The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - #122: Candace Burch - Sex Drive, Hormone Imbalance, Mood Swings, Stress Levels, & Understanding Your Partners Hormones

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

On this episode we sit down with hormone expert Candace Burch M.A. to discuss all things hormones. Like our other episodes, this one covers a lot of ground. We dive into the subject of hormones and how they effect our mood, body, and relationships. We discuss how hormones can effect our sex drive, weight loss, moods, stress levels and relationships. We also discuss the science behind hormones to get a better understanding of how they effect our bodies and those around us.  To Attend the Live Event on 7/12/18 click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) For Detailed Show Notes click HERE This episode is brought to you by OMAX. We love OMAX, As you guys know we are huge Omega 3 fans and OMAX3 has some of the purest Omega 3 supplements on the market. Over 75% of Americans Don’t get enough Omega 3 in their diet. Omega 3’s help improve mental focus, memory and cardiovascular health. Omega 3’s also alleviate joint pain and muscle health. OMAX3 is clinically tested and they do what’s called a freezer test challenge to verify that each supplement is pure. To try OMAX3 and receive a free box go to www.tryomax.com/skinny This episode is brought to you by FOUR SIGMATIC We have been drinking this company's mushroom-infused elixirs and coffees for over a year now. When we need a break from coffee but still need that extra morning jolt and focus the Mushroom Coffee with Lion's Mane and Chaga is the way to go. Lauryn also drinks the Mushroom Matcha which is a green tea designed as a coffee alternative for those of you who want to cut back on caffeine without losing focus and cognitive boosts. This stuff doesn't actually taste like mushrooms, it's delicious. All of these blends have a ton of nutrients and amino acids to give you balanced energy without the jitters. To try FOUR SIGMATIC products go to foursigmatic.com/skinny and use promo code SKINNY for 15% off all products.   

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. So it's one of our favorite companies. We actually interviewed Taro, the founder on the show, and had to bring the brand on board as a partner. Four Sigmatic specializes in superfoods and medicinal mushrooms. They also make drinking mushrooms and superfoods delicious and easy to do with their mushroom coffees, mushroom superfood blends, and mushroom elixirs. If you're looking for a coffee alternative to switch up your caffeine intake, Four Sigmatic has the blends for you. They're delicious. All you have to do is open a pack and add it to hot water. They also don't taste like mushrooms. And we also have a special offer

for you guys. So go to foursigmatic.com forward slash skinny and enter promo code skinny at checkout for 15% off your entire order. This episode is also brought to you by Omax. We love Omax. As you guys know, we are huge omega-3 fans and Omax 3 has some of the purest omega-3 supplements on the market. Over 75% of Americans don't get enough omega-3s in their diet and there's a strong chance you could be one of them if you aren't taking Omax 3. Omega-3s help improve mental focus, memory, and cardiovascular health. Omega-3s also alleviate joint pain and muscle health, which I need desperately. There are a lot of bad omega-3 supplements on the market, and we vetted this one a ton before recommending it. Omax 3 is clinically tested, and they do what's called a freezer test challenge to verify

that each supplement is pure. So go to tryomax.com slash skinny today to get a box of Omax 3 Ultra Pure for free. That's tryomax.com slash skinny to get your free box of Omega 3s. Tryomax.com slash skinny. Terms and conditions do apply. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Even getting a workout in now starts to get stressful because you got to fit it in somewhere. We're all trying to fit things in and I'm seeing in test results of much younger people that stress levels are, you know, out of the box.

They're not where they should be. They're not following the normal pattern. Cortisol is the master stress hormone. So it's adrenaline that our adrenals are pumping out if you were running from the Taliban or a tsunami or something. All right. All right. All right. You know, Lauren, what that's from, it's from Matthew McConaughey, as you know, I like to say it, but I was listening to him on Howard Stern, an old interview. And he said he had to memorize these lines for um days and confused

i don't know if you've ever seen that movie but it's a great movie and he had two of the three and then he was like i need to remember the third line and he's like all right all right all right he's like all right if i got all three then i'm good so that's what's from it's actually the first lines he ever said on screen thanks for that little movie welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show if you are new to the show thanks for joining that clip history. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. If you are new to the show, thanks for joining. That clip was from our guest of the show today, Candice Birch. On this show, we talk all things hormones. We discuss testosterone, estrogen, how to try and balance hormones, how hormones affect

our mood, Lauren, our sex drive, our weight, and our stress levels, and what we can do to get our hormones balanced and in order. Stress levels. Yes, sir. Yes. Or ma'am. Sorry. Okay. Well, you need hormones balanced and in order. Stress levels. Yes, sir. Or ma'am, sorry. Okay, well, you need to keep reading that one. Stress levels. Guys, I'm Lauren Everett.

I'm the creator of The Skinny Confidential. It's a blog, a brand, a book, obviously a podcast. The Skinny Confidential has become a resource for women all over the world, which has turned into this huge, incredible community. And I'm Michael Bostic. I am a business operator and entrepreneur, most recently the CEO of a podcast network called Dear Media. We are getting ready to do some live events this month here in LA.

We have a lot of shows being showcased. We are signing a lot of shows consistently. If you guys are bored and want to go, if you're looking on iTunes or Apple Podcasts, and you click Dear Media, which is under our Lauren and I shows, you can start to see some of the shows that we're showcasing. I think we have 16 shows signed to the network, and I believe nine or 10 of them are showcased right now. Some of them will announce soon.

So excited. Go check them out. A lot of great podcasts. We're kicking off the Dear Media live event with our show featuring Emily Schumann and Jeffrey Fuller. We're so excited. They're behind the brand Cupcakes and Cashmere, which is like an OG blog.

Yeah. And as we discussed last week, for those of you that tuned in, we are doing our first ever live event. Sorry, tongue twister there. And we're doing it at The Grove, which is a landmark location here in LA. We touched on all the details last week.

If you missed that announcement, you can go to www.dearmedia.com live on all the details last week. If you missed that announcement, you can go to www.deermedia.com slash live to get the details. And there's still some seats left over. So go ahead and check it out. Just go to deermedia.com slash live has all the details, not just for our show, but all of the other shows that will be announced in the next three weeks. The wine will be flowing. There'll be macaroons. There's going to be some candy, cocktails, little networking. It's going to be fun. Yeah.

And the first hundred people that show up get goodie bags. And there is some good Kopari in there. Let me just tell you. Yeah. Goody bags, all that good stuff, but also a great show. And we're excited to partner with The Grove. Also, another thing we will be doing our first second episode of the week. So we're starting to do every other Thursday,

we're going to start releasing full episodes. This Thursday, we'll have another full episode. And I think what we're going to do is we're going to kick off the beginning of that show with some of the call-in messages that you guys have been leaving on our new hotline. Yeah, you guys have left some really, really good questions on there. And if you don't know what we're talking about, we have a him and her hotline set up. So if you guys want a chance to have a question or comment featured on the show, call 1-833-SKINNYS, that's S-K-I-N-N-Y-S, and just leave us a message. Don't forget to leave your first name, your city, state, and you can also leave your Instagram handle so we can shout you out.

The message will have a chance to be played on the show, and we can discuss the topic or answer the questions. It's going to be a fun way to get you guys involved on the podcast. And even if you just want to go in there and just leave a request about what you want more over, what you want to hear, you know, if we want like more tips of the week or you want to go and have new segments. Maybe you guys want to come on and tell Michael to get his hormones under control after the show. You never know. Mix it up. Speaking of hormones, I want to tell you guys why we interviewed Candice. So we interviewed Candice because I feel like as women, hormones

get swept under the rug, right? Does anyone feel me here? I feel like guys make rude comments without knowing all the facts. So I think that you guys should all listen to this episode extra loud next to your boyfriend while he shaves his face in the bathroom. Just kidding. But seriously, hormones affect both men and women, but as women, we get PMS. So, you know, anyway, we felt it was important to bring someone on who really, really understands hormones. And we wanted to get like the details, the nitty gritty. So if you're unfamiliar with hormones, there's certain symptoms that can be brutal. Okay. You can feel mood swings, hot flashes, night sweats, fatigue, headaches, depression, anxiety, nervousness, vaginal dryness,

feeling teary eyed, memory lapses, and maybe you can't lose weight. So these are just some symptoms. And I just felt like this is the perfect platform to discuss them on. You get it. So I think it's an important topic, like I said, to bring awareness to something that, you know, we all need to know about. So who is Candice Birch? Candice Birch is a hormone expert, guys. It all started when she started having hot flashes every 20 minutes and meltdowns for

no apparent reason. Sounds exactly like me. That reason ended up being hormones. So in search of relief, she found a simple saliva test that identified the hidden hormone imbalances behind her rollercoaster symptoms. That information not only restored her health and sanity, but probably saved her marriage. During this time, she obtained a master's degree and became a hormone health educator. She pursued and landed the position of director of education at ZRT Laboratory and learned from the experts on how to use hormone testing to detect and correct hormone imbalances. Candice is a founder

of Women in Balance, one of the first nonprofits in the country to advocate for women's hormone health. Her goal is to help people rebalance their hormones to relieve symptoms and restore balance in their lives. With that, let's welcome Candice. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Before we get into the interview, let's talk about omega-3s. Our particular favorite right now is from Omax, as you heard earlier. As you guys know, we are very selective about which products we talk about on this show. We turn down so many sponsors and vet each one very carefully before committing. We want to make sure that we're bringing you guys the highest quality products and that we test all

of them. Omax went through that process. We even got on the phone with our founder, got the low down, grilled him, and learned everything we could about the brand. So before I give you my spiel, if you just want to go through this and get to the interview, Omax is giving a free box when you go to tryomax.com slash skinny. Okay, now for the spiel. I have a ton of joint and muscle pain from when I was training when I was younger. I got really big at one point in college and did a lot of damage to myself. So I've been constantly recovering ever since. And I've been looking for a long time for something that could help me with these issues that I have in my body. And I take a ton of supplements and I couldn't figure the right one until I found omega-3s. And Omax was perfect because Omax really, really helps with

this joint pain. I actually really noticed it when I stopped taking it for a few days. Over 75% of Americans don't get enough omega-3s. And if you aren't taking an omega-3 supplement, you are probably one of them, just like I was. There are so many important things, not only for joint and muscle recovery, but also memory and focus. We are doing so many things that require us to be on point throughout the week, this podcast being one of them, and Omax 3 omega-3s help keep me on point, and Lauren as well. Like I said, I really notice a difference. It's like a fog comes over my brain when I stop taking it, And we've been taking it now for about two months. This product is 94% pure. Most omega-3 supplements don't even come close and they don't have that fish burp taste, which keeps my marriage

on point because Lauren doesn't want me to be burping in her face. Right, Lauren? Yeah, Michael, that's not hot. So we love this product. We think you will love this product as well. And as always, we wouldn't recommend it if we didn't think you would. So go to tryomax.com slash skinny today to get a box of Omax 3 Ultra Pure for free. That's tryomax.com slash skinny to get your free box of Omax 3. Tryomax.com slash skinny. Terms and conditions do apply, and it does come with a 60-day money-back guarantee. So you have plenty of time to try it and feel what I'm feeling. Okay, Candice, can you explain to my husband why I get a hall pass for my hormones? Let's hop right into it. Why you get a hall pass. So you mean him trying to understand you better and what's going on and why you don't feel particularly chatty at particular times or in the mood at other times or that you really are attracted to him. We really,

you are, but not tonight. And, um, or you're moody or, I mean, I don't know what's going on. I have a hundred million things like in the morning, like he doesn't need to ask me a hundred questions. And in the night I like to be quiet sometimes, but sometimes I like to talk. And when he's extra talky, sometimes I don't want to talk. Like, it's just, it's different. It's different moments, you know? Yeah. Well, you know, this is what's so interesting.

I have been saying for years that we need to have couples kits for hormone testing. Because, you know, I started out in the menopause world. I went into perimenopause when you're really on the roller coaster at 48. And I had a five-year-old and a nine-year-old. And I was just such a bitch on wheels. And my kids are afraid of me. And, you know, I got into this because I needed to moderate my moods. And I found that, you know, using, it just was, I got into it. I started working in the hormone testing world. I've seen millions of hormone tests. I had to do a lot of lectures and at these lectures, these women would come and they'd bring their husbands and the husbands were there because he's supposedly there to understand why she is so difficult to live with.

Good luck, buddy. And then the minute I'd my slides would come up with the guy on the couch with the remote on his extra super preceding himself belly. And and my whole slide on what happens to male hormones, these guys would sort of look off or look down or, you know, sort of she's talking about me. But yeah, I think it's important to understand each other what's going on why she doesn't feel like talking in the morning or why you feel more like chatting in the evening and having I think a test result could actually explain that because you might see your cortisol levels might be

sort of moderate in the morning and you want to be quiet and still and then you kind of get your your wind as the day goes on and yours may be real high and you're chatty and then it may be the reverse for each of you in the evening and that's what's fun about testing cortisols because you test morning, noon, evening, night and then you can see a pattern. I think it's helpful to understand who you know we all have the same hormones by the way men and women all have estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and cortisol, but in different amounts and at different times. And of course we women have cycles. So that kind of throws more monkey wrench

into it. Yeah. I'm going to throw a monkey wrench into your day every day. So I obviously know what hormones are and you just, and you just mentioned the different types of hormones, but I think when Lauren says, Oh, if my hormones are out of control or girls sound hormone like i kind of nod my head and act like i know what i'm talking about uh-huh but i really don't there's been a fight or two by the way that he has said your hormones are out of whack but he doesn't know what that means it's just like a slogan that he wants to say i was like i think well i think that i'm probably right but i just but then i don't know what i'm talking about bitch with high cortisol so i'd like to, I'd like to know for anyone listening out there to understand hormones

a little bit better and what each of them, you know, how they impact us. Can we kind of get into that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the main big picture hormones that you want to look at if you're testing or that you want to be aware of the symptoms, you know, what, what the symptoms of imbalance for these are would be, as I mentioned, estrogen, which is, you know, what the symptoms of imbalance for these are, would be, as I mentioned, estrogen, which is, you know, the mother of all hormones. It's the super growth hormone. It multiplies, grows, divides cells. It grows the egg in the ovary. It grows the blood-rich lining

of the uterus. It grew our breasts, our reproductive organs, our curves, you know. It has, it regulates a lot of our cycle, of course, but it's all about growth. So if estrogen keeps growing out of control without the balancing action of all those partner hormones, the helper hormones, progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol, then you start to have symptoms of, let's say, estrogen dominance. And men can have this too. So with women, it's heavy periods, painful periods, really bad, pass me the shotgun kind of PMS, bloating, water retention,

all kinds of weight gain, and, you know, hard to lose weight. And the same thing can happen to men, usually when they're kind of moving into their 40s, because their testosterone starts to drop. And in ratio to dropping testosterone, we get rising estrogen. So that's where you see men, and this happens earlier and earlier depending how much stress is going on. These kind of changes should start like mid 40s, but they're happening in our late 30s. So men get moody, they lose their sex drive or their competitive drive, They don't like their job anymore. They want to go shopping with their wife and carry her purse and they cry in commercials and you know, this happens over, not for you guys, you're too young yet, but, but stress is doing,

is really doing a job on very younger and younger people. I'm seeing hormone levels that are way out of the box and that shouldn't be. Is it true when you move in with a woman or move in with a man that the levels try to balance out? Like, so maybe say I have a lot of testosterone and then I move in with Lauren, then my testosterone drops and my estrogen rises and then vice versa with her. Is that true or is that a myth? I don't think it's that. I mean, I think it's somewhat true. I think, you know, it's just sort of the closeness of an intimate relationship and

hormones being shared, you know, skin to skin, oxytocin, having baby, having a baby and men participating in childcare can definitely, taking care of the baby can definitely bring hormones more into sync. Yeah. Talk to me about stress in 2018 specifically, because I feel like everyone is running around stressed. There's a lot of cortisol going on. What are some things that we can do as millennials or just living in 2018 that we can kind of balance that stress out with? You know, this is a world of abundant stress. I grew up here in L.A., and when I come back and I look at all the traffic, and it's happening in Portland where I live, and all the people, and all that there is to do, and the events, and it's just a lot.

It's like you're trying to return everybody's texts and do all the right stuff for yourself. Even getting a workout in now starts to get stressful because you've got to fit it in somewhere. We're all trying to fit things in. And I'm seeing in test results of much younger people that stress levels are, you know, out of the box. They're not where they should be. They're not following the normal pattern. Cortisol is the master stress hormone. So it's adrenaline that our adrenals are pumping out if you were running from the Taliban or a tsunami or something. You know, the little adrenal. Or me in the morning, my husband. Yeah, talking about banking or whatever.

No wonder my stress is so high. I'm constantly on the run. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, you've always heard of the fight or flight hormone. That's adrenaline. So that's when the lady can lift the car off the baby and all that stuff. But on a 24-7 basis, our adrenals are pumping out cortisol. And these little adrenals are like, think of them as bellows. So they're pumping, pumping, pumping out cortisol to meet the demands of your day, which begin with the morning, right? You get out of bed. Hopefully, you're supposed to get out of bed feeling rested and refreshed and ready for your day, you know, ready to take it on gangbusters. And then your stress levels are supposed to drop gradually throughout the day, not plummet to low levels, or then, you know, get jacked up in the afternoon and then back up at night, so you're not sleeping,

but gradually from the highest level to the lowest level at night so you're ready for calming and sleep. And instead, we're seeing these levels the reverse. And this is a pattern. It's really mapping your circadian rhythm. And it's all in sync with melatonin and the sleep-wake cycle and appetite hormones and all of that. So, cortisols need to kind of follow, somehow follow pretty close to the normal pattern. You don't want it all wonky and all of that. So cortisols need to kind of follow, somehow follow pretty close to the normal pattern. You don't want it all wonky and out of range because you're either, which you can see in a test, because you can test at optimal levels. You have to test in the morning, right when you wake up, within the first hour of waking, without eating, drinking. Then you got to test

again noon, evening, and right at bed. Before we get into that, let's talk about Four Sigmatic. So you guys know that Taro recently came on our podcast. He is the founder of Four Sigmatic. And I mean, I was always very on board with mushrooms. I know their health benefits because you know, I am obsessive about research. But once we had Taro on, I was completely sold. So here's the thing about mushrooms, okay? The benefits are unreal. And if you don't believe me, go research it yourself. Mushrooms assist in weight loss, lower stress levels, Michael, promote healthy skin, and have anti-aging effects. They're also huge players in the role of preventing diseases. You know I love preventative measures.

A secret star because I feel like people don't even know how many hidden magical powers they have. Four Sigmatic has blends for focus, blends for sleep, blends to replace your morning coffee, blends for your gut health, blends to relax, and even to combat anxiety. And trust me when I say this, they work, okay? Each of these mushroom blends include a ton of beneficial amino acids and adaptogens. None of them give you the caffeine jitters. We don't want the caffeine jitters. My favorite right now is the mushroom hot cacao. I'm telling you, this is the one. It does not screw around. So the reason that I like this one is because I have an obnoxious sweet tooth that always comes up at night. It's like around 10 PM. It's very annoying. So I do one of two things here. One is really weird. Okay. I like to get specific with you guys. So I like to eat a

date. Okay. Do you know what a date is? A date like the fruit. I eat one and it sort of offsets the sugar cravings. The other thing that I like to do is drink mushroom hot cacao mix. So I heat up hot water and then I add the powder. And it's like this little tiny pouch that fits in your handbag, super efficient. And then on top of my mushroom hot cacao, I add lemon. So I know that sounds nuts, but bear with me. So the lemon and the chocolate taste insane together and it's the perfect treat before you go to bed. This is really nice too if you're trying to keep it tight and right for summer because it doesn't have any added crap. If you want to try this concoction, all you have to do is go to foursigmatic.com slash skinny and enter the promo code skinny for 15% off. Again, go to foursigmatic.com slash skinny and enter the promo code

skinny for 15% off. This is a saliva test. Okay. And what's it called? Just if anyone wants to buy it, it's called the jumpstart kit. Okay. And I'm Michael and I are going to do this. We'll let you guys know. Yeah. I actually have had my hormones tested. I told you earlier. Yeah. And, um, the cortisol was off the charts.

The woman told me she's a doctor. She said your cortisol is just crazy. What is something that myself and the audience can do at home to lower their cortisol? Is there supplements that we should be taking? What do you recommend? So which cortisol was off the charts? Was it the morning? Was it the evening?

You know, that's important. She only tested me in the morning. So it was just the morning. Okay. So that's not the whole story. Okay. Because we need the whole pattern. If your cortisol was high in the morning,

if that's what she meant by off the charts, if it was too high, then that's kind of an indication that maybe throughout the night your cortisol was rising. Maybe you weren't moving into deep REM stages of sleep. Maybe you weren't getting a deep sleep and you woke up with a somewhat elevated cortisol. Sometimes people have an issue where their blood sugar crashes in the night. Perhaps they didn't eat well or have a good dinner or they drank too much wine or had sweets or something. Blood sugar crashes. Hypoglycemic effect is that cortisol goes up. That's a stress response.

So it can go up in the middle of the night and you wake up and you can't get back to sleep. And then maybe you wake up with a higher cortisol. So I don't know how high your cortisol was. That matters. But it's not real scary to have high cortisol in the morning because that's kind of situational. Okay. It's more, it's what is, what you really want to see is what's the pattern? Is it high when it should be and is it dropping gradually?

Or is it like the lady who told me that her husband, I was consulting with this woman and she had a curve that was really low in the morning, then way up high in the afternoon, then falling at night, and then way back up at bedtime. And she was telling me that she's a dental hygienist. She's cleaned everyone's teeth in town. Everyone knows her, and her husband's having an affair with their son's best friend's father.

My cortisol would be in Mars. So everyone knew and her cortisol pattern was, you know, she just looked at it. She goes, yep, that's the story of my life, you know? Wow. So that that pattern is important to see. Okay, let's say someone does the test. So we only have half the story. Okay, let's say that their cortisol is high in general, it's high kind of everywhere. What are things that someone could do at home? Well, first of all, you've got to look at your habits. Are you drinking coffee and having a donut in the morning?

So you're getting caffeine and sugar, flogging the adrenals. Maybe a chocolate croissant, as in Michael's case. No, I don't like chocolate. Oh, sorry, almond. Okay, and then, all right, those are really good. And then not enough protein. Maybe, you know, if cortisol is high at night, we want to see maybe some magnesium taken before bedtime,

some B6 if we're not sleeping, some little melatonin with B6, depending on, you know, what's going on. We want to get off the iPhone and the computer because we're hearing ad nauseum now about the blue light off the electronic gizmos. But how many people are going to bed with their cell phone? It's a problem. And that's huge because it interrupts the blue light goes right to the pineal gland of the brain and stops melatonin production. How many experts and conversations do you think we need to have to for you to understand that the phone's not so great at night?

As many as it takes for you to understand that when I wake up, I want to be woken up like a cat. Do you know what that means? Nobody knows what that means. I want to be woken up like a cat. Like this is my dream every morning. He pets me and wakes me up really slow. Maybe he throws on like some light jazz music, preferably smooth because I don't want to go too crazy. I would love on my, it's a good idea on my coffee. These are good ideas, but don't you think tea, maybe some lemon, little meditation.

I just don't doubt that. Tell me how pretty. Like, that's what I need in the morning. Don't ask for much. I checked out at Kat. So don't you think, though, a lot of this stuff has, I mean, there's a lot of things that we can take, but don't you think a lot of this stuff comes from, like, your mindset? Like, you know, if you're super stressed out, a lot of it's from your thought patterns, right? Well, you know, your cortisol, there's been some interesting studies about how high stress

hormones actually can re-pattern the brain circuits. And, you know, then we get into dopamine and neurohormone effects and lack of serotonin and high dopamine. You know, all these hormones are like seesaws. You create too much of one and the other one goes down. And so if your mindset is, yeah, like, you know, this sentence I've heard before, I'll sleep when I die. You know, this sentence I've heard before, I'll sleep when I die, you know, this kind of thing. Or, you know, I don't have time to die. Or, you know, I'm just

crazy busy. I hear that all the time. Like, this is a badge of some kind of honor. Is that admirable to be crazy busy? Busy is a decision. Yeah. And I mean, not being busy, I think it's important to have unstructured time and to have that be part of your mindset that I will have unstructured time part of every day that I you're living your life you think it's unlimited time you don't realize how quickly it can go and so if you knew how quickly it could go and you really understood like how small and blurb of time that we are as humans here and like how you would maybe value it a little bit more i have to say that i for like a living for seven days a week, I share my life with social media. And, um, this weekend I, I hit a wall on Friday.

There's just something where I just, I just didn't want to post anything, which is so unlike me. And so I listened to myself, which normally I would have pushed through it. And I put my phone away for two days and I read, which is a huge deal for me. I mean,

I'm not, I don't mean to brag, but like I'm patting myself on the back and I noticed wow which is a huge deal for me I mean I'm not I don't mean to brag but like I'm patting myself on the back and I noticed it was really like in another life instead of you know Captain Hook Lauren would just be Captain Phone and her hand would just be a phone well we're many of us are guilty of that aren't we yes and but I think that just taking those two days off it completely rejuvenated me. And I realized, like you just said, how I need to really value that downtime where I can just read a book and it can be a paperback book. It doesn't need to be on my iPad. Exactly. And you know, cortisol too is, if I talk

about the side effects of having too much elevated cortisol. So when your cortisol is elevated all the time, as you asked me about that, that is a stress response. The body goes into, wow, I don't know if it's divorce or donuts. This person is under stress. You know, it can be too much sugar is stress for the body. Too little sleep is stress for the body. Pain, chronic accidents, divorce, moving. So is birthdays, weddings, Christmas.

This response. Birthdays really do it for me. Birthdays? No. How about weddings? My God. I don't get invited to a lot of weddings. Lucky you.

Do a tangent and say how you feel about birthdays. You know, I'll do another tangent. We had this, one of our friends just didn't invite us to, it's a whole long story, but we didn't get invited to this wedding. There was an issue with the girl or something. But he came up and he was giving me this whole apology to her. And deep down, I wanted to shake his hand and say thank you. It's like, you know. One birthday party you don't have to go to how many birthdays

do we have to celebrate i have this idea if you know more than 20 people you're in trouble because they're gonna because they're all having a 30th birthday party and on average if you know 20 people you're gonna have at least one birthday a month right yeah yeah 2019 i'm gonna make like no one celebrates anything and everyone gets a break it's called the break year and no one can celebrate anything. No Father's Day. Sorry, Daddy. We know. I know you're listening.

I know you love a Father's Day card, but no Father's Day like nothing. It's marketing hype. I mean, you can tell people you love them every day. But, you know, I think what happens over time with people that are always going, going, burning the candle at both ends, you get exhausted. You hit a wall. And actually, when you're, you hit a wall. And actually, when you're, you know, I've talked to so many people over the years who have been, you know,

in a high octane job, their lawyers, their doctors, their whatever business, they're in social media, and they're going, going, going, and then one day, they can't get out of bed. And they're sick. And, and cortisol is a big, you know, it's when it's high, it starts the inflammation process because it's actually trying to protect you against disease. So the inflammatory process starts as a way to bring in those antibodies, et cetera. But if it stays high, then you've got this inflammatory response going all the time. Cortisol is totally linked in with our immune defenses. So when our cortisol is off, we start to have, you know, if it's high, we can have a lot of anxiety, feel nervous. I can't believe all the young people I'm talking to in their 30s that are suffering horribly from anxiety. I have such a lot. And so you're okay. It just seems to be the central thing, this anxiety that is making

a lot of people are on drugs. They don't understand why they're anxious, but they are having panic attacks. You know, there's great, there are many things that one can take for that. But the biggest thing is to start saying, so, you know, how do I relax? What I ask people, make a list of the 10 things you love to do most in all the world that bring you joy and relaxation and happiness. That's easy, right? You you could make that list right now you go back through that list and tell me when is the last time you did any of those things and that will be a revelation yeah that's three things that help me with anxiety the first thing there's my friend Ingrid who's like this fitness expert health expert on

Instagram told me that instead of eating my lunch while I'm on my phone, put my phone down and take my lunch to just eat. She says in France, what a concept, what a concept she in France where she lives. She takes one to two. She has one glass of wine and she will just, she'll just eat her food with no phone. The other thing I've done that's really helped is CBD oil. Have you heard of that? Sure. That's helped a lot at night in a vape pen? No. Or rubbing it on? It's an oil that I just put underneath my tongue and that's helped me relax. And then the third thing is sex. Yeah. Gosh. Those are three things that help. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Well, you're releasing all these good hormones when you have sex and the CBD oild oil can be very you know hit

the pleasure centers of the brain there are things like gaba as well sublingual gaba magnesium before bed if you have trouble sleeping if you are allergic to or not allergic but well it is kind of an allergy if you're addicted if you're addicted to chocolate if you have sugar cravings you're probably magnesium deficient. And magnesium is a big one to add in before bed. You know what's funny? At least 500 milligrams. Do you know the fruit dates?

Yeah. Do they have magnesium in them? I think so. Yeah. Okay. Because I've been eating one date before bed every night. There's something about it that I'm craving. Just one date and it completely gets rid of my sugar cravings. Okay.

Well, maybe, yeah, maybe that's working. You know what? I attribute a lot of this anxiety and stress to young people to know. And it's, and it's, we're in a time where this has never existed before,

but the, the rapid spread of information and be in social media, it's what's, it's what's causing a lot of anxiety in my opinion, because before you could, you know, it could be you and Joe and the same career path, but you didn't have to see everything that Joe was doing every single day.

Maybe you look and he's a little further ahead of you and you wouldn't know that back then. Right. Now you're looking every single day, you're getting an update and you're seeing people putting their best life forward. And I think it's causing anxiety because it's there's maybe a lack of fulfillment or there's a comparison game going on. Or even with the news, I mean, you read the headlines, everything. If you read the headlines in the news every day the world's gonna end right and so I think this is the rapid spread of information is causing a ton of anxiety and I think us as a society need to figure out how to navigate that because it's we're living in a time where it just didn't exist before yeah I mean I'm so with you there I'm very worried about the inundation I'm always happy that when I think

back that I raised kids before cell phone addiction, you know, it was hard enough to control the computer, but we had boundaries. And I think people need to set boundaries, just like you do with the car keys. You got to say on the computer. Yeah, because it's not going to stop, right? It's not going to stop. And when I see these families sitting around at a dinner, just last week, my husband and I were in this restaurant and the people that the couple were talking to each other and their two kids were on their iphone and a computer all through dinner they were eating with the computer and they never talked to each other you know so it's kind of it can be very simple things like trying to buck that trend of saying when when we have a family

we're all going to have dinner together. How many families have dinner together anymore? And when we go to bed at night, we're going to turn off our cell phone. Just the turning it off is like this psychological thing. It's off. No one can get to me. I remember the days when you could walk down the street and no one could get to you because you didn't have a cell. Can you imagine walking down the street? No one could get you. You were your own person. You could go to the beach. I mean, we could be alone. We could be an island. We have no privacy anymore. There's no us.

There's no me. It's like I belong to everybody. And this pressure to be available to everyone at all times, it's wearing us down. I think that's why people are anxious. And these cortisol levels are staying elevated. And with that starts to come allergies and asthma and breakouts and no sex drive. And a feeling of tiredness all the time. Tired and wired.

It also feels like you have to be guarded all the time. And I don't mean just guarded from people seeing you. But everything you say now can be misconstrued and it's stressful right like if you're a public person and you like i was reading the other day like the head of twitter had to apologize um for eating a chick-fil-a sandwich because the guy that owns chick-fil-a is was maybe not pro-gay pro-gay rights or whatever and i understand that like you know if you don't like what chick-fil-a stands for then don't eat there but like this guy the twitter guy like when he goes and eats a sandwich there and then the media takes

and says oh like and he has to issue apologies like dude he ate he was eating a fucking sandwich like yeah it's not that big of a deal i mean it doesn't mean that he's anti-gay right you know you know i mean it's just like that's a stressful way to live because he knows yeah because if you don't follow the media and i'm going to go eat a chicken sandwich and the next thing i know someone's yelling at me for the i would be be like, this is too much. You know, I think everybody's taking themselves way too seriously. Yeah. It's too much. I think what's really important when you're talking about hormones, hormone balance, hormone imbalances, knowing that there are such things as imbalances and that your behaviors and your attitudes and the way you eat and live and,

or don't eat and don't exercise way too much. I mean, everybody I talk to is exercising like a crazy person and not eating properly, not making sure their blood sugar stays stable. You can't be going with these ups and downs because you're rushing here and eating on the run and somebody's criticizing you for what you ate. I mean, how in the world can you digest your food? The poor guy that ate the Chick-fil-A,

he won't be digesting his food for the next, he won't dare, right? I mean, he's going to be living the rest of his life. He's going to be living on an elevated... I mean, you have to go read the whole bio behind the restaurant and who owns it before you can eat there anymore. And I think it's a stressful way to live. And I think people are hypersensitive and you're constantly, this just didn't exist

before. Yeah. Well, you know, also the inundation of information that you're referring to means that it's very hard to sort out unless you're extremely research-based what the hell is true and what isn't. And that's one of the reasons I like to, you know, I've been an advocate of this hormone testing for ages because it gives you something to, you know, something that's in black and white that you can correlate with how you're feeling so that you kind of have a guide. And it's, you know, it's fact-based, you know, there are ranges and we're testing at certain times of the day and we're looking at physiology. So, you know, it's kind of comforting to say, people say, well, there aren't enough studies about this and

that. Well, yeah, Big Pharma doesn't like a lot of studies of natural stuff. They're not going to, they're not going to fund a study of something they can't patent and profit. But there's physiology. And when people say, well, I don't know what's true and I don't know what's false, and everybody's saying this about cholesterol or not. You know, with hormones, cholesterol is the backbone of hormones. It's the backbone from which hormones are formed. So if you're on a no-fat diet, which hopefully we're past that, people know about good fats now, you're not making enough hormone.

Women that are way too thin, who refuse to eat, there's all kinds of issues. So it's going to the physiology. It's finding more fact-based information that you can trust, because I think that's the problem. We have too much information, and we can't sort it out. This stuff always gets me in trouble, and gonna get me in trouble again like you know people do these crazy diets where they eliminate something cold turkey right and they're saying i'm i'm this or i'm that and to me and again this is what's going to get me in trouble those people seem to be the people that always have the most health issues and you're looking at them you're like okay i get it

i respect your way of life but you have all these issues and and i'm somebody who i don't have any crazy diet trends right i'm a pretty balanced person i think sometimes i eat sometimes i drink sometimes i eat sugar sometimes i eat fat sometimes i eat sometimes is the key word here yeah but i don't and and hopefully like knock on wood i don't have as many health issues i see some of these people that go to extremes and i I can understand for moral reasons, fine. But I think it's really dangerous when people preach, okay, eliminate this or eliminate fats or eliminate meat. It's like, you know, this is just not over throughout time, throughout evolutionary history. Like this is not how humans behave.

Humans eat meat and humans eat fats and humans eat some sugars. It's just... These are nutrients the body can't make on its own. We have to get them from the foods we eat. Certainly, you know, they're like, let's just take the bread thing. So with, I love Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. And he starts out talking about the staff of life was bread. Bread was on every table from time immemorial.

And now, you know, bread, get the bread out of here and all that. Okay, so if you're really a celiac and you really have gluten sensitivity then then it's an issue and there is an issue about the hybridization of the wheat the wheat germ the plant what in the 70s we were going to feed the world's hungry and and wheat was hybridized and there is a lot more gluten in the wheat now and at the same time the usda came out with this the the first food pyramid, remember that? And it wasn't put together by scientists, it was put together by USDA government officials, and you know, the dairy industry. So what was on the bottom was, let's eat nine servings of grains. And then there was dairy, and then there was meat, and it was all that. And so here we

have the wheat being hybridized with more gluten in it. And now we're supposed to eat nine servings of it every day. So that's when we started seeing a lot of obesity coming about. And, and, you know, so that that's a perfect example of, yes, there are reasons to be careful, but you got to do the research. Do I really have a gluten sensitivity? Do I really need to avoid every piece of bread on the planet? Can I eat it once in a while? Which are the best types? Every new fad is another restriction. And in fact, restricting calories to an extreme can be really dangerous. You know, you can lose out on all the good fatty acids and the enzymes that are in wheat that help us break down our hormones properly, get the body to use them and excrete them. We don't want to store hormone levels. We need all kinds of foods to break down into the nutrients that regulate our blood sugar and thus regulate our appetite hormones and our sleep-wake cycle and our immunities and, energy levels, etc. So if we restrict calories,

the body actually sees that as a stress response. And in its survival wisdom, it will hold on to fat. I want to talk about weight for a second. How does hormones affect weight? If there's someone out there that's struggling with their weight, is there something that they can do to look into their hormones to see if that has to do with it? There's a big connection. So if you've got cortisol elevated, as we've been talking about, so your stress hormones are high because you're working, working, working.

You're not eating regularly. You don't have any downtime. You're working out extremely. You're being woken up by someone. Yeah, who doesn't give you the what was it you needed certain i want to wake up like a cat let's not go no we can't go down there again i think that you need to to write a blog about that what that means what waking up like yeah what that would entail million dollar question that's such a good way to manipulate the situation

yes and then i'll send it to him or have like someone else send it to my dad told me a long time ago if you want to figure out women figure out how to how to train a cat and i've never figured it out maybe buy a cat i'll get you one so so the deal with weight is twofold if cortisols are out of balance you're going to be putting weight on in the mid section because cortisol out of balance means blood sugar is out of balance means insulin is out of balance and then you get into this insulin resistant state where a good way to describe that is the cells that insulin wants to put some sugar into because insulin's job is take all that blood sugar and put it somewhere the cells start going hey we got plenty here she's she's not working out she's been eating donuts all day and we don't need any more blood sugar. Like the pizza delivery man that keeps delivering the pizza. At a certain point, you

lock the door and you pull down the shade and you say, we haven't got any more room for this. So what does insulin do? It stores excess blood sugar right in the belly. The abdomen is the fat depot. The body in its wisdom is saying, okay, let's put it in the belly there a lot of fat cells there we'll store it there for that rainy day because some somewhere there's stress here we don't know what it is exactly but we're gonna hang on to this so that can come from calorie deprivation restricting yourself not getting enough sleep etc the other kind of fat gain is related to estrogen dominance have you heard that phrase So I am seeing there are so many women that are estrogen dominant. This comes down to a lack of possible lack of ovulation.

The cycle, when your first part of your cycle is ruled by estrogen growing that egg in the ovary and that lining of the uterus, right? Then you're supposed to ovulate. And when you ovulate at day 12, 14, the egg pops, goes down the fallopian tube in search of the friendly sperm. Are you recording this for yourself, Michael, to listen to? Fallopian tube, got it. Fallopian tube. Down the fallopian tube, friendly sperm. Meanwhile, ruptured follicle becomes this magical new little organ called the corpus luteum,

which, by the way, needs B6 big time to form in the first place. And the corpus luteum now governs the whole rest of the cycle, the whole second half of your cycle, and it's all about progesterone. Progesterone is the hormone that regulates estrogen and says, okay, you grew the egg, you grew the lining, enough growth already. We need to now make, feather the nest, get the nest ready for a possible fertilized egg. Progesterone is absolutely key to having a healthy pregnancy. High miscarriage rates are related to low progesterone. What I'm seeing is a lot of low progesterone, and even if estrogen is within range, it can be, somebody I just talked to yesterday had

a really high estrogen. That can come from all the xenoestrogen chemical toxins in the environment and also from not ovulating every cycle. What if you don't ovulate every cycle? Then you have a low progesterone, an estrogen that is in excess of progesterone, a low ratio between them means estrogen dominance. And the biggest symptom of the hallmark symptoms of that are heavy, heavy periods, mood swings, PMS, and weight gain. And the kind of weight gain that came creeping up, and I hear from women, but I never had a weight problem, and now I have a weight problem, and nothing I do can help me lose

this weight. So the knock-on effect is estrogen is actually, it encourages fat to migrate to hips, thighs, and bottom. So if you're estrogen dominant, you tend to start putting on weight there. You start bloating and retaining water. And it gets really hard to lose weight because there's a knock-on effect with the thyroid. So this is where we get into women who are gaining a lot of weight and freak out and say, it must be my thyroid. I'm gaining weight, suddenly I can't lose. So they go and get a thyroid test and there's nothing wrong with their thyroid. Then they're really frustrated. The reason that there's usually nothing wrong with the thyroid is because the thyroid is actually functioning. It's creating thyroid hormone. T4 is the most abundant thyroid, but it's inactive.

It has to convert to T3. You've probably had somebody on talking about this. T3 is the active thyroid hormone. So the thyroid makes T4, but if it doesn't convert, you're not getting the metabolism, you're not getting all the effects of a good active thyroid. And what interferes with that conversion? Too much estrogen. So what can you do? So what you can do is you have to,

okay, first you want to know, you know, it's good to know the symptoms of estrogen dominance. So if out there you have really bad PMS and you want to break up with your boyfriend every time you have your cycle or you want to get divorced or you want to go into a room and stay in your black hole for the next five days, if you have weight gain and, you know. I would get more creative. Like, maybe, like, clip his hair like my friend Jackie does when he's sleeping. Yeah, something really.

He just looks startled. Cut little holes in his favorite sweater. You didn't see that, people, but he just looked really startled. There's certain conversations i jump into and this one i'm just kind of creeping back so so if you know the symptoms of estrogen dominance which i was just naming and you are gaining weight slowly but surely and you can't lose it then don't rush off to get the thyroid medication forever find out if you have an underlying balance like estrogen dominance,

because that's what usually underlies this kind of thyroid issue. And also, you know, if you do find out that you are, that you have an imbalance of progesterone, that's when you need to really pour on the B vitamins, make sure that you're getting, some women need to use a little progesterone cream to replenish, especially women who've been on birth control, and that's another huge subject. Women who've been on birth control for 15 years, 20 years in a row, and sequentially haven't been off all that time, and their ovaries are just kind of shut down.

You know, they're sleeping. So how do you wake them back up? You know, if your ovaries are down, you're not ovulating. I need to do this test. I've been on birth control. I just got off for 10 years. You just got off? How long ago?

You've been off now for a little while. I've been off for about... At least a year. Yeah, about a year. Perfect. Good, good, good. Okay, so we'll probably get some baseline levels for you then. Yeah, I definitely need to do this test.

I really find a lot of women, I'd say 52, 53% of them are on contraception and not for contraceptive purposes. They're on it because their skin was breaking out because they had horrible heavy periods or they had fibroids or they had mood swings or really bad PMS and don't even have a relationship and aren't sexually active. And they're still on. I have a PSA though. I was so, so, so scared to get off birth control because I attributed my clear skin to birth control. So I was petrified because I'm obsessed with skin. And so I was going to my doctor and saying I needed to be on that one thing that's in

birth control called Spironolactone. Yes. I was like, please can you put me on that? I can't even say that word. Because it clears your skin. Yeah. I got off and my skin has never been better so if anyone's out there and they're listening and they're just on birth control for skin i think that is a total myth in my opinion well you know

what's what's happening with birth control is that so it's stopping ovulation and by the way the only time you make progesterone is upon ovulation so you're stopping ovulation. And by the way, the only time you make progesterone is upon ovulation. So you're stopping ovulation, you're stopping estrogen and progesterone, and when those go down, guess what starts to come up, relatively speaking? Testosterone. So testosterone and DHEA in particular are the anabolic hormones that we also call them anabolic because they build bone, they build lean muscle, they build drive, they build sex drive, all that. But they're also androgenic, meaning andro means male in Greek. So men have oilier skin, hairier bodies, heavier bones, heavier muscles. If women get too much testosterone and DHEA going, and that, by the way, can be a knock-on effect of too much

sugar in the diet and too much insulin. Insulin causes the ovaries to overproduce testosterone and DHEA. That causes your skin to break out. So if you're on birth control and it's tamping down, it's shutting down estrogen and progesterone, since all these hormones are like a seesaw, you know, they describe them as a seesaw or a an orchestra where one if one instrument is playing out of tune then the whole symphony is off right um then you get this rise in testosterone and that can be the reason why you're you're breaking out or your skin becomes oily or a lot of women have this woman yesterday told me she has literally has a beard that she has to so So she may have PCOS. I have a mustache.

Michael makes me shave it. I don't see it. No, I shaved it off. I shave it. It's like a little one. Michael says Michael warns me when we're in the sun and the sun's hitting it. We might have to lower some of that testosterone. Full disclosure here.

Yeah, well, it'll be interesting if you have that issue. It'll be interesting to see what your T levels are. It's a few hairs, but he reminds me. I can't forget about it ever because he reminds me of it when i'm in the sun it's not a few years like there's one cat yeah it's like this of course yeah it's this one long hair it kind of looks like see that like that present ribbon how it's like twisting and turning and it's like that i think you two are very amusing and funny and fun yeah but i think it's it's kind of exciting to me that you're a couple and you can talk about, you know,

you, it'll be fun for you to do this test together. So what do you think will happen? We're going to do this test and we have to tell it. We're going to have to tell me what happened. Do you think we're going to get stressed out? Do you think it's going to like, she doesn't know she's,

we're going to have to do the test and we're both going to do it. I'm a little nervous to do it because I feel like it's going to tell me that I have a lot of cortisol and that I'm stressed and then it's going to stress me out even further. I've never seen someone so stressed as my husband. I'm going down the rabbit hole here. You got a lot going on, right? No, maybe too much. But that's the point when you see, you know, as I said, people will see these, these cortisol levels and these graphs and they'll go, oh, okay. You know, I get it. I got to do something. So something has to give. And also, so it's behaviors, it's mindset, as you were talking, it's how you take in your information and what you do

with it. And it's also what are you missing? I mean, you may be doing a million great things, eating well and getting all kinds of supplements in, but maybe you're missing the key B vitamins, or maybe you're missing a little magnesium. What's most common that people are missing? Or in men? I'd say men definitely are missing. Men are notorious for not thinking that anything has to do with anything. I don't think that's true. There's a study called the HIM study, which means hypogonadism in males, which really refers to low testosterone.

And it was a study of over 13. The results turned out that over 13 million males in this country that were going to health centers and testing for testosterone, men over 45 were low in testosterone. And yet none of them... Is this uncommon compared to other periods? I mean, did these tests exist? Let's say my dad's generation, let's say 50s, 60s, 70s. Oh, he'll probably be quite low in testosterone.

No, but I mean like in the 60s, 70s. Yeah, in the 60s or 70s, were men low then, or is this common now? I think it's gotten much worse because there's so many xenoestrogens in the environment, things that you hear about all the time. For instance, I counseled with a man who was losing weight, doing everything right, but it turns out his testosterone remained low and his estrogen was really high, and we kept trying to figure out why. And it turns out he was a milk freak. He drank milk all the time.

I hate milk. And he didn't drink, he wasn't drinking hormone-free milk. You know, there are like 12 different kinds of estrogen in milk. And soy milk's the worst, huh? Soy milk is not the way to get your soy. Soy needs to be eaten fermented because soy does act like an estrogen. So that's that whole conversation about there are phytoestrogens, plant estrogens that are good things, like edamame beans and flaxseed and all that, that women who are low in estrogen might want to take in more of.

But in the environment, when everything's in soy, and you're a vegan and everything's soy-based, and then you're getting chemicals in the environment and for men it's bad news because estrogens are coming in testosterone's going down and overweight men oh here's a good one so in fat cells there's an enzyme called aromatase and aromatase loves to take your bioavailable free testosterone that's floating around in there and grab it and turn it into estrogen yeah the more fat cells we have the more estrogen we have so men that are overweight like the older generation that's getting the they're just churning out estrogen you know i knew this kid actually he's one of my best friends still and he throughout in his entire he broke so many bones when we were

growing up i'd known him since first grade so many. And I always saw this guy chugging down milk. This is literally your favorite story. No, because milk's gross, right? I have this maybe theory that's controversial. Okay. This is something I think. I haven't studied it or anything. I think that I'm noticing that men, estrogen levels are getting higher as we go on in life.

And I believe, and you can tell me if I'm wrong here, that there is so much soy in everything nowadays. I mean, you eat a piece of Ezekiel toast, which is supposed to be healthy for you. And if you look on the back, there's soy in it. And I'm noticing that men are getting kind of bitchy sometimes. Is that totally off base? Well, you know, I think because like you were saying, everybody's on the bandwagon, restricting this, restricting that, and not really realizing what foods are sources of these different hormones, that it's not, you know, as the experts who know this say,

eat your soy in a fermented way. If a guy has gone off milk and thinks soy milk's a better alternative, not realizing that soy is going to act like an estrogen. And the way that works, it's interesting. These things are like, you know, the key and the lock. That's how hormones work. They fit into the lock of a target cell and they open that cell. You know, they become, they're on the red blood cell bound in the bloodstream, which is why you want to test in saliva because when you test blood, you're testing bound hormone that is inactive. You want to test the hormone that's broken loose from its red blood cell because some, because the brain just signaled and said, Mike's over there and he's working out, he's working out hard. He needs a little more testosterone. Release testosterone. So it's released into tissue, collections of cells. And we can capture

that active en route to the target tissue in saliva gland because it's a collection of tissues. So we're getting that active level. And that's where we can see, you know, what's really happening. And we can measure, you know, is this guy's estrogen too high and his testosterone too low and his cortisol is high too and that's bringing his thyroid in and interfering with thyroid conversion and now we're gaining weight and we're moody and emotional, just as our wife may be for different reasons or for different levels. When Michael gets testosterone from the gym, he comes in with his shirtless tank and flexes in the mirror, and he's a little bit more dominant, I notice.

Like, I can tell when he has testosterone. I needed to answer your question. I think, guys, yeah. Should I put my shirt back on? What do you mean when he comes in with testosterone? Oh, because his testosterone's up because he's been working out. Yeah, he wants to flex in the mirror. As a man, I don't know if this is true or if this is my own theory, if you work out your legs really hard, too, I feel like you get a lot more testosterone.

A lot of men neglect their legs. Yeah. I love when you work out your legs. Big muscle groups. Because the sex is really great when you work out your legs. All right. We don't need to tell. Keep that in mind.

Yeah. Let's get in the gym. But that is the best way to raise ladies and gents. That is the best, most natural way to raise testosterone is to do strength training. To do strength training. With weights. Yeah. And to get with the trainer and learn to do it properly.

You guys may have opinions about whether it's lighter weights and more reps or heavier weights and fewer reps. There are different ways to go. It depends. It's hugely important and a most natural way and for men you know i i think it's really unfortunate that men rush to get testosterone injections they get a lot you know it's all about low t is your t low that is not what matters as much it is is your estrogen high do is your estrogen high which is then and are do you have fat cells you see You were talking about men you think are using, they're moody and emotional. How about the moobs?

How many men do you see? Michael doesn't have moobs yet. No, he doesn't, but there are plenty of men that do, and you can see them on the street. I can't wait. You know that that man is estrogen. I'm not getting moobs. No, you won't be getting. You don't seem like a moob type.

Ray, do you have moobs? I have dad body. You have dad body. Ray's got a dad body who says i love a dad body you know um no i'm not gonna get it because i'm gonna not drink the milk and i'm gonna stay in the store and i'm gonna work out and yeah you know what i want to do i think at some point when we do this test we gotta we gotta talk to you again because i think people would be very interested to you know to hear what this test to hear what you found out yeah you can come on and share our results. I have a question about ghrelin.

I just learned about ghrelin from my friend Ingrid on Instagram. No, not gremlins. Ghrelin and leptin, the little elves. Tell the audience about ghrelin and tell them how we can sort of get ghrelin under control so it doesn't sabotage us.

Okay, so I'm not going to go into heavy science because I'm not an expert on ghrelin and leptin, but I can tell you that the main thing here is that if you are a short sleeper, which is like 6.5 or less hours a night, you are going to have a ghrelin-leptin problem. Oh, great. Because they are hinged to the sleep wake cycle the appetite hormones so ghrelin's the hunger hormone and leptin's the satiety hormone that says you're full and when you don't sleep well enough and your your cortisol melatonin levels are off you are upsetting these appetite hormones over the circadian rhythm and what happens is ghrelin

increases and leptin plummets so the net effect is that this is where people are hardwired to crave certain foods or sugars or they feel hungry all the time and they'd never feel full and they overeat they're constantly eating like my husband my daughters are always going dad is constantly eating my dad wakes up in the morning and he's cooking breakfast and then he'll tell you about what how excited he is to make dinner he asks you what you want for dinner i'm like listen man your dad has cooked me dinner and asked me what i want for the next night while he's cooking i'm like let's get through the breakfast man he's hard why really i like people to understand if you have sugar cravings and you are hungry all the time and

never feel full and you just you're realizing i just ate two hours ago and i'm starving old daddy bosta look to your sleep look to your sleeping habits and look to your, you know, it's not that easy to get ghrelin and leptin tested, actually. So the best way to start is to find out what's going on with your cortisol levels. But the opposite one is if you're not hungry. Yeah. The big hint would be if you had an elevated night cortisol, then you could pretty much surmise that probably your ghrelin and leptin levels are off. I love the word ghrelin. I feel like it makes me sound smart. I want to name that probably your ghrelin-leptin levels are off. I love the word ghrelin. I feel like it makes me sound smart.

I want to name my firstborn ghrelin. What is one... Ghrelin-bostic. Ghrelin-leptin. That's so unfair. The middle name can be moob. Ghrelin-moob-bostic. Send him up for success.

We hope he's not a mooby guy. No, we hope he's not a mooby guy.. No, he's not a Mubi guy. What is one resource before you go that you can give our audience if they want to learn more about hormones? I think it's important, you remember the campaign to learn about the seven warning signs of cancer? I think it's really important to know the symptoms of hormone imbalance. Because I think people are walking around with hormone imbalance don't even realize it because they just get used to being tired all the time or bitchy or itchy or crabby or can't lose weight you know feeling psycho people just say it's my hormones but that's not good enough okay how much better could you be feeling how

much better did you used to feel so know your symptoms get tested to confirm symptoms but you know just look at your life too. Like you were talking about, you turned off your phone for a couple of days and you felt rejuvenated. What would it take to just turn your damn phone off at night? You know, turn it off. Not, not to, you know, I think that the addictions that we have, um, we need to just take a look. The, the idea of taking that. But you don't even realize they're addictions. Which you don't because people become their addictions. They become their symptoms.

They get used to feeling certain ways. And then they just carry on like this. Or I hear this all the time. My mother was like this. Or my dad was like this. People think it's inevitable that they're going to get diabetes or be obese. None of this is inevitable. I write blogs, too, but I wrote one called

aging is not a Botox deficiency. You know, we are all going to age and our hormones are going to fluctuate and we are going to go into, you're going to go into menopause and you're going to go into andropause, the slowdown of hormones, but it doesn't need to be a precipitous dramatic drop. If you are supporting your lifestyle, you guys are busy, but hopefully you're eating well, you're getting the right amount of exercise, enough sleep. What you have to do is support your lifestyle with adaptogenic herbs, with the supplements our own bodies don't make,

with downtime, me time, all those good, it's a holistic thing. Avoiding the xenos and making sure when you buy your protein sources that it says these animals were raised without hormones not just no added hormones but raised without that you open the egg carton and says our hens are you know our cows are rbst free our hens are are free range that you don't microwave in plastic. And, you know, there's so many things like that, choices that we have to make that you stop taking receipts, you stop eating out of cans. All of these chemicals turn in, don't ask me why, they turn into estrogens in the body. So we call them xenos. They go in and it's like, you know, I was talking about the key in the lock.

These xenoestrogens are potent estrogens. They don't bother to open the door nicely. They just kick the damn door in and occupy a cell, kick out the naturally occurring estrogen or hormone, and just take over. So no more receipts for you. I find receipts in your pockets all the time. Those days are over. Those days are over. Those receipts are over.

Becoming aware of this stuff. So when people test with me, I send you an action plan. So we talk on the phone for 50 minutes and go through your results. Okay. And is this your kit? Can you tell the audience where they can buy it? We'll leave it in the show notes, you guys. This kit is a saliva kit from a very reputable lab called Iumetrix.

We test with them because i like them best and you can buy the kit on your hormone balance.com we have a jump start that tests all the hormones i talked about and we have a weight management kit too and i work with my daughter on that she's an institute of integrative nutritionists so when health coach so i talk to you about your hormones and then people talk to her about how to eat for healthy hormone balance because that's huge. That's a huge piece. So it's all online.

And then there's at your hormone balance is the Instagram. I'm terrible on Instagram. We'll link everything anyways. We'll share all your goodies. And we got people for that now. Yeah, we got people to take the cortisol off you. So just one more time with your Instagram handle. At your hormone balance.

Perfect. And now, Michael, whenever you're annoying or I'm annoying. You're getting my cortisol up right now. Thank you for coming on. Oh, that was fun. Thank you for having me. All right, guys, before we go, I want to remind everyone one more time about the live event this Thursday.

It's only a couple of days away. If you're in the LA, San Diego, Orange County area, it's a free event. It's at the Grove. For details, go to deermedia.com slash live RSVP. There are still some seats available and we'd love to see you. It's going to be a good show.

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