This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You: The New Hormone Solution with Dr. Erika Schwartz | 305

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Feeling exhausted, anxious, bloated, foggy, or just off—and being told “it’s normal” because you’re aging or just a woman? Yeah, no. It’s not normal. And it’s definitely not something you have to accept. In this eye-opening episode, I’m joined by Dr. Erika Schwartz, a pioneer in bio-identical hormone therapy and founder of Evolved Science, where she’s flipping traditional medicine on its outdated, symptom-chasing head. With over 30 years of experience, eight best-selling books, and a global reputation for helping people reclaim their health, Dr. Erika is here to tell us: your hormones matter. And ignoring them could be the reason you feel like garbage—even if all your labs come back “normal.” We’re talking real solutions, not band-aids. Actual prevention, not prescriptions. And a whole new way of thinking about what your body needs to thrive—especially as you age. In This Episode, We Cover: ✅ Why traditional medicine is failing women—especially around hormones ✅ The truth about hormone imbalance (and how to fix it) ✅ What bio-identical hormone therapy really is—and why it matters ✅ Signs your hormones are out of whack (that your doctor might miss) ✅ How to advocate for yourself in a medical system that often won’t ✅ What true health optimization looks like (spoiler: not another pill) It’s time to stop accepting exhaustion as a fact of life and start demanding answers—and better care. Because your hormones aren’t the problem. They’re the starting point to feeling like yourself again. Connect with Erika:  Website: https://drerika.com/  Book: https://drerika.com/publications/  IG: https://www.instagram.com/drerikaschwartz/  Related Podcast Episodes: 179 / What You Need to Know About Menopause with Thara Vayali 139 / Well-Rested with Jolene Hart Endometriosis & Women's Health with Somer Baburek | 238 Get 40% off by going to cozyearth.com and using code TIWW, and this weekend, May 2nd through 4th, Cozy Earth is giving my listeners a special offer: Buy One, Get One Free bamboo pajamas with code TIWWBOGO. Because she deserves the best—and so do you Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/tiww ! #squarepod Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kahlil, and on this episode of This Is Woman's Work, we're going to dive into a topic that's relevant to every single one of us. Today we're talking about our hormones. We've all got them, and most of us don't really understand them except that when they go haywire, things get real interesting. You know, the random mood swings, the exhaustion that no amount of caffeine can fix, the inexplicable weight gain even though you swear you're eating the same, and the anxiety that shows up uninvited and totally unexpected.

Now here's the real kicker. Women's hormones, our cycles, paramenopause, menopause, all of it, are just some of the most under-researched, underfunded, and misunderstood areas of medicine. Up until the 1990s, medical studies were based on men's bodies, with women's health treated as an afterthought, or worse, a niche issue. Even now, conditions like paramenopause, PCOS, and hormonal imbalances remain woefully underexplored, leaving women to figure out things on their own,

or worse, be dismissed as hysterical, which, by the way, makes me absolutely hysterical. We've been conditioned to think that feeling like crap is just part of aging, being a woman, or an unavoidable part of life. But what if it's not? What if hormones, those tiny chemical messengers running the show inside our bodies,

are actually the key to not just surviving, but thriving? And what if the medical world has been getting this all wrong for, oh, I don't know, ever? That's where today's guest comes in. Dr. Erica Schwartz is a pioneer in bioidentical hormone therapy and a relentless advocate for treating patients as a whole person, not just a collection of symptoms. She's the founder of Evolved Science, a cutting edge medical practice that starts with balancing hormones as the foundation of better health. From there, she focuses on optimization, longevity, and brace yourself, actually preventing disease

instead of just slapping prescriptions on the problem. Dr. Erica has been at this for more than 30 years, written eight bestselling books, and been featured everywhere from the New York Times to Vogue. She is a distinguished faculty member of A4M, the world's preeminent longevity and functional medicine organization, and she hosts the popular Redefining Medicine podcast. Dr. Erica, thank you so much for being here. I have so many questions, so I'm just gonna dive right in.

You describe hormones as being fundamental to our health, even more important than diet and exercise. Why are hormones so crucial? Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on your podcast, Nicole. It's a pleasure and it's an honor because anybody who actually cares about women, to me, is very close to my heart, obviously,

having done this for the past 30 years plus. very close to my heart, obviously, having done this for the past 30 years plus. So about hormones, it's very simple. If your hormones are out of balance and we started puberty, it's not like it's not a continuum. At puberty, the hormones kick in, we get our periods, things start changing. Then in our 20s, 30s, we have babies.

So we have to have the right hormones in the right quantities to make sure that we give birth to a healthy baby. Then we have the postpartum time when things have to be rebalanced and recalib it. So then nothing much happens, except for the fact that a lot happens. And then hormones start heading towards premenopause, perimenopause, menopause. They're all labels. It's just the continuum of life.

And in this continuum, our hormone balances change. If the hormones are in balance, things are great. Just think about it. When you're a teenager, in your 20s, you get off the couch, you exercise, you sleep well, your libido is great, you have a clear skin, your hair looks great. Everything is wonderful. You don't have any problems. As you get older and your hormones go out of balance, that's when things start going downhill.

And no way can you exercise your way through losing your hormones because you just don't have the energy anymore. No way will you be able to stay away from that sugar and all the carbohydrates that we all have as we get older because your hormone imbalance is causing you to crave them. No way will you be able to sleep at night if your hormones are not there. So when we're talking about the whole life, which to me is a puzzle, and the more pieces of the puzzle you put in,

the more likely you are to actually see your whole life optimized, your hormones are the foundation. If your hormones are in balance, then you can do everything else. Then you can lose weight, you can gain weight, you can exercise, you can sleep well, you can gain weight, you can exercise, you can sleep well, everything happens right. When your hormones are out of balance, things don't work out. And we're not disposable. When menopause comes, you have pretty much half of your life left ahead of you. And to be considered discardable and unnecessary is really to not do us a service

because you're kind of putting the world at a huge disadvantage because 40 plus year old women have wisdom, have experience, and have a lot to offer to the younger generations. So to get rid of them because their hormones are out of balance and they don't exist anymore, is kind of a cruel joke to play on us. Yeah, it almost feels like, I don't know what the word is, but like, it might be easier to dismiss us, like a conspiracy, a conspiracy to dismiss us

because of how powerful we are. Like, I just think the older I've gotten, the more comfortable I've become in my own skin, the more clear I am on what matters, and the less I care about what everybody else thinks. I think that that's a superpower. And yet, as you're saying, I think there is this sort of conspiracy to dismiss us at certain ages. So, okay, let's say we all buy into this idea that hormones are probably one of the best places to start. Why is it that we go visit our doctor

and this doesn't even get brought up or tested or talked about? Like, if this is so important, why isn't the medical community talking about this at the forefront? Because the medical community is uneducated and uninformed. Because when you go through medical school, you don't get any training on women's hormones.

There's pretty much one page about it, if not less. And once you go post-graduate training, There's pretty much one page about it, if not less. And once you go post-graduate training, so you go to be an obstetrician, gynecologist, or a primary care doctor, a family practitioner, there's no training on what happens hormonally. But I'll give you a very simple example, which is getting pregnant, right? So you're pregnant and you go to have your OB follow up and do ultrasounds and bloods and measurements. And it's all about making sure that you're gonna deliver a healthy baby.

The moment the baby is born and is healthy, you don't matter anymore. You go for a follow-up visit six weeks later, and the doctor very quickly discards you by saying, well, now you can go home and have sex because that's really all there is to it. And that to me is not just upsetting, it's infuriating because that's not the way women should be treated. There's so much change that occurs in that period of time after you had a baby, and we're not prepared for it because our doctors don't prepare us.

We do not live in societies where the grandparents, the grandmothers, are around to tell us what to do. So we're kind of at sea without a paddle. We have to depend on each other rather than depending on a support system that gives us what we need to thrive. When you get to menopause, the same thing happens. They don't know anything about it.

There's no education on it. The North American Menopause Society that was created by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology about 40 years ago literally had nothing to say about how to deal with menopause. It was just a bunch of all men, really, as usual, making decisions for us. So it's really disturbing. Now they're starting to come around, but like, you know, with the Women's Health Initiative, that study that said that hormones were bad for you, they didn't even look to see that that study made no sense,

that women were just like, seven million women were taken off hormones without any second thought. It's still offensive about how horrible women are treated in our society. So I'm so glad you used that word because that's exactly it. It's offensive. Like I am offended. I think we should all be offended that this isn't a huge part of medical training. I mean, we are half the population. And as you said, our hormones are at play pretty much the entire of our existence. So like the idea that this isn't something that we can go to a perceived expert

and get any sort of knowledge, wisdom, understanding, support is just infuriating to me at a level that I can't even begin to get into. So I want to ask, sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say, listen, now that it's in, because now menopause is in because of social media, actually, there are a ton of experts and they're not really experts because they have no experience.

They really don't know what they're not really experts because they have no experience. They really don't know what they're talking about. And women are desperately following them. And there's a shingle on every street corner. I don't know where you are, but I'm in New York City. So there's a shingle on every street corner with an expert on hormones. And I know because I teach about hormones

at a very, on a large scale at the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. And the thing is, these people can't possibly have the experience. They can't possibly know what they're doing. And they're just doing exactly what the conventional world was doing, which is just pushing medications and pushing things. Because women go in fear because they don't want to

get old. They don't want to feel old. They don't want to become useless and unseed, invisible. And I think that that is really where we as women have to start taking back our strength, our self-confidence, our rights. And I'm, you know, people like you, Nicole, thank God are there. And that's why I'm on your podcast because I want to spread the word that women have the strength, women have the power,

women need to own it, to not be afraid and not listen to the intimidating rhetoric that they get in a conventional medical or even in this new world of like hormone experts. Yeah, I would even argue going past not listening and not accepting and reframing entirely, taking it back and reclaiming it for ourselves. I am about as pro-aging as I could possibly be.

Like I freaking love getting older. Of course. And yes, I use a lot of skincare products and things like that, but I mean- Your skin looks great. Thanks. But, you know, I just, okay. So let's say every one of us wants to learn

to both understand our hormones better and to make sure that they're balanced throughout the stages of our life. Where do we begin? We have to learn it ourselves, unfortunately, because your doctors are not gonna tell you because they don't know. And it's not, you know, like a

negative intentional, they don't know, and they don't want to share it with you. But there are two types of doctors. They're the ones who are willing to learn and are willing to join you in your journey. And then there are the doctors who anything they have not been trained for or taught in their training, they will discard and say it doesn't work, which is really the worst kind, because those are the ones you should just leave immediately. So you want to find somebody who actually cares about you and sees you as a human being rather than a, you know, 45-year-old woman kind of thing, and you in a bucket because we're not epidemiological studies where each and every one of us unique. The epidemiologic studies are great to learn

for education, for protocols, for algorithms, but when you're sitting with a patient in front of you, that's not what you use. You have to use learning who the patient is, figuring out what's going on, and then trying to work with the patient to find the best way to get them in balance. So you want to find the right person. Well, good luck. That's a tough one. Because the way I say it when people come to me is, give me three months. If in three months I don't get to know you enough, I don't do enough to make you feel like you fell 20 years ago, then you know what? I'm not the right doctor for you.

Relationships with doctors are the same as relationships with anybody else. If they work, stay with it. If they don't work, move on. There are plenty of them around. So that's one thing. The other thing is do some reading. But when you're going to Google, Dr. Google, you're actually there. The information you get is scary. It's not information that applies to the individual. So I say to people, and you know, we're fortunate we're together,

I have patients who have been with me for 30 years, literally. And then I say, listen, it doesn't necessarily mean that it applies to you, but it gives you some kind of foundation. Then you're following somebody on Instagram, following on Facebook. The thing is, make sure that these people are for real. Make sure they're not doing it to make money off of you, to push some supplement or something like that. Make sure you read the label on those you're following. The same way you read the label in the supermarket.

And make sure that they make sense to you. Make sure that people are responsive to you. If you're writing to one of these people, make sure they respond. Make sure they're real. Make sure they're not AI. I think in that what I believe to be so important is there is no one-size-fits-all solution for anything. And yes, we can do the reading, we can follow the people, but paying attention to as you apply the advice, is it working for you? And if the answer is no, that doesn't necessarily mean

that the advice is bad or wrong. It's just not... Yeah, exactly. So then you go find what does. Yeah. Where does hormone testing come into play? And from personal experience, I've found, after doing labs that show, and I'm just going to put in air quotes, normal results, where I'm like, yeah, but I just feel off or tired all the time or whatever. Like, how do we gather data? And then what do we do with it when what it's telling us or that it's normal doesn't align

with how we're feeling? Listen to yourself. Start learning your body. Start living inside your body. No one lives inside your body except for you. A doctor doesn't know better, a blood test doesn't know better, any kind of testing does not know better.

They can either reinforce what you already know, or they cannot. So what you want is to listen to your body, and then stop buying everything in sight in this for out of desperation. Start seeing how one thing at a time works. The way I work in our practice is I layer the care. What I do is I start, you know, hormones, but sometimes it's lifestyle. Sometimes it's like you can't do the same thing you did at 20, at 50. You can't.

Your body won't respond the same way. So you can't eat the same amount of food. You can't not sleep because women stop sleeping when they go around menopause, you have to make sure that you're not taking 50 medications, that you're not looking for disease, that you're looking to optimize your health. And if you live inside your body, you know what that means. You know when you wake up in the morning and you feel great. You know when you wake up in the morning and you feel great. You know when you wake up in the morning and you're

exhausted. So obviously something's wrong. What did you eat the night before? How did you sleep? Did you actually move? Were you able to get off the couch and walk around? Do you have a job that's too stressful? Is your relationship with your partner killing you? Are your kids killing you? There's so many variables and it's tough as I put them all on the table at once in five minutes, but you take one thing at a time and you look at it. And honestly, then deal with it. If you can't deal with it, I say just put it in a drawer and close the drawer.

But don't let it take up space in your head. Take care of yourself. Learn first to take care of yourself. And you know, we're brainwashed, all of us, to think that getting our hair done, getting our makeup, you know, I mean, look how many people buy makeup all day long. I mean, how many advertisements there are.

Makeup, get your nails done. Those are not taking care of yourself. That's actually making money for somebody else. That's what you're doing. Taking care of yourself is sitting there by yourself without any outside noise and listening to what your body is saying. Learn how to breathe.

Learn how to meditate. Learn how to write down how you're feeling so you can take out of your brain all the negativity and focus on the positivity. Then you can figure out how to take care of your hormones because you know, if you're over 40, chances are your hormones are starting to head in the wrong direction, but it's easy to balance your hormones if you feel well about yourself

and you have the confidence to work with some, find the right person. And you know that the right person will show up the moment you're right for yourself. 100%. It's like the, if you build it, they will come sort of model. And I really like this idea of layering care,

because if you try too many things at once, you have no way of knowing if anything's working and what's working and what might be. So that speaks to my experience. Okay. I opened up by saying so many of us don't understand our hormones and I'm one of those people.

So talk to us about progesterone and estrogen as if this is like a basic 101 class. What do we need to know? Well, you really need to know that there are hundreds of hormones that our bodies make. And the hormones are there to help keep the correct balance. When we're talking about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, we're talking about a particular kind of hormone,

which is what our ovaries make primarily, but our fat makes them, our adrenal glands make them. There are a lot of places they get made. And the thing is that these are the hormones that help our bodies become female. They're the ones that help us have babies. They're the ones that help us define ourselves as female. So that's really what it is. And it's the ratio of those hormones that changes. You know, as I said, when you're pregnant, it's different than when you're not pregnant. It's different when you're puberty than it is in menopause. So those are hormones are just these tiny little molecules that circulate throughout your body that are made by different organs.

When your brain, in your brain, your pituitary gland, one of the master glands tells them to make it. The thyroid is also a very important gland for the same reason. The adrenals make important hormones. So all of these need to be balanced properly. And you're not gonna get that done by taking one pill. You're gonna get that done by taking one pill. You're going to get that done by eating right, sleeping,

exercising, dealing with stress, doing all these other things, but also taking, like I said to you, the layer, which is really important. There are no supplements. I mean, I work with supplements a lot and there are a lot of really great supplements, but they're part of the layering. And the thing is that there's no supplement that you're going to find that will give you the testosterone you need, the progesterone you need, and the estradiol that you need. So understand that you need those,

and those are prescription medications that you have to get through a prescriber, a nurse practitioner, a physician associate, physician assistant, a doctor. Those are the people who will prescribe them for you. So you do need them. The same thing with the thyroid. There are a lot of supplements that tell us that they do that, that they replace things and that they supplement them. They may supplement, but they're not going to supplement what you really need, which is why I said that the foundation has to be hormones.

But before you jump into hormones, and I have to tell you, I don't start everybody I see on hormones, before you start taking hormones, look at yourself and find out, are you taking birth control pills? Because birth control pills are not hormones. They're synthetic stuff that really suppress your hormone production and what they do is they put you in menopause from the hormonal standpoint. So if you're on birth control pills and you have all these symptoms, go off the birth control pills. Do you have an IUD with hormones in it, like Mirena, for instance? That also will cause a lot of symptoms,

even though the doctor will say to you, oh, it's in your uterus, it doesn't get absorbed. Everything gets absorbed, because your uterus is part of your body, it has blood flow to it, so then obviously it's gonna go everywhere in your body, it has blood flow to it, so then obviously it's going to go everywhere in your body. Everything goes everywhere.

So if you have symptoms, take that out first before you start taking hormones. The other thing is when you get around menopause, the fluctuation in hormones becomes really jagged. Like one minute you're going to have a lot of estrogen, the next minute you can have no estrogen. So you want to make sure that you don't start patients, women, on estrogen because they have hot flashes. Find out if the hot flashes are related to all these other lifestyle pieces first, then do the blood test. I don't believe in saliva testing, except for cortisol level, which is from the adrenal. So there are a

lot of people who spend a lot of money because saliva testing, you don't need a prescription for, and I think it doesn't really tell us very much. Urine testing is important, but I have to tell you, there are a lot of states that will not do the 24 hour urines. So we're kind of stuck with blood tests. And it would be great if we went back and said, okay, at the age of 18, you should have your hormones checked. So you could find out what your hormones look like when they're optimal.

But unfortunately, they don't do it to men, they don't do it to women, nobody checks hormones. Because as we said, nobody knows about them. So when you start doing the hormone testing, then you see if the patient has a lot of hormone, a lot of estradiol, you're not gonna start them on it. Then start them on progesterone, start them on thyroid. You could do a lot of other things

to help them find the balance. And they, the patient themselves, has to use the opportunities of balance a little bit, getting that balance a little bit, like the door's a jar. And they have to walk through and open that door and start changing their lifestyle, start eating, right? Start exercising, start doing the things that they need to do, drinking a lot of water, doing the things they need to do to actually feel better and better.

So it's kind of a two-way street because if it's not a two-way street, it's a dead end. Yeah, and I'm glad that you said that because it does infuriate me that the medical community doesn't know more about this and we are still responsible for our bodies. Well, we are responsible. That's the thing that I think is really important. We are responsible for our bodies and we have to take responsibility for it and not allow the medical community to tell us that they know better, to scare us into submission and to doing all these unnecessary tests and unnecessary

diagnoses and waiting for us to get sick. We can own our lives and our health now. Right now, take responsibility for what you're doing to make it better versus what you're doing to not make it better. And as we get older, we understand so much more. So why not make it an opportunity to share with others and also an opportunity to feel better. There's no reason not to feel great in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. There's no reason not. It's just that we're following the wrong

format, which is the conventional finding a disease, giving in medication. So most of the problems that we have are really caused by the system. They're not ours. They're caused by the system. If you're going to treat, the number one problem is obesity. We know, we talk about it. If you look at a chart in any hospital, any medical record, obesity doesn't even come in. Hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, et cetera, they're all there. But the main cause, which is obesity, is not there. Why, I say, and you know why, because if we treated obesity, we have helped women and men really take care of themselves so they don't get more and more obese.

They won't have all these other problems. And if they don't have all these other problems, who's going to go into the medical system? Right. And what happens to all these pharmaceutical companies, right? I think we have a tendency when we think about hormonal imbalance. There's a lot of talk about how that affects us physically. How does it connect to our mental health? Well, everything that affects us physically affects us mentally.

As it turns out, your head is connected to your body. And anything that happens in our bodies actually happens in our heads. So we need to stop breaking ourselves down into pieces because the subspecialists in the conventional world have brainwashed us into thinking that we need to see 12 different specialists. The thing is, we're all one.

So if you have one thing that goes wrong in your head, it'll go wrong in your body. So everything's connected. Everything's connected. And you have the power to understand the connection because you live in there and start making your own connections and start helping improve things. You mentioned earlier, this is my last question, that stress can contribute to hormonal imbalance. I think stress has become such a part of our day-to-day lives that we don't even know what's normal or not normal anymore. So how do you help patients distinguish between, I'm gonna put in air quotes, normal stress

and a hormone related anxiety, mood swings, where there might actually be a hormonal imbalance? Well, the answer is very simple. It's all connected. So stress is literally killing us. It's the number one killer right now. It started and it got worse with COVID and we've done nothing, nothing to make that better. We still don't know anything about COVID. There's still no scientific data to support it. We've created this misinformation baloney to tell you the truth. We have no idea.

All we know is that we're living with a lot of mental illness right now. We have a lot of increase in suicides. We have a lot of increase in all these mental problems. And it's all because nobody's helping us. So what I do is I always have to understand what's going on with my patients and I do help everybody I work with by explaining to them this is good stress, you want it, it's short-lived, it's the excitement of getting on a podcast with you and talking. That's great stress. Makes me wake up and I will pay attention. So that's good stress. That's great stress. Makes me wake up and I will pay attention. So that's good stress.

That's the kind of stress that clears out your arteries and helps your brain function better. And then there's the stress that's like the ongoing grinding away at your life, at your health, at your hormones, at everything. And that's the bad stress that you have to stay away from. But you can't stay away from it because it's part of our lives.

So you have to start seeing, what can I do to minimize its impact? And I told you what they are and they're really simple. Obviously balance your hormones, but meditation, breathing, staying alone, turn off the phone, turn off the media, listen to a decent podcast that cares, write and read a book, and just stay alone. We don't have alone time and we don't have rejuvenating, rebalancing time. And that's what we need and we can do it.

I know we can do it. We don't have to go back to writing all the stuff, but I have to tell you, I know we can do it. And once we do it, the change is dramatic. I actually saw somebody this morning before I got on with you, and she was really stressed because of her work and that there was some change at work

and everybody's going through all these changes. And what I really did is a few weeks ago, we didn't even talk about her hormones. I've been balancing them for years and they're fine. I talked to her about how she was dealing with stress. And she came back after two weeks of discussion when I spoke to her two weeks ago, and she said, you know, I feel better, I sleep better.

I've been doing what you said, which is what I just said to you. There are a lot of apps that help you meditate, that help you breathe. There are some people who say, oh, I don't wanna meditate, I can't do that. So then what I say is, okay, don't call it meditation. Just sit. Sit by yourself alone without listening to any outside stimulus. That's a good starting point. Breathe. Learn to breathe. None of us breathe. And I have to tell you,

the lack of breathing is one of the sources of toxicity in our bodies, and it also pushes our hormones in the wrong direction. All of this is so fascinating, and one of the things that you said a few times was,

find an expert who cares and who will listen and who is the right fit for you. And I know so many people tuning in are going to want you to be that expert. So you can follow Dr. Erica on Instagram at Dr. Erica Schwartz or go to her website or get one of her eight bestselling books. I mean, there are so many ways to find and follow her. Dr. Erica, thank you for your time and your expertise. Nicole, thank you so much for having me

and good luck to all the women who listen to you. And I know we can make it. I know we can make it. Yes. All right, friend, if today's episode has done anything, I hope it's given you permission to stop accepting feeling off as your new normal. We have been gaslit for generations into believing that exhaustion, brain fog, and mood swings are

just part of life or normal part of aging. Our hormones are not a side note in our health. They are the foundation. And if they're out of whack, no amount of green smoothies, 10-step morning routines, or sheer willpower is going to fix it. So let's stop gaslighting ourselves. Let's stop accepting outdated medical norms as fact, and let's start demanding better. Better research, better treatment, and better conversations. One, where we actually talk about

what's happening in our bodies instead of whispering about it like it's some shameful secret that isn't happening to half the world's population. Hormones are not the enemy. They're how we create life, how our bodies communicate, and honestly, they're kind of miraculous if you really think about it. So anyone who thinks calling us hormonal is an insult should probably take a seat, while one of us kicks that seat out from underneath them. I mean, we can always blame the hormones, right? And that, my friend, is woman's work.