Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Strategies to get your hormones working for you, not against you- With Dr. Kyrin Dunston

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Are you ready to experience the brilliant health you deserve? Dr. Kyrin began to learn functional medicine firsthand by running her own hormone and thyroid tests at home. Dr. Kyrin quickly discovered that she had thyroid, progesterone, and low cortisol issues, so she began to address them with herbs, vitamins, and supplements. Dr. Kyrin later did stool testing to find out what was causing all her stomach issues. After the results came back, Dr. Kyrin was able to pinpoint the best diet for her digestive system. She took the next steps making appropriate diet changes, and the pounds began melting off, her energy came back, and her self-confidence returned. It wasn't long before people from all over the country wanted to work with Dr. Kyrin, so she decided to take her practice to the web to work with patients virtually and in a way that is convenient for them. That is when Her Brilliant Health was born. In this podcast, we cover: - How functional medicine changed Dr. Kyrin's life - What happens to women during menopause  - Ways that women can improve their ovarian function  - The importance of progesterone - Why you may need to get your hormones replaced after menopause  - Advice for self-care during the quarantine  This Podcast is Sponsored by: Primal Kitchen. Use promo code PELZ for 10% off your order RESOURCES: Reset Academy Dr. Kyrin Meditation Essential Self Care for Health Resilience free download Her Brilliant Health Revolution Dr. Kyrin on Instagram

The information discussed in this episode is intended as general information only. It is not intended for one-on-one medical advice, and you should always consult your healthcare practitioner before making any changes. And if you like the content discussed in this episode, please go leave a review so that others can benefit from it as well. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the great, thought leaders and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me.

Okay, resetters. So on this episode of the Resetter podcast, we are going to dive into hormones. So I got the pleasure to talk to Dr. Kieran Dunstan about her. journey through medicine. And she, by the way, her background is that she is, was a practicing OBGYN and found that the tools that she had learned in medical school were not helping her with her own practice and the patients she had there, but also that she was finding that they weren't helping her with her own health. And so out of searching for her own solutions, she discovered functional medicine and how powerful functional medicine can be on a woman who's trying to balance her hormones. So we had an incredible conversation about not only her own personal journey,

but about what we can be doing to balance our hormones with lifestyle tools. She gave some, if you guys have questions about bioidentical, she talks about that in here. And she talks about why traditional OB-GYN medicine is antiquated and not giving women solutions. And she says it in a very loving way, and we had an incredible conversation just about how we can take the topic of hormone balancing and menopause to a whole other level for women so that we can truly finally balance our hormones. So excited to share this guest with you, Dr. Karen Dunstan, and get ready because it was a really good conversation. Enjoy.

Okay, resetters, Dr. Mindy Pels here, and I am super excited to dive into hormones with my next guest, Dr. Karen, so let me start off by just welcoming you. Dr. Karen, thank you for taking the time to talk to me and my audience and share your wisdom. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me, Mindy. Yeah. So a little background, and we'll dive a little more into the notes on your official background into health. But just for the sake of this conversation, you are a medical doctor. You're an OBGYN. Is that correct? Right. I'm board

certified OBGYN. I have been for over 20 years, but I don't practice OBGYN. I like to say I used to deliver babies and now I deliver exceptional wellness for women. I love it. I love it. That's great. And so tell us a little about your story because I found your story really interesting and very, very similar to what so many women are going through. And after we get done talking about your story, I also want to dive into why functional medicine is so powerful for women, especially as they go through menopause. Sure. So I was a very successful OBGYN. I had a huge practice with many doctors and mid-level providers and served thousands of women delivered thousands of babies, did hysterectomies, paps, mares, birth control, you know the whole OBGYN thing. But I started noticing in my

patients that were approaching middle age or in middle age, that they were having the same health problems I was having, which was we were gaining weight and we were tired and yet we couldn't sleep well and we were having increased anxiety and depression and hair falling out and low sex drive. And nothing that I had been taught as a board certified OBJYN really addressed these to the degree that people regained health and had optimal vitality. Sure, I had band-aids. I could give them. I'd hand them a handful of prescription, something to sleep, something for depression, right? But I didn't have this magic bullet to make them feel like themselves again. And that's what they said. I don't feel like myself. And I didn't feel like myself. I weighed at 1.243 pounds.

I had fibromyalgia, which is a condition where you have pain all over your body every day. I had chronic fatigue. So I was so tired that basically all I did, Mindy, was sleep and work and sleep. and sleep and work. That's it. I was depressed. I was anxious. My hair was falling out. I had no sex drive and I looked and felt 20 years older than I was. And I tried everything I knew as a board certified OBGYN to figure out what was wrong and to fix it. Couldn't. All my tests would come back, quote unquote, normal. I'd go to my internist and say something's got to be wrong. She'd run tests and they'd be quote unquote normal. And finally, one day she said, you know, Kieran, stop. There's nothing wrong. You're fine. Stop asking me about this. And I remember going home

so depressed and demoralized because I thought, oh my God, there's nothing wrong with me. And I'm going to be like this the rest of my life. And if this is what I have to look forward to, I don't know that I want to live this life. And I really didn't have a choice. So, you know, I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And so I did. And then through a series of what I consider to be miraculous events, I discovered this thing called functional medicine. And when I heard about it, the way it was presented, it was doctors and scientists in this field I had never heard of, not saying, well, this is my opinion. You should look into functional medicine because it works.

But they were talking about all the stuff I had learned in medical school, all the biochemistry, physiology about how the body works, the Krebs cycle and how we make ATP and right, all that stuff. I had been taught in med school and then went to residency and had never really thought about again, because I was told, do what I do by my chief residence, because this is how we do it. You see ovarian cysts, you get birth control pills. Basically every female condition you get birth control pills.

That's the short version. Yes. You know what I'm talking about. And if you're listening and you've been to the gynecologist and you had a problem with your reproductive organs, you know what I'm talking about. Birth control pills. That one doesn't work. Try this one.

That doesn't work. You get a laparoscopy. So anyway, when I heard about it, I was like, wow, they're talking about. talking about how the body functions. I haven't heard about that since I was in med school. So crazy. Nobody's talking about how the body functions, right? So I said, oh, this makes sense. And they talked about tests I had never heard of as a board certified OBGYN and is supposed to know more about women's health than anyone else. Like salivary cortisol testing. Well, why didn't I hear about this? Oh, they use it with NASA astronauts. Oh, they've been using it in Europe for decades.

Why don't we use it? No standard of care for this. No standard of care in mainstream medicine to check women's hormones. None. We check everything. Your blood pressure, your temperature, your respiratory rate, we weigh you. We check your cholesterol, your good cholesterol, your bad cholesterol, your potassium. When it comes to women's hormones, do we check them? No. Why? Okay, that's a whole other story. That's a detour. But anyway, check your sex hormone levels. Okay. So then I started working actually with a naturopath. And I started doing these tests. And oh, even though I had checked my thyroid at least 10 times and it was quote unquote normal when I did the right test and read them the right way, I was hypothyroid. Yep. Well, your thyroid's your battery, right? It gives you your energy. It tells you all your cells how to burn energy to make fuel, how to burn fuel to make energy. Sorry. So your glucose and your fat, thyroid's low. You don't burn. You don't burn energy. You don't burn. You're,

You can't lose weight. You don't have energy. You're tired. Generally constipated, hair falling out, depressed, anxious. You don't feel like yourself. Well, no wonder I didn't feel like myself and I had gained, you know, 100 pounds. So then I started addressing the low thyroid. Then I did sex hormone testing. And because it was something we didn't do in OBGYN. I was progesterone efficient. Well, estrogen, you know, if you have too much, is the weight, gain, water retention, PM. mass hormone and progesterone's the antidote, weight loss, diuretic, anti-anxiety, anti-depression, feel-good, happy, sexy hormone. You need enough estrogen, but most of us have way too much. I didn't have too much, but I had not enough progesterone. Well, it's no wonder I felt like crap and was anxious and depressed and had no sex drive. So I replenished that. Then I looked at salivary cortisol testing. I had never heard of it, but oh, it makes sense to me why this works because, you know, mainstream medicine is only concerned, do you have a disease? Are you in the top or bottom 2.5 to 5%? I was like, well, I know I don't have a disease. You know, Addisons or Cushings, but let me check it. And I came back and I was a flat line.

So for everyone who's not familiar with that, it means that I was surviving, but my body had no energy left for anything else. It's like, we're keeping you going. You're breathing. And that's it. And so then I started addressing why my cortisol was low. So I started doing these tests. I started addressing them. My weight started coming off. Energy started coming up. Hair started growing. Skin started shining. I started looking a little bit more like my age. And then after the whole journey was two years because I'd go to conferences, functional medicine conferences. I'd learn about a test. I do it on myself. I address it. So slowly but surely, I like to say I was like Hansel and Gretel following that breadcrumb trail. of relearning what I had unlearned since medical school and learning another way of treating the body that, you know, with the premise, which is the truth, that the body naturally wants to heal. Anyone who's ever cut themselves knows this.

You don't have to do anything except protect it. You got to put a band-aids so that it can make its little scab and you're not rubbing it off, you know, and falling off. So you have to keep it clean, right? The whole body does that, right? It wants to heal. So we just need to, my simplistic philosophy is get the good stuff in, bad stuff out, balance everything.

That's all you need to do. Yeah. Why do you think more obese don't think like this? Because, you know, when I hear you talk, I'm like, yeah, it's just common sense that we would want to work with the natural healing laws of the body. And, you know, I think I had mentioned this to you before, that one of the things I experienced on my menopause journey is I went to an OB and she looked at me and said, when I explained my menopause symptoms, she said, Mindy, I have a practice full of these women and my medical

textbooks have failed me. Yes. And I, you know, I have to give her so much admiration for admitting it, but she was like, I don't know what to do with these women. So why are we not teaching this in medical school. That's a good question and it's actually a mission, a personal mission that I'm developing in my head because I saw an article recently about now when I was a resident in 1992 to 96, we switched the tipping point to all female physicians. So we are predominantly a female specialty now of female doctors, which is unlike any other, most other specialties. And yeah, we have this archaic way of treating ourselves where we don't check hormone levels. Menopause is underrepresented in research studies.

It's underrepresented in everything, Mindy. I mean, you know, I don't know about you, but my audience is a similar audience to yours. And when I go to look source photographs for menopausal women, we're underrepresented in stock photography. We are underrepresented in everything. We're like the forgotten sex generation. Once women hit a certain age, it's like we disappear. And yet, I think it was it Gandhi who said that Western women are going to save the world. It's the menopausal woman who's going to save the world. Oh, my God. I love that. You know, we have the wisdom and the experience in so many areas of life and the education now to be able to solve these problems that we don't seem to be able to solve with our. current people trying to solve them. So read between the lines. But so I'm with you. And I don't mean in any way,

shape, or form to throw doctors or OBGYNs under the bus. So please hear that clearly. I was one of those doing exactly what your doctor said years ago, you know, giving birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy that increased people's risk of cancer and really didn't improve their quality of life because it wasn't addressing the root cause of why people had these problems. So when you ask, why don't doctors do this? The answer is, one, it's systemic. It's how we're educated. And when we go to medical school, you know, they take bright people, bright, shiny, optimistic people. And then we go to medical school, we learn all about how the body works. Great. Then we go to residency. And the thing is that at some point, you stop asking why you're doing the things you're doing and you just do them

because you're told to do them. And this is how we do it. And your double-blind placebo-controlled trial becomes your new religion for how you treat the body. And then you have no question, you have no reason to question why you do what you do because you get board certified. So you're told you know everything there is to know about women's health. And you never stop to question until you have your own health problem that isn't addressed by what you know, or you have a loved one that has a health problem that can't get better with what you know. And then you start questioning something's not wrong. And that's kind of where I was like, I knew something was wrong because the medicine I know is telling me I'm fine. And yet, I look in the mirror and I'm obese. I get on

the scale, I weigh 243 pounds. My hair is falling out. I look like I'm 60, but I'm 40. Like clearly, there's something wrong. I'm not fine. And I'm not fine. And so, but I thought I knew everything there was to know. Now, it's funny because I grew up in New York City and I was raised by a mom who we used to call her Granola Jerry. I have a mom like that too. Yeah. And so like my sister and I were get sick and she would give us golden seal and echinacea and put us under the covers and make us sweat it out. You know, we thought she was a little crazy. And then I went to med school and I came back and I told her mother, we heal with steel. And, you know, I thought I knew everything. So I pooped everything she knew. And it wasn't until I discovered functional medicine that it occurred to me. Wow. My mother was right. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

Maybe this is what I was missing. Like, that's how arrogant I was. Yeah. Yeah. Everything I need to know, I learned about medicine I learned from my mom, right? Yeah. So there's the title. There's a title of your book. That is to be. It's so true. There's so much wisdom that gets passed down from, you know, women in general as we go through life. And if you're willing to ask the right questions, my mom was the same way. Like really willing to look at alternative therapies then and apply them. Sometimes those aren't the double blind, controlled study, you know, little tricks, but they're very powerful. Because a lot of the things, tools that we use have been used for thousands of years by cultures all over the world and nobody can get a patent on them so they're not

going to pay to do a double blind placebo control trial. But in medicine, I think we've really, you know, sure, if you look at the medicine that used to exist three, four, five hundred years ago, it was kind of barbaric and there really was, it was kind of like a trade like making leather belt. He went and apprenticed how to make leather belt. And there really wasn't as much of a scientific background to it. So yes, did we need some reform? Yes. And are double-blind placebo-controlled trials valid? Yes. However, we don't need to throw out thousands of years of cultural understanding. And in fact, a lot of the medications that have been developed and are being developed, what they're actually doing is taking botanical medicines that have been used in various cultures and breaking them down to find out

what the components of them are. And like with the cholesterol medicine, with the red yeast rise, and then they're extracting that and manufacturing it and then doing the double wine placebo-controlled trial because they can get a patent. But, you know, that gets into a whole other topic of there's the vital life force in plants that then if you just make one ingredient, you're not getting. And I really believe personally that we were put on this earth with all of the flora and fauna that we were, because we're all meant to work together, to heal each other and nurture each other. And that when we respect that and we use it properly, that these plants really can give us what we need to heal.

Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. So let's dive into some real applicable information for people. And I absolutely agree with you. And I really hope that we as a society start to wake up. and realize that these plants and these herbs have, just because our doctor may not know about them,

they still can be quite valid and helpful. Absolutely. But one of the things I experienced, I'm 50 now, and one of the things that I experienced is when I hit 40, I started getting all of this decline and this wild ride of hormones. And I thought menopause was something my mother went through. I didn't think I, I still am like, I feel like I'm like I feel like I'm 25, not 50, but there is definitely some profound changes that happen when your ovaries start to shut down.

And this is another topic I wish as women we spoke of more, which is like, no, men don't go through this. There's not like this organ that just is like, I'm out, I'm done. Like I'm not going to, I'm not necessary anymore. But yet as women go through menopause, our ovaries are taken. they're going to go into retirement. And so what is it that we can do? Like I'd like to like tap every 40-year-old woman on the shoulder and be like, hey, I just want to kind of let you know what's coming down the road. And if you embrace it with certain strategies, you could actually do pretty well through your 40s and through this experience. So talk a little bit about that. And what are some of the strategies you

recommend for the peri, I would call that the perimenopause. Right. Yeah. So it would be nice if the doctors for women, OBGYNs, if we helped women to understand this is what's going to happen to you. And so what happens is that your eggs start getting old at age of 35 and that's when you're considered advanced maternal age. And so you're at increased risk for having a baby with chromosomal abnormalities, but also that's the time at which your ovarian hormone production, estrogen, progesterone starts, well, really it's the progesterone that starts going down. Estrogen typically starts going up. And that's the problem. You get this imbalance. So we talked about what those hormones do. And then your estrogen starts going up.

Progesterone starts going down. And that's why fibroids, endometriosis, ovarian, cis, breast, breast cancer all increase in the 40-year-old age range because these are estrogen-driven conditions and they are not counteracted by progesterone. And I will say that men do go through andropause as opposed to menopause, but it's not a complete cessation. What they go through is kind of like a perimenopause that's continual. So they start having a decrease, but it just keeps decreasing slowly. And it's kind of like, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? So it's not as noticeable. And dramatic because we have this change and we start wondering what's wrong with us. And then we hit menopause and that's a complete cessation. And then we're like, oh my gosh, what happened? And, you know,

the thing is that this was happening gradually. So if we could tap women on the shoulder and say, look, this is what's going to go down. So you need to be ready. What I would tell women is you need to be doing things to improve your ovarian function. So what can you do before you start into perimenopause? is you can decrease inflammation in your body. So inflammation is like little fires because inflammation is what's aging those eggs and making them not function properly and not make enough hormones. So this would be getting your gut health right, right? And I'm sure you talked about that in other videos.

And looking at any causes of inflammation in your body, whether it's toxicity from heavy metals or pesticides in your food or artificial colorings and flavorings or your cosmetics or your toiletries or cleaning products and all the things. And that's a whole other topic. So mitigating toxicity in your body, detoxifying properly, getting it out and eating things that are anti-inflammatory, like fruits and veggies to keep your inflammation down. Now, once your ovaries start with a decrease in production, there are botanicals that you can take that can signal your ovaries, hey, wake up, make more progesterone, get with it, right? Like chase.

tree, which is also called Vitex is a great one. And you can kind of try and help it wake up. And when they don't wake up enough, then you can start supplementing with natural, biologically identical progesterone. I am not talking about progestin that your gynecologists will prescribe for you. That is not progesterone. They will tell you it's progesterone because they don't understand the difference between progesterone and what a progestin is. And again, I don't blame them because that's what they were taught, because that's what I was taught. Progesterone is the hormone that your body naturally makes,

that it's called progesterone. Progestation, it's what supports a pregnancy until about 12 weeks until the placenta takes over. And if you don't get pregnant, then, you know, it goes down. But that's different progestin, which is an artificial, progesterone that's been taken in the lab and chemically altered so that a drug company could get a patent on it and sell it to you to make money so they could pay for their double-blind placebo control trial. It is not the same. So it sits on the receptor and it may give you some of the

benefits of progesterone, but it's also going to give you a whole lot of drawbacks that you don't want. Like metroxy progesterone acetate for one, it's also called pervera, has been shown to increase breast cancer among other health conditions. So you want natural, biologically identical progesterone. Generally, you'll have that made at a compounding pharmacy. You can get it over the counter in some forms, but you want to get a reputable brand because some of them actually don't really have any progesterone in there. And I'm sure, Dr. Mindy, you offer some to your clients.

And then if that stops, that's not enough, then you can get it from a condominable pharmacy. and you do need a prescription from a doctor to get it. But you need to supplement that progesterone, and if your estrogen is going sky high, you need to detoxify it and get your liver revved up and make sure you're pooping because that's how you get rid of it.

Because you can be miserable if you replace your progesterone to happy levels, but your estrogen's way up here, you're just not going to feel good. You're going to feel like you're always PMSing. So you've got to do something to balance this out because otherwise I've seen most women in their 40s, they're like, yeah, I just don't feel like myself.

I can't lose these last 20, 25 pounds. I just, my sex drive's not like it was. And, you know, all these symptoms that we suffer from, because we're so underserved, you really can get on top of it. I had this thought when I was driving one day because I was thinking, gosh, you know, this menopausal ride is so turbulent. And then this thought popped into my head like,

God, I just think I took progesterone for granted. Like, when I had it, I just, I didn't realize how amazing it was for me. I'm like, I just want to go apologize to my progesterone levels. And I wish I had 30 would have really taken in how well that progesterone works for me. We can make a, we need to make a song about ode to progesterone. Yes. Because it's that important and it's that wonderful. Yes.

I mean, it helps us make babies and it makes us feel so good. Yes. Yes. And we don't know it until it's gone. And then what's gone? We're like, what? Oh, my gosh, please come back and it's not coming back anymore. So what do you think of like creams?

Like, that's a pretty popular one. Any progesterone creams? Do you feel like those are helpful? Yes. But like I said, you just got to be savvy about your brands. Get one of these brands that is JMP certified. that, you know, most of them will test and prove that what they say is in there is in there. Because if you get one at Sam's Club, you know, you're on your own.

Yeah. No. No. It's like Costco, I tell people, please don't ever buy health products from Costco. So, yeah, and I agree with you on the heavy metal detoxing. For me, that was what gave me my sleep back at 45 was really pulling those metals out. So, yeah. So talk a little bit about, the post-menopausal woman, because I see this a lot in my resetters where a woman's gone through menopause. She's five years out, never hasn't had a cycle in five years. And she still has hot flashes. She still has trouble losing weight. She's still, hair is still falling out. What's going on in that situation? Yeah, you know, I actually did a YouTube video on this because people are so confused about what is perimenopal. What is menopause? And most of, I actually, I actually did a YouTube video on this, because people are so confused about

what is perimenopause? What is menopause? And most people think that you go through menopause and that's menopause and then you're done with it. And that's not true. Once you go in menopause, you are always in menopause. Menopause. Your period has paused. It has stopped forever. Right. And so you're always in it. And so, you know, I think that that's an important distinction for people to understand because there's some women who go through it and they feel, quote, unquote, normal again. And they think because they feel, quote unquote, normal that there's nothing they need to do, nothing they need to attend to, no adverse effects and that they're cool and they can just sail on into the sunset. But that's a problem because even if you feel okay or what I find

is people think they feel okay. But when they get their hormones replaced and they go, oh, I didn't No, I felt so bad. Yeah. Right. Wow. Yeah, so there's that. But then also you can have untoward side effects from menopause if your hormone levels are not optimized. And so even if you feel great, these things are happening and you're not aware of them. Like your bones aren't sending a message going telegram. We are getting really thin down here. And your, you know, your brain cells aren't sending a telegram going, we're dying at a record rate. please help us. Those people still need help. And then the ones who don't feel good and they say, I went to menopause five years ago, so I never felt right since. Well, it's because you miss your hormones. Yeah. So men and women both have estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. It's just that they have way more testosterone. We have way more estrogen and progesterone. We feel good when we have those. Like remember, when you went through puberty and you started feeling the surge of your sex hormones and how full of yourself, you felt like, I bet anybody listening, nobody could tell you anything when you were 16,

could they? Right? Because you felt so good. Yep. Well, that's what you're missing. So if you're walking around and you just don't feel like yourself, and that's what I hear women say all the time, you know, this patient comes to mind, Diana, and she just did not feel like herself. And she had gone through menopause several years before, thought she was through it. She'd go to her regular doctor. and the regular doctor were trying to convince her that she was depressed and needed an antidepressant and that she needed a sleep medicine. And she kind of knew that wasn't the answer. She's like, no, I don't feel depressed. Just don't feel like myself. And so when we looked at her sex hormone levels, I like to use the Dutch, dried urine hormone. Yeah, that's what we. We love the Dutch.

Yeah. And she was, you know, empty tank. I love how they report the levels by little dial like it's a tank. Yeah, she was empty tank, you know. And so when we replenish that, she's like, wow. I didn't, she says, I knew I felt bad, but I didn't even know how bad I felt until I had the hormones replaced. So, you know, if this is you and you're listening and you're thinking, yeah, I thought I had been through it. I thought there really weren't answers. Maybe your gynecologist put you on Prem Pro or Premphase or any of these other myriad pharmacologic replacing. which you need to beware of because they actually yanked the women's health initiative study because of the increased risk for diseases. You don't want that. That's not anything you want. I wouldn't give it to my mother, my sister, or my daughter, so I wouldn't use it for you either. So you want to get

those hormones replenished. Yeah. And know what your hormone levels are. This is why I love the Dutch test. When I first understood the Dutch test, I thought, if I could get this in every woman's hands, that's over 40. We could stop all the anxiety. We could probably end, we could stop all the divorces that probably happen from not having progesterone. And you could stop the diseases like cancer and, you know, all the ovarian and the breast cancer diseases that you look on that Dutch test. And I have sat with a lot of women and said, your estrogen metabolites are so, and so imbalanced and in such a harmful place, you are building cancer right now if you do not do something. And it's motivating.

It is. It's so different than to say someone to, well, you should reduce your risk of breast cancer. When you show it in full color, like look at what you're not, how you're not disposing of your estrogen, your methylation is tanked, you know, your enzymes are, it's so vital. And, you know, I really think it is time for a new standard of care in OBGYN. And, you know, I mentioned earlier that now we are predominantly female specialty. And I've been thinking, but how do you approach doctors who think they know everything? But it's time to have a higher standard of care.

We need to be checking women's hormone levels when they are 20 and 30 years old. So we know where they feel good. And then we need to be able to compare it and we need to be fine-tuning it. We need to have bioidentical hormones as the standard of care. So I'm really about, you know, my podcast is Her Brilliant Health Revolution. And so it's about more than it's about the individual revolution. But on a societal basis, I've really been thinking about how do I, this is an aside, how do I start approaching this? And so I'm asking for divine guidance on that. Yes, it's necessary. It's really necessary because so many women are suffering through menopause. And, you know, that should be our time where we really, it's like our coming, coming out time. Like our kids are going off to college. Our careers are well established. We've made enough mistakes. We actually are.

pretty wise. And at that moment, you know, women are feeling horrible. Their hair's falling out. They're not sleeping. It's it, like I said, it's just such, and we're not talking about it. Nobody's talking about it. Well, we are, Mindy. I know you and I are. Because it's so freaking important. It's like, and I know, you know, women listening are probably listening to us and they're thinking, why don't I see this on the six o'clock news? Exactly. Why is this, you know, why is, and that's a whole other discussion, but it's very political, you know, because we're not promoting pharmacologics and so it's a whole other story. But you made it here and so you're in good hands.

Yeah, exactly. This is like what I say about fasting. The reason you have to go digging for the research on fasting is because nobody's getting rich off of fasting. So we have to go search for it because if it was, if they could make a drug for it, you would find it on, like you said, said the six o'clock news. Oh yeah, there'd be a fasting drug, right? Yeah. And then it would be a commercial for it all over. Right. Exactly. So, okay, and by the way, you need to bring, have you brought Dr. Carrie Jones onto your podcast? No. Uh-uh. Okay, so she's the medical director of the Dutch test. Oh, definitely. She's fabulous. She's fun to talk to. She has a great Instagram. It's one of the best podcast trending for us right now. People just love it. So you guys would

enjoy, go find her and you can pick her brain on the Dutch test because it's so amazing. So, okay, let's bring it back to what's going on today in our world. Now, here, I'm in California. So we are seven weeks into quarantine. And I keep saying to myself, like, poor menopausal women, like, there's no progesterone, you're in quarantine. You know, we've got all this anxiety around uncertainty in the world. What are some things that the a puzzle woman can do to relieve anxiety and to improve her health as we are going through this horrible crisis that we're in? Meditate. So first, let me say, you know, I know it is a, it's a new time for everyone, so we're trying to figure it out. You know, when you said how long you'd been in quarantine,

I stopped, I realized I had stopped counting, but I guess I'm six weeks now and, you know, and sheltering in place. But, you know, really, and I just actually, and I'd love to share it, with your audience, Mindy, is I created essential self-care for creating resilient health-free download about the things I'm doing that people can start doing at home while they're sheltering in place to improve their overall health status and their health resilience and boost their immune system. And so there are a lot of tips in there, but I would say the number one activity that I'm doing more now than I ever have is meditation. Because I don't know about you, Mindy, and I don't know about you ladies and men listening, but this whole disruption to the daily rhythm of my life has made me a little crazy.

Yes. And I find it very ungrounding to not go to the places I usually go and see the people I usually see and do my usual activities. And I know we're all dealing with that. And so I've upped my meditation practice to I'm doing 40 minutes every morning and trying to do another 20 minutes in the evening. And it is making all the difference. And are you doing one in particular or are you doing your own? Because once you do your own, I mean, once you record your own, you could probably do. Well, I do transcendental meditation. I was trained in it when I was 15 by my

granola Jerry mom. And, you know, that's the kind of thing she did for me and my sister. I still do transcendental meditation. I do like to listen to some guided ones. I do. I do like to listen to some guided ones. and I actually created a guided meditation for brilliant hormone balance. I'd love to share with your listeners. It's 20 minutes. And I find if you're not an experienced meditator, you can't just sit there and do nothing. It's impossible. And so when people try that, the brain is like, you can't shut it off.

You have to have something to focus on. And I find people do best with a combination of background music and spoken word, oftentimes with imagery of the spoken word like I do. I'm taking you through some things that you're doing and things that you're seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting at touch. It's really cool. So try that, but I would say meditation at home is number one.

Really, you know, when you go on your grocery outings, I know it's a big production now. I have to get ready, like physically and emotionally to go to the grocery store. But prepare yourself and then I have a whole list in the download of what you should be eating and what you should not be eating. I want to get lots of fruits and veggies. You know, one thing that I put in the download that I think people will really appreciate

they're probably not hearing, definitely not hearing on the news that they need to hear about is thermal therapies. So temperature manipulation. So hot and cold. So hot with sauna or hot baths or hot showers and cold. and how this stimulates the immune system to increase immune cells like natural killer cells. Love it. And also the heat is part of your body's innate immune system, which is that first part that

fights infection by raising up the temperature. That's why you get a fever. Well, you can be the fever from the outside and tell that virus, you know, like go away. So I have that and there. I have all kinds of things. And also I'd say the other thing is staying connected with people. I don't like the term social distance. It's physical distance, not social.

So get on Zoom. Like, it means so much to me to look into your eyes right now and see your face. Like, I wish I could just love you. I'm a hugger too. And because I just, you know, I am having that like skin hunger for a hug. I live alone with my two dogs. They're so sick of me because I'm always on hugging them. Yeah.

You know Dr. Anna Quebec, right? Yes. Yeah. So she, I love chatting with her. And one of the things that I always want to talk to her about is this idea that oxytocin controls cortisol. Cortisol controls insulin and that controls the sex hormones. So we're so missing the oxytocin right now. It's really, I mean, you can get it from your dogs.

I have done some research that is showing that you can even if you call somebody up and you say, I'm really grateful for you. or using the word love to people that when you genuinely love them, you can get some little oxytocin boosts there. But I like that physical distancing, not social, because that's only going to make our hormones even worse in this moment. Yeah, we are so oxytocin deprived. And, you know, we're hardwired at birth for the facial recognition to be seen and look into people's eyes.

And so, and it does help to calm our cortisol, our stress hormone. And so we really need to be getting that connection however we can. You know, for a while, I thought, oh, I'm really jealous of people who live with other humans. And then I thought, no, those people are probably really sick of their humans right now. Let me tell you, my 20-year-old came home from college. So well. Yeah, so seeing what you can do to balance your hormones, because your immune system function is all about your cortisol. And that's your stress hormone, and so what can you do to balance it? Meditation is great. Reframing any negative thoughts that you're having,

I don't know about people listening. I've gone down the tubes a couple times from reading stories that had highly emotional content details that I didn't need to know and pictures that I didn't need to see right? We don't all need to see this and know some of the details that we're getting in the media. So I had to get real intentional about my hygiene, mental hygiene around what information I'm consuming and what I'm not. And so I'm getting credible information and once a day and that's it. And then I have to move on. So really being mindful and noticing when you're in a negative loop that's taking you into negative and motions, do something to snap out of it. You know, you can do the rubber band, hit yourself, or switch the rubber band from side to side every time you have a negative thought. I know,

I talked with someone the other day and she said, oh yeah, we were doing a podcast interview for my podcast. And she said, I stopped, drop and roll. She literally stops what she's doing, throws herself on the floor and rolls because she had said to her husband, she was going down the tubes and she was saying out loud what she was thinking and he said, honey, you just need to stop, drop and roll. Oh my God. It's a pattern, you know, a neurolinguistic. It's a pattern interrupt. That's a great idea. I'm going to try that. So yeah, I love that. Well, I could chat with you for hours. I think you and I are absolutely in the same vibe when it comes to these menopausal years. So thank you so much for the work that you're doing. Your podcast is incredible. So we will put all the links in

the notes, but if you guys have not checked out for a podcast, you really want to do that. So let me finish up with this thought. Yeah. I like to do this with everybody in interview because I think that those of us that that are out there in the world, putting our information out, there's really a heart reason why we do it. And it's because we have some message we want to give the world. And it's some people, it's not, the message isn't necessarily like on hormones or weight loss or anything. There's a deeper message. So what would you say if you had one message, like one essence of information you could get across to the world, what would that be? I would say you don't have to settle for feeling less than your best self. You deserve brilliant health and vitality so that you can bring your unique gifts to the world.

That's really why I do what I do. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, Dr. Karen, thank you so much. Thank you for your generous links. I will be listening to your meditation. So it is definitely one of those tasks that I need to focus in more on. So again, this was great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you for doing the work you're doing. Thank you for trying to go and go back and change the way that OBs are doing this. So just, you know, from the bottom of my heart, just love enjoying this time together. And thank you for all you do. Oh, it's my pleasure to be here. here and it's a pleasure to do this.

Hey guys, I want to share with you a couple of really cool programs that we do that are either free or a really low cost. And let me start off with those of you that want to learn how to build a fasting lifestyle. Once a month, I do something called Fast Training Week. And I do it on YouTube. I do it in my Resetter Collaborative on Facebook. We do it on Instagram. So we take our whole social media community and we,

we come together and fast together. I always give you two fasts that you can do. A lot of people love to try a three to five day water fast or I'll do one of the other seven fast where I'll teach you autophagy fasting. I'll teach you fast mimicking. I'll teach you how to do some of the longer like 36 hour weight loss fasts. So I always give you two options and guide you through the experience and you get to do it with a community of people that are all on a, trying to build a fasting lifestyle like you. So you can find that on my community page on YouTube, or you can join the Reset or Collaborative on Facebook or follow us on,

follow me on Instagram. Okay, the other thing that we do that's really cool is our Reset Academy. And the Reset Academy is really a place where you and I can interact in a deeper level where my team can help support you in building a fasting lifestyle and learning how to do more variation. So I realize that it is hard when you're learning pieces of information that you don't always know how to put together different fast, different styles of keto, when do you eat to build hormones? Definitely there's a complexity to it. So in the Reset Academy, what we do is we as a community work together to help you guide yourself into a fasting variation and diet variation.

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