Gut Health, Hormones & HRT: What Every Woman Needs to Know

Introduction and the importance of gut health 0:00

right? We want to we want to be optimal because we can live a quality of life. But what I always tell people is what you eat, what you drink, how much you sleep, how much you exercise, the stress you're under, the toxins you're exposed to affect everything, and especially your hormones and your gut. So I have women coming to me. They've been on hormones. They exercise. They're, you know, they think everything is good, and they're Have you ever wondered what the impact of your bowel habits are on your bone health?

Well, today you're going to find out that and so much more. We have a holistic longevity doctor who's been doing this for 40 years before everybody else was doing it. Welcome, doctor. Lorraine Miter. Well, thank you so much for having me because I've got to get the word out. Women are losing bone, losing their minds and losing their relationships because of not knowing how to take care of themselves and looking in the wrong places for the solution. Well, this is vitality made simple, and we are all about equipping people to feel better, look better, and enjoy better relationships.

So thank you for bringing that up because you know, life, Lorraine, is all about relationships. You know, if relationships suffer when we don't feel good. So give us just do us a favor. Give us a brief, introduction on how you got into this space of integrative medicine. You're really quite an early pioneer. Well, I was a resident in, well, in New York City, and I worked in an emergency room there, and someone gave me tuberculosis. Then I was on antibiotics for nine months. They cured the tuberculosis, but it left me tired, full, brain fog, gaining weight, losing my hair, having rashes and being, you know, just I said this.

I'm young. I mean, if I have to live the rest of my life like this. This is awful. So I found an, holistic doctor, and he taught me about gut health, and I followed his protocol for three months, and then I got my life back.

Dr. Miter's path into integrative medicine 3:03

And then fast forward, I went into, a corporation. And, back in the day, there were very few women in high places. Right. So you could probably count it just, one hand and a pinky. And one day, one of the, you know, I came out of the emergency room. I could save your life. I mean, I, you know, I was like, super. God, I felt right. I mean, I really was well trained. And a woman came down to me, and she was a very senior executive, and I was at high level, and I was intimidated. And she said to me, you have to help me.

Standing, giving a lecture. And I broke out in a hot flash. I turned red, I started to sweat, and I've lost my train of thought. And men were either looking down in shame like I can't watch this, or elbowing each other like snickering. Like, she said, you know what? I can't be taken seriously if this has happened. So that's when I learned a lot more about menopause and hormones, even though I studied it and I was going to be an ObGyn, but changed my mind and then fast forward years later, I went through perimenopause.

And when I tell you it it when you don't feel well, it affects your relationships. I did all the right things, I said the right things. But there was always a tone of irritation. So I lost some of my best friends. I, you know, impaired relationships. I was so overwhelmed. I just quit my job because I was having some issues with my family, and I figured I have to choose my family over my job, and I learned like, oh my God, it's hormones. And it had, I had I recognize that in myself at first because that's why sometimes you you can't be objective about yourself.

I probably would have kept that job. It had power, prestige, pay, position. I mean, it was it was a dream job. But I said, you know, I, I can't do this. Well, the thing about it, Lorraine, because of what you went through, you've helped a lot of other people. So I think you've made a bigger impact. Maybe. You know what I'm saying? Not for yourself, but for, for people everywhere who've been your patients because you've treated thousands and thousands of people as well as doing lecturing. So I want to get to hormones a little later in our discussion.

But, what I've seen is so often people think they can take a pill whether or put a cream on or whatever a prescription is, and solve the problem. What I think you've done so beautifully is talk about gut health, stress management, some other areas that really are synergistic with potentially hormone, you know, hormone replacement. So let's tell us about gut health and what you've seen, in terms of osteoporosis and what what people everywhere, not just women, but predominantly women need to know about constipation and how that and how that impacts, bone health.

I see I when I ask people around all the time, it's always like I'm shocked at how many people are constipated. No wonder relationships are suffering. They're constipated. They say it's normal. It's not right, but it's not. It's not normal. It's not optimal. You know, normal and optimal are two different things. Most people in their 60s or 72 are on two meds. They're medications, they're obese, and they have some medical problems. That's normal. But that's not really optimal. You don't want to be our definition of normal, right?

We want to we want to be optimal because we can live a quality of life. But what I always tell people is what you eat, what you drink, how much you sleep, how much you exercise, the stress you're under, the toxins you're exposed to affect everything, and especially your hormones and your gut. So I have women coming to me. They've been on hormones. They exercise. They're, you know, they think everything is good, and they're they're not. There's something not right. And then they discover, oh, my God, I have osteoporosis.

How could that be? Well, you know, we're in a society of doo doo doo doo doo rather than b b b b b and this is a distress. So distress could be physical, it could be emotional and it could be chemical. And I can tell you that so many people come to me and say, I don't have stress. It's just everyday stress. But I always measure cortisol in everyone, and sometimes it's off the chart and I have to dig. And when I show them their, their labs, they'll look and say, well, yeah, this is happening, that is happening.

So, you know, I always try to address

Gut health, constipation, and bone health 7:58

cortisol through, you know, your lifestyle. Right? But when it comes to your gut, if you're not absorbing the nutrients, you're missing out. And and this is what I see when you're do do do do do go go go go go. You can either be in fight or flight or rest, digest, reproduce, repair or rejuvenate. You cannot be in both at the same time. So the digestive process starts with your head. It starts with looking at the food, taking your time, salivating because the saliva starts, the digestive process, that saliva.

Then you chew. People don't chew their foods. They're they're they're on their computer and they're like shoveling it in and just swallowing it down. That is not enough time for your digestive enzymes to do its job. So then food just passes through you. It's not broken down enough and it's not absorbed. So I tell people to choose, chew and chill. Choose the foods that are very nourishing, chew them thoroughly and chill out. Relax. So I mean, that's what I said. I think saying, grace, you don't have to be religious, but just taking time to appreciate your food.

Take a deep breath. You know, look at it, chew it thoroughly because the chewing stimulates acid production and we lose that production of acid as we get older. And or if you're under stress. So then the acid in your stomach stimulates the pancreas and the gallbladder to make their digestive enzymes. So you develop your digest protein and fat. And then it all goes through nicely, like a car wash. Right. Love that. Choose to and chill I love that I love acronyms. So because you talk about the gut really being the car wash for hormones, I mean, so often Loraine, when I do a GI map on somebody, I'll see high beta glucan on a day.

And you know, they're not detoxing, potentially hormones. A lot of times they're on testosterone or something that they're not detoxing. So tell us more about that. The car wash aspect of that. So so everything has to work together because if you if you race through a car wash and you still had suds on and you didn't, you race through that rinse cycle, you're like, you got gunk. So there's two big reasons why some women just don't feel as good in the hormones. Usually they feel good right away, and then later on they're like, something's not right.

Well, one is bio, and many women have had their gallbladder taken out and the bile has some amazing functions. And bile does a lot more than just digest bad. It binds toxins and it binds what your gut wants to get rid of. What? Your liver, your liver. Process it. It's a recycle plant. The bile binds to the things you want to get rid of. It actually sterilizes the gut so that, you know, some people with Sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, if you get the bile flowing, they do better. If you get motility and the gut moving, they do better.

I mean, this is overall health. This is not just about hormones. So the Bible is binding a lot of toxins and the breakdown products of hormones. So if you have bad gut microbiome that will take that toxin off the bile and like a scissor, cut it so that the bile no longer has a hold on it and it just gets reabsorbed. So I use the analogy if you have a problem with bile, a problem with the microbiome, and you don't poop logs or snakes every day, it's like flushing a backed up toilet. It's gross. Right?

I mean, that visual gets people. That's what it is. If you don't move your bowels every day and you don't have your belt, that bio flowing. So the composition of your diet can affect bile, the composition of your microbiome can and gut motility. You know, it really affects everything because you're otherwise you're backing, you're flushing a backed up toilet. Yeah. I think I want our listeners to really hear that they need to be pooping every single day, every single day. And because you wouldn't like you said you wouldn't think about not flushing or stool or, you know, having it, having it back up.

So I said, Doctor Marta, what can people do who have had their gallbladder removed? I mean, that's the storage place for bile. So what recommendations do you have for those people? Well, I usually recommend either diet either or both digestive enzymes. Digestive bitters, you know, is to use them in cocktails in the 50s. And those are coming back. Not that you need a cocktail, but I used to have some on my desk and have people try it. You know, some people like it. You know, you can put it in different things and other people just, you know, sneer at it.

So digestive bitters, get your bile flowing, they get your digestive enzyme flowing there. That's what they're why they're called digestive bitters. Right. The other thing that I love for bile flow is Tud, aka capital T, capital U, capital D, capital C, capital A tadka. I have found that women who had their gold bladders removed. It's a game changer for them. They can't believe how much better they feel. They don't feel that gas and that bloating and the fluid sitting. It really helps a lot. And and, you know, again, keeping your gastrointestinal tract flowing.

So hydration, exercise, fiber and, you know, most people are deficient in magnesium. So especially if you're constipated, magnesium is extremely helpful. And magnesium is good for about 300 chemical reactions in the body. So but I find that people, if they're constipated, sometimes use the wrong form of magnesium. All right. So if you're using it to sleep or, you know, for anxiety, magnesium three and eight crosses the blood brain barrier. That can be helpful in some. If you have a lot of muscle tension.

Magnesium malate is good. The best magnesium for constipation is magnesium. Citrate. So that one is good for constipation. And if people have a tendency to lose bowels, magnesium glistening is good because it doesn't have that effect on the mouth. So magnesium is my go to because I try to recommend supplements that do more than one thing right? Oh, that's so great. Let's go back to tadka. I've never heard of this. Tell us more about tuck. But it's possible. So it changes the composition of the bile.

So it's bile salts okay. That's what it is. It's bile salts. And you know, a lot of I have people coming to me with gallstones and they don't want to have surgery. And I'm glad that they do, because you can change the composition of the bile. So you may not get rid of the stones or they may, you know, melt slowly and you have a problem with the stones. If they get stuck and then they, then they, they cause pain and then things get infected and inflamed, you know, then it's an emergency. But I find that if you have less saturated fats, more, omega three fats.

So I use fish oil to change the composition and TCA and again, plenty of fiber. And I, you know, I look at a lot of other things, but these are very simple things. And lo and behold, you know, I had someone come to me a few weeks before surgery. I said, I need a little more time to that. Right. You know, it's not going to get better. But she decided to, you know, postpone and she's canceled it completely so that this is a pearl. Folks. This is why I was so excited about having you on Lorraine, because, you have so many of these pearls with 40 years of experience.

Doing holistic medicine. So, tadka, look at this. I mean, this is new to me, and I'm thrilled to know about this, to help people. Well, I'm a nerd. I'm constantly, you know, I never stop reading and studying. And every week I write a blog and I look and I do research and say, what's new? What's new, what's different? What? What is something that most people don't know about? I mean, all of these really common things people don't know about. And I want a little twist, a little something different that, you know, it not just makes me stand out, but it under.

So people have to understand health is an evolving field and our world has changed dramatically. Look, I grew up, we had fresh food from our garden. There weren't a lot of chemicals at the time. There weren't as many of those processed foods. We ate healthy and fresh. And, you know, now we're exposed to about 200 chemicals a day. And those chemicals cause cause inflammation. They damage your immune system, your hormone system and your nervous system. And we have to clean up our diet. And I started with my elimination diet when I had tuberculosis.

Bile flow, gallbladder support, and magnesium 17:20

And, you know, I eliminated 3 or 4 things. But now I have people eliminated 9 to 10 things. Right? Because there are too many artificial flavors and coloring foods and dyes that weren't really in the foods I was eating at the time. So it's you have to keep up on this stuff, right? So there's so, so much change going on. Yeah, so many good changes happening right now and so many people, you know, talking about this. Thank you for talking about normal. I joke about normal all the time. Lorraine. And, you know, normal is dehydrated, irritated, constipated, frustrated, overscheduled, overstimulated, undernourished, under rested, and totally stressed out.

That's normal in our world. And you know, normal is not where any of us want to be. And I know it's none of where none of our listeners want to be. Thank you, listeners, for for a appreciating optimal. So, so that's a really great segue into something I've heard you speak about, in terms of stress management and that is hard math. In the 200 plus episodes we've had of Vitality Made Simple. I never talked about heart myth. Tell us everything. I love that you know where as you said, stressed out, overstimulated.

And we need tools. Because I say to people, what do you do to relax? Oh, I do yoga. I read a book. Well, in the moment you can't do that right. You know, we're we're bombarded with stressors all day long. Hard math is like deep belly breathing because because I use the analogy, if you only worked your biceps, your arm would be stuck in a curl. And you, if you didn't work the triceps, you're stuck, right? So we're working the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight nervous system all day, every day.

And we're not working the other part. So what a deep belly breath is, is it stimulates parasympathetic nervous system. That's the rest. Digest, reproduce, rate repair rejuvenate. So what hard math is there are 200 studies on this. And you know I'm going to show my age now I implemented hard math and my big company back when it was on cassette tapes. Many of you, it's not that long ago. Many of you I had. It was yesterday. I still have some, so there are 200 studies on this, and it was used in elite athletes and CEOs to enhance, decision making in innovation, creativity and performance.

Right. So then it was brought to the public. I mean, you can get it as an app on your iPhone, but you don't even need the app. So we teach it and it's deep belly breathing, deep and slow. That activates the parasympathetic nervous system, focusing on your heart and focusing on someone, something or someplace that you're deeply grateful for because you can't be in gratitude or fight or flight when you're in gratitude, it's it's a whole different ballgame. Yes. Right. So I practice gratitude and I in between every patient I do this and it takes seconds seconds.

So I had a person working for me who is an avid meditator, and I hooked her up because I have the desktop model. I did executive physicals and it shows a graph. So she's there. I said, you relax and she's there. Yeah, bring it on. Like she's meditating. I said, okay, so I see a wave that is a little choppy. It's a sine wave. It goes up and down. That's our normal pattern of breathing and heart rate. Right. So then I knew I knew she loved her dog. So I said, think of your dog. You actually could see visually the change in her demeanor and that sine wave was nice and smooth.

And then I asked her, I said, did that feel different? And she said yes. And then she opened her eyes and she saw the difference. So it's more powerful when you do the breathing, focusing on your heart and focusing on something, someplace or someone that you deeply appreciate or you're grateful for. And it's a game changer and you feel different. Everyone who I've taken through this say I do feel different. And did that take long? No, but it's kind of like learning how to type or practicing the piano.

You need to practice it when you're not stressed out. And then it's like that. It's so easy. Another great pearl. Because I think even you've seen people get so stressed out over health practices. I mean, trying to do everything so perfectly in eating and exercising and, you know, sleep and everything turns into a stressor in life. So hard math is is so key. So, so, Lorraine, if somebody just says heart math, it's in MIT. Where what do they look up to? Get started? Well, they they you know, I have a coach that trains people in that they have trainers, they have a sort of a free.

I'll take you through heart math quickly if you want to and you want the biofeedback part. You can buy the app for the phone hard Match.com. You can buy the app for the phone, and you put a little clip on your ear and it will show you in colors. I back in the day, they had those, stress that you put the stress on and if it turned black, you were stressed out and if it was like it, you know, and deep green, you're all relaxed. So it's sort of a reminder. And I have I in one of my programs, I give people buy I get people to get the bio.

So you could put it, you know, right here on your, you know, between your thumb and forefinger. And that's a good spot to put it so hard. Math.com. And you know, you can buy the app but you don't have to I do it without the app. You know, just get it. It's helpful to get some training. And I bet you if you you googled it on YouTube, there's people that are doing it there. I have a very short video on it on my YouTube channel. I call it Insta com and but you know, sometimes some people need longer and if you're like me, type a, oh, I just show me fast.

Well, Insta. Yeah, you want Insta. But it's so good to practice that. Well, when you don't need it. I think that's great advice. Absolutely. I look up every morning and do gratitude and.

HeartMath and stress reduction techniques 23:58

And before I go to sleep. Yes. Well. And that was my next question. You're such a warm and caring, health care practitioner. Physician? What do you tell your patients, in terms of, of sleep hygiene? Well, most people know dark room, cold room. But the two things that disrupt the circadian rhythm the most are light at night and snacking, late night snacking that will that will stop. Ouch. Melatonin. Ouch. Yeah. Ouch. And again, there's a car wash and you have your circadian rhythm. It starts with the light dark clock, the wake sleep clock.

And in sleep a lot of things start happening. Your kidneys filter, your liver filters. You start producing growth hormone. So if you disrupt that clock, all those other clouds kind of are out of sync. So if you set the alarm for 12 and all your clocks are going a little off, you're just never in sync and nothing is really going to work, right? There are people who have circadian rhythm disruptions tend to have more, illness, more disease, more gastrointestinal illnesses, ulcers, cardiovascular disease.

You don't feel good, you have more fatigue. So light, dark, cool. Don't don't, snack late at night and don't do anything really vigorous or disturbing, because I remember my friend told me about this show, Ozark, and I started watching, and it was so violent. I mean, it was a little bit addictive because you wanted to know what was happening, but it disrupted my sleep. I had to stop, you know, it's so good you protected your sleep because people will, you know, come in so tired and they'll be like, well, I was binge watching whatever last night.

And, you know, in along and they'll suffer for days because of that. Yeah. And you can watch it earlier, you know, if that's something you go for. But you know, and I'm also watching the news at night, I did a newscast, probably six years ago now. I read about I know what's going on in the world. But I do not need to be bombarded with it and have all the pundits like their opinion and their opinion and get all riled up and worked up. So I know what's going on, but I don't I don't saturate myself in it because I find it at night.

It's disturbing. That's great advice because I don't think we're designed to know everything going on everywhere and every possible implication. I think I think in News Fast, or at least, not watching it as much is so healthy for people. Now you are known as the hormone harmonizer. And, I have a disclaimer. Loraine. My my mother, had breast cancer in her 50s. As in it, in it came on right after she started, estrogen. And, so I've had a real fear of any kind of hormone replacement therapy. I'm 66, have never taken hormones.

But you you have some pretty compelling information, and, and I want to be I want to share that with our listeners, because for if it's not right for me, it might be right for other people. So. So tell us you know what you found. Also, tell us about the quiz you have on your website that helps people know if it's right for them. The quiz will tell you what hormone is the most that you have to focus on. So it's going to be either cortisol too much estrogen, too little estrogen. And you know that that's what's called estrogen dominance.

But I've been doing this for many years, ever since I actually studied under one of the world's top infertility specialists, fell in love with hormones. This was before I finished, even before I started residency, and I was going to go into ob gyn. And then, you know, I changed my mind. I changed my mind. I said, you know, and, because there were missing so many other pieces. I mean, so I'm an internist and I have to put all the pieces together. I can't just focus on one things. Hyper laser, laser focus.

So what I learned was, you know, and I, I, I study the studies, I, and I used to prescribe hormones and I prescribed bioidentical hormones long before I became, popular, after Suzanne Somers and Oprah did shows on them. So I, I used to have in the company, there were 120,000 people in this company, and after that woman came down, you know, complaining, I learned and I, you know, had I studied everything. And you know what? We've found that over the years, you know, people came and said, I want what she's having because they were having bioidentical hormones, not the army horse urine, estrogen, the you know, that.

Then there wasn't they were just coming out with microRNAs bioidentical progesterone. So fast forward. You know, I was there when the Women's Health Initiative came out and I had all these women on hormones, and everybody was so scared and there was not enough guidance. That was a big piece of misinformation. And we know when misinformation goes viral, it's very hard to correct that. And in 2017, the principal investigator of the study said it was hijacked. The press got a hold of it before the all the scientists got to put it into context.

That information came out. There were eight more cases of breast cancer, so it increased breast cancer risk. And what we found fast forward is, you know, you always compare the group that got the hormones with the control group. Now the control group is supposed to represent the the number of cases in the population. The general population. Well it just so happened that that control group had a lower risk of breast cancer. So it made it appear that the group that had the breast cancer in the hormone group were higher, but actually it mimicked the same rate as a general population.

Now, of course, they were not bioidentical hormones. Estrogen was given orally. So if you take it by mouth, a pill, it goes through the liver and the liver makes clotting factors and that increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. Well, that's why most women stopped it. That and then this whole oh my God, it causes breast cancer. Fast forward, if you give estrogen through the skin, the risk of clots is negligible. No one can say never because some people have a genetic predisposition for clots, whether they're on hormones or not on hormones.

So you have to look for that. Like, I don't give it to people who have had a deep vein thrombosis

Sleep hygiene and protecting circadian rhythm 30:48

or a pulmonary embolism, because those are life threatening. I do not give them to women who have had breast cancer, and I do not give it to women who have the Brackett gene. All the other is is a quality of life. And the subsequent studies have shown estrogen does not cause breast cancer. These are all the latest studies. These are not the ancient 2002 studies. These are the last 3 to 5 years. A lot of studies came out. Synthetic progestin do increase the risk of breast cancer and natural bioidentical or microRNAs.

Progesterone is safer. So. So we don't give it the way they gave it. We don't get the clots. And the North American Menopause Society and 20 other organizations now say the benefits outweigh the risks. So many women suffer quality of life issues. So my course is HRT for you. It's a very inexpensive course that one has. You do all these self-assessments. What would happen if I did take it? Do I have those big three? If not, okay, fast forward, what is my quality of life now? Because when I was going through perimenopause, I was tired, I was irritable, my periods were irregular, I was losing hair, I was gaining weight.

And my best friend said to me, your personality changed and I would walk into my office and I had a big staff and you'd see them scatter and run. Oh, what kind of mood? And today. Right. So I didn't realize because I, I was always trying to have self-control and well thought out decisions, which you did. But that year, you know, when you get tired, that irritation comes out. And that soured my relationships. And I see women having relationship problems when they're going through these transitions.

And I have a theory midlife crisis, maybe hormonal. Okay. It's just a theory. Women are irritable and snappy and in your face, it's like perimenopause is like PMS and they're in your face, you know? Right. And then the men go through and rapports and it's not dramatic at all. They're sort of like, tired, withdrawn, you know, a little grumpy. So the women are moving towards the men's are moving away and I have couples sitting in the office and I explain hormone imbalances to them, and they're all nodding their head.

So I think I'm onto something, but I there's no study that's going to prove it. But hormone one of my patients said it beautifully. Hormone issues are real. And if you have risk factors for heart disease, dementia, osteoporosis, you have a poor quality of life. This stacks up higher than that infinitesimal risk of mate, possibly breast cancer. You're not going to have the risk of clots. And you know, if you have a good gut and you're you're pooping every day and you have it and you're staying away from toxins and you have your you're loving your liver by not having a lot of toxic substances.

I say consider it. So if anyone who takes my course is HRT for you, you're going to have all these assessment tools you're going to know what hormones will help, what hormones will hurt, and the part. And you're going to have a list of all the studies, like, I'm a nerd and that has been a game changer because somebody is going to tell you, don't take that. Your doctors, your nurses, your health care professionals, your coaches, your family, your friends, and you'll have this. And you say, look, these are recent studies from big name teaching hospitals, from real MDS, from the top medical journals.

And they are real and this is real, and this is somebody given to me by somebody who has 40 years experience. You know, I, I only saw breast cancer in my practice on women not on hormones. And also women who stopped follow up or their stress was off the charts and they didn't do any of the things I told them to do. Well, and it's not you know, it's so key that it's not one size fits all. I mean, someone can figure out their specific life situation, what they're willing to do in terms of lifestyle strategies.

And controlling stress is certainly part of that. I mean, I, I don't like one size fits all clothing. So, you know, why would we want one size fits all health strategies? I mean, it's there's so many issues and, you do a great job of talking about cortisol. We think hormones and we just think estrogen, primarily progesterone. Testosterone. But cortisol is a huge piece of the hormone harmony.

Hormone therapy, safety, and the HRT quiz 35:48

Yeah. And if cortisol is up, you feel good. Hormones are down. And I have had people where they didn't even need to go on hormones. If we got their cortisol in check. And men I mean, believe it or not, I have some at home come to me. I don't really want to be on testosterone. Well, I measure their cortisol to the roof. We get the cortisol down, and sure enough, it's like a seesaw. Cortisol goes down, testosterone goes up, cortisol goes up, testosterone goes down. Same thing with all the other sex hormones. So.

So then, Doctor Marder, what do you tell people when you, when you're working with someone for it to lower cortisol? What's what what are some of your strategies? It's lifestyle TLC, radical self-care and self-care is in a bubble bath or massage. Self-care is saying no. Self-care is setting appropriate boundaries because everybody's hitting you with something. Do do do I want this? I want that, and you know you want to please everybody. Well, this people pleasing is killing you. So saying no to something that you know, in a nice way allows you to do the things that you really find fulfilling and nurturing.

So saying no is a big one. The other is, you know, eating nutrient dense foods. You know, this fast food, processed food, simple carbohydrates, sugar. They're they're alcohol, caffeine overdoing it is a no no that really. And and this goes for cortisol high too high or too low. Too low. Cortisol too little. That's burnout. You know high cortisol stressed out low results burnout. And avoiding those stimulants, avoiding toxins and taking the time. Like that's why I do hard math between every patient.

Because I want to sort of clear out the energy from the patient before because sometimes it's heavy. You know, people have things going on in their lives that just break my heart. And, you know, I send them love and I, I clear. So I'm in a fully present for the next session. And like I said, it takes seconds and I do it little mini heart mounts throughout the day. And you know when when I'm really tense, I'll do, you know, maybe three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. And it's so relaxing. So find the relaxation chips for you because you can just go out and read a book or do yoga or walk in nature all day.

You know, that's like, you know, what is it, half an hour to an hour a day or exercise? What about the other the rest of it? Right. So I also teach people vagal exercises, which stimulates the vagus nerve, which is that parasympathetic rest digest repair rejuvenate response. And it's it's they're free. It's as simple as, you know, I sing in the shower, singing just releases tension. Right. It's and it's very joyful because this way nobody's going to, you know, you see, my, my voice is a little froggy now because I just got over one of those respiratory viruses.

But who cares if you don't sound good in the shower, right? Then when I'm cleaning up or straightening up, I hum. When I brush my teeth, I gargle, and then I do a little gag because all of those things stimulate the vagus nerve. Dancing. Like, sometimes if I'm cooking, I'll, I'll put on nice music and I'll, you know, about these things, just release joy and be. And you know what people always say. What's the most important thing I said, find some joy. A that is so such a stress reliever, but you've got to make it happen.

It's got to be a decision that is just wonderful. Those are wonderful strategies. Lorraine. Thank you for those humming. I mean, I think, you know, there's been studies on humming and how it totally changes physiology. Yeah. Everybody can hum. Yes. You know, chanting is good, but not, you know, it depends on where you are. Right. So those are free. They're accessible. They're easy. Of course. Yoga, tai chi, prayer, meditation and mindfulness, all of those are good. And massage. But massage is not. You could self massage that's free.

But you know, massage is not free. But all those other things are free. They're accessible. Yeah. No, it's, I think there's, you know, there's so much wisdom. For, for me, the Bible is a big source of wisdom. Be still and know that I am God. So just to be able to be still, to give yourself permission. I mean, women like you, women like me, we have to give ourself permission to be still. Like we're not, you know, accomplishing anything. We think, yeah, yeah, but doing nothing is really doing something, you know, very absolutely.

It's working. That person. Pathetic nervous system. And it's resetting your hormone system, your immune system and your nervous system. Cortisol affects all of that weight, energy, mood. That's why people come to me. But all of these things fit together. Oh, they notice somebody slaps hormones on you and say, relax. Right. Well, have you legs right? You can't do that. You know, it's you need to take a check, check, check. And you don't have to do it all at once. You get make something a habit, then you add something else.

You make that a habit. Then you add something else little by little. Right? The house is built brick by brick, so your health is going to be that way too. Don't let it overwhelm you. You have such good analogies, I appreciate that. And I appreciate Lorraine. I mean, since you are a hormone expert and have been in this area for so many years, you still don't just write a prescription and tell people, okay, you know, keep driving through the fast food places, keep being stressed out, keep binge watching, keep, you know, holding unforgiveness.

Keep whatever you may. You are truly integrative in your approach. And so, so for anybody listening, you know, I think this has been so instructive. You there's so many things, that Doctor Mito has told us we can do even before the prescription. Yeah. So key. So how can people find you? Your resources? You have a rich, website. Tell us everything. I actually have two websites because of, you know, on one on the doctor. Right. Vibrance for life. That's where if you can see me one on one, I have to be in New York, new Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida.

That's where you get medical care one on one medical care. But because I'm not accessible to everyone and people need this information, I establish a business called the Feel Good Again Institute. So that has coaching courses. Both have blogs read. So they're geared to different things and a lot of free resources. A lot of the hormone quiz is free. You can find that on both websites. And on the Feel Good Again Institute. If you go to, where my courses are, we're kind of re organizing the website.

But is HRT for you? And that is a very inexpensive course and it's life changing. So it has to be the feel good again Institute because if you type just feel good again you're going to get a drug rehab center. And that's not me. So yeah good to know I got Well this is just been a joy. Thank you so much for your time. I've, I've enjoyed learning from you. And, I know that our listeners have really enjoyed it, too. You've cleared up a lot of things about hormones. I think there's a lot of, misconceptions, on both sides of that fence. Yes.

And and listeners, thank you all. If this has been helpful to you, please share it with someone. Please subscribe. Please comment. And and once again, just thank you for being part of my podcasting family. I love doing this. And, join me on Instagram. Just just get out there and enjoy your life. Enjoy your relationships. Blessings. And till next time.