How Bio-Identical Hormones Regenerate Your Life

Aging, Legacy, and the Fear of Dying 0:00

When we think about aging, we thinking about dying. Dying is the biggest fear, and so we have to come to terms with that. Practical exercise to figure out what you want it to look like. What would you like people to remember you for? What you would like your legacy to be? And you know, it can be anything from what your desire. This is Dr. Talks. Well, Dr. Sharon Stills, I'm so excited to have you on this segment of Regenerative Medicine Summit. I mean, how much more regenerative can it be than to talk about what we're going to be talking about?

I am excited be here. And I love the topic. It's an under-discussed topic and the body has such regenerating capabilities like our cells and our organs. So I so glad you're bringing light to this topic in a big way. Fun, fun. So, Dr. Sharon Stills is going to tell how amazing you are. Dr Sharon stills is a naturopathic medical doctor who helps perimenoposal and menopausal women to pause and evaluate life so they can live the second act of their story stronger. healthier and sexier while aging backwards.

That's the way we like it. Using her 20 plus years of experience and extensive training and background in European biological medicine, anti-aging therapies and bioidentical hormone replacement,

Introducing Dr. Sharon Stills and Pro-Aging Medicine 1:24

she has successfully helped thousands of women transition gently through the different stages of their lives with all natural methods. Dr. Stills is passionate about spreading the word about her signature Red Hot Sexy Menopause Program. The philosophy she developed for you to reinvent your health, explore your spirit and discover your sexy so that you too can create and live the life you desire and deserve. She founded and ran one of the largest and most successful naturopathic clinics in the country for a decade and is a host of the Science of Self-Healing podcast.

She is an expert physician for Women's Health Network and she educates other physicians as a co-lead North American lecturer for the Paracelsus Academy in Switzerland. Patients work with Dr. Stills in a variety of ways through telemedicine consults and her life-changing retreats for individuals or small groups in healing and rejuvenating locations around the world. Some patients will even fly out to see her or fly her in just to get the chance to work her one-on-one. Well, how cool. This is going to be awesome.

And I just have to, I changed my bio. I haven't changed it everywhere around yet, but I'm into pro-aging, not anti-ageing. Anti- ageing is such a buzzword, it really speaks the opposite of what we're talking about because we are all aging. It's inevitable. We're all headed in that direction. But if we can do it in a graceful and elegant and healthy manner, that's what I am really about. I have to make sure that's changed. I like that. It's not like we're fighting aging. We still like the wisdom and the knowledge.

But I don't want to be a 20-year-old. Yeah, I've learned so many lessons. But we want to feel good and we wanna be kind of excited about life. We want be able to have those intimate relationships and all those things that increase oxytocin in our brain, all the happy neurotransmitters and hormones. You know, we, want have that and deserve that, and can have it, right? Exactly. One of the things that I just find personally now that i'm 54 is I often just sit and dwell in this blissful peace knowing that like I have gone through the 20s, the 30s even the 40s and I used to be a total drama queen back then and now I'm just, you know, wisdom you really do age and get wiser.

Menopause as a Time to Pause and Reevaluate 4:12

And now, I have such peace that I can just feel coursing through my body and that i feel in my life externally and internally. Not looking to go back to being 20, I think it's just, we all have to through this learning process that's part of being human, but as we age and we get to really know ourselves and be comfortable in our own skin, there's such a wonderful experience that happens and I really believe it puts you into the power of sympathetics and it really helps you with your healing process.

Yeah. I love that. So tell me, I mean, you work with women mostly that's going through menopause. Uh, and I'm sure you're working with men as well, but I, mean this, this is like your baby, yeah. Really helping women go through the stage in their life, so that they can really do it in a great way. Tell me a little bit, women that come to you for, for help. Explain to me what menopause looks like for them. Well, for someone who's really struggling, menopausal symptoms can start even 10, 15 years before the actual date of when they haven't had their period for 12 months.

And so it can look like anything from urinary tract infections, sleepless nights, low libido, hair falling out, weight gain, hot flashes, joint pain, brain fog. A lot of emotional, so one of the things I'll commonly hear is, of course, anxiety or depression or mood swings, but also this, I just don't feel like myself. I feel I'm going crazy, where my moods are so just out of control. So there's a laundry list of symptoms that go along with this. And it really is just the body's sacred way of saying things are out of balance here and hello, you need to pay attention to me.

So symptoms can give me a clue as to, oh, what hormone is dropping or what organ is out-of-balance or is detox not occurring and so forth. But I feel like, and I write menopause with the parentheses around pause, Because I feel like this is a time, a lot of times, especially women, we're just so busy taking care of everyone else. We're raising families. Maybe we have aging parents we are taking of.We have a job and a career of our own in addition to all the stuff we were doing in the house. And we just kind of like push through.

We take an Advil if we have a headache or we drink some caffeine if were tired or take a sleeping pill and we don't really go seek help. But when menopause comes and the symptoms become so dramatic and you're waking up in the middle of the night drenched I feel like that's when women will actually say okay I got to do something now and so to me it's this beautiful opening this opportunity to actually pause and really evaluate your life where you've been Where you are currently, where you want to go, what's working, What's not working?

What dreams and aspirations have you stepped into? what have You like totally not paid attention to, but it's really important to you. So I use this time. It's like, oh good, you're having hot flashes. We can balance those out really easily, But let's Really now use This as an opportunity to do the deep work. And because we live as a species so much longer, We can live two-thirds of our life post-menopausal. And so we want to make sure that we're vibrant and healthy and that, we are really changing the mindset of, this is a time where I'm just useless.

I not going to be sexy anymore. Not going want have sex anymore, I am going get fat, going be in pain. These are all things that are just so false and don't have to part of your experience. And that's kind of how women come into my center as well. I mean, it's their scenario where they're just, well, this is the face in life, I just have to accept this, you know, This is what I'm going through. And it is kind repeating the story, their worthiness story. Because, like you're mentioning, a lot of women, they are just used to pushing through.

I'm in pain, you know, but I can't really take care of myself, I got all these other things that I have to take of. And so I just kind of push through and even then when things get bad, like you're saying, some women wake up, which is great, because they have too, and because I cannot live in that situation. But many just think that this is menopause and this what I've to go through, when I had to suffer and they don't, right? No, they don't. And I do a lot of work like you do with patients dealing with cancer.

I find that that's also this opportunity for patients to really dig in. So I dream of a day where patients wake up and they're feeling good and I'm going to call Dr. Stills because I feel so good and I want to keep feeling good. So let me figure out what I need to keeps doing. But we don't operate that way. We operate from fear, we operate form pain. I mean, I've been practicing over 20 years now and think I can count. on one hand, maybe like I can get another finger and count to six patients who've actually come in just saying, I feel good and I just want to do prevention.

We don't really see that very often. And that's really the key. So when I talk about menopause, like this is important for any woman. And at any stage in your life, you can be paying attention to your health. So when you get to this, quote, dreaded menopausal transition, it can a regenerative time for you. It doesn't have to be this downfall. I mean, I personally, and I see it in all my patients, that I always slap myself. Why didn't I do before and after pictures? But I just see patients just feeling better, being more vibrant in their 60s and 70s than when they were in there 50s or 40s when the first came to see me.

And I personally, my health at 54, there's nothing to even discuss as to how I felt when I was in my 20s, or 30s.

Emotional Reset, Beliefs, and Legacy Work 10:48

I am so much healthier now. Every year you have this opportunity to get healthier and healthier. Love it. So, can you paint a picture of what the aging, what, the pro-aging should look like? I mean, What is the carrot that they can kind of try to move towards, you know, when they're not feeling well, so that, they have an image of, of true menopause can look, like the red hot sexy menopus, right? Yes, so from a, do you mean from the physical perspective? From emotional, physical, just the experience of what should it, if it was the ultimate experience, what it should look like.

So I'll start with emotional. From an emotional perspective, we have to really get clear in ourselves about, first of all, just take a moment and pause and think about what are our beliefs? Because beliefs come to us from our childhood, from spiritual leaders, teachers, parents, people on the grocery store line, the media. So we really have stop and weed through all that and be like, okay, what do I believe about menopause? Is that true? Do I really believe that? Is my belief or is that just something I've been taught or maybe even witnessed?

Because we have to remember, and I always say this, your mother's menopause does not have be your menoppause. And so I know we use, what age did your mom go into menopus? Cause that can give us a predictor of when you will and there's truth to that. But if your mothers suffered or had to have a hysterectomy, chances are. She wasn't working with a doctor like you or I who knows how to get to the underlying causes and do the emotional work and all of these things. So you can't really judge. It's just like when we say genetics loads the gun, but the lifestyle pulls the trigger.

And so you really have to think emotionally. You know, what are actually my beliefs? And if you do have beliefs, then you have to, and, you know this can, this might not be something that you're just listening and you go, oh, I have this belief that aging is scary and now I don't have it anymore. Like sometimes we have do, do you, know I'm just giving you the, the lead, but then have you to do the work, maybe working with a professional or whatever it is that your doing. to kind of start to pull out those weeds and get new beliefs in because it's hard sometimes our subconscious is like running the show you know I think five percent of our thoughts every day are conscious and the rest is our sub-conscious and that can be From when we were children, like before the age of seven, we kind of get this viewpoint of what the world looks like.

And so we can go in with EMDR, with family constellation therapy, journaling with plant medicine, somatic therapies. I mean, there's lots of different ways, you know, talk therapy can take you so far, but a lot of times these things are in our tissues and we need something a little deeper than just talk. But we have to start believing it and stepping in and thinking about what we want and looking for role models because there is proof out there that you can age gracefully, that can be rocking it at 80, you could be starting a new career at 75. So you have start shifting your mindset and emotionally thinking what does this mean to you and how can you embrace aging because when we think about aging, we talk about dying.

And other than public speaking, dying is the biggest fear. And so we have to come to terms with that. So it's a lot of things, and I often tell women as like a practical exercise to figure out what you want it to look like. Think about how you would like to be eulogized at your funeral. What would you like people to remember you for? What you'd like your legacy to, what would be known for. It can be anything from traveling the world and creating world peace to just having a warm home and making the best paleo banana bread ever.

I mean, there's no judgment on what you desire, but really thinking about that and then thinking, hmm, if my eulogy was today, am I actually living into that? Am I taking steps to do that?" I did this for myself and to me, dance is medicine and I love dancing. And I was like, I talk about dancing all the time and I'm like, I have not been in a dance class for the last year. I am signing up for a class. So it really helps you get clear on what you want to do and to make an action plan for it. That's a little bit about emotional, but we can always regenerate our thought processes.

Another thing I didn't mention, that I love is tapping. EFT tapping is something that's so simple. I like go on YouTube in the morning. Eft YouTube crush on Brad Yates. He's like this tapping guy and I love him. And I just tap with him and it really resets your nervous system. managing your tapping on acupuncture points. And it's so simple. It's free. There's a gazillion resources out there and it really makes a big difference. So it is something you have to be conscious about and you need to make an effort.

You can't just say, yeah, I think that aging is scary and I'm going to work on changing that. you actually have put your feet in the dirt and do the work. And at that time in your life also, it tends to coincide with, you know, if you have children, they're on their own and you're having to rewrite your story in a way because you've been there in one role and just supporting and taking care. But now it's in finding that sense of self and finding your purpose and who am I, to find what is my worth as an individual versus worth of what I'm giving to all these other people.

And I love that, like you're saying, If I would write it, what would I want it to say? Who am I? And it's finding that place and the impact that that has on your whole endocrine system and hormonal system. And that's so true. It really is. If you've been married, it's really a time to reevaluate and look at your relationship because if your kids are leaving the nest, who have you become in relationship to each other? And if you're a single parent like I was, I remember when I dropped my first son off at college, this is years ago, my other son was with me.

And I like collapsed in the, we were in a parking garage of UT Austin and I just like lost it. Like my son had to like pick me up. I was like hysterical cause I'm like, Oh my God, like who am I now if I am not your mother? And so it's definitely this time of really reevaluating. and life is always about reevaluating. I look at life as chapters, and I've kind of just decided that every chapter is a decade. And so I think it's important to really reevaluate and think about what you're doing and who you are doing it with and what want to be doing because life is so short.

You know, in some ways, it goes by in a flash. So it is up to us to, really, be the masters and the co-creators of our lives and decide what we want them to about. I personally travel is just like, that's my thing.

Clinical Approach: Testing, Detox, and Root Causes 18:36

And I, you know, changed my whole life around, I really blew it up. I closed my clinic that I had, and I just changed everything because I wanted to be able to travel at extended period of times and have this experience that my soul was yearning for. So it's okay to blow our lives up and step into another version of ourselves. Sometimes I think we're We're afraid and the truth is we just need to go inward because we're the ones who know where our destiny and what we desire. We can't ask outward.

we have to always remember to come inward and that's why I'm such a fan of mindfulness as medicine because I truly believe that all the answers lie in the silence and we Just have tap into it and connect to it. So when a patient comes to you, then you described kind of what it looks like for many of these patients that come to, how do you unravel that? I mean, what are some of the directions that you start to look at? You mentioned like mindfulness and EFT, I love EFT, that's a fantastic tool. How do kind drive them in the direction they need to go?

Do you do certain tests to figure it out? What do people kind look? So the first thing I do with a patient is I a very extensive intake for about an hour. And a lot of it is just talking and getting their story and, getting a sense because I believe and that's kind of why I created RED because the R is for reinventing your health and the E is exploring your spirit and then the D is discovering your sexy and like your passions and so it's kinda my take on the mind-body complex and I that the mind-body complex is married and we have to always address both.

And so it's kind of my job as the physician to decide what takes priority here. So, and also kind seeing where patients at because I feel like patients are either really in the mine camp and like they're totally into using their mind to change things or they're really in the body camp and they want to swallow 20 supplements. And so I like to, you know, kind of help harness people where they already have energy and where their excited about. So I talk with them and kind just make a plan and let them know that we're going to be approaching all of these things.

Often I'll kind do the R first, I do physical body first because it's hard to do like releasing anger and rage if you have really bad muscle pains and could the muscle pain be from past lives or emotional stuff? Yes, but can we are physical beings and so can being dehydrated or being deficient in magnesium or not having good thyroid function or whatever it is, play a role in that, yes. So I kind of like to balance the body and the vessel and just see where that puts us. Does that put us a little higher up on the playing field?

Is there a level of relief? Was there some physical stuff? And then we can kind deal with the emotional things after that once the bodies kind settled. I do extensive testing from looking at like 30 vials of blood work. to really see what's going on and to evaluate it from a more biological regulatory perspective. I do thermography scans on patients to see their regulation.I do heart rate variability. Sometimes we're putting blood under the microscope. i'm looking at their doshas.i'm doing a lot of like stool analysis and saliva testing for cortisol and 24-hour testing and mold testing, and lime testing.

And I just like to Rule it in or rule it out. Like, let's see, is this an issue? Because there are pathogens like Lyme and the co-infections and mold, and these can be driving things. So if you don't just find out if it's an issues or not, you can working really hard to balance the body and missing it. I look at toxicity levels, I looked at heavy metals. And then of course, even before that I'm just looking from a bioregulatory perspective. Making sure that scars are cleared. Doing a lot of work.

on the teeth. So my patients know they're very often getting booted out of my office very early to go get their teeth taken care of. I just learned that at a very young doctor age, from working over in Europe and Germany and with Dr. Wirtman from Austria, that you have to handle the tea. That so many focal infections and blockages to healing aren't hanging out right here in the mouth. Before I learned that I just thought, like a lot of us think, that the teeth are just about, I'll go get a cleaning once a year and make sure I don't have any cavities and if I do get them filled.

And so I have since learned from root canals to amalgam fillings to galvanic currents to cavitations that a of what ails us physically starts here. So I always clean up the teeth and I get all the amongteries open so I'm very big into making sure the body knows how to drain because if we just go in and start doing detox well then we're just kind of moving toxins from one place to the other so you have to make sure your lymphatic system is moving that the extracellular matrix so we are all very concerned about the health of the cells and the mitochondria and that's fine and dandy and i like that too you need good mitochondria for hormone function, for example, but you have to think about the home that the cells live in and that's the extracellular matrix, the fascia, and the lymph is flowing through there.

So I make sure that is opened up. We have make the livers moving and in the bile. We focus a lot on the liver and we forget about the bile and the bio super important and looking at the microbiome and Looking at genetics, just so you have an idea where someone may be a little weaker and need a Little more support. It's I was talking to someone other colleague before and. We were talking about the myth of the magic pill. And I was like, I wish there was a magic to make my job so much easier because it always, it has intrigued me for the last 20 plus years that like so many times patients will come in and I'm sure you see this too.

and they're like oh, the doctor said there's nothing I can do. I just have to suffer, live with this. So I could take this pill to suppress the symptoms. And I'm thinking, oh my God, there's like 7,000 things we can do. You know, it's my job to kind of weed through it and figure out what's primary and what is important. But there is always, I mean, if you're like listening and you are not getting the help you need, like don't give up. Sometimes we have to jump like really way out of the box, but we do if we need to.

You know, everyone needs a different method for how they're going to heal. And, but it always exists. That's why me as a physician, I know you, like we're constantly going on conferences, constantly learning, to shop. But I'm like the doctor version woman, you know, I like to go to conferences and buy new toys and new healing modalities. And I was like, my kids, they're like oh my God, You just can't stop buying things. But this could really help people. Yeah. So when you get to that age, What happens a lot, I mean, so you have the adrenals.

You have your whole hormonal system. They are the ones that help you deal with stressors and all these infections and chemicals and heavy metals and these become stressor. And so now you go into where hormones are produced at a slower rate than from your ovaries. So now the adrenal are having to take on that function in addition to all of these other stressers. Like you're saying, it's so such a key to resolve these stressors that you might have been able to handle when you had that additional hormonal support, but now you are having less.

So that's why you have to look at the individual as a whole and to clear all of that junk out in addition to supporting it hormonally. So what I will say is, yes, like theoretically we travel through menopause and our hormones pick up the slack and start producing our own hormones for us. But that just doesn't happen because let's face it, we're human. If you're from the States listening to this, even if you are not, Like we all have stress. It's getting crazy out there. The last few years have been really not so, and you know, it just seems to be continuing on that trajectory.

We're not getting rid of the toxins, the EMFs, all these things and so where bodies are stressed by the time we get to the menopausal transition, our adrenals are typically shot and we tend to think there's a lot of people talk about high cortisol and that's why I have belly fat and it could be, but my experience in testing, you know, hundreds and thousands of women is that a lot of times their adrenals are just bottom line, like they've been through the high cortisol period and now they actually could use a little cortisol and so I'll use bioidentical cortisol with them just to kind of tell their adrenals, you can go lay in a hammock in Hawaii for a little while, we got you.

We don't use milligram doses that will shut down the adranals but just subphysiological to support the Adrenos. And yes, so we have to work on our Adranos and then the other big misconception I think with regeneration is that well I'll take some herbs to stimulate my hormones and I can tell you that too after all my experience it typically doesn't work and by the time they get to my office and i'm like look Let's just put you on bioidentical hormones, like they're natural too. That's what your body actually lost.

It didn't lose an herb. it lost its hormones. And so we're going to give you what you're body naturally produced in a safe form.

Hormone Therapy Options and Monitoring 28:36

You know, I compound them all and have no fillers in my creams and so forth. I put acidophilus in progesterone capsules. You know, why not give your body back what it's lacking and what's causing so much havoc. And when we do this and we, do it wisely and were monitored and urine and, we're not overdosed. Then it like your, body just goes, thank you. And your brain comes back on and you lower your risk of Alzheimer's and your bones get stronger and lower risk osteoporosis and breasts get healthier and actually lower the risk breast cancer.

Your heart gets healthier you know your your heart attacks and cardiovascular disease is actually the number one. cause of death in women. I think a lot of times we think it's breast cancer, but it is actually cardiovascular disease. And not having proper hormones puts you at a much higher risk for cardiovascular diseases. So it strengthens your immune system. It just does so much good on top of making your skin healthy and helping if you have extra weight gain and giving you a libido and help you sleep and all these other important things.

To me and in my practice, it's not just done in a vacuum because I think you can go to hormone clinics and get hormones. And yes, typically, when you take hormones and they're given to you in the right form and the dosage, you're going to notice something. It's a big deal. But as trained as a bioregulatory physician, I'm like, no, We don't give you your hormone refills if you're not like actively making sure you are sweating and moving your lymphatic system and your bile and liver and all of these other things and living a happy lifestyle.

So eating properly, hydrating, sleeping, moving, communicating, getting out in nature, harnessing the power of the sun. And so to me, it's like, a whole thing that you have to do, but having the hormones in there is such a game changer. So I'm really on this mission because I can't tell you how many women I see suffering. They're told you can have hormones because someone had breast cancer or you had cancer, or your risk or no hormones are not sick. Like they're all this stuff that's just not true.

And when they can get the hormones, I mean, it just gives them their lives back. The key is, like you're saying, I mean, yes, you can just get on hormones and you'll feel the change. But you do also want to work on the things that have drained your hormones. You want seal up the holes in the boat at the same time as you are then supporting yourself with those hormones, and that's why it's so important to. Work on both at same. Yeah. If you take, you know, if you, take your bias and your progesterone and testosterone, your oxytocin and DHA, all the good stuff, but you are like not sleeping and angry and in horrible relationships and not eating right and always stressed out and, not paying attention to detoxifying and all these things, then they're not going to work as good and you're, still going end up sick.

It really has to be the whole, the, whole banana. And in your experience, because there's so many different ways that you can then take hormones, you have creams, pellets, injections, oral things you take. Are there ways better than others and are there tests that are more accurate than other in order to be able to monitor what's going on? Yes, I have very strong opinions about this. That's what I was hoping for. So creams, so I'm talking about for women. For women, like biased creams testosterone cream, you can use progesterone cream.

I also use Progesteron in a capsule.I give women both because they have different mechanisms of action in the body and the capsule actually will hit and like act like a GABA. It hits the GABE receptors, so it's more relaxing, helps with sleep. But when you give it by cream, it actually has a more systemic effect is what I found. So I'll do both. DHEA, Pregnenolone, I actually do liposomal, do drops. I used to do creams and sometimes I still do, but I've found a lot of women didn't absorb it as well as the lipsomal ones.

Oxytocin, we do through a nasal spray. Melatonin like the Somali. Thyroid can just be, you know, like a natural thyroid, natural pill. Adrenal support, sometimes I use bioidentical cortisol that's in a capsule. Or I use herbs and other things to support the adrenals as far as like men can have testosterone shots. And then I, you know, we all have all the hormones. They're just in different proportions. So like sometimes I give men progesterone too, sometimes they really need it. You've heard me talk before you hear me say this a lot but no oral estrogen like if someone tries to give you oral Estrogen you got to run far away from them because they haven't been properly trained and there are a Lot of people who want to dabble in things and they mean well hopefully but dabbling can get you into trouble oral estrogen is known to an Increase cardiovascular issues.

It raises your C reactive protein. So that's a big no-no. You only want bioidenticals none of the synthetic like That is dangerous. I know it leads to cancer. So you want to stay away from that. Not a fan of pellets. Maybe there are people out there who actually understand how to do pellet, but my experience I used to work in a clinic here and everyone who came in was on pellets and they were all whacked out. No one felt good. They were way overdosed on testosterone. It was just such a nightmare.

I had to detox them all out and rebalance them. So it's really hard with pellet because a lot of times you get like a big burst and then it drops off. And I don't see the need to have to implant anything in you that never like, you know, I dont see why you would want to do that. so I'm not a fan of pellete. and so i think that's kind of like how to As far as monitoring and applications, this is a huge one, application of creams. So like John Lee, like from years ago, wrote the book, Wait, Doctor Didn't Tell You About Progesterone.

He was awesome and like brought so much knowledge, but he had everyone like rubbing creams in different spots. And what ends up happening is you'll get like a dermal fatigue where it starts to get stuck in the fat tissue. So I have my patients apply the creams to the external labia. It's mucosal tissue. You don't get that dermal fatigue. you get better absorption. So typically you can use less of the hormone and still get as big a bang. And then as far as monitoring, 24-hour Hormone urines when someone is on hormones is an absolute must.

It's the way to see how the hormones are metabolizing. And if any of the metabolites are pushing towards proliferation or DNA damage, you can modulate that. You can, Give a supplement here a certain thing and you can change the way they're metabolizing. That's really important. I'm not a huge fan of blood for estrogen and progesterone. It's very inaccurate, especially if you're on it and in the blood, they don't really check estriol and estradiol, and they certainly don t check the metabolites. I do think it can be pretty accurate for testosterone, certainly for men.

I'll look at it for women too. It's a good way to check your DHT. For men, estradiol. DHP is dihydrotestosterone, which is a metabolite of testosterone. You want to make sure you're watching because if you are converting that way and you have hair loss, that's probably the reason. cortisol to see the diurnal rhythm. I'll also get like levels in the 24-hour urine just to like your stores and your cortisol versus your cortisone. Did I forget anything? No, I think you did great. Of course, you do great!

I just want to reiterate again. So, like you said, women, they put it here, here and here. Belly button, inside thigh and all these kind of they circulate. But so what you're saying is that you get them tissue fatigue in those areas and it kind accumulates in these areas. So if you do it on the outer labia, you don't get that tissue fatigue and it still distributes throughout the whole body. Yes. I mean, you can also do it on your anal mucosa, but most women would rather do on their vaginal. But like when they do their 24-hour urine testing so we don't get contamination, I have them apply it to the anus because that's also muccosal tissue.

So it's moist. It's that tissue outside your vagina canal that is moist and so yes, it is much better absorption. And I learned this years and years ago from Dr. Jonathan Wright, who I consider like the father of bioidentical hormone replacement, I think he wrote the first script. And so I, you know, always figure out who's the best in the field and I go learn from them so that I can be the better too. So I studied with him to figure what he was doing. I use his lab, Meridian Valley, that's where I run my 24-hour urine tests.

There's a lot of people doing dried spot urine test, but my experiences that the 24-hour urine is more accurate. So I use that. And then I just want to say like if you're on hormones and someone's checking you in saliva or blood, you are going to see like falsely elevated. I see this happen. A lot of patients come in. They're like, well, I was taking off my hormones because I had the saliva. You know, so once you on them, You really can't trust saliva, it'll mislead you and even blood can mislead you.

So I just find monitoring symptoms and 24-hour urine is like the optimal way. And then if I need to spot check anything, I can. The 24 hour urine also does thyroid hormones, but I find that I do trust blood work. But I also think if you have great levels in your blood and they've ran all the thyroid levels you need run, that we're all individuals and just because you're in range doesn't mean that's the range for you. So I encourage everyone, you know, with your doctor, make sure you are working with a doctor who's looking at labs, but most importantly looking you and, if your labs look great but you still the poster child for hypothyroidism, then you probably need some thyroid support.

Don't let, I see too many women and men too, right? who are told, oh, no, it's not your thyroid. It's fine. I checked your levels. And typically, mainstream doctors just check the TSH. But even in the alternative world, when they check all the levels and they don't realize that we're individuals and what's good for you may not be what is good me. Who are they getting these optimal ranges from anyway, right? A lot of patients I see, they're certainly outside the bell curve. Yeah, yeah. And so with the metabolites, so if they do then the blood tests, you know, it shows elevated.

When they then do the urine test, the 24 hour urine tests. It is, and that just shows the metabolism, right? So it will then reflect more accurately as to what's going on in the system. Yeah, so the blood won't show the metabolites, but the 24-hour urine will show, it'll show levels, and it will also show metabolite.

Cancer, Regeneration, and Choosing Health 40:36

So you can see, you know, we all talk about, oh, estrogen causes cancer, which it doesn't. But certain estrogen metabolitites or certain ratios of E2, E3 can be more proliferative and can potentially be contributing. And so by looking at the twenty-four hour urine, we can really see, oh, you have the protective metabolites or oh we need to shift this. So there's like something called an estrogen quotient, which is, gosh, now I have to do math. It's the comparison of E2 and E1 to E3. And E 3 is estriol, cancer protective.

And so you want to have more estriol than E1 and E2. So this can look at it and they've shown like anything above a one and higher shows you're more protected against breast cancer. I've been working with patients for 20 plus years, have a huge population of women dealing with breast. Cancer have always used bioidentical hormones for prevention, for treatment, to prevent recurrence. It scares me when women aren't doing hormones because I know that is a causative factor. And I don't think, you know, there's never just one reason you develop cancer.

It's multifactorial and cancer doesn't develop typically in, a weekend. it's the culmination of years of choices that are not supporting your body in the right direction. Can I go back to where we talked about, yeah. kind of the vision of who we are living a life that we don't want to be in. You know, those are in addition to all the toxins, chemicals, 5G, all these things. I mean, these fill up the bucket that later on becomes things like cancer. Yeah, and I'm sure you hear this all the time, but I love, I know we're getting there.

We've turned the corner when patients are grateful for the cancer, right? Because it really, just like I am trying to use menopause as this opportunity to pause and stop you in your tracks. redefine the habits you have and what you think about health and how you're going to live your day-to-day life, cancer makes you do that. And so it often wakes up patients and they really grow and learn from it and have gratitude for the experience. I know that might sound really weird to some people listening, but it's really a different way of looking at our relationship with our body.

When our bodies are at a balance and it speaks to us or screams to How are we going to respond to it? And, you know, old school traditional medicine has you just want to suppress, get rid of it, don't deal with it. And the way we look at medicine is no, like, come on, show your face. Let's hear what you have to say. We're going, we're gonna go, We are going dance together. and we are gonna figure this out. So that's a very opposite way of thinking about things. Yeah. And it's honoring your body, giving your buddy a voice and listening to it because your bodies is trying to connect you with what is out of balance.

If you keep making, putting duct tape over that voice, you're never going to resolve anything. It's going start to scream louder and louder until you have no other choice. Yeah, so this being human and being a part of actively regenerating your body and choosing health, we're sitting here talking about it, but it's a commitment. It's something you have to really be engaged with. It's a challenge to be human, right? And it's easy to just be swept up in stress and bad food and, bad choices and just kind of roll along with the life.

And so you have to really like empower yourself and say, I'm choosing health. I spend time as I am sure you do, like, you know, created a life where this is important to me and so food choices and detoxing and spending time in nature and taking my supplements and doing my testing and all of these things. I just had my blood drawn and the lady came to my house to do the, she's like, you're the doctor? Why are you doing this? She's, like are,y you okay? And I'm, yeah, I am okay. If I ask a patient to it and it's something I can do, we are a different kind of doctor.

We are, you know, I don't know about you, but like I was very sick. I mean, it was a disaster growing up. It was like a hormonal disaster in my teens and my twenties, like really bad. And so I have learned how to take care of myself and made it a priority because feeling good, there's nothing more important. Your health is your wealth and there is nothing important than feeling and maybe there are some people out there who like they got these really great strong constitutions and good genes and they can just eat McDonald's and live to 120 and be fine, but that is the minority.

And so the majority of us have to put some time and effort and attention into having a healthy body and so I'm personally grateful for my health challenges that I had because they have, you know, put me on a path to healthy living and to really being in touch with my body and making wise choices. You know gone are the days of my twenties where I was like, I get a gold star because I can get by on four hours of sleep. No, now I'm like you don't even talk to me unless I've had at least eight hours.

I got a Gold Star because i had my sleep I did my meditation, I do my detox, my coffee enema, whatever all that is. Exactly, exactly. And I think you can get overwhelmed, so I always tell patients like start slowly, pick one thing, integrate it, change it up because like rigidity does not lead to healthy aging, so have lots of different things you can be doing. It's just like you wouldn't want to eat the same food every day. Like a lot of times we find, oh, oatmeal and blueberries is healthy, and then a piece of chicken with broccoli is health on my salad.

And when we eat same thing every, one, we can create sensitivities to those foods, but two, We're not giving our body a wide array of nutrients and so our bodies can start to react and it can be missing things. So mix it up, be curious and have lots of different ways you can detox, move your body, meditation, all that kind of stuff. I love it. I mean, you consult with people all over the world and you also have programs. You have these kind of master classes people can go through and what to look at and explore to kind go into that phase of their life where they can have

Closing Thoughts on Self-Care and Education 48:00

a red hot sexy menopause. I love how you, not everyone says it like you say it. I appreciate that. But yes, you know, I mean, obviously not every can work with me personally, but there's so many things, as you now, that we can teach people to do in their lifestyles or even just, what we're talking about today, just things you can take back to your own physician or be armed with to go find a physician. And so, ya know I loved teaching, love educating, loved sharing, cause I really believe The more we get this thought process out there, the more, we can actually change the health and individually our lives and then collectively.

And so, I'm very passionate about spreading the word. Wonderful. I love it. Well, Dr. Seale, thank you so much for spending the time with me and sharing your brilliance on this subject. Thank you. Pleasure. Bye, everyone. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks, Real Talk from Real Doctors, on the issues that matter to you most.