,rations that can get in the way of the study.

The first long-term clinical trial, the Women's Health Initiative, happened in 2002. This is after 35 years of women being on synthetic hormones that they finally told us, all the things we told you you need to take HRT4 to protect your heart, your bones, your brain, all of that. It was causing heart disease. It was causing breast cancer. It was causing strokes. And they had to halt the study three years early because of the risks being greater than benefit. This is when it became known that guess what? There are hormones called bioidentical hormones that European women have been using for ages that are made from plants. So a bioidentical hormone is a hormone that is not derived from horses that are kept pregnant all year round. And their babies left to wander off in the fields, those little foals.

God knows what happens to them. They keep these horses pregnant constantly. So, you know, so we're already, if we're, we're just, it's just the karmic fingerprint of horse torture. Who wants to be involved in that? We have these bioidentical hormones, like for instance, progesterone and estrogen can be made from soy and soy. There's, you know, there's a lot to say about soy. We can eat too much soy in the Western world. If we're eating soy cookies and soy there's you know there's a lot to say about soy we can eat too much soy in the western world if we're eating soy cookies and soy chips and soy milk and soy everything but there's fermented soy that's very you know eat soy more like the asians do fermented miso tempeh tamari all of that and a modicum of soy is fine because it can actually have an estrogenic effect.

So if you're a person that's been on birth control for years and you've got really low estrogens and you need a little hormone, that can be a good way through the foods to get it. But anyway, these can serve as the substrates for creating a hormone in a lab. So bioidenticals are not entire. I can't say they're absolutely natural because they're synthesized in a lab, but they're synthesized from the plants, the wild yam and the soy that can then be constructed into a structure, a molecular structure that is exact in form and function as the hormones our own bodies make. So when you use a bioidentical hormone, and by the way, they're often used in topical creams where you can apply a Goldilocks dose that is not too much, not too little, just right, just matching your physiologic need, which is about quarter teaspoon in women that are low. And you can use that to replenish

your hormone levels without ever encountering a synthetic horse-derived hormone. And using them in Goldilocks doses means we're only duplicating physiology. There are other forms for women in menopause. There's a patch that can be reapplied every week, gives you a steady state delivery so that your body knows what to do with this. Your body will recognize a hormone that attaches to the cell in the proper way without banging down the door and overtaking the cell machinery, but rather fitting into that little, that receptor site. Think of it as a docking base or a puzzle piece. The hormone is the key that fits into the lock. We always use that, but it has to fit perfectly. Like the key

that you use to open your front door. That's what we're looking for. So we are trying in every way to duplicate our own physiology at levels that are safe and sound that can easily be metabolized by the body and don't end us up with excesses and imbalances that are driving us around the bend. Yeah. So for someone listening, um, I mean, this is all just so fascinating for someone listening, let's say that they are either attempting to get off birth control or they have come off of it. What are some things that they can do to start balancing, rebalancing their hormones? Or do they just need to kind of wait and ride that wave? First of all, read the book, Beyond the Pill by Jolene Brighton. Dr. Jolene Brighton, she's up here in the Pacific Northwest.

Brilliant book. It tells you how to detox and come off the pill properly. But basically, if you've been on the pill, now I do test women that are on the pill that shows it's often a good way to see what your hormones are looking like under the influence of birth control. But if you've already been on the pill and you know you want to come off and so many women are saying they want to, they know it's not good for them. They're learning more and more. We have great fertility tracking devices now that we can use to track ovulation. So for the few days that we're fertile to take the pill and mess up our hormones for years seems is a diminishing, diminishing in popularity, I'm happy to say. So ideally wait, if you've decided to come

off the pill, read Jolene Brighton's book, How to Come Off It Properly. Test your hormones, maybe four to six weeks, I'd say, four to six weeks after you're on the pill, so we can get baseline levels. Where are your levels now? And then if your levels, then we can address the, generally, you're going to have low levels of estrogen progesterone and testosterone for sure and when you've been on the pill for a long time and the adrenals are going to need some support so that just gets into all those things we've been talking about like pumping yourself up with with lots of good fats and lots of good protein and B vitamins. The B6 and B5 in particular are huge supporters of adrenals and also help to create progesterone.

You've got foods that increase estrogen, phytoestrogen foods that have plant-based estrogens that, well, they're plant-based foods that act like estrogens in the body to a weaker extent, but they can provide symptom relief and they can provide protection from more potent estrogens that come in the hormone process stuff. So that's the flax seeds and the hemp seeds and the coconut oils and all the natural EPAs and DHEAs that we get from omega-3s, fatty fish. So you just start eating a perfect diet as best you can. You start trying to redesign the way you handle stress, the way you treat your sleep hygiene, all these, you know, it's a holistic approach and you may very well need, as you did, Courtney,

a little progesterone. Some women can use Chaseberry, which is an herb. The other name for it is Vitex, a Latin name for Chaseberry, a time-tested herb that's been used for, I don't know, 2000 years, something like that to help regulate female problems. And actually I've seen many women that have used Chaseberry raise their progesterone levels and get back into balance. It takes a lot longer. Any herb is going to take longer. So if you're in a situation like Courtney was, where she's just kind of feeling like she's falling apart at the seams at the age of 27 and can't get rid of acne. And also women that can't sleep, I think are really, I see that as one of the things that has to happen. That has to start,

we have to start getting a handle on that. So many women can use progesterone at night. That's the best time to use it. If you're low in it and you're estrogen dominant, progesterone can help you sleep big time. Rubbing that cream in is like, it's a revelation. It can really help you sleep deeper. It does do that. It promotes calming, hits the GABA center of the brain, that feel good calming center of the brain. And it can be miraculous. It really can be magical for sleep. So in those cases, I might suggest a little bit of progesterone. And once you get your levels back to normal, because you're only in your twenties and thirties,

and you should be making your own hormones, you don't have to do that forever. It's just trying to top up, replenish. Now for women who are older, whose ovaries are packing their bags and are not going to be doing, you know, making optimal amounts of hormone anymore. People say, how long should I be on hormone? Well, how long do you want to live? And, you know, we do need to top up just like you have to get certain amino acids from the foods you eat. You have to get omega-3s from the foods you eat. There are certain things we don't make or certain things our bodies don't make. And when we get to the place where we're not making the things that make our world go around and give us enthusiasm for living and zest for life and take us back to who we are. How many women say to me,

I just don't feel like myself. I'm just not myself. This is not me. I don't want to be this person. You know, you want to, this is where, you know, taking steps to rebalance with a little bit of this and a little bit of that, you know, getting the balance just right can, can be very transformative and can save your life too. You know, we're, as we get older, we got to deal with heart disease. Heart disease is much more common in women than breast cancer is. We have to deal with colon cancer. We have things we have to look out for and make sure that we, you know, I don't want to go that way. This is our, to me, it's not about lifespan. I don't, it doesn't matter how long you live, as long as you're living in a state of health. So health span is really the concept that I think more about living your life in a state of

health and the absence of disease for as long as perfect as possible. And, you know you know, that's, that's what I'm aiming for. And I think at every age, that's how we all feel. We want to feel good. We want to look good and feel good for our age. And you can, you can absolutely feel better. I think a lot of women don't even know how good they could be feeling. Yeah. Oh, I love that you brought that up. It's such a good point. And I feel like this is a great segue into a question that I ask all my guests before we go. And that question is what are your health non-negotiables? So what are things that you do, no matter how busy you are, no matter how crazy your schedule is, things that you do to like prioritize your hormonal health, you know, and just prioritize your overall health?

I have to have sunlight in the morning, get out, get out in the, in the sun and air, do a little exercise out there, have my cup of tea. I lived in England for a long time. So I love my, you know, what is it? Keep calm and carry on. When my kids, when my kids were little, I just remembered, we we used to read this book called Five Minutes Peace. And it was a story of these elephants. The elephant mom was at her wit's end. And I felt like the elephant mom. And I just finally said to everybody, you know what, folks? I need five minutes peace in the morning to myself. If I want to stare out and veg, you know, stare into the distance with my cup of tea. I do not look at my cell phone first thing. That's a non-negotiable. I do not. I turn off my computer and cell phone at night, read a book. The light is shining on the book,

not in your eyes, things like that. You know, anything that is disruptive of my, I love my wine, but I don't drink it too late at night. Happy hour is a good concept because it's earlier in the afternoon. I don't, you know, I don't eat white flour and processed foods. And I definitely do not eat anything that has a hormone injected into it. So I enjoy most things. I don't limit things. I do a bit of intermittent fasting, but I do the 12 hours. So I don't, I don't limit things. I do a bit of, of intermittent fasting,

but I do the 12 hours. So I don't, I don't, don't do anything extreme. And mainly, you know, I just try to, I'm trying, especially with COVID and how the social distancing, I think has made us socially distant. I think it's important to reach out to friends. If you can't see them talk on the phone, do the zoom thing. So there are a lot of non-negotiables in my life. And I think it's important to reach out to friends. If you can't see them, talk on the phone, do the Zoom thing. So there are a lot of non-negotiables in my life. And I think those are habits I've been cultivating over time. And then again, taking my hormones is absolutely, that's a non-negotiable. Because when I don't get a little bit of those hormones, I become that little, that sort

of bitch on wheels person that is not very- That's not fun for anyone. And also adrenal support, the B vitamins. And I don't overload with vitamins, but there are certain vitamins that are depleted very easily. So I do get my compliment of omega-3s and B vitamins and some lovely adaptogenic herbs, which can really help to balance your hormones like ashwagandha and rhodiola. There's maca. There's all kinds of great hormone tinctures out there, which I also recommend.

And I wanted to tell you, Courtney, anybody that wants to test, go to yourhormonebalance.com and do our symptom quiz. That will help you get up to speed on whether you have symptoms of imbalance. And then anybody that wants to order a test kit, we'd love to offer your listeners $50 off any test kit that we offer. Okay, Real Foodology, use that code for $50 off the kit. And I think that's, you know, that's your beginning. That's, that's the first step really to, to getting into this place where you will create your own non-negotiables because you'll feel so much better. Yeah, that's so true. Well, thank you so much. Also, thank you for sharing that code with my listeners. I'm sure they're

going to be really excited. I'm actually, I think I'm going to, I'm going to do that test too, because it's been a long time. I did the hormone, um, the spit test that you were talking about, the saliva test, but I did that probably, Ooh, I don't know. It's been like eight years, eight years ago. So I kind of want to. Is that the last time you tested your hormones? Uh, not the last time I tested them, but it was the one, it was when I was really trying

to figure out where all my imbalances and stuff were. So I've, I've done blood tests since then, But I'm just curious to kind of see what's happening. To put in just a word about saliva, because as I said, I'm in that camp, but saliva testing, blood testing, urine testing, they all test different things. But the saliva testing I like because it's non-invasive, it doesn't skew cortisol hormones. And also it's measuring hormone that has left the bloodstream. It's measuring hormone that's moving into the cellular tissue. So it can be more kind of spot on about what the level of active hormone is and that correlates better with the symptoms you're experiencing. So I like that. So for those people that are, that sounds good to saliva is, you know, it's time-tested, very popular way to test. So there's

many ways to go. Yeah. I heard it's, yeah, it's a great way to really get a true snapshot into what's happening. Yes. It's a, it's a good beginning for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So for everyone listening where I know they can find you at your home on balance.com, but is there anywhere else that if someone is just wanting to reach out to you or maybe follow you, I don't know if you're on Instagram or anything like that, where can they find you? We have an awesome Instagram channel. What do you call it? Instagram platform. Yeah. Platform handle. My daughters are just going to town with that. We post every day and it's full of great information. I oversee a lot of the, you know, I oversee

everything I'm on there. Sometimes I have my own podcast called women talking frankly, which is for often for women in menopause. So we talk about younger women too, but you know, lots of quotes and memes and fun information, very useful information. Our aim is to educate you and to create awareness and to help you find, find your way through this maze, through this hormonal balance journey. And it can be, it's, it's enlightening and it's fun and it's transformative. It's life-changing. So yeah, go to our Instagram at your hormone balance. And then, you know, you can, you can contact us through the website to your hormone balance.com. Okay. Awesome. Well, this has been such an amazing conversation. I'm so happy that you were able to come on and thank you so much for coming on. This was great. It was my pleasure. It was good fun. Thanks, Courtney.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie, spelled with a J.

Love you guys so much. See you next week. I know I don't have my time You are standing twice above me You're all I'm feeling I'm feeling