Full Transcript 0:00 If it was just the hormones, every 20-year-old would be like the peak of health, right? 0:05 But no, the 20 year olds have their hormones but they might be eating crap, they may not be sleeping, maybe drinking alcohol, 0:11 may be taking care of themselves, and so that's going to cause symptoms. 0:15 And so you don't want to just do hormones. 0:17 You don' want just to lifestyle. 0:21 a combination of it all. 0:23 Hormones won't work if you're stressed out. 0:26 And hormones won' work, if your just eating a bunch of crap. 0:29 This is Doctor Talks. 0:37 Well, welcome back to the Conquering Chronic Inflammation Summit. 0:40 I'm your host, Dr. 0:41 David Jockers, and today I've got the honor of interviewing Dr Michelle Sands from GlowNaturalWellness.com. 0:49 She is a number one bestselling author, a licensed naturopathic physician, female hormone expert and epigenetics coach. 0:56 she's passionate about helping women harness that power of nature so they can elevate their genetic expression and live vibrantly, 1:02 not just by optimizing health physically, but also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 1:06 And today we're talking all about optimizing female hormones to reduce inflammation and thrive in life. 1:12 You guys are in for a treat here. 1:14 If you are going through perimenopause or menopaus, make sure you take note with this episode, this interview, because she's going to go through some really 1:21 powerful information for you. 1:23 We're going do a deep dive on bioidentical hormones and how important they can be for women going thru peri-menopas and menapause, 1:33 your expression of life, your brain function, energy, cellular health and how to reduce inflammation as you go through these critical stages of your life. 1:41 So you guys are in for a treat here again check out Dr. 1:44 Michelle Sands website GlowNaturalWellness.com and let's go into the interview. 1:51 Well, I'm here with my friend Dr. 1:52 Michelle Sands from GlowNaturalWellness.com. 1:56 We're talking about optimizing female hormones to reduce inflammation and thrive in life. 2:01 And she's a female hormone expert, so you guys are in for a treat here. 2:05 Let's start, Dr Michelle. 2:07 I mean, I've known you now for several years and you're a fierce advocate for natural toxin free solutions for hormone health. 2:14 Why do you think traditional medicine has failed midlife women and how does your approach to root cause medicine and plant based identical bio identical 2:23 hormones address these gaps? 2:25 Oh my God. 2:26 What a loaded question. 2:28 How has conventional medicine failed? 2:30 Midlife. 2:31 Women. 2:31 pretty much in every aspect. 2:34 Women are not included in studies like for the longest time, like only 1993 was like when the first women were included studies that had to do with any 2:44 kind of medication, medical procedure, or medical appliance, anything that has to with your health. 2:51 It was just done on men and mostly like men in their twenties. 2:54 Then they started adding women in, so like yay, but then they only added women that were on birth control pills because our cycles are very confusing. 3:01 and it was unpredictable and they would have to time the studies if they had to like... 3:06 do it for a woman when she was on ovulation phase or her luteal phase. 3:11 So they only did studies on women that are on birth control pills. 3:15 Only recently are not on breath control in the studies and it's still not very common. 3:20 Like usually you're actually like not eligible to be in a study if you are non birth controls, which is crazy. 3:28 Their philosophy is sterilize the woman then we can study them basically. 3:32 Yeah, just because women are so complicated because of the hormones. 3:35 That's what the medical community and that's part of a lot of reason why women aren't getting help for their hormone issues in their teens, 3:44 in there 20s, postpartum and in menopause is because the complication of it, it doesn't really fit in with our medical system, 3:53 conventional medical systems way of doing medicine because most people don't know that when they go to the doctor, they tell the doctors their symptoms 4:01 and their doctor is like typing on their little keyboard, right? 4:04 What they're typing is they are typing your symptoms, and then they get a code and the code tells them what the medication they should prescribe is and 4:12 they name your symptom. 4:14 or your condition. 4:15 For women, a lot of fatigue, weight gain, mood swings, skin issues, gut issues. 4:23 These all could be symptoms of hormone imbalance. 4:27 They could symptoms thyroid imbalance, they could of so many different things. 4:32 Parasites, inflammation, heavy metals, so may things, but when we hear these symptoms that all kind of go in a cluster, the doctors will put those in and 4:42 they'll be like, oh, hormone imbalance. 4:44 And the answer to that is birth control pills. 4:46 It doesn't matter if it is estrogen dominance, low progesterone, PCOS, it's always gonna be the birth-control pill. 4:57 Your symptoms are really bad, they might give you antidepressant too. 5:00 I say this from experience because when I was in my teens, early teens actually 12 years old, pre-teen, I was brought to the doctor because I had horrible periods, 5:10 like horrible pain. 5:11 I didn't want to stay home from school. 5:13 And I put on the birth control pill at age 12, and my mom swore me to secrecy because she was just like, you're not going to tell anyone you were on a 5:21 birth-control pill. 5:21 She's an Italian mom from New York, so it was embarrassing to my family that her daughter was on birth controls. 5:28 It kind of made me feel bad, but it did regulate things a little bit. 5:33 cramps went away a little, but I had so many other health issues. 5:37 And then I ended up being diagnosed with ovarian failure at age 20. So many different issues, and later on, I went on to go back to school for medicine, 5:48 natural medicine. 5:49 Learn about the body, learn about how the systems relate to each other. 5:52 I have gut issues I've had parasites, heavy metal toxicity, Hashimoto's thyroiditis. 5:58 All these things that were preventing my cycle. 6:01 from working the way it should, and were causing all these symptoms that looked like hormone imbalance, but they were really all of these isolated things 6:08 and different systems in my body, which all meshed together to create the whole problem that I was experiencing. 6:15 And once I able to unravel those piece by piece and change my diet, change the ways I worked out, start doing some stress reduction activities, 6:24 get rid of all the toxic things in my environment, the cleaning products, personal care products. 6:30 Remove the gluten in the dairy, which was not popular when I was in 20s, because that was the 90s. 6:35 People were not talking about gluten and dairy like they're talking now. 6:39 And so it was just normal, and so I had to do some abnormal things back then, but once I could do that, it really wasn't ovarian failure. 6:47 It was ovaian insufficiency, my ovaries weren't working the way they should because of all these other dysfunctions that were happening in your body, 6:56 In the intelligence, basically, it wasn't a good environment for me to grow a baby with all of those things happening. 7:03 And so my body is like, shut it down. 7:05 We're going to make you survive because you have all these other things. 7:08 Happening and then once I was able to restore health and all those systems of the body, my. 7:14 periods came back I was able to have my son naturally which is why I'm so such an advocate for natural medicine because I Was told by countless doctors 7:24 that I would never have kids. 7:26 There was nothing I could do I just gonna have to be on the antidepressants. 7:29 I wasn't gonna Have to beyond the pain pills. 7:30 That was gonna. 7:31 Have two beon the birth control pill for the rest of my life And had I believed that, had kind of bought into that. 7:37 I wouldn't have my son now, I would still have, the company I have today, my health. 7:43 It might be just sitting around doing nothing because I'm on all this medication and being depressed. 7:50 And so whether you have diabetes, whether your cancer, or whether it's hormone imbalance, no matter what it is, do not believe that there's nothing you 7:58 can do because the body is constantly restoring, rebuilding reformatting its cells and you get new chances every day with all the inputs that you do every 8:11 bite you take every move you make every thought you have impacts your cells And your hormones and so that's like the message that I'm like so passionate 8:19 about sharing and I see every Day doctors telling women there's nothing you can do. 8:23 There's not that You can so much you Can do and So yeah, the medical system has failed us because There's we're told there's nothing we can do and then 8:32 when there is things we Can do which is the other part of the question that you asked like why I'm so passionate about the non-toxic plant-based alternatives 8:40 for hormone balance What we are putting in our bodies is microplastics, petrochemicals, toxins in the hormone products that If you're lucky enough to get 8:51 a doctor to prescribe them for you, now you are putting toxins in your body along with the hormones. 8:57 And so a lot of the studies that show like, oh, the, hormones are bad for. 9:00 It's not the hormone that's bad. 9:02 For you. 9:02 it's all the toxins that are in the. 9:04 Hormones that. 9:05 Are bad, for, you and I searched for myself. 9:08 All the different avenues, pills, creams, patches, all of different things. 9:14 They all have either propylene glycol or. 9:18 microplastics or some other type of petrochemical and just like really bad forever chemicals that are going to stay in your body. 9:25 If it's something you're going put in you body for the rest of your life and you are really doing it for longevity, you really want to do the best you 9:32 can to be as clean as possible and so that was like, really become like my passion in the last few years is to make those products available. 9:41 to the public, and I've had to fight the FDA, I had fight so many different things just to make them available, but I'll continue that fight just so that 9:49 women can have the opportunity to replace their hormones and get that health that they want without having to compromise their commitment to living a non-toxic lifestyle. 10:00 Yeah, absolutely. 10:01 You said a lot of really good things there. 10:03 And ultimately, the body knows how to heal itself. 10:06 It just needs no interference. 10:07 But we interfere with it all the time with drugs. 10:10 Just the modern world is. 10:11 I always tell people, it is like, you have to be weird in order to avoid toxins. 10:16 Because it's so easy for us to sit at, I could sit right here and I can order food, and go to school, date. 10:25 Can do everything from this seat without ever getting up. 10:30 And I can be in air-condition, I could be with the artificial flame retardants on my furniture, on clothes, using conventional products on skin. 10:41 You have to really go out of your way to move your body because everyone's like, oh you want to go get together, we're going to eat. 10:50 the Olive Garden. 10:52 Nothing against the olive garden but you know it's toxic food or hey like let's go for some drinks or you go to the office and there's the thing of cookies 11:01 and so you have to be the odd one that's like oh you what I'm gonna go exercise instead I am not going to go out drinking I going by the organic skincare 11:11 product from the farmers market instead of going into CVS and buying the things on the shelf and my kids are not gonna eat the candy with the red dye number 40 11:22 and I'm going to give them the organic keto brownie, right? 11:27 You have to be a little bit strange in order to avoid all the unnatural things in our environment. 11:32 Our ancestors, they didn't have say no if everything was natural back then, you know, but we had to say, no, so many times. 11:41 Yeah, so critical. 11:42 And you talked about birth control pills. 11:44 What do they actually do to the body, and what sort of risks are associated with taking birth controls pills? 11:49 Yeah. 11:50 So birth-control pills, I am also an advocate for feminine rights and women's freedoms and everything. 11:57 The birth controlled pill did do something good. 12:01 It allowed women to have sexual relations without having to get pregnant. 12:05 That idea is amazing. 12:07 There's other ways to happen as well through like family planning method, condoms, things like that. 12:15 The birth control pill unfortunately is endocrine disrupting compounds. 12:20 So if you look on the little inserts that have the tiny, tiny writing that comes with the birth-control pill, it will actually list the ingredients. 12:29 If you looked at those ingredients, they are all classified as endocrine-disrupting components. 12:33 That means It is disrupting your endocrine system, which is what the birth control pill is supposed to do, because it is going to prevent you from ovulence. 12:43 The endocrine system is the hormone. 12:45 Every hormone is being disrupted. 12:47 Yeah, the endocrine system, is your hormone system. 12:50 So the birth control pill is to disrupt your hormones system and by design. 12:54 Because we want to, by taking the Birth Control Pill, The goal is, to prevent me from ovulating. 13:00 It's preventing the release of the hormones that are going to trigger the released of egg and the whole cycle is then turned off. 13:09 And when you turn off your cycle, you're not making progesterone. 13:12 You're making estrogen. 13:13 you are making very little testosterone. 13:15 And those things are going to trickle down and cause all the symptoms of low hormones. 13:22 Now you do have these artificial endocrine disruptors that do you have some qualities that mimic the hormones, so you won't get all of the symptom of hormone 13:34 imbalance or low estrogen, low proestrogen, but you will get a lot of them. 13:37 and they will compound over time because every cell in your body depends on estrogen. 13:42 Like estrogen is important for your brain, it's important your liver, important to your gut, Skin like everything your muscles think of a name an organ 13:52 and estrogen is going to be important for even your ears like the cochlea inside your years It can be affected by low estrogen. 14:00 You can start getting ringing in your ear. 14:02 She can starting itchy ears It's crazy how many things are related your voice your eyesight you're having dry eyes the list goes on and on so by interfering 14:14 with your body's ability to make those hormones, you are like every day chipping away at your health. 14:21 And unknowingly, women, after being on birth control pills for five, 10, 15 years, bone loss is an issue, they have trouble with their skin, 14:30 and they trouble their digestion oftentimes, their microbiome is messed up. 14:35 So many problems can result from this shutting off of such an important system in our body. 14:43 Yeah, and they deplete a lot of key nutrients too. 14:46 Oh, yeah. 14:47 Zinc, right? 14:48 A lot. 14:48 Yeah. 14:49 So B vitamins. 14:50 It's really horrible because like your body actually is going to not be able to absorb a of the key and nutrients that you need for your overall health. 15:02 when you're taking these kind of disrupting compounds. 15:05 It's really- I think what people need to understand is that really 99% of the drugs that are prescribed, really, if they should be prescribed it should 15:14 for very short term use. 15:15 Yes. 15:17 That is so, so true. 15:20 And that's why things that we are going to use as a supplement, a lot of times drugs are now being used as supplements, you really have to make sure that 15:28 they are actually only building health and not taking away from it. 15:32 Even a little of the supplements on the market, thank God you make some really great supplements that don't have all of that. 15:39 unnecessary ingredients like the magnesium steroids and all the crap that goes into a lot of products there's these days we really have to look at everything 15:47 we put in our body and sometimes medications you just get the bottle with the label on it and unless you ask the pharmacist for the insert that's goes 15:55 with it you don't get that And so a lot of times we just we figure if the doctor is going to recommend it and it's regulated by the pharmacy that must 16:05 be safe for us. 16:06 But these are the things that are least safe. 16:08 For us, like, I can't tell you how many each year, how may drugs are recalled after they've been out in the market for like death and adverse events. 16:19 So it just because it's prescribed does not mean it safe. 16:22 A lot of times it is not safe, but if you look at the side effects, just like look up anything you're taking right now and just Google the name of your 16:29 medication and side-effects. 16:31 And the craziest thing that we see all the time is people come in and they're on a medication, and then they get put on second medication to manage the 16:41 effects of the first medication. 16:42 Yeah, it happens all the time. 16:44 It's so saddening. 16:46 Yeah. 16:47 And so it's a big deal. 16:49 Especially as women go through perimenopause and menopaus, right? 16:53 There's lot of women that are listening to this right now. 16:55 They're going through those stages. 16:56 There are starting to have some different symptoms. 16:59 How do you look at that stage of life? 17:02 Obviously, you're coming through it personally. 17:03 Right? 17:04 Yeah! 17:04 I'm in peri-menopauze right know. 17:05 So the interesting thing is, So many women, every women will go through this. 17:11 So every woman who lives past age 40 is going to go to perimenopause. 17:15 Every woman that lives at a past-age average 51, 55 is gonna go thru menopaus. 17:21 They go the doctor with the classic symptoms of peri-menopas and menopsis and their doctors are like perplexed. 17:27 I don't know how this is. 17:29 Why is it such a shocker for women and their doctors when this happens to every woman? 17:36 It'd almost be like when kids go through puberty, if it was like their skin starts breaking out, they're like, oh my god, 17:42 I wanna know what's wrong with you. 17:43 What's happening? 17:45 No, it's puverty. 17:46 Of course, their voice is gonna change. 17:48 They're gonna get a little awkward and lanky. 17:50 Their skin's gonna break out. 17:51 The hair's going to get greasy. 17:52 And their armpits are gonna start stinking. 17:54 These are things that happen to ever kid. 17:57 And then when we're going through perimenopause, it's happening to every woman. 18:00 So you have trouble sleeping, her moods are going to change a little bit, our periods are gonna change, those are like progesterone dropping symptoms, 18:06 usually the first ones to go. 18:08 And she's going have maybe a bit of weight gain, maybe she is not processing her carbs as well because she has more insulin resistance, 18:17 a lot more inflammation, and maybe her skin is reacting to products that she always used before and now all of a sudden she sensitive to them. 18:23 This is changes in the skin microbiome due to estrogen change. 18:27 Maybe we'll start to get some wrinkles. 18:29 Hair might start falling out. 18:30 These are all normal symptoms of hormone decline, yet we're just like, oh, I don't know why that's happening. 18:40 a pain pill, maybe you need to be on GLP-1s, whatever it might be. 18:44 Why don't we address what we know is happening that the hormones are declining? 18:49 Because that's natural for them to decline. 18:51 It's normal and natural. 18:52 There's nothing wrong with you if you're losing your estrogen and progesterone and your testosterone in perimenopause. 18:59 That is what's to expected. 19:01 Now, then why do we do hormone replacement? 19:03 People are always like, well, if it's naturally normal, and you are a naturopathic doctor, Why are you recommending women get on hormones? 19:09 Isn't that like unnatural? 19:11 And I used to think that. 19:12 So back when I was in school, naturopathic medical school I, I I am just going to use herbs. 19:18 I'm just gonna use nutrition. 19:20 Um, to have women do yoga. 19:21 And then I realized that That thinking is only good for like back when the life expectancy was 50 years old, 45 years, old women used to only live until 19:40 menopause and then they would die. 19:41 And that would be the end of their life. 19:43 But now our life is because of science and, you know, sanitation and the changes in our environment. 19:49 Women are living a average age 88. And we're probably going to make that longer as we keep doing advances. 19:57 And average age of perimenopause is like 35, 40. So that's half of our life that we would be living in this deficient state. 20:06 We understand that our hormones are important for our brain health and moods, inflammation levels, everything that, our whole being is determined by our hormone. 20:18 We want someone to have a deficiency in their hormones. 20:21 Why would we treat like a vitamin D deficiency and treat estrogen deficiency? 20:25 We treat thyroid deficiency. 20:27 So if you have low thyroid for one reason or another, we're going to be like, oh, it's really important you should get on thyroid medication. 20:34 You shouldn't just deal with the symptoms. 20:36 And so, like, anything that we're deficient in, insulin, if you just don't make insulin we are going to give you insulin. 20:42 And that's a hormone, but female hormones, we were like oh, you don' want to take those, that is bad for you. 20:48 Or that it's unnatural, completely natural if we use natural hormones and you do not have additional crap in the hormones. 20:56 And you use it in a way that is a physiological dose, so a normal dose for a woman, not a mega dose because that's what we're seeing right now. 21:04 Testosterone has become a very big catchphrase and it's really popular for women to go and get a pellet of like a megadose of testosterone, 21:12 like, a man dose of testosteron. 21:14 And they feel good for little bit, they're like oh I've got energy, I'm feeling good, and then their hair starts falling out. 21:21 They start gaining weight, they start getting skin issues, and then they get put on like a ozumthic or something to help with the weight gain and they 21:27 put it on something that helps with hair. 21:29 And it's like, that's a slippery slope too. 21:32 So you want to do it responsibly. 21:33 You want replace your hormones in a most natural fashion so that you're just getting what you need so you are back at baseline, 21:41 not that your overdosing anything. 21:43 And the same thing with vitamins. 21:44 The same with anything. 21:46 You eat too much protein, you're going to gain weight. 21:50 It's not like more is better than anything, it's balance. 21:53 And that's what we talk about with hormones. 21:55 We're talking about hormone balance, not hormone excess or deficiency. 21:59 Yeah. 21:59 That's, that's really key to know when you're using hormones, you got to use the right dosages and kind of phase them like time. 22:06 Yeah, and they're very Goldilocks. 22:07 Like hormones are like, it's like Goldi locks on the three beers, like too little estrogen. 22:11 You have symptoms too much estrogen and you also have. 22:14 And then when we have it just right, It's just, right. 22:16 It has to be balanced with the projection and the testosterone because you have too many testosterone and too low progesterone. 22:23 Now you are getting like belly fat gain hair where you don't want it. 22:28 irritability, but then you balance it out and now you feel great. 22:31 So it does take some trial and error. 22:33 It's not like if you're a woman who's 54 years old and weigh 120 pounds, this is your dose. 22:38 Everybody is different. 22:39 And so it just takes a little bit of trial-and-error. 22:41 I always like to err on the side of going a lower dose first and then increasing until you get to where you need to be. 22:47 Yeah. 22:48 Now, when your team is coaching people... 22:51 Yeah, the other thing I will say, and because a lot of times when I'll be like, okay, great, I'm having these symptoms when we take the hormones, 22:59 but they neglect to do the diet, exercise, stress reduction, toxin reduction and they're like the hormone aren't working. 23:07 Wow. 23:08 It's not just the hormones, it's the hormone and the lifestyle together. 23:11 Because if it was just a hormones every 20 year old would be like the peak of health, right? 23:17 But no, the 20-year-olds have their hormones but they might be eating crap, they may not be sleeping, maybe drinking alcohol, 23:23 They might not have taken care of themselves and so that's going to cause symptoms. 23:27 And so you don't want to just do hormones. 23:29 You don' want just to lifestyle. 23:33 a combination of it all. 23:35 And hormones won't work if you're stressed out and not sleeping. 23:39 Hormones won' work, if your just eating a bunch of crap. 23:42 You're still gonna have symptoms. 23:45 Like I said before, like every bite we take, every move we make, and every thought we have, it's a hormonal experience. 23:51 It will affect how you live and how your breathe. 23:54 If you do take care of things, then you'll need less hormones to feel your best. 23:59 Yeah, so it's a multi-therapeutic approach. 24:01 You got to start with the lifestyle by keeping your stress under control, optimizing your sleep, having good blood sugar stability, 24:09 keeping you toxic load down and keeping our drainage pathways open. 24:13 Yeah. 24:14 Get a good movement and building muscle. 24:16 Those things are going to help your body naturally produce as much of the hormones as possible. 24:21 But of course, as a woman is going through perimenopause and menopausal. 24:25 You're just not going to do it with just lifestyle alone. 24:27 And one thing I will note is- Yeah. 24:30 One thing we'll note- ...level where they're going really, really thrive, typically, or at least a certain percentage of women are not. 24:36 That's where the bioidenticals come in and give them the extra bump. 24:40 Absolutely, and I will say, like, it can be very, very overwhelming for women to hear, okay, I've got to get my protein in, 24:49 or I got get to my steps, so I gotta drink my water, gotta avoid the toxins, got make sure that my drainage pathways are open, 24:56 that I have got a dry brush, have to do castor oil packs. 24:59 And it's overwhelming especially when you're in a hormone depleted state. 25:03 So for some women, sometimes we give them the hormones first and they're like, okay, now we're going to adjust your diet and now, 25:09 we are going add in the exercise because they need like something just to get a little boost. 25:14 And then for women who have, they are not in that state, then we'll start them in their lifestyle and then add the hormone. 25:21 It's not one way or another because I get that question a lot. 25:24 Do I need to do this before that? 25:27 Well, it depends. 25:28 It depends on what you are capable of and where your mindset is and what your energy levels are. 25:33 But a lot of times the hormones can give you that little boost that you need so then you can start cooking your own food and doing the things that need 25:42 you to be healthier. 25:43 Yup. 25:43 Now when your team is working with people, are you guys testing hormones? 25:47 Is there a particular test you like or do you feel like you can typically figure out what's going on based on questionnaires, 25:53 health history? 25:54 What would you say to that? 25:55 Yeah, so we do both. 25:57 So we have like in our Healthy Hormone Club, we include testing because testing is always going to be best. 26:03 If you have the more information you could have, the better decisions you make. 26:07 But at the same time, some women, financial reasons or other, they don't want to do the test. 26:12 They can't do a test, we can go off of symptoms and we kind of go after questionnaires. 26:18 And that might take a little more trial and error dialing in. 26:23 It really depends on what stage they're in as well, how long they've been doing, and how they have been having the imbalances, 26:29 whether they had been on hormones before. 26:30 But anytime I can test, I love to test just because it gives me that information. 26:36 Now with hormones, you can't test through blood, through saliva, or urine. 26:41 For just knowing what your levels are, a saliva test is great because this is going to tell us our free and available levels of our estrogen, 26:47 progesterone, DHEA, testosterone. 26:50 If you want to know a little more information like how your hormones are breaking down, whether you need to detox different things, 26:57 how you're estrogen is breaking, now whether it's going down the more healthy pathways, then like the Dutch test, which is a dry urine test. 27:04 That's a great test because it gives you a lot of information, but it is little expensive. 27:07 So if that information isn't necessary for you at the moment, Then you can go with a saliva test, which is very inexpensive, 27:13 or you could go a blood test from your doctor that might be included in your insurance. 27:17 You just have to tell your doctors what you want tested, because they will not test everything that you wanted, and they'll also probably not be testing 27:24 you at the right time of the month. 27:26 That's kind of a tricky thing with the Dutch. 27:29 I believe it's right after ovulation. 27:31 Yeah, even with a saliva testing, if we can, we like to get it within five days of ovulation because that's going to give us that second peak of the hormones 27:42 and give a little better idea of how much you're making. 27:45 And then with testosterone, you always want to test that in the morning because when your levels are higher. 27:49 So a lot of doctors don't know that and they'll send you for a blood test at 3 p.m. 27:54 on the fifth of a month. 27:56 They don t even know what your cycle is and so you might get not quite the right information. 28:01 Yeah, for sure. 28:01 And then when somebody goes in and they get a prescription from a conventional medical doctor for, let's say, estrogen therapy, 28:09 what is the difference between that and a bioidentical hormone therapy? 28:13 Well, you might get it prescription for bio identical. 28:16 So you can get bio-idental hormones prescribed or you get synthetic hormones to prescribe. 28:21 Synthetic estrogen is generally made from horse urine, not be not human hormones, but horse hormones. 28:29 And there's also some that are just made from chemicals. 28:33 Those are like hormones but they're not hormones and so those, again, just like the birth control pill, they are kind of like hormone disruptors. 28:41 They're are not what your body is expecting. 28:43 Bioidentical means biologically identical, usually made for a plant. 28:47 So the wild yam and also the soybean have a component of them called diazgenin. 28:54 And that has a very similar chemical backbone, like in chemistry class, how you have all the octagons with the little tags and the hydrogens and carbons 29:02 coming off of them. 29:02 They're almost the same as our human hormones, so they have to take into a lab and they remove some of those hydragens, and that's exactly the chemical 29:10 structure of progesterone, or exactly estradiol, exactly exactly DHEA. 29:14 And so that is what your body is going to recognize as same, as it had before. 29:20 It can utilize that with no weird stuff happening. 29:24 The other thing with prescriptions is sometimes you'll get an oral estrogen prescribed, the pill that you take, and estrogen, 29:30 when you actually take it by mouth, has to go through the liver and that creates some byproducts that can be dangerous, can cause clotting, 29:39 cause issues with their heart. 29:41 There's an enzyme called MMP9 that's created that causes issues of inflammation. 29:47 and down the road. 29:48 So you don't want to do, I never recommend oral estrogen to anybody, bio-identical or synthetic, and transdermal or sublingual estrogen is going to be 29:58 the best way to go because that bypasses the liver. 30:00 And then any woman who has any issues with like clotting or any kind of stroke in the past or family history, a lot of times they're told they can't use 30:10 hormone replacement therapy. 30:11 But the truth is they cannot use oral hormone-replacement therapy, they definitely can use trans-derma. 30:16 So transdermal, you're getting it in through the skin. 30:18 It's a cream that you are putting on and it's getting in though your skin because actually, believe it or not, your is in a sense, 30:24 I mean, it is pulling stuff in. 30:26 Whatever you put on your in is getting into your body. 30:28 So you want to make sure things are as chemical free as possible. 30:32 Yeah. 30:32 And then sublingual, You're putting it under your tongue and that actually gets right into the bloodstream. 30:36 Dissolves right in to the Yes, exactly. 30:39 And so that bypasses the liver and so it doesn't have to be broken down before it goes to your tissues. 30:46 It goes through your tissue as the actual hormone. 30:49 So that really makes it more effective. 30:51 You actually can use less hormones when it's not going through the digestive system as well. 30:56 Yeah. 30:56 And what do you find with dosing? 30:57 Do you have to play around a lot with those things or is there kind of like a standardized dosage that you fine? 31:04 Well, it really is. 31:06 It's quite it varies quite a like there could be a woman, my exact height and weight, exact age, exactly starting hormone levels. 31:14 and I might be on double the amount of hormones that she is It depends on your metabolism, it depends your clearance, depends of your genetics, 31:23 and depends how your body absorbs things. 31:25 It also can depend on stress levels and things like that as well. 31:29 So yeah, there is no one dose. 31:32 Some women use tiny, tiny doses and it changes their life and other women have to use a lot more. 31:38 So it really is. 31:39 I always like to start low. 31:40 And I can usually tell just how people's history of how they deal with other medications, how do they do with their supplements. 31:49 Are they a super sensitive person? 31:50 Like, can they take a bunch of supplements and just take glass of water and they're good? 31:54 Or do you have to like really tie trade up? 31:57 And so you're usually there's clues for a lot of women to know whether they should start super low or whether we should go with like a moderate dose. 32:06 But the good thing about transdermal hormones is you can add more. 32:09 So like if you could use one dose for a week and then we can be like, okay, just do use a little bit more where if we have a pill or you have patch, 32:18 it's a lot harder to change the dosing. 32:20 Well, I just wanted to let you guys know that I had a power outage right there as Dr. 32:25 Michelle was talking about bioidentical hormones. 32:29 But guys, you can find out so much more information about how to use bio identical hormones and other lifestyle strategies to optimize female hormones, 32:39 reduce inflammation, and thrive in life by going to Dr Michelle Sands website, glownaturalwellness.com. 32:47 GlowNaturalWellness.com, she's got a healthy hormone club. 32:50 She's gotta lot of really great stuff going on over there. 32:53 So be sure to check that out. 32:55 Again, sorry for cutting off there, but had a huge storm here that shut off my power. 33:01 And so we couldn't finish up, wrap it up quite the way I wanted to. 33:05 But with that said, check out Glownaturalwellness .com. 33:08 Just great resources over their. 33:11 to help you on your hormone and inflammation-reducing journey. 33:15 So check that out, and everybody be blessed. 33:18 Thank you for tuning in to Dr. 33:20 Talks. 33:20 We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you in your path to optimal health. 33:25 Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. 33:30 For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast, Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks, 33:44 real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.
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