The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Lauryn Solo On How To Balanced Your Hormones & Fix Thyroid Issues

Episode Date: November 10, 2020

#306: On this episode Lauryn is solo discussing how she balanced her hormones after pregnancy and how she discovered that a thyroid issue was draining her energy. She then dives into audience questions and dives deep into the issues so many women go through trying to balance their hormones.  To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by Avocado Green Mattress Avocado green mattresses are better for your health and better for the planet. A natural mattress is more sustainable and responsible. It’s an essential piece of a conscious lifestyle. After all, you spend roughly one-third of your life in bed, on a mattress. Detoxing your bed, then moving on to your bedroom, and ultimately your home, can be liberating. Visit www.AvocadoMattress.com and use the code SKINNY200 for $200 off Avocado’s NEW All Latex Mattress and Luxury Organic Crib Mattresses. Valid now through November 30, 2020. This episode is brought to you by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning space offering more than 25,000 courses. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for our listeners: Get two months of Skillshare for free. That’s right, Skillshare is offering The Skinny Confidential listeners two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free. To sign up, go to www.skillshare.com/skinny Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. 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.

Aha! What is up? You have Lauren only. It's just me today. It's a solo episode. We are going to have some fun because I am going to discuss a topic that I feel like has been a long time coming. This is a topic that I've noticed a lot of interest in, and I think it's because we're

all sort of dealing with it in some way or another, and that is hormones and thyroid. Now, I want to preface this episode with giving a little disclaimer. I am not a doctor. I am just sharing my experience with hormones and thyroids and insulin resistance and all this stuff that I have discovered post-birth. So obviously, check with a doctor, do your own research. I got a hormone specialist involved, and that was very helpful. And be your own guru. With that, I'm going to take you on the journey of how I have dealt with my hormones and thyroid. Ready? So I obviously was pregnant for nine

months, actually 10, basically 10, 42 weeks with Zaza. After giving birth, I thought everything would just sort of go back to the way that it was. And I think that that's where I really went wrong. I had such an easy, magical pregnancy, and I had an insane birth, like couldn't have gone better. And so I just thought, oh, my recovery is going to be easy. And that was really stupid because my recovery was not easy. In fact, the hardest thing about having a baby has not been the baby. It has not been the pregnancy. It has not even been the weight gain or giving birth at all. It's been dealing with the postpartum of it all, the hormones, the thyroid, the postpartum anxiety. So I wanted to just get on the mic by myself and do an episode on how I've

dealt with each of these things. So like I said, I had the baby. Right after having the baby, I obviously felt bloated. I felt out of my body. I felt like I was wearing a costume or something. Obviously felt heavy, which is very normal. Lots of water weight. I gained 55 pounds when I got pregnant. So I still was feeling just sort of out of body experience with my body. But I was also feeling really shitty. Okay. I was feeling fucking tired, fatigued, anxious. And when I say anxious, I mean the sound of a text message coming in on a cell phone would make me anxious. So normal everyday sounds would just give me anxiety throughout my entire body. And I always explain that it's like when you're about to get into a car crash and you get that jolt of anxiety through your body.

That's how it felt. But it kept happening over and over all day long. And so I kind of knew, okay, this is maybe a little bit of postpartum anxiety. And then I started to have intrusive thoughts, which I know a lot of mothers have. It's very normal of things that could go wrong. Like, is this picture frame going to fall on the baby? Is the knife going to fall out of the knife holder and fall onto the baby? Just things that never would have entered my mind before I was pregnant. And so then I was like, okay, this is postpartum. Talked to a lot of mothers. They said it's very normal. I personally don't think it's been talked about publicly enough, which is why

this was important for me to get on the mic. But basically the main thing was, is that I was wearing like the same clothes every day. I was wearing Michael sweats, didn't give a shit about my hair, was just slopping around the house really really. And I had no energy, and I had no energy to do my work. And I would wake up, and it was like a constant struggle all day. I felt like I had fog over my eyes. And so maybe that was a little bit of depression looking back. I'm not sure. But the point is, and why I want to tell this story, is now I have so much clarity. I feel so much better. I have so much energy and I feel completely back to normal. And I want to tell you guys how I got to this point because

it's been eight months. And I think that even if you haven't had a baby, this episode will be relevant because like I said, we're going to talk about hormones and thyroid. I started talking to people in my Pilates class or asking around and a woman there who was probably about 65 years old said, you need to get your hormones checked. You need to get your thyroid checked. Your neck is swollen, she said. And so I was like, I don't have low thyroid. I don't have high thyroid. I feel like it's fine. Didn't listen. A couple of weeks went by. She said it again. She said, your neck's swollen. I really want you to go to my girl. She's going to help you a lot. And I just know that there's something off. So begrudgingly, I booked an appointment with a specialist. Again, it was a hormone specialist, not a regular doctor.

And the reason that this is really important is that a regular doctor does general tests, but a hormone specialist looks under the bed. So they're going to really test every single level that a regular practitioner wouldn't test, and they specialize in it. So if you have a problem with hormones or thyroid, that is what I recommend. So off I went to the doctor. I got a blood test. I remember feeling so bloated, so fatigued, and so tired that I was sitting in her office in Michael's sweats. I didn't even put makeup on or get ready, or I just felt like a blob. And I was sitting in her office crying and just saying, I don't know what is wrong with me. I feel so tired, so fatigued all the time. I before fog over the eyes so what she said is she said we are going to help you fix your symptoms we're not just only going to look at your blood and i

thought that was smart because sometimes doctors will only look at your blood and then dismiss you and diagnose you and like call it a day but this woman wanted to work with my symptoms as well as looking at my blood so we did a gnarly blood panel she tested like my t i want to say like my symptoms as well as looking at my blood. So we did a gnarly blood panel. She tested like my T, I want to say like my T1, my T2, my T3. I don't know if I'm saying this right, but like every single thing you could possibly test when it comes to hormones. So we tested testosterone levels, progesterone levels, thyroid levels, everything. I obviously left the office. I get a call from her a couple of days later and it turned out that I had incredibly low thyroid. I had low testosterone, low progesterone. To be honest with you, I was happy. I was relieved because I started to be like, okay, I'm not crazy. This is not me being dramatic that I'm tired. this is a real thing that I need to look into so she prescribed me to a thyroid medicine I believe it's the natural synthroid I hope I'm

saying that right and I would take one every morning right when I woke up I still do and can't eat or drink 30 minutes after so we we implemented that first. And after two weeks, I felt 80% better. And so I call my dad. I'm talking to my dad. I'm telling him all about how my diagnosis. And he says, oh yeah, I have low thyroid. And your grandma had low thyroid. And I thought, oh fuck, I should have known that because it can be genetic. So I probably should have had this test when I was 21 and I was feeling fatigued. Who knows how long I've had this thyroid issue. The thing that I heard is that there's something that happens to your body after birth that makes these things come out even more. So I could have always had low thyroid, which is why maybe I was

tired. I remember when I was 22, I could nap at any time in the day. I just thought, oh, I'm 22. You know, I had too much to drink the night before. No, I probably had some low thyroid going on. But then I gave birth and it made all these issues just really peak their ugly head out. And then after we sort of got my thyroid under control, it can take up to a month for you to feel better. I started looking at testosterone and progesterone. And this is where it's like everyone's different. You have to go to your own specialist and see. And I started experimenting with that. I don't want to be on hormones the rest of my life. I want to deal with this in a way where I can eventually find something natural.

But for the time being, I've experienced being on the hormones and balancing them out. And I just feel so relieved and so much better. So then, and this is important to note if you are going to get your hormones or thyroid tested, is that you want to go back two months later or three months later or four months later, because this is not something that you get tested for, get prescribed something, and then never see the doctor again. This is something that you need to constantly check up on. Hormones can change. There's environmental factors. There's all different kinds of things that can change your hormones. So it's important that when you're working with someone, you really find someone

who's committed to sort of a long-term strategy. Like I mentioned earlier, I hope I don't have to be on hormones forever. I just want to do it maybe for a couple of months and then try to find something more natural. And so I found a Chinese medicine doctor through my friend Kenzie Burke. Shout out to Kenzie. And I started seeing a Chinese medicine doctor. And the reason that I want to talk about this too is because I'm taking a two-pronged approach to this. I have my hormone specialist and I have a Chinese medicine doctor who's holistic and she's Eastern medicine. And so with that, I feel like I have all my tools in the toolbox. And a lot of people will say, well, that's overwhelming. That's two doctors, blah, blah, blah. But for me, this is my health and this is my energy levels. And there was something really wrong. And I want to take the

approach that I would take if I was solving a business issue, which is really get my ducks in line and use the tools in my toolbox. So then I started going to a Chinese medicine doctor, which does not test your blood. She does this arm test. I can't explain it. I don't know what it's called. It's something to do with your neurological brain. And she tests of things that your organs need. And so she realized that I need a supplement, a Chinese medicine supplement for my heart. And so that's another sort of piece to the puzzle. So my heart was feeling like it needed some support. So like I said, she prescribed me the Chinese medicine for the heart. And so with that and my thyroid medicine and balancing my hormones, I just started to feel 100%. Things that changed if you're out there and you're struggling. I was feeling anxious. I was feeling depressed. I was feeling fatigued and

tired. I was feeling sluggish. And these were things that I was not feeling before I got pregnant. Sometimes I would feel fatigued, like I said, but it wasn't this gnarly. And combined with the Chinese medicine and the hormones together, it worked very harmoniously to help me have clarity. And the reason that I really wanted to get on the mic and do this podcast is because I think we're told so many times that we don't have to get our hormones checked as women until we're 50 years old because of menopause or whatever. I, after going through all this, would say if you have symptoms to go out and be an advocate for yourself.

Go see what's going on. The way that I felt at the beginning of this year compared to now is truly a 360 because I really think I tried to take it under control. And I feel like I asked these questions on Instagram, which I'm going to get into. I'm going to answer your questions. And so many of you had so many questions about this because I feel like the information isn't readily available. Quick break to tell you all about Skillshare. So Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. I have had a lot of bloggers or influencers or small businesses reach out via DM and say, where do I start? And one of the things

that I would tell you is to check out Skillshare. My entire team, seriously, the entire Skinny Confidential team took a class on Instagram story animation, and they learned how to make these beautiful videos for our podcast or for blog posts. And with Skillshare, why it's so awesome is because they have all these categories where you can go learn to create assets for your business. Some of the other things they have, if you're not interested in that, are creative writing, fine art, graphic design, music, photography, design, and web development. So if you're sitting there and you're like, I really want to launch a website, but I don't know how to do it, you can go to Skillshare and it will teach you very seamlessly how to do web development. Now there is like really no excuse. In 2020,

we have access to Google and even more, we have access to Skillshare. So it will literally teach you step by step how to figure it out. One of my favorite classes in a class that I recommend to a lot of creatives is the iPhone filmmaking class. And they teach you how to create this beautiful video with your iPhone. So like I said, no excuses. And just if you're searching for that one, the specific teachers are Caleb Bangkok and Niles Gray. To get detailed with you, members of Skillshare get unlimited access to thousands of inspiring classes with hands-on projects and feedback from a community of millions. They have new live classes, experience real-time inspiration with popular teachers along with other members. You should know there's no ads and they're always launching new premium classes. The teachers are insane.

They even have one with Greg McKeown who wrote the book Essentialism. It's one of Michael's favorite classes. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com slash skinny and the first thousand people to use our link will get a free trial of Skillshare premium membership. Receive free access to thousands of classes for a limited time. Be one of the first thousand to sign up at Skillshare.com slash skinny. All right, let's get back to hormones. I am committed to having a hormone expert come on the podcast and dissect this with us. I also think there's a lot of men out there that could benefit from something called the Dutch test. It's a test for your hormones. And I'm going to have a Chinese medicine expert come on the podcast to talk about this more because I obviously, like I said,

I'm not a doctor. I don't know all the facts. I just know that this has been my journey and it's made me feel so, so much better that I can't shut the fuck up about it. So yes, we will have those experts on the podcast for you. They will come on the blog. And then I'm also going to do a series with my friend Ingrid, who specializes in hormones. And we're probably going to do this, I think, on Instagram Live or Instagram TV and just have candid conversations about cortisol and ghrelin. Ghrelin's the hunger hormone. And just talk about all these things that aren't being talked about enough. I know so many women in LA that I've talked to and met here. Many are celebrities or influencers, and there's so

many of them that are getting their hormones tested, but not a lot of people are talking about it. Maybe, I don't know if it's something that people think is private or taboo, but for me, I wanted to share how much better I feel with you guys because I feel like it will help someone who, you know, maybe you're in Florida and you're experiencing the same kind of symptoms and you just gave birth and you're just brushing it off as postpartum anxiety. And now you're going to go get your hormones tested and your thyroid and maybe you too have low thyroid. What was crazy to me is when I was talking to my doctor, I said, I can't lose weight. I said, I work out every single day. I am eating clean. I'm doing all the things and checking all the boxes and doing all the

wellness stuff and the weight is not coming off. And to her, that signaled that there was something wrong. And when she called me and told me my results, I forgot to mention this earlier, she said, even if you did everything, starved yourself and worked out 12 times a week, you still wouldn't lose weight very easily with all these things. You have all these things working against you. So if you're experiencing any of these feelings

that I just showcased, go get your hormones tested. For the second part of this podcast, what I wanted to do was I wanted to go through your questions that you asked me on Instagram. I thought this would be a fun, quick, interactive way to get the conversation going. But before I get into that, I wanted to tell you some things that I'm doing to manage the postpartum anxiety because I want to touch on that. So obviously, the hormone specialist, the Chinese medicine expert.

Another thing I do, and I know this sounds crazy, but since I was having anxiety about a text message going off or an alarm going off or these weird things that had never happened to me before, I started doing something that's made a big difference. And Ingrid actually recommended this. Ingrid is from France. And in France, they sit down and they enjoy their meal without interruption I was eating wherever I could I would be, you know standing in the elevator eating a hard-boiled egg or I would be sitting down and doing a conference call while I was eating You know a taco and I just realized that when you're eating and you're stressed out,

it's not a good mix. So now when I eat a meal, I sit and I sit with someone that I love and I can talk to, or I sit without my phone, or I sit with a book. And that little tweak has made such a difference. I know it sounds stupid, but try it. And once you start to notice how much you're eating food with distraction and not intention, you'll check yourself. I'm telling you. Another thing that I did for postpartum anxiety was microdose mushrooms. I've talked about this a little bit on Instagram. If you guys are interested in this, let me know on my latest post.

This is a whole podcast episode in itself. I did it three times. It really, really helped me have perspective. Obviously, I'm not telling anyone to microdose mushrooms. I'm just telling you that for me, this worked. Another thing that I did, I talk about this all the time on stories, is I went to Peak Wellness and Pellicure. Peak Wellness is like a chiropractor. I go to Dennis and he does a lot of myofascial release. And I felt like that helped with my posture. This is weird, but it helped with my implants. So when you have implants, you can sometimes hunch over and they can actually block your

rib cage from breathing a little bit. So he adjusted my implants. I know that sounds weird, but he did. And it took the pressure off my ribs. I know, I know, I'm weird, but it worked. Okay, so I have to share. And then next door is Pellicure. And I cannot tell you enough good things about Pellicure. My friend Anna owns the spa and she truly created it because she had such bad postpartum depression and anxiety. She had the worst. She couldn't even like see straight, she said. And so she wanted to create a space for women that were new moms that needed a release, but also something to work on their nervous system. So these scrubs, they just relax you in the best way while also getting your lymphatic system going.

Before I gave birth, I was obsessed with the facials at Pellicure. I still am. I go to Haley. But after giving birth, I realized the value in the scrub. The scrub is what really helped with my nervous system. Every time I would be feeling so much anxiety, I would go in there. I would get a private scrub. You get butt naked.

You lay on the table. The warm water cascades over you. They wash your hair with like the best products and you just lay there. It's really amazing. Taylor, you would actually really like it too. Anyways, so the Korean scrub at Pellicure. I can't say enough good things if you're having any kind of anxiety or you're postpartum. And then obviously the last

and final thing was the hormones, the Chinese medicine. So those are the things that I did to help with anxiety at postpartum. But the biggest component was getting my thyroid and my hormones under control. Cannot recommend it enough. With that, let's answer some of your questions. You guys had so many questions on the posts that I did on Instagram. And I think that this will be fun. Do hormone specialists take insurance? Mine did. I think I had to pay a little bit for one visit. But basically, insurance covered, I want to say, about 80%.

That's my insurance, though. I don't know if everyone's insurance is the same. I would definitely look into your insurance company and your plan and see if they cover it before booking someone. And then I would also make sure you're doing your research on who you're booking as a specialist. We are discussing wellness in this episode, so it's so fitting to tell you about avocado green mattresses. I know we've talked about this before in a lot of episodes, but just to remind you, it's a natural mattress that's more sustainable and more responsible. So I didn't realize all of this

info on mattresses until I started researching avocado mattress. So they follow this farm to bedroom approach in manufacturing and they make eco luxury organic certified mattresses and bedding. And they do it all from their California factory. So a lot of mattresses are made with a lot of weird shit. And their mattresses are made with GOTS, which is organic certified cotton and wool, and GOALS, which is organic certified latex. So like I said, all sustainably sourced from farms that they co-own in India. And why I'm a huge fan of this brand is I like brands that disrupt the market. And this is totally disrupting the market. So they're really showcasing that there are better mattresses for

the health and for the planet. We even got Zaza one. So they have organic crib mattresses. And this is made without all these weird foams and off-gassing memory foams or chemical adhesives. All this stuff that we don't even know is in our mattress. We're laying on our bed for seven to nine hours a night. It should be organic. These are certified non-toxic. Like I said, you can rest assured that they're safer for you and safer for your family. On another note, which is awesome, they're members of 1% for the planet. So they donate 1% of all revenue to environmental nonprofits. I think that is amazing. Check them out if you're a new mom for crib mattresses.

And also check them out if you need a new mattress. Certified organic, non-toxic, I'm telling you. Visit avocadomatress.com and use code SKINNY200 for $200 off Avocado's new all-latex mattress and their luxury organic crib mattresses. That's the one I got Zaza, their luxury organic crib mattress. It's valid now through November 30th, 2020. Go shop. Happy mattress shopping. I think you'll love this brand. Someone said, how often should someone get them if they've had abnormal results in the past? So my doctor likes to check my levels every couple months for now. So probably every four months, which sucks because I fucking hate blood tests. I have them do it out of my hand

with a butterfly needle. Such a fucking baby. Lay down, have to listen to Howard Stern to be distracted. It's a whole to-do. But she likes to test every four months. I think as I start to get things under control more, it'll be every six months. But I do think it's something that you should do at least twice a year, according to my hormone specialist. Again, you've got to ask your own doctor. How did I find a hormone specialist? I found one by word of mouth. I think that is the most powerful way to find someone instead of just Googling. I started talking to people. I started asking questions. I started getting curious. And I noticed when I start to get curious and start to ask questions, whether it's at a workout or through a friend or through a text, it sort of like comes to me. You manifest your answer, right? So you just start

putting it out there into the ether that you're looking for this certain person and you need help with a certain thing. And all of a sudden it comes to you. So if you feel like you have a hormone issue, start putting it out into the ether around your community. And I'm sure someone will have an amazing recommendation for you. Who is your doctor in LA? My doctor is Dr. Shirley. She's in Beverly Hills and she's amazing. And I've had such a good experience with her. How much weight have I lost since balancing my hormones? I went into Dr. Shirley's office after a month and a half of being balanced out. And I'm happy to report that my levels were normal. Everything was normal, which is awesome. And I had lost 15 pounds in a month and a half. I still do have weight to lose. I'd like to lose another 15 pounds just so I can feel like the best version of myself. But just from getting

everything balanced out, the weight, I don't want to say fell off. It didn't fall off. I'm eating very clean and working out and walking every day, but it certainly has come off so much quicker than if I hadn't gotten anything balanced. Someone asked about if an endocrinologist is the same as a hormone specialist. I actually don't know. I just know that the doctor that I used was a hormone specialist. That might mean she's also an endocrinologist. I would have to look into that. Like I said, this is like kind of out of my wheelhouse. So I'm still learning about it. Another person asked a natural way to level everything out. If you are more into a very, very natural approach,

I don't blame you. I would say talk to a Chinese medicine doctor. Again, that's someone that you want to ask around about. Do your own research and really find someone that's going to work for you. Another listener asked how to help horrible periods without getting on the pill. I think that if you have the worst periods ever, a hormone specialist could really help you with that. That's something that I think that going to just see if everything's all leveled out would really benefit the period. I can't imagine having a horrible period. That's never happened to me. I'm sure it's awful. And that's just something I would look into. Maybe it's a sign that your body's telling you you need something, whether it's natural or unnatural. What are the benefits of having a hormonal balance? I cannot tell you.

There are so many benefits. I feel so, so much better. I no longer want to nap during the day. I'm bouncing off the walls with energy. I have clarity. I feel like the fog's been lifted off my eyes. My anxiety is almost gone away. I'm still a little bit sensitive to certain noises. If a door slams, I'm way more sensitive than I was before I was pregnant. So I just have to get my energy levels and my energy frequency around me in a good place. I just feel like I'm functioning on all cylinders. And most importantly, it makes me a better mother to my daughter. When I felt like shit the whole time, I'm like, this sucks. So to actually know what's going on and know how to fix it has been very, very beneficial. Can't even tell

you. Last question is, does this only affect you if you're pregnant and had a baby? No, hormone issues can affect anyone. Thyroid issues can affect anyone. Talk to your parents, talk to your grandparents, see if they had any hormone or thyroid issues, number one, so then you can just, you know, know about that. And then if you're experiencing the symptoms, just get it checked out. It's a one-time blood test. If there is something wrong, like I said, you do have to keep going back. But I just think it's worth knowing the information. I hope that this podcast helped someone. I would love to know your feedback. Do you want to hear more on this? If so, let me know on my latest

Instagram at the skinny confidential. Just knowing what you guys want to hear on the podcast is really great for the show. I feel like we always want you guys to be the captains of the ship. So it seems to me that hormones is an issue that you want us to dive deeper in. I am not saying I have this all figured out. This has been a journey over the last eight months. I still obviously have a long way to go and I'll keep you guys updated along the way if this is of interest. Anyways, thank you so much for listening to my solo episode. This was so much fun. I'm going to get on the mic more. And if you want to win some cute, cheeky, skinny, confidential merch, we just got some new stickers, then tell me on my latest Instagram at the Skinny Confidential what you want my next solo episode to be on.

I was thinking I could do a baby master list. The master list would not be something that you find on Google. It would probably be random. I've actually never Googled what should be on my baby list. So it's very curated to Zaza, but I thought that would be fun. And maybe I could take a bunch of your recommendations, right? So let me know on my latest Instagram. And as always, thank you guys so much for listening, subscribing, rating, and reviewing the Skinny Confidential Him and Her podcast.