Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Link Between Hormones and Mental Health Part II

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts, go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep133/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership, go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is about how hormones and neurotransmitters can synergize together to improve our mental health. Please see our medical disclaimer.

Once we know these hormones, we know how to take better care of our mental health, and we know how to turn around and tell others how to take better care of us. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here, and I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself again. Let's jump in. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you me. This is literally my first solo episode. I have never done in the three seasons of The Resetter podcast.

I've never done a solo episode. But I wanted to take a pause and I wanted to synergize all of the information that you may be learning from this podcast, from my YouTube videos, from the information, my books and the things that I put out there. And I wanted to tie hormones to mental health. We are living in a time where so many of you are struggling with your mental health. And I really wanted a discussion that was unique to women. Now, you will hear, as I go through this, that this doesn't mean men are left out of this

conversation. I talk about how we handle stress differently. I also have done some great podcasts with Dr. John Gray talking about the mental health differences between men and women. So you can go back and listen to that. But this is a conversation. I am hoping that you will listen to with the other women in your life. If there are men in your life, I hope you listen to it with them.

And that I hope this discussion brings your understanding of hormones, neurotransmitters, and moods, and how these all synergized together and play out not only when we went through puberty, not only during our monthly cycle, but how it plays out in the menopausal years. So as always, I put out information to change the conversation for women. And I really hope that this solo discussion that I just gave you all changes the way you look at your moods and always gives you the power back. So here you go. a solo episode and conversation with me. And if you love it, give me a review, share it out into the

world. More importantly, don't give up on yourself and make sure that as a woman, that you are supporting other women in their mental health journey because we are way more powerful together. Enjoy. Now let's dive into the neurotransmitters. So here's how this looks. I'm going to do it in a in a in a 30 day menstrual cycle i feel like that's the best way for me to articulate neurotransmitters and moods so from the day you start your period what i want you to know is that from day one to day 10 estrogen is coming in and in that time period those first 10 days estrogen is building so it's not like it you know hormones pulse they come in for a few seconds and then they stop and then they come in and they stop and there's a rhythm to this pulsing a little bit

like a metronome so in day one through five the pulsing may be sort of slow of estrogen may be slow and methodical but as you get closer to day 10 the pulsing it gets faster and faster and faster and more and more estrogen comes in in that 10 day period you're going to want to keep insulin glucose down, so the ketogenic diet shines in this moment, you're going to want to fast more. So if you want to go into longer fast, do it in this 10-day period because you will assist estrogen in her production. Or think of it, I think of it like she's kind of coming out of the and ready to shine and show all her glory. And those 10 days is where she's going to build. Now, what you might notice in those first 10 days, mood-wise women, is you might notice that you are more,

you feel more social. So whereas you'll see as we get to the back half our cycle, we don't feel as social. So when estrogen is coming in, you should feel more outward with your mental. You want to be more stimulated by people, by learning, by, uh, by experiences, you're going to feel like you want to be out in the world. You're going to want to be in conversations. Now, that happens from 1 through 10, day 1 through 10. At that same time as estrogen is building, you also need estrogen to be able to make dopamine

and serotonin. Now, let's talk about those two hormones for a moment. dopamine is the molecule of more. I think what's interesting about dopamine is that we have really gotten into this dopamine saturated world. We're often chasing dopamine. And yet dopamine is a big liar. Dopamine should be looked at as a motivator, not as a happiness molecule.

So when we get dopamine, it moves us and propels us towards something. And when we get that something and we achieve that thing, then dopamine should stop. It actually does stop. And then serotonin should come in. And serotonin comes in and says, okay, you did a good job. You should be proud. And serotonin is the, I call it kind of a yummy neurotransmitter. It's that neurotransmitter that just makes you feel warm inside and makes you feel.

good and makes you feel accomplished. If you've ever hit a goal and you sit back and you're like, whoa, wow, that was a lot. I'm really proud of my work. I'm proud of what I just did. I'm excited for the results I just got. And you walk around throughout the day, cherishing some gold that you just hit, that's serotonin. Dopamine got you to be able to put the action into be able to get the serotonin comes in to tell you good job. So they both are necessary for joy. The most important part I want to bring into this conversation right now is that you need estrogen to be in her full glory in order to get dopamine and serotonin. And for a cycling woman, you are getting this from day one to day 10. Now, this is where it's really rough for the menopausal woman and for the perimenopausal woman,

is we are supposed to lose estrogen. That's part of the natural process. So as we lose estrogen, we're also losing dopamine and serotonin. So one of the key things that is emerging in the work that I've been doing with patients, but also the work that we're doing in my reset academy and we have a health coaching program called Thought Thrive is we've been back filling in with amino acids. And for dopamine and serotonin, some of the amino acids, that are very key are things like 5HTP,

triptophan, both of these are really important amino acids. But in general, all amino acids have an impact. Colleen is really important for the neurotransmitter production. Coaline, you get it in eggs, is really important for brain production or brain health. So if you haven't dabbled in understanding amino acids, please start to open your brain to educating you on the educating yourself on this.

I will be bringing more amino acid specialists onto the Reset or podcast so we can understand this a little bit better. I have done some YouTube videos on amino acids. So go look at those resources. If you need more help with amino acid production, we are teaching this in my Reset Academy. For the sake of this conversation, I want you to understand. that you have to have a good dose of amino acids to support dopamine and serotonin production. You also need estrogen.

So there is a synergy of four things that need to come together to bring you joy. You got to have your aminos in check. You got to have estrogen, help support estrogen at its age-appropriate spot, and you need to have dopamine and serotonin. why menopause is so tricky is because we are losing estrogen, therefore we lose dopamine, therefore we lose serotonin, so amino acids become even more important. So there are a lot of ways that we can look at building aminos in. So if you want to stay committed to a vegetarian diet, then you're going to want to add in more or make sure you're supplementing with aminos.

Okay, so that's the first 10 days. You should start to feel more outwardly gregarious. You should have better mental clarity. You should be feeling more joy. And you should be feeling like you can start to multitask because estrogen does that for us. When we go into the ovulation time, this is about day 10, you know, day 11 to day 15. It's a short four to five day window. Now we're getting estrogen at her peak.

We also have a big surge of testosterone coming in, and you get a little bit of progestron. In Fast Like a Girl, I actually gave this a name because one of the things that I like to do with health, I think health should be fun. And hormones should be really fun. And we've been villainizing hormones for too long. So what I want you to know is that in, so I renamed everything. In the Fast Like a Girl, you're going to see it. I just gave them all fun names. day one through day 10 when when hormones are low and we're building estrogen, I call it the

power phase. I'll share with you that I put another power phase because in in the second half of your cycle because you can power up on ketones. You can power up on more fasting to get these hormones. In the ovulation phase, this five-day window, I call it the manifestation phase because the manifestation phase is where you can manifest so many cool things. because you've got estrogen at its peak, testosterone at its peak,

and you've got a little bit of progesterone. So during ovulation, you should feel like a wonder woman. And if you're not, then we got to go figure out why not. And I'll talk about that in a moment, some of the tools to go in and figuring that out. But if you were to ask for a raise,

you would do it during the manifestation phase. If you have a conflict, like do you want to resolve? Do it during the manifestation phase. If you have like a big project that requires a lot of mental cognition, do it during this five-day period because you have all these hormones working to your advantage. I recently had a conversation with this beautiful dad who was in his late 40s, early 50s, and he was talking about how he wanted to try to understand his teenage daughter a little bit better. And so one of the questions I asked, him was, okay, tell me what, when you get the best conversations with her. Do you get great conversations

with her all the time? Or do they come in just small little blurbs of a few here and a few there? And he's like, yeah, they kind of come and go, I get connected to her. And then I feel like she shuts my wife and I out and we can't reach her. And so I said, what if you look, at do you know her hormonal schedule? Do you know when she ovulates? Because really the best time for you to connect with her. Let's say you want to talk to her about her grades. Let's say you need, you have something really big you need to talk to her about. Talk to her during her ovulation window because she has the hormones then to be able to have a really good constructive conversation with you. Whereas the week before her period, she's going to, as you'll see here

in a moment, she's going to want to go in her and she's not going to want to talk to you as much. And she might not have enough of the hormones needed to keep her calm. So you're a tough conversation is going to be the hardest then. And we even went on to say, and I'll tell you, this is where my geeky hormone brain goes, is that if we could get hormonal tests on on families, we could all understand each other a lot more if we understood our hormones. I call it hormonal astrology. It's like how do we bring together two different hormonal profiles and help people understand their hormones. But I say this with the manifestation phase because what I want you all to realize is if you are a woman who's ovulating still, you kick some butt that's during those five

days because you can do, you're crazy powerful. And not only testosterone doesn't just give you libido. And men, if you're listening, you have this five-day period where her libido, if you're with a woman, her libido is going to be at its peak during these five days. But you're also women, your motivation is going to be the highest. So if you want to start a project, start it during your ovulation window. You're going to get the most momentum that way. So start a workout plan there. Up your workouts during this time because you're going to have all of this testosterone. So weight, more heavier weights with your, with your exercise is going to be great during this time. So we've got this incredible mental clarity from estrogen, this desire to multitask and to

talk from estrogen is coming in during this five-day period. You're motivated. You have drive, your libido's up. And then you get a little bit of progesterone at this moment. You get a little blur up of progesterone to keep you calm. This is why you can manifest anything in this ovulation way. window. Then after about day 15, we dip down into this period where our hormones come crashing down again. And this is where we can go back into more ketogenic. We can do more cardio. We can do some

longer fast. Usually this goes from about day 16 to around day 19. For some of you that have high toxic loads, you might not feel great in ovulation. In fact, if you don't feel good during the manifestation phase, go run a Dutch test. I'll talk about that in a moment. It's really important to understand your hormones because your toxic level could be really high. Your liver may not be breaking down those hormones properly during ovulation. So make sure you understand that. But for most women, we come out of ovulation and those hormones come down and we go, okay, feel a little bit better, trying to kind of get a little more rhythm with hormones that are a little more steady. They're not as up and down as quickly.

So during that five-day, four-day period, after ovulation, you can go into some more fasting, go into some more keto. And then after that, about day 19, this is really, really important. This is when progestrone is coming in. And progestrone really needs GABA and it makes GABA. Progesterone, I also heard recently, progesterone can actually fulfill the GABA receptors in our brain. and so it calms the brain.

And so that week before our period, we are going to feel more inner, inner. We're not going to feel like we want to socialize a lot. This is really hard if you have big social engagements or you're a high performer that has to go, you know, compete or go give a talk or go do some kind of performance. And it's the week before your period. I just want to say have compassion for yourself because you're not necessarily hormonally equipped to be able to be as outwardly focus as you might need to be, which would mean that that week before your cycle, you would need to maybe then if you have a, let's say you have a big

performance, go do the performance, but then the next day you're going to need to go inner and rest and relax. Progesterone, when it comes in around day 19, not only makes us feel inner, not only makes us feel like we want to sit on the couch, but it makes us crave carbs. And the reason it makes us crave carbs is because we need more glucose. We need more insulin to be able to make progesterone. So if you're doing the ketogenic diet, if you're fasting during this week, there's a good chance. Anxiety's going to go up and you're going to lose your cycle. You may even lose hair. That's a huge reason I started to get out into the world talking about this is because so many women flooded my YouTube channel telling me how they were suffering. She was suffering using these

tools because too many women were not minding that week before. But progesterone and GABA are really, really important. There are neurotransmitters you need to be able to make progester, progestron. One is DLPA. It's known as L-Fenolalanine. You can find it in a really good, that is amino acid you need to make progesterone. You can find that in a really good multi-supplement for aminos. Personally, right now, my favorite, I will leave a link for it in here, is perfect aminos. I do them as liquid sometimes and sometimes I just take them. And again, we're doing more customization of amino acids in my reset academy.

So if you want to know more about that, come into the academy. But that week before, you need to chill out. You need to raise glucose. And it's okay if you're in her. So this is why I said this to this dad, is that we need to remember that going inner the week before is exactly what your daughter should be doing. So how do we support her in that? If my daughter right now is 22, if she was still living at home and I had known this in her teenage years, I would have been talking to her more about, you know, it's the week before your period. What can you do to nurture yourself? Which is why I call this in fast like a girl, I call this the nurture face.

So when we don't mind progesterone and GABA during this time, we struggle with premenstrual challenges. There's a new term. that everybody's throwing around in the health world. Again, another fancy term that doesn't mean much other than you didn't live in accordance with your hormones. And it's called PMDD, which is premenstrual dysfunction. And it's insane PMS symptoms. If your PMS symptoms are insane, it's because you haven't minded this hormonal lifestyle that I'm teaching you today.

And one of the key pieces of this is day 19. we got to slow down. Yoga's great. Going out and up for a hike is great, but don't train for a marathon during that time. Don't up your workouts. Don't overcrow your schedule. This is a time to go within and you probably already feel it. Those of you that are fasting, I just want to remind you that if you're more hungry during that time, this is key for just progesterone telling you, give me some food. So make sure you honor that. And then a couple of days before you bleed, gestron goes way up and then it just crashes down and that quick crash down is what will cause the uterine lining to start to bleed and you'll start the cycle all over again.

You will know you did the cycle right if on day one and day two when those when when you start that part of your cycle, you're starting to feel better. You're like, oh, okay, I feel like talking to people now. Okay, I feel like fasting a little longer. I feel like exercising a little more. you'll know that it really, within those first two days, you should feel that. You'll know that you minded your hormonal cycle well. If you get to those first two days and you're struggling, it takes you about five days to get yourself into that gregarious, energized state, then go back and work the principles. Again, this is what Fast Sike a Girl is, and it will be the go-to manual for you guys so that

you have that resource to be able to do that. So that's cycling women. Now, let's go to the perimenopausal woman for a second because here's the challenge is that we don't really have, sometimes we have a cycle coming every 60 days, sometimes it's every 90. We don't really know when it's coming and going. So we have to use symptoms to be able to tell us what hormone is wanting our attention. And for progesterone, the symptom is that we start spotting. This happened to me where all of a sudden I started to notice that I would spot. This is in my late 40s, and then maybe a week or two later, my cycle would start.

And at that time, it was actually maybe my mid-40s. I was so in love with keto and fasting. I just started fasting and doing keto all the time. I didn't know to mind these hormones. Once I started stepping out of ketosis the week before my cycle, then I noticed that the spotting went away. And actually, I thought I might be going into menopause in like, when I was at 47.

And then I realized, no, I actually just wasn't minding my hormones. And if I mind my hormones and live a lifestyle like this, I actually started getting a cycle more regular from 47 until now. We'll see what happens. I'm 90 days. We'll see. It kind of comes and goes. The most for menopause, the later you go into menopause, the healthier.

We really want to see women go into menopause somewhere between 52 and 55. That's the healthiest way. time to go in. So that gives you kind of a gauge there. So you can use perimenopausal women. You can use, I'm feeling really anxious today. You can use. And to me, for the perimenopausal anxiety when progesterone is low is a body anxiety. So it's your body not, you can't relax in your body. I know I need more progesterone when I'm sitting on the couch and I'm, my body is like not comfortable there. It's just sitting. That's because of the lack of estrogen. We also know you need more estrogen if you are not handling stress right.

If stress hits you and you fall apart, it's because you don't have the GABA that progesterone can stimulate to be able to calm the brain. So those can be some signs that you need to make sure that you vary it. In Fast like a Girl, I have a 30-day fasting reset, that perimenopausal and well, everybody will be able to do, but perimenopausal and post-menopausal, when you're women that don't have a cycle to really accurately time to, we'll be able to do this and bring some balance back to those hormones. So stay tuned on that. It is available for pre-order, by the way, right now. You can go to fast like a girl.com and go and go and get that. Okay. That's my perimenopausal. Post-menopausal women. What I want you to know is that

once you get on the other side, the brain has started to recalibrate. And if you are 10 after menopause and you're still feeling like your mental health is not where you want it to be. I encourage you to go back and work those five principles I wrote in the menopause reset, but then I really want to encourage you to look at your amino acid profile. You might even do a neurotransmitter test or a Dutch test so that you can start to understand what you need to focus on. Those resources you can find on our website. But no, you're not going crazy.

that it's just as you move through menopause, your body in adapting to the loss of hormones may have used your amino acid resources and now you need to come back in with some more amino acids combined with making sure that you're following the five principles from the menopause reset. So that's a lifetime view looking at hormones and mental health. that is a monthly view. So I hope that part helps. I do want to finish this up with talking about some tools and some conversations I've been in around how we can make sure we get proper hormone production. It doesn't matter what age you're at and proper neurotransmitter production.

So let's start with the tools, some of them I've talked about. The first tool is fasting at the right time. So this is why I've written books on it. I do tons of videos on it. I really hope that fast like a girl becomes this incredible resource for women to understand how to use fasting as a tool to balance these hormones out and in that be able to balance these neurotransmitters out. So fasting is amazing. We talked about aminos.

So amino acids, you're going to hear more from me. So know that if you want better mental health, you may need to start to back fill in with aminos. A great starting point if you're hearing this for the first time is to go get yourself some perfect aminos. Always there are discounts for our community. So you can go into the show notes here and find those discounts. Revelationhealth.com is where you can find perfect aminos. And as always, if you use my last name, PELZ, they'll give you 10% off. So that's an option for you there. So aminos are great.

Okay. Another one conversation I just had with Dr. Laura Briden, who I had this on Instagram. You can go watch. This was a beautiful conversation recently on Instagram. And we talked about the difference between alcohol and THC. So I want to talk about this for a moment because one of the conversations out there that is really frustrating me is, this and makes it sad is that we need to give up alcohol in order to get our hormones in check. Now, I do not disagree with this statement, but I also want to reach out to my perimenopausal

women, reach out to my postmenopausal women, and I want to say, I get you, I know that you are not managing stress like you used to at 25, and alcohol, a glass of wine at night, is incredibly helpful tool to calm you down. I've even had multiple conversations with Dr. Carrie Jones, one of my hormone heroines. You can follow her on Instagram. And I said, I put a glucose monitor on. I had a glass of wine and my glucose went down. So if my glucose goes down, that means my insulin's going down, which means my sex hormones are going to be more balanced. So how can you tell me that alcohol is not a great tool in that moment? And that conversation went on to really emphasize that the challenge with alcohol in our system is that when alcohol is on the scene, the liver doesn't do anything else.

It doesn't burn fat and it doesn't break down estrogen. So a lot of women will say, well, when I drink, I have more. hot flashes. Yes, because you're not breaking down estrogen because through the liver and you need good liver health to break estrogen down. So I even got to this point where I was thinking, you know, I think the worst time to drink alcohol would be during ovulation because you have these three different hormones that are coming into play and they need to be metabolized. They need to be broken down. And if you're drinking alcohol, you're impairing the the liver affecting the liver's ability to do that. So I was like, oh, we're going to start

timing alcohol to a woman's hormonal cycle. But for the perimenopausal woman, I want to come back to this concept of alcohol. I think we're back at the age old challenge with almost everything, which is how clean is the food or the drink or the substance you're using and dosage. So if you're a wine drinker, to me there is only natural, biodynamic chemical-free wines to drink after 40. I'm a huge fan of dry farm wines and we'll leave a link for that in the show notes. So when I drink wine, that's all I drink. If I go out to a restaurant, I ask for biodynamic natural wines. If they don't know or I ask for low alcohol wines, I'd look for something under 12%.

or I ask for wine that comes from France or Austria or Italy because those countries typically have more stringent rules around pesticides, glyphosate, and sprain the chemicals onto the grapes. So there's my wine talk. Now, other alcohols, you know, tequila tends to be a little bit cleaner and more women tend to do okay with tequila. it comes from the that you got to look at where the fermentation process comes from it comes from the from cactus from agave which is lower on the glycemic index vodka comes from potatoes a little bit lower on the glycemic index but still um you know potatoes are going to are not as low as as a cactus the gave so if you were going to go into hard alcohol you would want to go into more of a

a teala or a natural wine and then of course never put it with a mixer those are four of sugar. Now, I say all this to say, I'm not advocating for alcohol. I really want to point that out. I'm just saying, if you're going to do it, know the potential hormonal side effects and make sure it's clean and make sure that it's not every day. Make sure that you're dosing with it in small doses and that you're not on this path all the time. Now, this conversation with Laura Briden, a hormone expert who I admire, she actually brought up a really good point that research is now being done on THC. Now, this and the benefits of THC for the menopausal woman, I'm in California, marijuana is legal.

You also want to make sure that if you're going to lean into THC, that it's clean and organic, and the marijuana plant will pick up toxins from whatever soils it's been in. so you would want to know the quality of the soil if it's been tested for heavy metals. But having said all of that, the research is now showing that THC may be a better tool for relaxation for a menopausal woman than alcohol because it doesn't affect the liver's ability to break down estrogen. And when you're doing THC, you're stimulating two CBD receptor sites in your brain, that cause you to be more in a parasympathetic state, which is why you're relaxed,

and women over 40 need to practice parasympathetic strategies as much as possible. THC, the other CBD receptor site improves immunity. As estrogen goes down, your immune system can be more compromised. So THC is an interesting tool for being able to manage stress. Again, I'm just bringing you some of the information. I don't, the research is not there yet to be able to bring you the science. This is just a conversation to open this up. I want to just say right now, if those of you are listening to this and reject everything

that I just said, the goal of this podcast and all of my platform is to think for yourself. So if that doesn't sit right with you, then don't drink. Don't do marijuana. I'm a big fan if you are going to venture into T-C-THC, that tinctures, gummies, those kind of things are way better than smoking it. So there's always a different way of looking at what we used to think was toxic, looking at it in a cleaner way. Now, that leads me to the last couple of things I want to talk about with managing

mental health hormones and neurotransmitters. So recently, I've been. in some interviews. You guys can go back and listen to last season's interview with Dr. Sarah Godfrey and the interview I did with Dr. Austin Pearl Mudder. Both of them opened my mind to plant medicine, opened my mind to psychedelics and the impact that it has on our hormones. If you're not following Dr. Sarah Godfrey right now, she's bravely speaking out, talking about

the power of ketamine. when I interviewed her, I asked her a question last summer of how do we help women who have trauma that's stored in their tissues, like emotional trauma, physical trauma from maybe their younger years and are still affecting her hormonally? How do we help her? And her response to me was ketamine-assisted therapy. And it shocked me. I did not think that that was going to be the case.

And I've since learned that what ketamine does is it calms the excitatory neurons in our brain. Those are called glutamate receptors that we have or NMDA receptors is what they call it. And so those of you that are in a constant state of anxiety with the looping thoughts, which often happens to the menopausal woman and the perimenopausal woman because we don't have enough gabba. we don't have the same amount of progesterone. So those looping thoughts and where we can't unhook ourselves from a thought that keeps raising our cortisol, keeps giving us more suffering. If we can get the NMD receptor sites, glutamate receptor sites to calm down, then those thoughts

start to stop their looping. And ketamine is a door into that. Now, this isn't like, you know, the ketamine that you're what, that people are doing it rock concerts or, you know, doing for a drug trip. This is therapy-assisted ketamine. I will tell you that I just had a firsthand experience with this. I wanted to test it for myself. So I went to a place called field trip health. You can Google them. They are a franchise. I went through an extensive screening process and did two ketamine-assisted sessions with a therapist in the room working with me. and it was a beautiful experience.

And this was six weeks ago, and I will tell you that my brain is 100%, maybe probably even a thousand percent calmer. Things that normally trigger me are not triggering me. The research on ketamine says that you want to do, you want to do it once a week for six weeks and that it will be, it is a looked at as an incredible solution for drug-resistant, depression and anxiety. I chose to just do two and see where I was at. But field trip health is a great resource. Dr. Sarah Godfrey is a great research for you. Now, the other psychedelic that's really

look at the, and by the way, it was a game changer for me. It was a brain reset. So I am a huge fan of ketamine where I sit right now, done in the right dose in the right environment. Now, the second part of this, Dr. Austin Pearl Mudder told me about, and this is the idea of psilocybin and some psychedelics. Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, my God, Dr. Mindy's lost her mind. For sure, a year ago, if you had come to me, and if I had heard my own podcast right now, I would be like, oh, my God, I'm crazy. But I've been deep in the research over the last year. I've been in conversations with some very intelligent people, and I'm very clear that these are great tools that we need to help women learn how to use in a responsible way. So I'm also going

to take all this information and figure out what their impact is on our hormonal health. So stay tuned. But I can tell you mental health-wise what Austro-Mutter said to me. And I asked him, go listen to the podcast. I asked him what his stance was on plant medicine. And and psychedelics, and his response to me, he actually flipped it on me. And he said, I'm going to ask you what you think of it. And I said, this is last summer, I said, I think it's just an excuse to do drugs. And he challenged me and said, I'm going to ask you to rethink that because the research is so impressive. Well, I did. I did challenge myself to rethink it. And he's right. Things like psilocybin What psilocybin can do for mental health is unbelievable.

The biggest thing that psilocybin can do is grow you more neurons in your brain. Just like ketamine does the same thing. It's not just the experience in the moment. It's the change it makes, the lasting change it makes on your brain over time. Again, done in the right dosage, psilocybin can grow new neurons. and these new neurons can actually start to, especially if they're in the prefrontal cortex, they'll pull you out of anxiety. They will give you more neurons to put your positive thoughts onto so that you can start

to change the way your brain is seen maybe a certain situation, a person, or life. So we can calm with some of these things, the NMDA receptors. we can calm the excitatory part of the brain and we can start to grow new neurons that give that we can train to be able to think more positively to come up with more solutions. And so there's this long-term gain that these psychedelics have for our mental health. And I'm not going to go into all of the details. Here, there's a couple of resources, the most impressive, two of the most important. Two of the most impressive resources I will share with you right now on psilocybin is go go look at

what Michael Paulin is saying in his new book. He also has a documentary on Netflix. I can't remember the name of it right now, but it's one of the top 10 shows that it was like a brain unchanged, something along those lines, but it's on Netflix. Go watch that. And I'm going to ask you to open up your mind and see that done in a right situation, these tools may be game changers for mental health. As always, you're going to have to find the one that works best for you. And we need to be responsible with this. When we look at where we've come with psychedelics, one of the interesting pieces is that back in the 60s and the 70s, when Timothy Leary was talking about psychedelics, the messaging that the world got was, take psychedelics and check out a society.

And then when we moved into the 80s and 90s, the messaging changed to, don't do drugs, just say no. This is your brain on drugs. That's sort of the generation I grew up in. And now there's a third wave that's coming with these tools. And it's more along the lines of when you do this responsibly, when you integrate these tools in a responsible way. And you use it as a tool, not as a cure. You use it as a way to open up your brain so you can now all of your mindfulness techniques can work better. That's the responsible way. That's how these tools start to become incredibly effective for you. And I'll tell you a story.

I'll finish up on this thought that I was flying across country. Many of you know that I've been blessed to be in Jesse Itzler's, be a mentor in his group. Love the man. If you don't follow Jesse Itzler, go find him on Instagram. He's just a beautiful example of how to live life in a compassionate way, but really still kick butt in business and in family and in friendships. And so I was flying across the country and I had a layover in Chicago. On that day, it was on the second day of a water fast. I was two weeks after ketamine. And I get to Chicago. And I'm My flight's canceled, and it's 1 o'clock in the afternoon. And I need to be to New York by 11 o'clock the next day.

Now, the old brain of mine would have been spinning. I had led this group through a three-day water fast. I wanted to be at there at 11 the next morning to help everybody properly break the fast. I did not want to be stuck in Chicago. But what happened because of the ketamine, because of the second day of a water fast, is that I was calm, I was clear, and I was patient. And I was able to get myself a flight the next day. I made the best out of my afternoon going down into Chicago and enjoying the river walk.

And it was a really interesting reflection into my mind that in a stressful situation, it was now working differently. So these are all great tools. There is not one tool that is going to be your go-to, but I wanted to bring this up on a discussion of mental health, I think it's really important that we bring some of these conversations to the surface. And you go do the research yourself. Last thing, I see a world where we start to not only as women understand our hormones, but we're able to articulate where we are in our cycle, where we are in our life, with everybody around us. I see a world where we no longer. We know,

as women are given a one-size-fits-all approach to anything. I see a world where relationships we start talking about hormones. We start having conversations like, hey, we've got some conflict in our relationship right now. How about in two days when I'm in my ovulation window, we discuss this? Or I'm going through menopause right now. Give me some time to think about what you just said so that I can process this and give you a thorough answer instead of responding and reacting in an immediate way with a brain that

doesn't have enough estrogen. Once we know these hormones, we know how to take better care of our mental health, and we know how to turn around and tell others how to take better care of us. So that's how important this conversation is, which is why when we looked at doing a solo episode, I needed this to be the one that you all heard. So give me a review. Let me know. if this was helpful so that I could know if I'm on the right track with other women and and men in this conversation. Tess, I would really encourage you to do. If you have not done a Dutch test, both men and women, I highly recommend you do a Dutch test so you understand your hormones. We'll leave a link to the one that I like. When you do it with us, it comes with our amazing health

coach. We'll sit down with you and help you understand your test. So you'll can apply it. And we do both men and women. And depending on the age of your teenagers, usually around 15, 16, we can start to do some of these Dutch tests in the younger generation. We're also exploring neurotransmitter tests. So stay tuned on that. And understanding cortisol patterns is another thing that will be launching more on our profile on my platform in coming months. So testing is always a great door in. But as always, I hope this level of conversation just took your knowledge to hormones and neurotransmitters to a deeper level. Please share this out if you feel like you learned something

that you didn't know. Please sit down with your teenage daughter, your granddaughter, share this with other women. This is the next level of empowering women to really be who we were truly designed to be. One of the really heartwarming experiences that I have seen this year is how well people are responding to the title, Fast Like a Girl. How many women have told me that they never thought of being a girl or being a woman as a superpower. And as they're listening to conversations like this, as they're understanding the principles of Fast Like a Girl, that they are taking their power back by just acknowledging how incredible these hormones are for us and not villainizing them. So there you go.

As always, from the bottom of my heart, I hope this helps. Let's keep working at this together. And I really appreciate all of you. I appreciate the sharing of my information out there. I appreciate you ordering fast like a girl. And we're in this together. All boats rise together. I see a world.

we come together as women and we shine as a community. So I hope you see it that way too and never give up on your stuff. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.