What the heck is going on with our youth? Low hormone levels in teens and young women are becoming alarmingly common, and yet, they often go unnoticed by traditional medicine. Dr. Lara shares her clinical experience on what she is witnessing happening with teens and 20-year-olds as it relates to their hormone health. There is an increase in young women with low hormones due to poor nutrition, lack of sleep, high levels of stress, high toxic chemical exposures, and lack of physical exercise. Prevention is key. We need to educate teens and young women on the importance of taking better care of their health for long-term outcomes. Many women who experience terrible menopause transitions are due to the poor decisions they made in their lives when they were young. Let’s help educate teenage girls and young women to make informed decisions and establish healthy lifestyle patterns for better outcomes later in life. Please!! Please!!! Please share this with a teen girl and young woman!!!
At Raices Naturopathic Medical Center, Dr. Lara does work with teens and young women, and does hormone testing and evaluations, and uses natural approaches, nutritional guidance and natural remedies to help hormones regulate.
Schedule your FREE 15 minute phone consultation Website: https://raicesndmedcenter.com/
Podcast 50 Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a 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 Thyself, the podcast. This episode, I want to dedicate to talking about hormone health in teenagers and in young women by young women. I’m talking about women in their twenties. So 20 to 30s.
It’s very sad for me to see young women coming into my office, these teenage girls, and they are telling me how they feel, and they are showing signs and symptoms of low hormones. So I’ll start by saying that it’s not common in medicine for a teenager who’s 15 or 16 years old or a 20-year-old woman to have their doctors do hormone testing on them. First of all, insurance won’t even consider that. Sometimes, even women in their thirties say, ‘You’re too young.’ It’s not an issue. It’s not that. I don’t believe in turning, turning away from looking at hormones. I always offer the option to my patients, especially parents, when they bring in their young teenage daughters or sons. But usually what I’ll give them an option is a cash pay option to check the full panel of sex, female hormones in their teenager or young 20-year-old so that it’s affordable and they know what their out of pocket’s going to be upfront instead of getting a $3,000 bill for labs that their insurance is not willing to cover.
Why Are Low Hormone Levels in Teens and Young Women Being Overlooked?
According to the standard of medicine, they are too young to be assessed for hormone imbalances. Let me tell you, when I get these values back, it is scary to see the number every single time. There has not been one time that my medical brain says we need to check hormones in this 15-year-old. The parents say, Okay, let’s do it. Every single time when I get their hormone results back, they’re low, their progesterone is low, their estrogen is low, and their testosterone is low. Sometimes DHEA is low. And so that’s a huge concern, huge because this is the most optimal time in their life, and it’s not normal for 20-year-olds to have low hormones like this. Oftentimes in a joking way to encourage these young teens and girls, women, I tell them I’m 46 years old and my hormones are optimal, not just for my age.
They’re optimal. My hormones are better than your hormones, and you’re 15 or you’re 20 years old. Do you see the concern there? That’s not normal. What I see is this very common trend. In the last episode, we discussed common mistakes that women make, and men make them as well. However, the common mistakes that people make are often repeated by teenagers who start making them very early on, establishing those patterns. Women, you need to take care of yourselves because your daughters are watching you and following your example, not just because you told them to. You know how it goes with children. You tell ’em to do something and they don’t do it. But the things that they do are the things that you don’t ask them to do. It’s the things that you model for them.
If they see mom burning the candle on both ends, not sleeping, not eating, not exercising, or being extreme about their body image, they pick that behavior up too. And it’s early on. We have to model these healthy behaviors for children as they enter that pre-puberty stage and that preteen stage and into their teenage years. This is the time for young girls to start making healthy decisions that will impact the longevity and quality of their lives. It’s when they’re young that they acquire these very poor behaviors. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t exhibit these behaviors that these young girls are displaying. It seems to be a trend, and I know it has a lot to do with access to technology. They have a phone glued to their hand and are constantly on it, going to bed with it, and are exposed to all this stimulus. As a result, they’re not going to bed early enough to regulate their hormones.
This conversation is geared to these teenage girls and these young women. I want you to share this episode with them because I need them to hear what I’m about to share. Some of these behaviors that many young girls exhibit are also being practiced by their mothers, and sometimes by their fathers. This seems to be an issue in our country, where people wake up, get ready, and are out the door without needing anything. They get to school. These young girls, who are still in high school or college, arrive at school, but they don’t have lunch there. They don’t like the lunch, and they’re too cool to take it. They starve themselves and then they get home two, three o’clock, they’ll snack on junk chips and whatever’s there. And then whenever mom makes dinner, that’s when they eat.
How are you going to make hormones if you’re having one real meal a day? Then you wonder why you’re stuffing your face with carbs, with chips, with cookies, with junk food, because at the cellular level, you’re starving. Your body wants food, but you’re not giving it what it needs. Now, if you’re a student, whether you’re in high school or college, you really need food because your brain is going to be processing more and it needs energy to process more. Therefore, if you’re not getting the protein and the healthy fats, your brain is starving. It cannot learn. It cannot focus, it cannot function. It can’t remember what you learned in class. So, now it’s affecting you cognitively. Your energy’s low. Then what happens is I get these young teenage girls in my office that have really bad acne, have low energy, feel depressed or have anxiety, can’t sleep, and this should be the most optimal time in your life.
You have so much energy and have such a positive outlook on life. But I’ll tell you what, this right here, these cell phones, what’s the problem? These young girls are on social media comparing themselves to other people’s standards and what they’re saying. There’s too much noise in our world, and we’ve got to shut it off. We’ve got to shut it off, and we’ve got to get back to living life. With these young girls, I see this very often. The symptoms they’re telling me are that they’re missing periods. Now, I know through medical school, we were told that when a young girl starts their menstrual cycle, they could experience irregularities here and there. They might not get it every month. They might miss periods. It might be until their body regulates. But there is a point at which your body will find its normal cycle.
What I’m referring to when I say missed periods is five or six months without a period. And that could be a teenager or a 20-year-old. That’s not normal. Oftentimes the reason they’re missing these, they’re not having a period every month, is because, like I said, they’re not eating enough. They’re starving themselves. If you don’t have the building blocks, you cannot make these hormones. They’re super tired, and their parents always tell me about the mood swings. They’re irritated about everything, and it’s because their brain are still being developed. Whether you’re 20, 22, 25, your prefrontal cortex is still developing, and it needs these building blocks, especially the healthy fats. So, mood swings, they can have acne, and like I said, then they start having anxiety, panic attacks, they can’t sleep. It is the same common cycle that you see in women who are going through menopause. So, a 20-year-old is not going through menopause, so their hormone levels are off, but they’re not going through menopause yet. They’re too young. Then we know it’s because they’re not eating enough food and they’re not sleeping well and they have too much stress. They’re stressing about things like social media, technology, things that are not really significant stressors. It makes it more difficult for them to navigate that.
Once again, the estrogen and progesterone. Progesterone. Let’s talk about progesterone because progesterone does not get enough light on how important it is. Progesterone is really important in the process of someone trying to conceive and get pregnant, and maintain a pregnancy. Progesterone is really important to maintain a pregnancy, and it grows. It increases really high in a pregnant woman. This is the reason why women,, when they’re pregnant, especially those first three months, are so exhausted, they fall asleep everywhere. They just want to sleep. Oftentimes, women want to bring up their energy, but progesterone is doing its job. It’s actually saying, go to sleep, slow down, rest, because you’re building a baby. The effects of progesterone on the body, on the brain, and on the nervous system have a calming effect. Now, when you’re not pregnant. So, in a young woman who doesn’t want to get pregnant, you still need to have a healthy level of progesterone.
The luteal phase, which is days 19 to 21, is the ideal time to look at the levels of progesterone because this is the one time of the month when it will peak at its highest, and we need to see what that level is. When women have healthy levels of progesterone, they’re going to feel cool, calm and collected. There could be a lot of chaos and stressful situations in your life, but because this hormone is in your body, it’s going to help regulate your nervous system. When it’s not there, look it up. If you don’t believe me, just look it up. Low progesterone can give you anxiety. It can cause panic attacks. How many young girls are experiencing anxiety and having panic attacks? Grown women are having anxiety and panic attacks. They go to their doctor and they say, I’m having anxiety and panic attacks, or they go to the emergency room, I’m having anxiety and panic attacks. And what do they do? They give them medications for anxiety. That’s not the solution.
The only way to know is to get tested. There’s a lot of talk on social media, like you don’t need to do a lab test to tell if your hormones are off. Just follow the symptoms. Well, how do you know how far off your hormones are? Lemme just give you an idea. The ideal range of progesterone in a female during the luteal phase is between 15 to 23 units of progesterone. Men have 0.2, very little; they don’t need a lot. But for women, that’s a lot, and that’s the optimal range. So 15 to 23 is optimal. When I’m checking the hormones of these young girls, they’re coming at 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4. If they’re lucky, perhaps they have two points, two points during the luteal phase, when they should be closer to 23 units of progesterone. Do you see how concerning that is? If no one is checking these young girls for hormones, how do you know they’re not having hormone imbalances? They are, and it’s an alarming rate. I mean, I’m just one clinic. I can just imagine across the country how many other girls are experiencing low hormones, and it’s because of their lifestyle choices. They’re not eating enough, they’re not sleeping enough. Chronic stress over petty things.
That’s where the modifications need to come into play. Don’t wait until they’re later on in life to address them. Address them now, because they’re young, they’re more likely to adapt to change and understand how this is important for you to get a good handle on your lifestyle behaviors early on, versus when you’re 30 and 40 years old. Here’s why it’s critical for young people. So, in women, when they go through menopause, I’m going to have an episode on menopause, so stay tuned for that. But the adrenal glands are supposed to kick in to make a little bit of hormones, of progesterone and estrogen, when women are going through menopause. Now, if women have lived all their lives in chronic stress, they’re tapping into those adrenal glands all the time, and they deplete their adrenal gland function. So when they’re going through menopause, those adrenal glands cannot make those hormones anymore.
They’re on empty. They’re empty all the way through, and that’s why they experienced the hot flashes. They experienced all these other symptoms. Well, if we don’t teach young teenage girls and young women to regulate their stress response, to eat better, to sleep better, to get their bodies moving, and to eliminate hormone disruptors, they’re going to be tapping into their adrenal gland function very early on. By the time they won’t even make it to 50, by the time they’re in their thirties and forties, their adrenal glands are crashed, maybe sooner than that. So, when they are going through menopause, the symptoms they will experience will be greater than any. I know this is true. I’ve spoken to my mother and women in her generation who are 70 and older. Many of the women who led moderate lives didn’t experience excessive stress.
They ate well and slept well during the transition through menopause. They don’t have the hot flashes. My mom said, I didn’t have any of those symptoms. I don’t know what women were talking about. So, my mother grew up in a time and place where poverty was a real stressor. Were present. Are we going to have food? Will there be enough money to meet our basic needs? Instead of worrying about comparing yourself, how another female looks on social media and getting all the pressures of the world on you of what you should do, what you should look like, what you should be doing in life, those are pressures and stressors that we can shut off by limiting our time on our phones. You’re not worried about whether you’re going to have food on your table for the most part. Those are real stress responses and the stress that we have now, it is just in our minds; it’s not a real threat.
That’s what I’m seeing in young girls is this constant chronic fatigue and burnout when they’re just teenagers, irregular periods like the mood swings and just feeling depressed. I really encourage having this conversation with your teenager or young adult female to help manage their lifestyle, start eating breakfast, and take a quick protein source with you for lunch. But we need to start breaking some of these behaviors. If you notice that your teenager is experiencing these symptoms, such as a hormone imbalance, with a lot of cystic acne. They’re not sleeping well, they’re low energy, they’re moody, their menstrual periods are off. Get them help find a doctor. You can reach my clinic and ask how I work with teenagers, but you really should get those hormones checked for them, because you will be surprised that these young people’s hormones are running low.
I hope this information has brought some value to you, but I just want to shine some light on this topic of young people and low hormones, because these young women and men also are going to have a hard time when it comes to fertility, when they’re married and they’re wanting to conceive. You’re going to see a lot of these young people having a hard time conceiving and maintaining a healthy pregnancy because their bodies are not making enough hormones. So I know when you’re 15 and 18 and 20, you’re not thinking about conception of getting pregnant, particular family, but don’t wait till you get to the point that you are wanting a family and then you’re struggling to get pregnant because of the lifestyle choices. On the flip end, I see a lot of girls too who are over-exercising, like I said in the last, so they’re over-exercising and they’re not eating enough food.
Those two things have to match. If you’re going to put more demand on your body, it will need more fuel. It’s energy. Your body needs protein, as well as healthy fats. It requires energy to lift that weight and endure that kind of physical activity. Otherwise, over-exercising and undereating is going to create stress in your body. And those stress responses can create autoimmune conditions in cancers and other nutrient deficiencies and issues. So, you want to ensure you’re getting the right blood work done for these conditions. I hope you’ve found this information helpful. Share it with someone who has children, young teenagers, young adults, or who is a teenager and a young adult, to start taking their health seriously. I’m not your mama, but maybe you should listen to your mama when she tells you to eat your breakfast and to go to bed early.
It’s for you. A lot of women are focused on anti-aging, and they’re injecting their faces with things and doing all these invasive therapies, but what you should really be doing is eating well, sleeping well, and exercising. That is your anti-aging. That’s how you can preserve your youth. So I hope you found this message of great value. And 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 listen to 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.