The Dr. Hyman Show - The Underlying Causes And Solutions For Women’s Hormonal Imbalances with Dr. Elizabeth Boham

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Hormone imbalances are epidemic these days. For example, symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), like mood swings, irritability, depression, anxiety, fluid retention, bloating, breast tenderness, sugar cravings, headaches, and sleep disturbances, affect 75 percent of women. But just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean you have to live with these symptoms.  The real fact is that suffering related to menstrual cycles is unnecessary. You might never know this from conventional medicine, which seems to subscribe to the idea that women are destined to suffer throughout their reproductive life and beyond. However, there are actually many things you can do to fix hormonal imbalances.  In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to discuss the Functional Medicine approach to treating hormonal imbalances in women.  Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnesses the power of nutrition every day in her practice and is committed to training other physicians to utilize nutrition in healing. Dr. Boham has contributed to many articles and wrote the latest chapter on Obesity for the Rankel Textbook of Family Medicine. She is part of the faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine and has been featured on the Dr. Oz show and in a variety of publications and media including Huffington Post, The Chalkboard Magazine, and Experience Life. Her DVD Breast Wellness: Tools to Prevent and Heal from Breast Cancer explores the functional medicine approach to keeping your breasts and whole body well.  This episode is sponsored by AirDoctor. We need clean air not only to live but to create vibrant health and protect ourselves and loved ones from toxin exposure and disease. Learn more about the AirDoctor Professional Air Purifier system at a special price at www.drhyman.com/filter In this episode, Dr. Hyman and Dr. Boham discuss: The prevalence of hormonal imbalances in women Using the birth control pill as medical therapy to address PMS, heavy bleeding, and other symptoms of hormonal imbalance What happens during perimenopause The interrelatedness of hormones and what causes them to be out of balance The role of our adrenal glands and how to support them The benefits of eating foods such as flax seeds, broccoli, and whole-food soy to support our hormonal health  Why maintaining balanced blood sugar is so important for hormonal health For more information visit drhyman.com/uwc Additional resources: “Getting to the Root: Perimenopause” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2019/02/16/getting-to-the-root-perimenopause/ “Lesson 3: Hormones and Neurotransmitters” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2012/10/17/lesson-3-hormones-and-neurotransmitters/ “Natural Approach to Alleviating PMS” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2018/04/25/natural-approach-to-alleviating-pms/ “Magical Magnesium” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2020/03/11/magic-magnesium/ “How Do I Naturally Balance Female Sex Hormones?” https://drhyman.com/blog/2015/08/14/how-do-i-naturally-balance-female-sex-hormones/ “How to Eliminate PMS in 5 Simple Steps” https://drhyman.com/blog/2010/09/17/how-to-eliminate-pms-in-5-simple-steps/ “Relationships, Menopause, and Health” https://drhyman.com/blog/2012/01/13/relationships-menopause-and-health/ “How to Get Your Mojo Back (Boosting Female Sex Drive)” https://drhyman.com/blog/2016/07/09/how-to-get-your-mojo-back-boosting-female-sex-drive/ “ULTRAMIND®: Key #2 Balance Your Hormones” https://drhyman.com/blog/2012/01/27/the-ultramind-solution-key-2-balance-your-hormones/ “A Functional Medicine Approach to Infertility” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2018/09/01/a-functional-medicine-approach-to-infertility/ “Clara’s Case Study: Overcoming Infertility” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2018/09/05/claras-case-study-overcoming-infertility/ “Overcoming Postpartum Depression” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2019/01/16/overcoming-postpartum-depression/ “Meditation: Connecting to the Wisdom Within” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2014/04/10/meditation-connecting-wisdom-within/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Even simple meditation, 15 minutes twice a day, can cut back on, can significantly cut in half the amount of hot flashes a woman has. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to a special episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. That's pharmacy with an F-F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter.

And if you've had any hormone issues, whether it's menstrual issues or menopause or perimenopause or bad pap tests or anything, this is the podcast you should listen to. It's with my colleague and friend and partner at the Ultra Wellness Center, Dr. Elizabeth Boham, and she's joining us on today's special episode of House Call on the doctor's pharmacy. And she's joining us on today's special episode of House Call on The Doctor's Pharmacy. And she's an incredible doctor. She's had struggles with herself with hormone issues and breast cancer. So she knows a lot about this. And we focus on chronic diseases that nobody else can figure out and get people better

when nobody else can using a very different model of care called functional medicine. So I'm super excited to have you here, Liz. Thank you for joining. Thank you so much for having me, Mark. All right, let's get into it. How prevalent are hormone imbalances for women? Oh man, I mean, when I see a woman, so often we're dealing with hormone imbalances. They're so prevalent. You know, everything from, as you mentioned, PMS to issues with menopause and perimenopause, to issues with estrogen dominance, right, or over levels of estrogen, high levels of estrogen in the body, which can lead to

breast tenderness or more PMS or cancers like uterine cancer and breast cancer. And fluid retention and heavy bleeding. That too, yes. And all kinds of nasty symptoms. Yeah, so hormones are- Emotional swings and heavy bleeding. That too, yes. And all kinds of nasty symptoms. Yeah, so hormones are... Emotional swings and mood issues. So we're really thinking about hormones and hormone balance when anybody comes into the office. So, I mean, that's something, I think that that's an area...

And it's so common, right? 75% of women suffer from PMS. How is that normal? Right. That's not a normal state of biology. Right. It's an abnormal state right just because it's so common doesn't mean it's actually optimal right absolutely so then we need to ask

that question why why are the hormones out of balance and we look at everything from how is the body metabolizing the hormones how is the microbiome and how is that influencing it? How is the person dealing with stress and is that influencing their hormone balance? So, you know, you want to look at the whole body when you're trying to figure out what may be out of balance with somebody's hormones. Even fertility issues. I mean... Oh, that's getting so common, right? It's so common, you know, affects one out of seven couples. That's big. And so when you go to a regular doctor and you have these, you know, symptoms of PMS or heavy bleeding or, you know, menopause, like,

what do they do? So often they'll say, okay, I'm going to put you on birth control pills. Oh yeah. Right? Right. Like if with, with PMS and, or regular cycles or perimenopause, that is the common response, you know, is let's just start some birth control pills and that's going to even everything out. Is that safe? I don't know. I mean, it's a good question, right? I mean, there's, there are side effects to birth control pills. You know, we see, we see, we see stroke and blood clots with some women with birth control pills. Feet infections, effects in microbiome. Absolutely. There's some, there's some women where we know that the longer you've been on birth control pills, or if you're on them more than 10 years, or if your risk for breast cancer goes up.

So there is an association with long-term use of birth control pills. Or just breast cancer. Just breast cancer. Yeah. So that is interesting. So you take the pill for a long time, and your risk of breast cancer goes up. Yeah. For women, when they're on the birth control pill, or if they've been on it a long time, they have a slightly higher risk. And so you know, so that's something we got to pay attention to. Not everybody handles the hormones in the birth control pills the same. So not

everybody's being prescribed birth control for birth control. They're using it as a medical therapy for hormone imbalances when there's a very different way of treating it that works better, where the women feel better, and their hormones get imbalanced without nasty side effects of stroke and cancer. Right, right. I mean, you really want to ask... And migraines, and who knows what else. Right, migraines too, absolutely. So you want to ask, well, why is there that imbalance in the hormones, and what may be out of balance for that woman? You know, I think perimenopause is

such an interesting time where we get a lot of women who come in to the office at that time because they're just feeling so crummy, right? Perimenopause is the timeframe between when your cycles are normal and you can easily get pregnant and menopause. So perimenopause are those years, you know, it can be like 10, 13 years of perimenopause and it can occur anytime you can go into menopause, anytime between 45 and 55, that's typical. And that perimenopause can be 10, 6 to 10 to 13 years beforehand, before you actually go into menopause is considered perimenopause. What is that? Do people feel bad?

Yeah. I mean, the hormones are not as regular and consistent, right? So what happens a lot in perimenopause is during those years, women will have what are called anovulatory cycles. So they don't ovulate every time they have a monthly cycle. And so those anovulatory cycles, meaning no ovulation that month, results in less progesterone being produced in the body. Because when you ovulate, that's when you make progesterone. And if you're sort of weaning down your years of reproductive life,

you don't necessarily make progesterone. You don't ovulate every time. You don't ovulate every cycle. And then you get these high levels of estrogen, and that causes a lot of these symptoms of clots and heavy bleeding and bad PMS and mood issues and sleep issues and migraines and all this stuff that women suffer from that is so unnecessary. Right. You think of it as, you know, when you're having regular cycles with ovulation, you have estrogen and progesterone, and they sort of balance each other out.

And then when you're in those perimenopausal years, you're going to have so many women will have cycles where they don't have that progesterone spike. So it feels like their body feels like it's higher in estrogen because they don't have that progesterone to balance it off. And so you feel like you have high estrogen and and like you mentioned you get more breast tenderness or more clotting or heavier bleeding and and the low progesterone makes us often feel crummy so you can be more irritable you can just you know cranky harder time sleeping because progesterone really is a

calming hormone and it helps us, helps women, helps people sleep better. So when it's low, many times you don't sleep as well. You'll have irregular sleep patterns where you've never had that before. And, and, and you just feel more irritable and cranky and it's no fun. Out of balance, yeah. Yeah, out of balance. And, you know, it's important to sort of understand that we know a lot about what causes these imbalances. And we know a lot about how to fix them, except your traditional doctor is just not doing it.

Yeah, yeah. So what are the things that we know create hormone imbalance that make things worse for women? And, and by the way, you know, just to sort of a little aside, you know, it's not just sex hormones that get out of balance. And when you, when you see this sort of period of life around perimenopause, there's like four different hormones that are all interacting. It all kind of gets screwed up. One is insulin and blood sugar. Yep. Because you're, you know, you're often the sandwich generation. You have kids and your parents are getting older and you're trying to have a career.

And it's like, it's a lot going on at that time for women often. Yep. And then they have estrogen imbalances and progesterone. They have adrenal imbalances because their adrenal glands are their stress response and they're highly stressed in that time of life. So their adrenals interact with the sex hormones and screw that up.

And then, of course, you've got thyroid thrown in there in a lot of cases. So you've got thyroid, adrenal, sex hormones, insulin. And so it's like a big mishmash of hormone chaos. And actually, you can fix it. Absolutely. And I'm so glad. These are like so easy to fix with functional medicine. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm so glad you brought that up because all of our hormones are interrelated. They're all playing off each other. They're all influencing each other. And so that's important to really understand because that's how we can really help women feel better. So when you really focus on the adrenal glands, for example, have you have two adrenal glands typically they sit up on top of your kidneys and those glands produce cortisol and they produce DHEA and they a bunch of other things yeah so cortisol is one of your stress hormones so when you're under a lot of stress if you're under chronic stress for example I mean you you know your body's gonna be

producing a lot of cortisol all the time. And so what can happen, what can happen is then the body is spending all this time making cortisol to handle that chronic stress you're under. You're dealing with your kids and your parents, as you talked about. You know, you're working all the time, your job. You're not giving your body enough time to rest. You're not getting enough sleep. You might not be eating right, you know, you might be just running from one thing to the other, and maybe not be taking the time to do your meditation or your exercise, right? You're just not doing that self-care, which is so important for your adrenal glands. And when that's

happening, then your body's spending all this time producing cortisol that it can't do as good a job at producing progesterone. Right? And so then you have- It's like a chicken wire thing. It's all connected. It's not like they're all separate. Right. And so then you have more of those signs of low progesterone, which we talked about before, which is irregular sleep, irritability, more crankiness, more PMS, right? So it's really important that we step back and say, okay, how can we support your adrenal glands? And that's really a lot of self-care, you know, by saying, okay, I need to give myself time to rest. I need to give myself enough time to sleep. Meditate maybe. Exactly. I got to get my meditation in. Right. And, um, and I think that makes a

big difference. It can really help, um, with, with balancing the hormones. We know, right, that even simple meditation, 15 minutes twice a day can cut back on, can significantly cut in half the amount of hot flashes a woman has during those perimenopause, we haven't even talked about hot flashes yet, right? Well, I mean, let's talk about the things that screw up your hormones, right? Yeah. So sugar. Yes. That causes insulin resistance.

That causes more estrogen to be made and all the imbalances, right? Right, right. We were talking about how when you get more insulin resistance, you gain more weight around the belly, right? And we know that, you gain more weight around the belly, right? And we know that when we gain more weight around the belly, that we have more of that aromatase enzyme, which makes more estrogen and again, throws us out of balance. And what about alcohol? Yeah, alcohol really is a concern because the way alcohol, and there's multiple ways

that alcohol can impact risk of breast cancer, for example, but it also seems to result in a higher level of free estrogen in the body. And so, you know, we know it disrupts sleep, right? It's a liver toxin. Yeah. And it literally impedes the body's ability to metabolize estrogen. Yep.

And I've seen studies, it was shocking to me, where people were on hormone replacement and drinking, and their liver just can't handle it. And the estrogen level spike, and their risk goes up. So we have an enormous link there. I remember a study I read years ago, which was if a woman had a glass of wine a day, it increases her risk of breast cancer by 40%. Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a linear relationship between alcohol and breast cancer risk. So for every drink a woman drinks per day, like every time she increases the amount of she drinks per day, her risk of breast cancer goes up even further. So, you know, what's considered moderation for women is five or less drinks a week with a drink being, you know, five

ounces of wine or, you know, an ounce of hard liquor. It's not very much. No, it's not very much. And that's all for a whole week. But what's interesting is you're right. There has been even studies showing that even one drink a day is linked with an increased risk of breast cancer. And maybe because it is impairing, well, partly because it's impairing our liver and our ability to detoxify, and it's shifting estrogen levels, and it also depletes the body of B vitamins. So there's so many impacts that alcohol has there. Yeah. And even the microbiome plays a role in your hormone balance, right? Right. Absolutely. Right. That's something we're always measuring, right? We're looking at how the body is metabolizing hormones, and we're looking

at the microbiome. And I think that that's important when we're dealing with a woman in perimenopause. Like sometimes they just don't even understand, why am I feeling this way? You know, why am I all of a sudden more irritable? Why am I having a harder time with my periods? You know, why are they heavier? Why can't I sleep? Why am I getting hot flashes now? Right. And so sometimes just educating them is a great first place to start. And a lot of times women just feel better when they start to understand, okay, this is, this is going to, you know, my hormones are shifting and then what can I do to support them? Yeah. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Hyman here. Now I know we're all focused on being as healthy as possible during this unprecedented time. And that means drinking clean water, eating loads of

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forward slash filter to access the Air Doctor filter for $329, and that's $300 off the normal price of this filter. And this is their biggest deal yet. You definitely want to take advantage. So head over to drhyman.com forward slash filter to access the deal. Thanks for tuning in. And we were talking about how great meditation is, right? Because it's, oh, yeah. Yeah. And the things, you know, we see typically the women who have the worst problems have the worst diet, the most stress, they drink too much, they don't exercise, they have lots of stress, they don't meditate. It's not rocket science why hormones get screwed up. And we know how to intervene using very specific diagnostic tests that we do at the Ultrawana Center to actually help map out what's happening with the hormones. We can look at

estrogen metabolism. We can see how to really be sophisticated in manipulating those hormones so that actually they're better. We can fix the gut and the microbiome. We can look for environmental toxins, which act like estrogens in the body and get rid of those or heavy metals. And we can actually have an impact through using various foods to help, whether it's flax seeds or other broccoli family, help estrogen metabolism, certain soy products that are whole foods, soy products are good. And then we can kind of get people's hormones to kind of work better. We may want to even use nutrients. And you were talking about sulforaphane, which is a powerful broccoli chemical that you can

take. And there's a whole cocktail of things we use to help estrogen metabolism. Well, we should probably talk about soy a little bit because honestly, this is probably the most common question I get because people are so confused about soy. Tell us, Dr. Bohm. What is the deal with soy? Oh, my goodness. Should we eat soy or not eat soy?

So soy, right, soy foods, they have these things called phytoestrogens in them. And this is what got everybody nervous, right? So they have these components, these phytonutrients, these components in them that can actually impact the estrogen receptor. And so for, you know, a bunch of years ago, oncologists used to say, oh no, it can impact the estrogen receptor. I don't want you to eat soy. but what we know actually is that they bind to the estrogen receptor, preventing your own estrogen from binding to the estrogen receptor, and as a result, you have a lower estrogen-like impact in the body. So multiple studies have shown that soy is actually associated with a lower rate of breast cancer. But if it's traditional soy. Yeah, that's a good point.

Like tofu, tempeh, natto, miso, soy sauce. Edamame, right? Right. Those are whole soy products that are not industrial food. And most soy we're eating today is industrial soy. Turned in all kinds of weird ingredients like soy burgers and soy hot dogs and texturized vegetable protein that gets inserted in all kinds of protein bars uh and isolated soy protein which very different than

regular whole soy and maybe linked to cancer in animal studies so i think it's important people realize that you know it's it's um you know food is a modulator and it usually helps the body do what it does rather than interfere with it. And so sometimes it's true with like you eat too much broccoli or whatever, raw broccoli going to affect your thyroid. But the phytoestrogens in soy actually help to act more like a thermos. They keep things balanced, right? And I think, you know, recommending those whole soy foods is great.

And I think that's a really easy thing to do. Flax seeds also really help. You want flax seeds in the gut. The broccoli family vegetables, simple dietary things, and getting more fiber to help the prebiotics in the gut, getting rid of all the starch, the sugar, the processed food, all those ingredients, alcohol. There's really simple things you can do.

Yeah, like balancing your blood sugar. Balancing your blood sugar by making sure that every meal has a good source of healthy fat, has a good source of fiber and has a good source of protein, right? So that prevents the spikes in blood sugar and the spikes in insulin, right? So you, you make sure your meals are balanced like that. Then you won't get those ups and downs in your, in your energy. And so you just feel better. And that helps with preventing that high insulin. And then you're going to be binging on carbs and sugar to get your energy up and all that. Right, right, right.

So then that helps with the balance of all the hormones, as you were mentioning earlier. And so when a woman is going through perimenopause, the first place we look at is, okay, what are these personalized lifestyle factors? What can we really focus on with them? I mean, there might be times where we at the Ultra Wellness Center may use some hormones to help with their sleep if necessary. But many times just a woman understanding what's going on and then making some shifts in their lifestyle can make a huge impact and make them feel better. Yeah. And so you had this patient who had struggled with sleep and she was 45 and she had never had a problem before and woke up all the time and had night sweats and she was terribly not well. And what did you find with her?

Right. So, you know, we found, so she was 45. So she was in perimenopause. We checked her hormones at day 20 in her cycle. So what we ended up finding was her progesterone was low, right? So she had, she was in those anovulatory cycles, like we had mentioned earlier, and, and her progesterone was low. So what we really worked on was supporting her, her progesterone production with supporting her adrenal gland, taking good self-care, getting good rest, doing her meditation. We also worked on metabolizing her estrogen. So she had some variations in her genetics,

and we worked to really lower her estrogen levels with, you know, the cruciferous vegetables, folate-rich foods. We added in some supplements that actually on top of that were helpful. And, you know, she did much better. She really started to feel better. And we also, you know, we got her off of, we got her off of caffeine because we know that caffeine can impact sleep more. And it might not have bothered her in the past, but during this transition in her life, it was really impacting her sleep and her irritability. So we got her off of the caffeine.

And we also saw when we did that, her hot flashes significantly decreased and her sleep started to improve. Yeah. And you just see so many of these patients who suffer with things like PMS or perimenopause or sleep issues or mood issues or depression or migraines, which are common when your hormones out of balance,

or abnormal pap tests, or we call dysfunctional uterine bleeding, which have clots and painful periods. And it makes me really angry when I see these patients because they're not getting the advice they need. They're not actually given a doorway into a way of thinking and diagnosis and treatment that actually fixes their problems. Yep. And they're either told they're, you know, you know, emotional or they're anxious or they give them an antidepressant or they give them a hormone treatment, which, you know, sometimes is okay.

But a lot of times it's, it's not the right hormones. It's, you know, giving them a, but a lot of times it's not the right hormones. It's, you know, giving them a birth control pill or giving them Premarin. And what we see in functional medicine is by working in this way, using the thyroid approach and the adrenal treatments and the insulin approach, you know, fixing the insulin resistance and fixing the estrogen metabolism and the gut and the toxins, you know, it's, it's, it's different for every woman, but you sort of look at what's for them, the issue, and you then personalize it and you can create an incredible roadmap for women to feel good and get rid of

PMS and get rid of heavy bleeding and get rid of the cramps and get rid of migraines and get rid of the sleep and hot flash issues and so forth. Right. So it's a pretty exciting model that I think is one of the best applications of functional medicine is helping women with all these hormone imbalances that are actually relatively easy to fix. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. It's really fun. It's a fun place to be.

Yeah. And I remember this one patient I had with abnormal pap test, because that's a big thing for women, right? Yes. Pre-cervical cancer and screening. And what they do is they, they screen you and then they, then they say, well, you know, come back if it's worse. And then they cut your cervix out or they do some surgical thing, they burn it or, you know,

that has consequences and, you know, may save your life, but it's not necessarily the only thing you can do. Right. And I had, you know, one had one woman, very interestingly, she really had a moral pap test. But when I checked her, she had these weird genes that made it hard for her to metabolize estrogen, the methylation genes, the things that have to do with B vitamins. And she also had some nutritional deficiencies and various things. We just fixed it up. And then we gave her methylfolate and we gave her various nutrients b6 which helps estrogen metabolism and we also gave her something called indole-3-carbinol which essentially is broccoli

pill yep and there's a lot of research on how if you have an abnormal pap test if you take these phytochemicals that help estrogen metabolism you actually have a reversal and i can't tell you how many patients i've had with using this to actually help them get their... Like 3,000 micrograms of methylfolate. Again, the methyl form, but 3,000 micrograms of methylfolate really can be helpful in terms of reversing that cervical dysplasia, right? Right. And of course, we always go with food and the folate rich foods are your foliage, your green leafy veggies. But when there's actual dysplasia in the cervix, when we give that higher dose of methylfolate, that it really can be very helpful. So powerful. And there's so many things

like, you know, we talked a little bit earlier, and maybe we need to do another podcast on this, but fertility is such an issue. One in seven couples are infertile. It's increasing. And it has to do with things that are often treatable or reversible, not using tons of hormones or intrigued to a fertilization or all these things. And, you know, I've had so many patients in my practice who couldn't get pregnant. Right. And you treat them using a functional medicine approach.

And I can just think of two right now. One's a 44-year-old woman who actually was so sick with all kinds of issues, wanted to have another baby, couldn't get pregnant, and got pregnant naturally after we fixed her. Another one was about a 38-year-old woman who also struggled with infertility, and she literally just had her baby last week. It's so gratifying to me to see that we can actually focus on how to treat these things using food.

There's old textbooks written on this, and Fertility Diet written by Walter Willett, which talks about how sugar is a big factor for infertility. Huge, huge. And people don't realize that. They're eating bread, they're eating sugar, and they think, oh, it's fine, but actually maybe it caused their infertility. But that whole connection with that high insulin

and your hormones, and it's so connected. So if anybody's listening out there who's a woman, there's probably a few out there, I would really not accept the traditional messaging from conventional doctors that you just have to suffer through all this. PMS, again, is one of those things that's relatively easy to fix using this functional medicine approach, whether we use diet, exercise, supplements, various kinds of herbs, nutrients, even sometimes natural hormones like progesterone can make a huge difference.

And if we do use hormones, we actually use bioidentical hormones, which things like Premarin is horse urine, pregnant mare's urine. And it produces all these secondary metabolites and more and more likely to give stroke and cancer. Increases inflammation in the body. Inflammation, increases C-reactive protein. I mean, it's like not great. And by using a different approach,

using bioidentical hormones delivered to the skin or certain ways can have a profound benefit to women. And I think we're gonna have to come back and do another podcast on menopause because we didn't even talk about hormone replacement therapy, which is a whole big category of thinking about how do you actually find the right dose in

the right person in the right way, it's delivered in the right method that actually has the most benefit. Because there are risks to it, but I think we can mitigate those risks using this whole approach. Absolutely, I agree. So what do you think as a woman about any last words to women and what they should think about when it comes to their hormones and being out of balance? Yeah. I mean, I think really appreciate the connection with all the different hormones in the body that when you really work to support your adrenal gland, when you really work to manage your stress, when you really work to get enough sleep and rest in your body, that really helps with your hormones rebalancing themselves. And I think that that's a really important area that so often women are just taking care of others, right? They're taking care of their kids, they're taking care of their spouse, they're taking care

of their parents, and they really need to take this time to say, okay, maybe some of these symptoms are telling me that I've got to start taking care of myself. And that really can make a huge difference. Sort of like on the airplane, they tell you to put the mask on your face before you put on your kids. I think that's what women need. And it's hard because women are programmed in our culture to be caretakers, to help everybody else, to neglect themselves and feel guilty and bad if they do it. And I think it's really important that women start to put themselves first and actually prioritize their own well-being, which will help everything in their life. Absolutely. Well, Dr. Boham, Liz, thank you so much for being on The Doctor's Pharmacy. I really love having you on this little mini episode we're doing regularly

called House Call that helps guide people on what to do. People want to learn more about hormone imbalance, what tests they should do, the kinds of therapies that are effective. There's a free information on the website, drhyman.com forward slash UWC. And you can go there and download it. And it's a great guide.

You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. You can try to find a functional medicine doctor in your area. But I encourage you not to just suffer through the misery of hormone imbalance because we have a way to figure it out. So thank you so much for being on the podcast. That's it for this week's house call. If you enjoyed this mini episode of the doctor's pharmacy, share with your friends and family on social media, leave a comment. We'd

love to hear from you. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy. Thank you, Mark. Hi, everyone. It's Dr. Mark Hyman. So two quick things. Number one, thanks so much for listening to this week's podcast. It really means a lot to me. If you love the podcast, I'd really appreciate you sharing with your friends and family. Second, I want to tell you about a brand new newsletter I started called Mark's Picks.

Every week, I'm going to send out a list of a few things that I've been using to take my own health to the next level. This could be books, podcasts, research that I found, supplement recommendations, recipes, or even gadgets i use a few of those and if you'd like to get access to this free weekly list all you have to do is visit drhyman.com forward slash pics that's drhyman.com forward slash pics i'll only email you once a week i promise and i'll never send you anything else besides my own recommendations. So just go to drhyman.com forward slash picks. That's P I C K S to sign up free today. 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, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.