Hormones! Hormones! Hormones! They have such an impact on our wellbeing. Yet, so many people do not understand how they function and how to optimize their hormone levels. In this episode, we discuss what hormones are, what sex hormones are, the steroid pathway of hormones, how hormones are converted, the effects hormones have on us, and common side effects hormone imbalance has on people. We will discuss perimenopause transition and what are some things women can do. If you are interested in learning more about how we can help you with your hormone health and you suspect your hormones have gone wild, schedule a Free 15 15-minute phone consultation and learn how we can help you: https://raicesndmedcenter.com/appointments/
Podcast Episode 34 Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your well-being, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, a naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal By Self, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara. And ladies, this is a conversation that I know you want to hear about and learn about and what to do about it. That’s a conversation on hormones. This conversation, I am going to tell you, I sat with it, and I, there’s so much to talk about it, and there’s so many different stages of a woman’s life that we can really focus on and go all in and really understand what’s going on.
But because I currently see many women that are going through perimenopause and they are going crazy, and if you’re one of those ladies, you know what I’m talking about. It just creeped up on you out of nowhere. You’re like, what’s going on? I was feeling fine. Now I feel like I’m losing my mind like I’m going crazy. And it’s a serious conversation because oftentimes, either spouses or other people who haven’t experienced this yet find it hard to understand what is really going on. They might think you’re just crazy, and it’s not. There is a true physiological chemical, hand, or mental change occurring, and if you don’t have the knowledge and understanding of the impact that hormones have on you, it’s very difficult for you to understand how real this is. These hormones and neurotransmitters have such an impact on how we mentally and emotionally respond to life.
Now, it’s not to say that that’s an excuse to be a bad person, but when there is true hormone imbalance at any age, mind you, at any age, you could be 20 years old and have really balanced hormones and you will not feel well. As women in their forties start to transition into their fifties, they can experience these early symptoms, what we call perimenopause. It’s like you’re not in menopause yet. You’re still having a period. If you have periods, women don’t have a uterus, or they’re on birth control. They don’t regularly, or they don’t have a period, or they don’t regularly have a period because of birth control. However, you will still feel the shift even if you’ve had your uterus removed; you can still feel the symptoms of there’s a transition happening. It’s not uncommon that I hear this from many of my patients, many of my friends, my social circle, and just online and on social media.
Many people who are women are struggling with this transition in their lives. So, what is perimenopause? Perimenopause can happen in someone in their forties, but I have seen women in their mid to late thirties start to have symptoms of perimenopause. So it is very important. I cannot emphasize again that you should do some blood work and check your hormones. We’re going to talk about what hormones are. What is the function of their hormones? I really want you to understand what these hormones are doing in your body and why you feel like you’re losing your mind. Right? That’s what I hear. I feel like I’m losing my mind. There’s a lot of crossover in symptoms. I love these conversations and can get carried away with details. I will do my best to keep it in layman’s terms so that you can understand what’s going on.
First of all, what is a hormone? A hormone is a signal that signals something in your body to perform certain functions. We know that there are about 50 or more hormones that scientists have been able to identify in the human body. These hormones control and regulate many, many biological processes. Your female sex hormones are not just so that you can have babies. It does so much more than that. It regulates so many other functions, and we will discuss those today. As I said, they regulate the physiology and behavior of just multicellular organisms. We will discuss what those hormones are and what’s going on. So, sex hormones are what we will focus on because hormones are a broad term.
The thyroid is a hormone. Insulin is a hormone. But we’re going to be looking at the female sex hormones. So I want you to understand that your diet plays a huge role in your hormone production because the very first thing that the body uses is cholesterol, good cholesterol from your body to make hormones. The very first thing that we see is that the body will take cholesterol and it will convert it to a hormone called pregnenolone. And from here, you have two potentially different pathways. That body will make hormones. It can go in the path of making progesterone, or it can go in the direction of making DHEA.
From ol alone, we make progesterone. This hormone can make aldosterone, which helps regulate blood pressure, and it’s made in the kidney, but it also makes cortisol, which is an active hormone in cortisone, which is inactive. It’s kind of like your backup, right? In case you need cortisol, it’ll take it from cortisone. From cholesterol, we make progesterone, and then we can make cortisol from that. Now, if you have high levels of stress and your body’s making a lot of cortisol, it will steal from progesterone and pernol alone. I will go into detail what these hormones are doing in your body. The other direction that this pathway can go into from premol alone is that it can make DHEA. So, DHEA has a huge effect on the adrenal glands, but it also has a huge impact on brain health. So does pregnenolone, and so does progesterone.
These three hormones have a huge effect on our brain function, our mood, and so forth. So, from DHEA, our body first makes testosterone. Listen to me. Whether you’re a man or woman, it doesn’t matter. Your body’s going to make testosterone from DHEA. From testosterone, it’s going to make your estrogens. The difference between a man and a woman is that genetically, your body knows you’re designed to be a male, so you’re going to make more testosterone, and then you will make estrogen. And if you’re a woman and know genetically you are a female, so you’re going to make a little bit of testosterone, you only need a little bit, and you’re going to make more estrogen, but it’s all in the same pathway. The amount is going to vary from female to male, and that’s just the biology.
Sorry, not sorry. That’s just the way it works. So, it is very important to assess these hormones. So, what do these hormones do? As I mentioned, DHEA, pregnenolone, DHEA, and progesterone, aside from sex regulation and reproductive regulation, have a huge impact on our memory concentration and our mood. So it’s very important to make sure that we have those. So when we’re talking about estrogen, which is very, very prominent in women to have healthy levels of estrogen, there are three forms, but there are two that we only check because they’re only present in a non-pregnant female. So estradiol and estrone are two of the hormones that we check. Estradiol is your main hormone. Estro is a weak estrogen. It’s there, but it should not be at elevated levels. So we know that these estrogens in a female play a crucial role in the developmental regulation of the female reproductive system.
So this includes the menstrual cycle, puberty, and pregnancy. It develops a secondary sexual characteristic like breasts and hips, but it impacts way much more. It impacts bone health, cardiovascular health, and brain activity in women. So it’s very important that we know where your levels are, and when your estrogen levels drop, you start to have joint pain, bone pain, you start to have maybe some high blood pressure issues, some cardiac issues, and of course, your brain function is changing because those estrogen levels went from being normal to being low. And let’s be honest, a lot of people just don’t routinely check their hormones. So you wouldn’t know what your hormones were when you were 30, and when you were 3,5, and now you’re 40, you notice a difference. You don’t know if you are, over time, slowly declining in hormones, which would, it wouldn’t be unusual as we get older, but then it can just kind of creep up on you out of nowhere.
Progesterone, oh, progesterone. It is such a beautiful, beautiful hormone. Ladies, progesterone is what makes you feel calm, cool, and collected. It’s what helps you to fall asleep and stay asleep. I know melatonin helps you to fall asleep and stay asleep. But let me tell you, so does progesterone. It has a huge impact on your brain. So estrogen and progesterone are made in the ovaries, and the functions are a little bit different. Estrogen builds the inner lining of the uterus to prepare it for when an egg is fertilized. It goes and gets implanted into the endometrial layer, and progesterone increases to help the egg be fertilized and maintain pregnancy. But when you’re not looking to get pregnant, and you’re 43 or 45 years old, and this declines, you will start to experience anxiety. You will not be able to fall asleep. Of course, with the decline of hormones, you’ll have hot flashes.
A common sign that I see that a lot of people overlook is you’ll have a ringing of the years. If you’re having ringing of the years along with the other perimenopausal symptoms, chances are that it’s because of the low hormones. Once these hormones come up, they tend to regulate and feel better. Testosterone levels are still very important in women. We make a very small amount, but it is important for us to have enough testosterone because this helps us to have energy to maintain muscle mass. And sex drive is also impacted by your levels of testosterone. With testosterone, you have the total value, which is like your backup, and you have free testosterone. That’s what’s circulating, that’s available. So it’s important to take a look at both of those because if you don’t look at your testosterone levels, you may not feel well either. So it’s not uncommon when I do labs on 40 and 50-year-old women that their testosterone as they’re going through perimenopause and menopause, their testosterone levels are low, and so that will affect their quality of life as well.
There is so much to talk about this. As I said, these hormones have a lot to do with our cognitive function and our brain health. And so it’s not unusual to see women who have a decline in their hormones, and they feel like they’re having a mental breakdown, and sometimes there might be social issues, issues going on in their family that kind of makes this transition even more difficult. So, what do healthy levels of estrogen do for women? As I said, it protects your heart, your bones, your skin, your hair, and your brain. All the pelvic floor muscles are because of estrogen. So it’s not unusual as estrogen decreases for women to have something called vaginal atrophy. So the vaginal tissue starts to just kind of destroy. It becomes less. So there’s vaginal dryness, which is very uncomfortable, and that’s because your estrogen levels are low. You are going to have mood swings.
You can have breast tenderness if you’re having a period, even though your hormones are low. You can suddenly have this change in your menstrual cycle, and it’s heavy. It’s either, so here’s what I see with perimenopausal women. Maybe they had regular periods, now they’re irregular, they have them too frequent, or they’re spaced out, or they’re really heavy, or they’re really light, and they don’t feel well during the cycle, during the period, during the time that they’re flowing, they feel just really miserable. So these could be early signs that you’re going through a transition, but there are things you can do. We’re going to talk about that. So when women have low estrogen, those hot flashes are real. It just comes up on them, and they feel hot. They experience very uncomfortable heat at that moment. Some women can experience borderline panic, anxiety, and panic attacks.
They can feel very depressed, like I said, very fatigued. They can have a lot of headaches, especially the frontal part of the forehead. They can have a lot of headaches, insomnia, mood swings, and, of course, infertility. And so decreased libido. So your sex drive is low, a lot of brain fog, difficulty concentrating. Your hair can get thinner. You can have a lot of hair loss and weight gain. So many women will start to gain weight, and it’s around their bellies. They’ll have a lot of abdominal weight, and nobody likes that. They’ll have dry skin, and you can start to see signs and experience pain because of the loss of bone tissue. This is leading up to osteoporosis. So, if you’re in your forties, you’re still kind of young to go through menopause, and there are some things that we can do to halt that process. So get serious about your diet.
First of all, that’s what I tell women. If you’re not eating enough protein and healthy fats, you don’t have the building blocks. I’m going to tell you something: it’s a big pet peeve of mine, and everyone has their opinion, and that’s fine. But my opinion and what I see clinically is that women who have a period should not be fasting regularly, and they need to be very careful if they are intermittent fasting because if you are sacrificing food, remember food is energy, but also they’re the building blocks to make a lot of these hormones. If you don’t have the building blocks to make estrogen and progesterone and testosterone and DHA and all of the other hormones along with all the other processes in your body, you’re not going to be able to make that. Where are you going to make estrogen if you don’t have cholesterol?
How are you going to make pregnenolone? You can’t. So if you’re going 16 plus hours without eating, you’re hurting yourself,f and it’s not worth it. So the best thing to do is get a healthy amount of protein, a healthy amount of omega, and three healthy fats so that you’re getting the building blocks to make these hormones. So diet is the number one thing. The other thing that I see that really impacts women’s hormones is the stress that you’re doing too much. Stop just trying to be perfect. Stop trying to be the hero in everyone’s story. Start taking care of yourself because this transition really should have been talked about when we were very young, in our twenties, and even as teenagers because the accumulation of stress that it has on our adrenal glands is going to show up in perimenopause; it’s going to show up in menopause itself.
The glands which are on top of our kidneys, and they’re in the back of our lower back, these glands, the adrenal gland, is responsible for making some of those hormones as we transition through menopause. But if all of your life from youth, you’ve been constantly under stress, overachieving, overperforming, just overdoing yourself, not sleeping well, not eating well, not taking care of your body. Now, when your body needs those adrenal glands to make those hormones to balance you off a little bit, it can’t. Your adrenal glands are not properly functioning to pick up some of the work. And so this is why I had a hard time having this conversation on the podcast because I feel like this conversation needs to start at a really young age in women because if young women know to take care of themselves, their transition into perimenopause and menopause is not going to be the same.
I know this to be true. I have spoken with women in their seventies and eighties, and this generation, as they transition to menopause, they don’t experience the same symptoms that many women are experiencing now because maybe their lifestyle is different. There was less stress. There was more moderation and balance in their life. So they weren’t pushing through and blowing through their adrenal gland function in their twenties and thirties. So they’re not experiencing a lot of these symptoms to the extreme that I’m seeing right now. I mean, I’ve had 35 and 38-year-olds that are perimenopausal, and it’s because of their lifestyle. It’s because they’re not eating enough and they’re stressing too much. Now, I know what a lot of you say, but I don’t feel stressed. I love doing those things, but your body’s still experiencing the stress. The other thing is, if you’re not sleeping well, if you were not sleeping, to begin with, well, if you weren’t going to bed at the right time at night, it’s an accumulation of over the years that’s led up to this point.
So now that you’re perimenopause and you can’t fall asleep because your hormones are down, what do you do? I’m sure you’re like, okay, what do I do now? Tell me what to do. Well, get serious about your diet. Start eating a lot of anti-inflammatory foods, start losing some of your body weight, and, more importantly, get into your doctor’s office. I already know they’re going to tell you no. Even OBGYNs will not do the right test. If you are having a period, you need to make sure you do the blood work and time it at the right time to do it because you want to do it between days 19 and 21 of your menstrual cycle. Suppose you do have a menstrual cycle. Now, if you are on birth control and you’re like, I don’t have a period. I haven’t had a period. It’s part of the problem.
You understand you’ve been taking something, a substance has been suppressing from having a period every month, and five years later, you have not had a period that’s not healthy. You might want to consider something else and get off that birth control, but so that you can see what your body is doing without the birth control on its own. But you want to get some blood work done, get these tests done, get the progesterone checked out, your estrogen and estradiol and estrone, your DHEA pregnenolone, your cortisol levels in the morning, testosterone total and free. There’s another one called sex hormone binding globulin that lets us know if your body is binding up excess hormone or it’s just gone crazy and it’s binding hormone that it shouldn’t be binding and removing it from the body. So the other two things I hope young women are watching, this is really my goal, so they can hear this and prevent from experiencing this when they’re in their forties, is avoid alcohol, avoid products that are hormone disruptors like plastics and chemicals because that’s going to put a burden, a toxic burden on your liver and your liver’s.
The really big responsibility of the liver is to metabolize these hormones and convert them. If toxins bog down your liver, it won’t be able to do its job. We know that women who smoke and drink alcohol regularly have a higher risk of many conditions, especially hormone imbalances. So I mean, there’s a lot here. There are a lot of herbs. I can’t really tell you which ones to take because then I would be treating you. However, there are a lot of herbs and natural supplements that can help women who are in the transition. That would be enough for many. It’s enough to help them regulate that we can do hormone replacement therapies that are safe and effective at boosting up levels of progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone. So, if you do have a family history of breast cancer or uterine cancer, we always advise that you’re cautious with the form of estrogens that you’re going to consume.
I would prefer that you do a natural source of it instead of doing hormone replacement therapy. But ladies, if you have symptoms of perimenopause and you’re in your forties or younger, don’t wait. Get the help. Find a doctor that’s going to help you with that. I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation to learn a little about what’s going on with you. I explain how I work with my patients and go over what tests we would do if you have insurance. If you don’t have insurance, we can find a way to get the blood work done. The other negative side of insurance is that sometimes, they don’t want to cover the blood work to do these comprehensive hormone panels. But I’ll tell you what: there are companies out there that you can do a very comprehensive female sex hormone panel, thyroid panel, some vitamins and nutrients, and other factors for about $200.
So don’t let money stop you back from taking care of yourself. If your doctor’s not willing to do it, find someone who is because women are willing to spend two $300 to get fake eyelashes. They’re willing to spend hundreds of dollars and not thousands on cosmetic things for their face and their body. They’ll buy the two $300 pairs of shoes and purses. Why not take that money and invest it into something that’s going to improve your quality of life and potentially extend your life so that you’re going to feel better? You’re going to feel optimal. You’re going to feel healthier because no one should walk around thinking that they’re losing their mind and they’re having psychotic episodes. It’s just not okay. But that’s how powerful these hormones are, and it is worth checking ’em out. Hey, look, in my practice, I do hormone testing.
Even in young teenagers, if there are signs that let me know they’re deficient in hormones, oftentimes the parents are paying cash for those labs because the insurance is not going to cover hormone tests on a 16-year-old, on an 18-year-old or a 20-year-old, even if they have enough reasons and symptoms to provide the coding to have them covered, but the investment of doing the test and then looking at the hormones, it is worth it. They start to see that there are imbalances. Then we can say, Hey, this is low, and here’s that slow. Let’s do this. Let’s change your diet. In younger people, I don’t do hormone replacement therapy. I just don’t believe in doing that in young people. What I do is go through the diet and lifestyle. I may give them some natural herbs and supplements to help the conversion and help those pathways to make more hormones.
And so, there are two approaches. There’s a natural way, and then there’s a hormone replacement therapy, and there’s a time and place for those therapies depending on the individual. So if you think your hormones are out of balance if you’re having any of those symptoms, it costs you nothing to go on my website, and I’ll provide all that information to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation on how we can potentially work together and help you so that you can potentially postpone menopause a little bit more and not struggle with how you’re feeling. So, I hope you have really taken a lot of information, good information from this episode on hormones and perimenopause. I see so many women struggling right now with that, and it’s not funny. It really is not. It really overtakes your energy and your brain. So reach out. There are solutions. We will transition into the good, the bad, and the ugly of our healthcare medical system.
One thing that I have seen in my practice is women who do go to their OBGYN doctors, and they advocate for themselves, which is a good thing, and they ask for hormone tests. And it boggles my mind that even as an OBGYN doctor, are not trained to do a thorough assessment of hormones or which hormones and when to do the hormone test. They’re just not doing the right test. They might check estrogen to estradiol, progesterone, or testosterone, but they’re not looking at the full pathway of the conversion. So if you’re low in pregnenolone, everything else is going to be low. So we know that there are things that we can supplement to support making more pregnenolone in the body, and also the time. Ladies, the time of the month you’re doing blood work matters. If you have a period, if you still have a menstrual cycle, you need to make sure you’re doing those tests between days 19 and 21.
So it’s not unusual that I have OBGYN doctors that have done the hormone test, some of the hormone tests, a few of them on the patient, but they didn’t tell them when to go. If they started right after they had their period, that information is just not substantial. We can’t really use it in the luteal phase. This is when our hormones are at their best, and that lets us know where progesterone is in relation to estrogen. Ladies don’t suffer and don’t struggle in silence. Get some help. It’s out there. There are many natural ways to help balance your hormones. Hey, until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.