The Dr. Hyman Show - Is Hormonal Imbalance The Cause Of Your Resistance To Weight Loss?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. It's really important to get this right because if you don't, you're gonna struggle with weight gain, you're gonna struggle with all these symptoms, and often low thyroid function is a big player if you're struggling with weight loss and you can't figure out why. Hey everyone, Dr. Mark here.

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Starting point is 00:02:29 Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with enough place for conversations that matter. And if you've ever struggled with weight loss and found it's just tough to get those pounds off, there may be hidden reasons for your resistance to weight loss. So that is what we're talking about today on The Doctor's Pharmacy, a place for conversations that matter. And it's in the form of one of our health bites, little tips that can help you make big changes over time or small changes that create big results over time.

Starting point is 00:02:56 You know, I've been here from patients, I've had a stubborn weight loss plateau. Even though I seem to be doing everything right, I'm eating right, I'm exercising, and what do I do? I just can't lose the weight. Now, I've discussed reasons for weight loss resistance before, and there are many obstacles that have nothing to do with what you eat or how much you exercise. Things like imbalances in your nutritional status, chronic inflammation from infections, even viruses, metabolic problems, toxins in your environment, leaky gut, your microbiome, huge impact on your metabolism, even your genes. So I cover all those things in the past. What I

Starting point is 00:03:32 want to talk about today is one specific category of resistance to weight loss, which is hormonal imbalances. Now, it's no contest when it comes to hormones, what the worst thing is for weight. It causes inflammation. It causes weight gain. It's the main when it comes to hormones, what the worst thing is for weight. It causes inflammation. It causes weight gain. It's the main driver of chronic disease, aging, pretty much everything that goes wrong as we get older. And it's too much insulin, insulin resistance. Insulin is basically the fat storage hormone.

Starting point is 00:04:00 In my book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, in the 10-Day Detox Diet, I talk about how we can regulate insulin so you can shift your body from storing fat to burning fat. So if you want to get more detail, check those out. But today, we're going to talk about things beyond insulin, how other hormones affect your weight and your health, your thyroid hormones, your stress hormones, and your sex hormones. So let's get right into it. Today, we're talking about these three big disruptors.

Starting point is 00:04:24 I talk about them in my book, Blood Sugar Solution, but let's talk about each of them today because they are often the cause of weight loss resistance. Now, thyroid is really common. We are inundated with a thyroid problem because our thyroid is like the canary in the coal mine. It's super sensitive to all sorts of environmental toxins, to stresses in our diet, to gluten. And low thyroid function affects one in five women and one in 10 men. That's a lot. And half of those cases, they're not diagnosed. And even if they are diagnosed and treated with conventional therapy, which is usually Synthroid or T4, it's not adequately controlled or treated. So what causes low thyroid function or thyroid imbalances? Well, there are a lot of things that cause it.

Starting point is 00:05:05 What are the symptoms? Let's just go over those first. You may not really identify this as a thyroid problem, but you might have a little of this and a little of that, a little depression, a little dry skin, a little hair falling out, a little constipation, low sex drive. Maybe your cholesterol is a little high. Maybe your nails are cracked. Maybe your hair is thinning.

Starting point is 00:05:20 Maybe you're having eyebrow loss in a lot of your eyebrows. Maybe you have muscle cramps. Maybe you're having eyebrow loss in a lot of your eyebrows. Maybe you have muscle cramps. Maybe you have trouble sleeping. Maybe you feel a little fluid retention and tired all the time. You have trouble getting up in the morning. These are all clues that your thyroid might not be working right. And often you just go to the doctor and you get the regular test, which we'll talk about, and it may not actually indicate what's really wrong. So one of the main things that causes dysfunction of thyroid in Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune thyroid condition, the most common one, is gluten. Gluten

Starting point is 00:05:51 is often associated probably in about 30% of cases with Hashimoto's. And the other big one is environmental toxins, heavy metals, mercury, lead. Also nutritional deficiencies affect your thyroid function. Things like low selenium, low zinc, low iodine, low omega-3 fats, low vitamin D all impact thyroid function. And most doctors don't even properly test for it. They don't know how to diagnose it and they don't treat it effectively because they just give you the precursor of your thyroid, active thyroid hormone, which is T4, and they don't know how to optimize your health otherwise with diet supplements or the right thyroid replacement. So it's really important to get this right because if you don't, you're going to struggle with weight gain, you're going to struggle with all these symptoms and often low

Starting point is 00:06:34 thyroid function is a big player if you're struggling with weight loss and you can't figure out why. So what are the strategies for optimizing your thyroid function and for getting your weight in check? First, get the right test. Now, the right tests include TSH or thyroid stimulating hormone, which is pretty much the only test that most conventional doctors do. You also have to ask for free T3 and free T4. And not only that, you have to ask for thyroid antibody tests, something called thyroid proxidase and antithyroid globulin antibodies. These are looking for low-level antibodies or even high-level antibodies. And you can have perfectly normal thyroid tests but have high antibodies and you still need to be treated. Or you can have a normal

Starting point is 00:07:13 TSH but a low T3 or a low T4 and you can still need thyroid replacement. So you've got to kind of figure out what's really going on here. We'll also look at reverse T3, which is the break that stops your thyroid from working. So sometimes toxins, inflammatory factors can actually increase reverse T3, which is like the break on your thyroid. So even if your regular tests look normal and you have high reverse T3, you might not have good thyroid function at the cellular level. Eat right for your thyroid is really important. If you don't eat right, you're not going to be on the right track because your diet influences your thyroid function. You need all the raw materials for thyroid function, but you also have to make sure you

Starting point is 00:07:49 don't include things that are hurting your thyroid. One of them is raw cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, collards, kale, Brussels sprouts. Now, people are often having kale juice a lot, and that can interrupt thyroid function. It's usually not eaten in cooked forms, not eaten in the normal amounts we eat them, which is even a couple of cups a day, but they can interfere with thyroid function. I had a woman who was in an England Journal study who saw that eating bok choy, which is one of these cruciferous vegetables, was good. And she ate, I think, two pounds a day of raw bok choy. And she ended up in a hypothyroid coma. So it sounds crazy, but I would encourage you not to be juicing kale.

Starting point is 00:08:30 Also, make sure you add foods that are including the nutrients you need to actually activate your thyroid function, which include, for example, iodine, which is in fish. You can get seaweed also. So you want to make sure you're having low mercury fish. Often people are eating iodine-free salt because they don't want to make sure you're having low mercury fish. Often people are eating iodine-free salt because they don't want to eat iodine in their salt. So there's more iodine deficiency out there than we might realize. It has to do with where it is in the soil. And we don't often eat foods with high levels. Also, making sure you don't have fluoride in your

Starting point is 00:09:00 water or chlorine, which are common. These are thyroid blockers. So you can filter your water or chlorine, which are common. These are thyroid blockers. You can filter your water at home. I think that's important. Also, you want to add extra nutrients that contain the other additional things like zinc, for example, has pumpkin seeds, brazil nuts have selenium. You know, as I mentioned, seaweed has iodine, vitamin D, you can get as a supplement, but also through fatty fish and even mushrooms. Although porcini mushrooms are highest, they're hard to find and they're hard to grow. Now, also you need the right supplements. So in order to activate the thyroid function, for example, to convert it from T3 to T4, you need selenium. In order to make thyroid itself, you need iodine to make it bind to the receptor of your nucleus to do all its thyroid

Starting point is 00:09:40 functions. It has to have vitamin D and so forth. So you need basically a multi fish oil and vitamin D as a foundation. You may need iodine supplements, but I would be very cautious about those. You can really overdose and interfere with your thyroid function. Also, when you're taking thyroid, you want to take the right stuff. Often doctors recommend Synthroid or Levoxel, which is the inactive form. Some people do well with that if you add a little T3, but I prefer people stay on a comprehensive bioidentical hormone. And the one I recommend is Armour Thyroid or Nature Throid or Westroid. These are a combination of T3 and 4, but they're whole glandular thyroids.

Starting point is 00:10:14 Now, it sounds kind of weird, but these came from a pig, very identical to our body's own thyroid hormone. And we've been using these glandulars in medicine for decades and decades, over 70 years for cortisol, for thyroid, for many things we use them for. And so I think that it's important to understand how to properly adjust this. Now, if you get on a bioidentical thyroid, your TSH is going to drop and your doctor will go, oh, you're over-treated, but you can't just look at the TSH. You need to look at the free T3 and free T4, and those have to be in a good range. And I have all that in my book, and there's a great guide online called How to Work with Your Doctor to Get What You Need. I wrote a whole guide called The Ultrathoroid Solution. You can look that up

Starting point is 00:10:59 online, a little PDF handbook. All right, let's talk about the next hormone, cortisol. Cortisol is a big one. Now, cortisol makes you gain weight. Now, it's a stress hormone. Most of us are overactive in our stress response and don't reset our nervous systems. When you have high levels of cortisol, it causes you to gain belly fat. It causes your muscles to break down. It makes you more insulin resistant. It raises your blood pressure. It shrinks your memory center in your brain. And what happens is stress also affects your fat cells, literally your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system, your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight nervous system has like neuronal connections to your fat cells. So literally when you're stressed, your fat cells are listening. And when your body is actually in a state of stress, it's not designed to actually lose weight initially because you want to be flooding your body with sugar and fatty acids.

Starting point is 00:11:57 And so you're basically inhibiting the process of metabolism and you're increasing your fat storage and you're doing all these things that are really bad. And they're good if you're running from a tiger for two minutes, but not if you're doing this every day. So stress often isn't just a real event in the world. It can be a tiger chasing you, but it could also be an imaginary event in your mind. Like you could think, oh, your spouse is cheating on you because they came home a half an hour late or something. And it could be a total fabrication. They got stuck in traffic. And so the same event can cause stress depending on how you interpret that event. So stress is really an interpretation of an event. Even, you know, even a gun, for example, to your head would be highly

Starting point is 00:12:39 different experience for James Bond or Woody Allen. So, you know, same trigger, but different, different response. So most of these short-lived traumas, we can learn how to mitigate, but the sort of long-term trauma we often have to deal with, and that may be PTSD. And there's a lot of emerging therapies around that, that help reset the nervous system, whether it's stale ganglion block, whether it's MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, which is being researched now in phase three clinical trials that should be approved by 2024. So there's a lot of things out there. But basically, if you're chronically stressed, you can just gain weight. I had a patient who was struggling to lose weight. Her daughter lived in Israel. It was the time of the Palestinian uprisings with a lot of bombings. And she was really constantly freaked out about her daughter getting killed. And as soon as your daughter moved back to the States, she lost 40

Starting point is 00:13:28 pounds. So it's a real thing. Now, you want to learn how to reset your nervous system. We can't get away with being in a stress-free life, but we can learn how to reset our nervous systems, whether it's breathing exercises or breath work, meditation, yoga, massage, guided imagery, binaural beats. I mean, the list goes on. There's all sorts of apps and programs for this. And you can really reset your nervous system. There's Apollo, Sensate, things that help to reset your parasympathetic nervous system to kind of a more calm state. So you have to practice that regularly.

Starting point is 00:14:08 And I encourage people to do that every day. So what should you do? Well, first of all, our thoughts are the biggest driver of our stress response. So make sure you're interpreting reality in a way that actually isn't constantly seen as a threat. And that may take some work and therapy, but it may take from coaching or different kind of examinations if you're thinking, but it's really important to do. Also practice active relaxation. Like I said, you know, you can't just do nothing and expect to relax. Like watch TV, you have to do something. When it can be something more active, like a breath work or meditation or yoga, or it can be something like a sauna or a steam bath or ice plunge, a cold plunge. These reset your nervous system in a powerful way and change your physiological state. You can also try meditation. I love Ziva meditation. I use it regularly. It's basically a

Starting point is 00:14:49 mantra-based Vedic meditation. It's very simple, 20 minutes once a day, twice a day, really easy. And also sort of our social connections are a huge mitigator of stress, whether it's cuddling with a friend, even cuddling with a pet makes a big difference. So make sure you have time to be a human being, not a human doing and just friends and family connections, super important. So make sure you take the time to do that. All right. So we covered thyroid, we covered cortisol. Let's cover the last hormone that can go, hormones that can go off, that affect your weight, which are sex hormones. So there's main ones are estrogen and testosterone we talked about. Also progesterone plays a role. A lot of women took Provera,

Starting point is 00:15:29 which is a synthetic progesterone and that makes women gain weight, makes women depressed. So it's not great. Now estrogen is often a problem. We live in an estrogenic society. We actually do all the things that make our estrogen levels as men and women go up. So men have estrogen too. And when estrogen goes up, you know, men get, you know, big fat belly, they lose the hair on their legs and their chest. And essentially they become an estrogen producing factory because fat cells produce estrogen, they'll convert testosterone to estrogen. So really, really important to make sure that you're not doing things that are leading you to that body state, which is all the sugar and starch. So basically our carbohydrate rich

Starting point is 00:16:10 starchy sugary diet is driving high estrogen levels. Also environmental toxins do that. Alcohol is a big one. You know, the beer belly thing, uh, that really is something we need to pay attention to because estrogen will basically make you gain weight when you look at how they fatten up steer for slaughter they basically put an estrogen pellet in their ear and they the body absorbs all this estrogen they get all this marbled fat and it you know sells for more money but it's inches because they're giving male steers estrogen to make them fat so a lot of things also affect your hormones, your gut flora play a big role, lack of fiber, too many antibiotics, you know, as you mentioned,

Starting point is 00:16:53 pesticides, all sorts of things can interfere with estrogen. So when women get too much estrogen, what are the symptoms? The men we talked about, but you get breast tenderness, fluid retention, PMS, fibroids, heavy menstrual bleeding. And also in men, what happens is you get low testosterone. So not only the estrogen go up, but it's converted to testosterone and your testosterone drops. When your testosterone drops, that's a big one because then you lose muscle, you actually end up with a poor metabolism. And a lot of things cause low testosterone, but lack of exercise, too much drinking, too much stress, environmental toxins, pre-diabetes, diabetes, even pituitary problems can lower testosterone. So you want to check that.

Starting point is 00:17:35 And if men have low testosterone, they tend to lose motivation, they lose muscle, they lose sexual desire, they lose sexual function, they might have fatigue, mental fogginess, they have bone loss, they can cause osteoporosis, and obviously muscle loss. So you really, when you lose muscle, your metabolism slows down, you gain more weight, and it just creates a vicious cycle. And you need, you know, for example, to take, to make testosterone, you need cholesterol and eating a low-fat diet and statin drugs can often interfere with male testosterone. So how do you balance your diet and lifestyle to correct sex hormone imbalances? Pretty easy.

Starting point is 00:18:15 Just follow what I've been saying forever, which is the approach that's in Eat Fat, Get Thin, or in my 10-Day Detox Diet, or my Pega Diet. It's pretty much similar principles about how to eat a diet which is low in starch and sugar, high in good fats, high in fiber, has adequate protein, lots of phytochemicals, and it can actually balance your gut flora. So my testosterone went up about 300 points when I changed my diet to eat more fat and less starch and sugar. Also fiber is really important. Flax seeds are great because they help regulate hormonal balance in men and women. You can add two tablespoons a day with shake or salad, eat lots of fiber-rich vegetables and fruit. Make sure you're having daily bowel movements. If you're constipated, you can help cause reabsorption of estrogen, which is really bad.

Starting point is 00:18:56 So you want to make sure you're going every day. Take magnesium citrate, vitamin C, probiotics, flax seeds, all that helps you go. Alcohol, again, not great for all your sex hormones. Increased risk of all sex hormone cancers, breast, uterine, ovarian, even prostate cancer. So not a good thing to do on a daily basis. It also affects your detoxification of hormones and your estrogen levels go up. Also get moving. Exercise is a huge regulator of hormones. So make sure you're exercising regularly. You'll balance your hormones. Make sure you're exercising regularly. You'll balance your hormones.

Starting point is 00:19:27 You'll increase testosterone. You'll lower estrogen. You'll build muscle, lose fat, all in a positive, virtuous cycle. So if you really are struggling with resistance to weight loss, check out all the other things we talked about. Make sure you check your hormones, thyroid, cortisol, stress hormones, and your sex hormones. And you'll usually find a way to heal a lot of it and overcome that resistance. So I hope you've learned a lot from this podcast. I hope you'll share with your friends and family on social media. I think a lot of people struggle with these issues. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy.

Starting point is 00:20:04 Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter and in it I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health and I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays, nothing else, I promise, and all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash PICS to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash PICS, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share

Starting point is 00:20:50 with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey,

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The Dr. Hyman Show - Is Hormonal Imbalance The Cause Of Your Resistance To Weight Loss?

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