Why You Need to Put Yourself First: The Hormone Survival Course

Introduction and talk overview 0:00

Great. So we'll get started and I thank you all for being here. And as other people drop in, you'll be able to pick up wherever we are. I'm Dr. Susan Sklar and the founder and medical director of the Sklars Center for Restorative Medicine, which actually we started about 15 and a half years ago. It's time's flying by, I must say. The topic of tonight's talk and we're located in Long Beach, California, sunny Southern California which is usually beautiful weather until last week when of course like a lot of the rest of country was impossibly hot and humid.

So the name of talk tonight is the Hormone Survival Course or move yourself to the top of your to-do list. And what we gonna talk about tonight By the end of the presentation, you'll know what causes hormone imbalances, the very many and different roles that hormones play in your wellbeing, how hormone levels fluctuate through the life cycle, and I call it the hormone rollercoaster. And finally, I will give you tips on how to reduce the impact of hormone the roller coaster. So we all have a lot of responsibilities.

There is work, we're active in our communities, were active, you know, religious affiliations. We have children, partners, spouses, parents, friends that we are helping to care for. Lots of multiple responsibility. And most of the time, the people who come to the Sklar Center are at the bottom of their to-do list. Everything comes first. And what I want to go over with you tonight are the components of lifelong resilience of which hormones and metabolic issues will provide you with lifelong, resilience, self-care, community meaning.

family, friends, humans are social by our very nature. And I know the pandemic's been really difficult for a lot of people because our socializing has really been severely diminished. We'll talk a little bit about lifestyle issues like sleep, stress reduction, your nutrition, and your exercise. All of these are components of lifelong resilience and reduction in chronic illness and a healthy lifespan. We want to live a long time, but we want that long to be healthy for as much as possible. So it's not how long you live, it is how well you.

And people forget, just like we hear on the airplane and it sometimes seems counterintuitive, put your oxygen mask on first and then help whoever is with you And I find myself talking to people who are caregivers, for example, about whether they are able to carve out some time in their day for self-care because you get really burned out and sick yourself if you are giving, giving giving unremittingly and don't do something to replenish what you've gotten depleted. And what are the things that happen as we age and as lose resilience and we have lots of young people who come to the Sklar Center.

When I first started this restorative medicine practice, I thought I would be dealing with midlife adults and older and was shocked to find out people in their 20s and 30s who were feeling really badly because of a whole variety of things, stress, toxins in the environment, hormone changes happening way too young. food supply not being as healthy as it should. So people in their 20s and 30s have grown up always eating food that was grown in soil that is depleted of nutrients.

What hormones do and why they matter 4:27

You know, I at least at the beginning of my life was in the 1946, you know, big agriculture hadn't really come in and the changes of fast food and processed food hadn t really came in. So I feel like the first few years of my life, I got pretty good, solid nutrition, but people growing up now, unless the family is really focused on healthy nutrition is very nutritionally deprived. This no longer applies to midlife and older people. We see people of all ages and what's happening when we start to decline.

Number one is that our hormones change and we're gonna spend most of our time tonight discussing that. There's inflammation, which is the underlying cause of chronic illnesses. Their cellular damage,which is caused by toxins, stress or nutrition. A decline in body functions caused by all of these things. Our brain chemicals become unbalanced. Young people are suffering anxiety and depression at really worrisome levels. And some of that has to do with unbalance brain, chemicals and inflammation in the brain.

or immune responses are not what they should be. We're not able to fight off disease as well as we should. And the COVID pandemic has been a real test of the health of our nation. The health our of nation is poor. A tremendous number of people in the United States died from COVID when they really shouldn't have. All of out underlying personal health problems and systemic health problem really became manifest during the Hormones are affected by where you are in your reproductive cycle, your age, you're level of stress, like I said, environmental toxins, sleep, nutrition and exercise all affect your hormones and I'll explain to you later on how.

So we're gonna start talking about the hormone roller coaster and certainly people who go through menstruation know that they are on a rollercoaster. And how do you know it? Well, you feel differently at different times during your menstrual cycle. You may have premenstrual syndrome in the week or two before onset of your menstruation period. It can comprise mood changes and fatigue. There may be changes due to stress at other times in this cycle, but we know that there are hormone changes, and I will show you the graphs of what happens during a menstruation cycle so you'll understand what the roller coaster is about.

And then people giving birth may have postpartum depression, hormone swings, and of course major body changes. People are going through menopause with the loss of hormones. We find all kinds of problems. weight gain and especially around your midsection where maybe you never had it before. Hot flashes, insomnia. These are just a few. Forgetfulness, decreased interest in sexual activity. And I'll never forget, I was doing a study at one time on testosterone and women's sexual function as part of a research project.

And a woman said to me, I wish I had met you 10 years ago because I don't think my marriage would have disintegrated. If I'd known there was something I could do about my lack of libido, and I think that my husband and would've separated and it really broke my heart because they had a relationship that certainly could have been taken care of through the judicious use of hormones. And people who are assigned male at birth, Hormone problems can contribute to low energy, loss of muscle, decreased sexual function, either lack of interest in sex or problems with having erections and moodiness.

And this is often a typical midlife male set of issues. Some people call it the grumpy old man syndrome. And anybody who remembers Oscar and Felix from the odd couple had an example of the Grumpy Old Man Syndrome. So what's happening? The problem is you're not what is called sick. The medical establishment can't put a label on you so they don't know what to do with you. And so you may not be sick in the conventional sense, but you certainly don't feel well. You don''t feel like yourself. And I hear that all the time from people.

I don' feel myself anymore. Then the things that doctors say, you must be depressed here, take this antidepressant, be anxious, and take the sedative. Patients will tell me, I wasn't depressed. I was tired. It had nothing to do with depression. Doctors saying things like, nah, you too young for menopause. Well, menopus changes actually start in your mid 30s. And you can have significant, and that's normal. This is not early or premature menopause. It's the usual menopod starts in our 30 and ends around age 50. And at any point during that time, you may suffer symptoms of menoppause and so to be, 39 years old or 42 years and told you're too young, we're not going to do anything is so unfair.

People get tested and they're told their tests are all fine. Well, yeah, if your menopausal and you have no estrogen and no progesterone and it shows up on lab testing, doctors will say, well, you're where you were supposed to be for your Menopause, status. But that's not where people feel their best. That's where they have their optimal health. And the last one, actually, I was giving a talk at a gym to a group of women and the audio visual person said, her doctor, who I'm not happy to say was a female, said I've been through it too and you just have to suck it up.

That's what I did. So the first thing is to explain what are hormones. And people hear the words and don't really have a grasp on what it is. Hormones are signaling molecules. So how does your body communicate with each other? Well, one way your buddy communicates is you have nerves, and nerves go for inches and inches, you know, nerves start in your brain and end up in you spinal cord or all the way down to your toes. That's a communication highway. But what about organs that are separated, like the pituitary gland in your brain and your ovaries or your adrenal glands?

Like how do they all communicate? How does your mind tell your body when it's ready to have babies and how to prepare for babies?

Hormone roller coaster across life stages 12:18

It's through hormones. So hormones are little messengers that travel around your and land places and change what happens when they land. They affect your mood and memory. We know that, and we've worked with people with cognitive decline, maintenance of hormones is an important part of keeping your memory and brain function. Some hormones like progesterone are very brain calming. And so the anxiety and panic attacks that can happen with menopause are often very much relieved or completely resolved with progesterone, which is a non-addictive natural substance rather than being on something like Vanax or, or quantapen, Which is addicting and ends you up with a whole other set of problems when you use it for anxiety.

Excuse me. Hormones control reproduction. Like I said before, they control your immunity. DHEA, dehydroepiandosterone is very important for your immune. They control metabolism. Thyroid is like a thermostat. And when it's set high, your body turns over more quickly. So if your thyroid level is low, Everything, it's like the engine is turning over very slowly. And what happens with that, your gut works slowly and you have constipation. Your metabolism slows down and your have weight gain. You're collagen production slows and and hair gets dry and brittle and nails crack and skin gets dried.

And you even may have sluggish mental activity because everything, the engine is slowed way down. And in terms of temperature, people who have low thyroid tend to be cold all the time. They have cold hands and feet. I had one patient come in at the very beginning of our restorative medicine practice and it was in the summer and she had a winter coat on. She had such a low thyroid level. and nobody had taken care of it. And you could look at this woman and know what was wrong with her without drawing blood or doing a single test.

Then hormones help you with your stress response, and we'll explain that later. Hormones regulate aging. So the things that you think of, loss of muscle, your hair getting thin, you're skin sagging, These are due to hormone changes, somewhat due the aging, but definitely accelerated by loss of hormone. And there are hormones that you are able to use to maintain yourself. So these things don't have to happen. Hormones like estrogen help to maintained the health of the lining inside your blood vessels.

It's called the endothelium. and estrogen helps to keep it soft and pliable and flexible so we don't end up with stiff pipes instead of nice flexible arteries. These are all the hormones that we work with at the Sklar Center. And I want to just run down the list. The most common ones are estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. And I told you a little bit about estrogen and progeterones action. Testosterone is great for maintaining muscle, clarity of thinking, sex drive. DHEA, I mentioned in terms of immunity, it's also an energy and vitality hormone.

One of the reasons why fatigue sets in as you get older is loss of DHA. Pregnenolone is called the grandmother of all hormones because it converts into hormones, into all the rest of the hormones. And pregnenalone is very anti-inflammatory. It is the chemical that helps you lay down new memories. So it's important for brain function and cognition. Thyroid, we talked about quite a bit. Melatonin, most of you know, is your go-to-sleep hormone. Its also a potent antioxidant. Helps to ward away cancer.

and growth hormone, which freaks people out because they've heard about growth hormones in athletes and abusive growth hormon. But growth hormones should really be called healing hormone. Growth hormone helps to heal all of the wear and tear that goes on in your body. Oxytocin,which gets released during nursing and when we hug somebody, it's called the cuddle hormone is a hormone that can help with social anxiety. It can helps relationships, it can helping anxiety in general, It Can help pain. And we do prescribe oxytocin to various of our patients.

Cortisol and insulin, all of these hormones in white tend to decline as the years go by. Except for cortisol and Insulin down at the bottom. And cortisol tends to go up as we age, and that ends up having adverse impacts on our health. That's part of the spare tire around your middle. The higher insulin is part what we call insulin resistance on the way to pre-diabetes and diabetes, which of course has tremendous impact on your cardiovascular and other health, So keeping levels of cortisol and insulin low is the challenge as we age while maintaining or increasing all of the other hormones.

Now, in general, our hormones are optimal between age 25 and 30. I'm not exactly sure that's true anymore with what I see going on with people's health in General and with young people, but this is how it's supposed to be. And then they decline as we age so that by midlife, and I'll show you some charts later, hormones can be a half of what they were when we were younger. So all the things that give us resilience and energy and keep our mood happy have been cut in half. And then I'm show what happens with menopause.

The hormone roller coaster. Here's a picture of happens during a menstrual period. So the purpose of a menstrual cycle is to build up the lining inside the uterus to get ready to accept a fertilized egg to make a baby. And there are a lot of hormone changes that go on to allow the linings to thicken and get a great blood supply so that it can accept and nourish a fertilizer egg. And what happens during a menstrual cycle, here's somebody's menstruial period. If you don't get pregnant, the lining falls out and you see it as your menstruation period, and the lightning falls down and then starts the cycle.

So the first thing that happens is your estrogen levels go up. That's estradiol to come down a bit. And then they come up again. If you get pregnant, they go up and up, and the lining gets thicker and thicker. And the same thing with progesterone. Progesteron is low in the beginning of a menstrual cycle, which means from the time you have your period until your ovulation time. Then it goes up up And it also will keep going up off the charts if a pregnancy happens because progesterone helps to nourish the developing fetus.

If no pregnancy, these hormone levels come down and the lining falls out. So you can see there's this up and down, and up, down up. And down. People who have menstrual cycles, a lot of times feel it. And what's happening during this week or so before a menstruation period, you can see your levels of estrogen, estradiol, and the progesterone are pretty good and then they come down pretty precipitously and that can start the onset of premenstrual symptoms, which occurs in 30 to 40% of people who menstruate.

And there are both those hormone changes I talked to you about and some changes in brain chemicals that bring on a whole host of symptoms that we talked about. Irritability, mood changes, fatigue, breast soreness, along with sometimes painful joints, difficulty sleeping, sometimes diarrhea, GI symptoms. Some people get a really overwhelming fear of anxiety, stress, or irritability or anger. And it seems like sugar, caffeine, drinking alcohol, stress, and lack of exercise all lead to worsening premenstrual syndrome and possibly dairy consumption because there are a lot of hormones in milk unless you especially buy hormone-free milk and hormone free meat products that you eat meat.

When, So we use a combination of things to help people who have premenstrual syndrome, and I'll go into some of those later. And then what about pregnancy? So I told you the progesterone levels go up, up and they end up being 20 times higher than when somebody is non-pregnant. The estrogen levels are 200 to 300 times high, huge hormone changes, which for many, many people promotes a relaxation and kind of feel-good response. The issue is later on when the pregnancy is over, what happens to that feel good response?

So this is the beginning of pregnancy. This is human chorionic anadetropin, and this the first month or two after the start of the pregnancy and HCG or human chorionic anadetropin is what we measure when we do a pregnancy test, even a home urine test. You're measuring HCg. And with the started of pregnancy, here goes, progesterone going up, up and estrogen going, and you have the baby and what happened? Kaboom. in a matter of hours, all those high levels that make you feel good and relaxed are down to next to nothing like a menopausal woman.

And a lot of women and people who are nursing maintain those very low estrogen levels and end up with bodies that can feel like menoppausial people with vaginal dryness and pain. So the postpartum hormone changes are huge. And one in seven people will get postpartum depression, and we think it is due to those rapid hormone changes. There may also be contributing things like lack of essential fatty acids, which are found in things omega-3 fish oil and salmon. Low vitamin D and low iron can be contributors to post-partium depression.

And some women have the abrupt onset of low thyroid function post partum. We're not sure why. And this will bring a lot of how you feel to a screeching halt. Then there is the perimenopause and menopausal changes. Here is a young age before having menstrual periods, and here's puberty and starting menstruation periods and progesterone goes up. and during pre-menopause and your menstrual cycle that's up and down during the months. And then with perimenopausal, which is the five years or so surrounding the time you stop having menstruation periods, progesterone will get very erratic and sometimes be high and some times be low until finally there's no more production, your ovaries have quit.

Estrogen has big changes all through the life cycle and gets even more erratic sometimes very low, sometimes, very high during perimetopause. And so what people will experience during Perimetapause is hot flashes when their estrogen levels are low like it is here, alternating with breast soreness, which is due to high estrogen. It's very unpredictable. And I always tell people the only thing you can predict about perimetopause is that your symptoms are going to be very unpredictable. What about some other hormones?

So these are again, this is DHEA levels by age for men and women.

Stress, toxins, and hormone disruption 26:00

Here showing the peak values at about age 25 for both males and females. By age 40, it's about half of what it was, by age 60, about a quarter of it what was. And if you are fortunate enough to live into your 80s or 90, you have virtually no DHEA, and it is your immunity, energy, resilience and vitality hormone. And then here is testosterone decline with age and this mostly applies to people who are male at birth. Testosterone kind of slowly declines at its best at age 20 and then it comes down, down down.

People with ovaries, it will come down, down down. And then in here, It goes down another sudden abrupt decline as the ovarian contribution to testosterone in your body, which is about half of your testosterone stops when your ovary stop making hormones when you're in menopause. What about melatonin? So you wonder about sleep problems as we age. Well, here's melotonin when we're 10 and 20 years old. And then melatonin goes down, down down and is virtually nothing there by age 70. And what about the effect of stress?

This is modern stress, right? Especially in Los Angeles, those of you who live here in Southern California know how stressful it is sitting in traffic. And this was prehistoric stress where an animal was running after you and wanted to kill you, wanted eat you. Now the difference is in pre-history times, one of two things happen. One is that the animal got you And you were dead. There was nothing to worry about after that. Or that you ran or climbed or crawled into a cave or a tree and got to safety.

And your period of danger was fairly short lived and then you had a recovery period and the recovery happened after a burst of physical exercise, which helps to mitigate the harm that comes from the stress response. Now, unfortunately, while we're sitting in traffic, we can't get out and run around the car. And if our boss gets angry at us, we can't up and run around the block, which would be a healthy thing to do, because it would really diminish the adverse effects of your stress response. And so stress is chronic.

It's going on day after day, all day long. What happens with it, and this is a chart of you steroid hormones, They start with cholesterol. So doctors who want to get your cholesterol down to next to nothing are ignoring the fact that you need cholesterol to make hormones and for other things too. And then cholesterol converts into pregnenolone, which I told you was the mother of all hormones. Then pregnenolones converts all of what we call our feel-good hormones, DHEA, testosterone, estrogen on this side, and progesterone down here.

So what happens if we get super stressed, our bodies see that as a red flag, red blinking light alarm problem, and immediately stops the conversion over here to our feel-good hormones and sends pregnenolone into making cortisol, which is our stress hormone and gets us through the stressful period. Unfortunately, when that goes on all the time, we don't make enough progesterone and people have menstrual periods, will have irregular periods sometimes when they get really stressed. Your sex drive goes down.

Some of it's probably emotional, but some of that may be not enough testosterone. So these hormones listed on the left-hand side are the ones that get depleted when you get stressed, And there is a lot of stress. Looking at workers in the United States, 62% of workers say their job is their main source of strife. And one in four workers have taken a mental health day off from work. These statistics were from before the pandemic. What are other things that affect hormones? Toxins. This is pretty nail polish and beautiful colored lipsticks.

And if you're not careful, and we have one patient who had high cadmium levels that are making her sick, partly because she was using red lipstick that had cadmeium in them. So what you put on your lips and what put your skin, you ingest and that gets into your body, whether it's getting absorbed through your skincare or licking your lip and eating it and swallowing it. You want to be very careful about products that you use in your home and on your body. It is estimated that the average American eats about 124 pounds of additives a year and doesn't know it.

So there are addatives that come in foods, pesticides, herbicides, The importance, I think it's very important to eat organic or at least eat foods that have not been sprayed with pesticides because I know a lot of the small farms have difficulty getting officially certified as organic. It's a very arduous and expensive process and requires 10 years of using no pesticides on the fields. But if you can atleast get foods, that are pesticide free, you'll be doing your body a big favor. And then there are endocrine disrupting chemicals that we abbreviate, we call EDCs.

Our bodies think they're estrogen. They look to our cells like estrogen, but they fool our bodies and they end up being interpreted as very potent estrogens and contribute to gynecologic problems such as endometriosis and fibroid. And these are the plasticizers, BPA. So it's important For your water bottle to either be a steel or glass water bottles, don't be drinking out of plastic. And again, to avoid pesticides in your food. So what are the solutions? What can you do to stay healthy? And so building resilience for life, just to go over what we mentioned before.

Self-care, you've got to put your oxygen mask on first. Do something about your hormones. Address stress. address your nutrition, get up and exercise, be sure you get good sleep, and have a community, have some kind of a social, family, friends community. So what does putting your oxygen mask on first look like? It could be taking an Epsom salt bath at night. Epson salts are a magnesium They'll stay. And so magnesium, it's very brain calming. It's one of the things that we use to help premenstrual syndrome and the magnesium and epsom salt in the bath will actually get absorbed through your skin into your body and raise your magnesium level.

Lots of people have low magnesium levels. Why? Because of depletion of minerals in our soil. So produce can't manufacture magnesium it pulls it from the soil that it's grown in. And if the in low in magnesium is depleted, well, magnesium and other minerals, you're not going to get magnesium in your vegetable. It has been tested and the magnesium levels in vegetables have gone down significantly since the end of World War II. You might get a manicure or pedicure. Connecting with nature is one of the most healing things we can do.

The Japanese even have special term for it, it's called forest therapy. Taking care of your hormones and Suzanne Summers, I used to say, oh my goodness, what does Prissy know about hormones? But Suzanne Somers just wrote this book about her experience going through menopause and how hormones help her. It's not a medical book. She doesn't report to give medical advice. but she told the compelling story and it's made a lot of people aware of the fact that you could do something about how you feel and you can do about your declining hormones.

So solutions for premenstrual syndrome. We use progesterone. I showed you where pro gesterones declines precipitously right before the menstrual period. Supporting with pro testosterone, using magnesium, probiotics and what happens in your gut can support you through pre menstruation syndrome vitamins, evening primrose oil, omega-3 fats, a whole variety of things, of natural products that can be used to help premenstrual syndrome.

Lifestyle strategies for resilience and hormone support 36:00

For postpartum depression, using bioidentical hormones, especially oral progesterone. Looking to see if there is thyroid deficiency. Has the person become hypothyroid following pregnancy? Certainly psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy and sometimes medications are needed if it's severe enough. And then what do we do in perimenopause and menopausal? I showed you all the erratic estrogen and progesterone. If we can fill in the hormone gaps when things tank down, there is so much less of a roller coaster of symptoms of sleeplessness and hot flashes and mood changes we're able to really smooth that transition very nicely.

It helps sleep because progesterone is brain calming and we have people take it at night and it helps their sleep. it reduces stress and also you want to avoid toxins so that you don't end up with those endocrine disrupting chemicals. So we balance and replenish these hormones And we see benefits of hormone restoration and improved energy and resilience, moods better, more cognitive clarity, better sleep and better libido and sexual function. You can do stress reduction any number of ways. Meditate, yoga, Tai Chi, take a walk.

Everybody's got something different that they do that can help reduce their stress. One of the things that's my favorite is a phone app called Calm, C-A-L-M. You could try it for free. And it has guided medication. Now that drives some people crazy and they don't wanna hear talking. They just wanna listen to music, which is fine. But if you're somebody that has trouble meditating, cause your mind keeps going off in a million directions, sometimes hearing the voice that comes with a guided meditation, telling you to relax and offering you some sort of a guidance, like you going down a ladder to go to a very calm place.

or you're walking at the beach or your doing a body scan where you relax various parts of your body starting with your head or feet. Those are ways that people can get the benefits of meditation even if they're having trouble with meditating. And your diet is very important and this to me looks like a renaissance painting. It's got beautiful colors and a lovely arrangement. And this is how you should be eating. Now, this colorful, but this not how should you be. You want to get a variety of vegetables and protein and lots of fiber and reducing sugar and refined carbohydrates because eating things like white bread or any kind of bread, even whole wheat bread turned into sugar very quickly.

And a lot of menopausal people notice that if they stop eating sugar, their hot flashes get better. And why is that? It's because sugar and refined carbs can be very inflammatory in your body. We think that hot flash are the result of brain inflammation in the temperature regulation center of the brain. So anything you can do to reduce inflammation may in fact help hot flashing. The other thing that will help your hormones. And there has been, I think finally it's turning around, but starting in the 1970s, this drive for low fat and with the drive low for fat, people started eating higher and higher carbohydrate.

There is no reason to eat a low-fat diet or very rare reasons to a eat low fatty diet. there are so many healthy oils and even if you're not supposed to have much saturated fat. Olive oil and avocado are not saturated fats. Foods that have healthy fats are nuts, grass-fed beef and dairy, because eating grass metabolizes differently in the beef. You do not end up with lots of saturated fat and grass fed beef, and grasped dairy. There's a company called Wellness Meats that are functional nutritionists, Jessica had told me about, and they have wonderful meats and are all grass-fed.

And you can buy butter like, oh, the name just slipped me, The Irish Butter that is grass fed. Maybe somebody can think of the names. Exercise is really important, but you want to exercise in moderation. And exercise increases testosterone for both men and women. It certainly is a mood adjuster. it reduces risk of illness, breast cancer, cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease. You know, these are our major pillars. And it helps with controlling your appetite and definitely increases your longevity.

But you don't want to do marathons all the time because those actually will inflame your body more. So you want over exercise. People that I hear tell me I exercise two hours a day, every day of the week. That's over exercising. that is not giving a break of a couple of days for your body to regenerate and feel and get the benefit of exercise. And then the last thing. So I'm going to read you from, this is from one of my favorite books. Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer.

It enhances your memory and makes you more creative. It makes your look more attractive. it keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. And protects you from cancer and dementia. If wars off colds and the flu, you'll even feel happier, less depressed and less anxious. Are you interested? And sleep. This is from a book called Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, which has an incredible amount of information the importance of sleep. Now science didn't always know why people slept and it was a real question like why would you go semi comatose for eight hours a day when a predator could come and eat you during that time?

Like how could that be an evolutionary benefit? And it turns out that during sleep there is a huge amount of repair that goes on from all of the damage and stress that goes on during the day when you're awake. And one of most important things that gets released, especially during first part of sleep, the first four hours of night, is human growth hormone, which like I said, should be called human healing hormone. If you short yourself on sleep you, short on growth hormones. You short your self on memory consolidation.

you short yourself on getting rid of waste products in the brain, which get carried away during the night when you're sleeping. It's like a brain power wash. it's hard to believe, but the supporting cells in your brain shrink by 40% during night, so that the cerebral spinal fluid can circulate more quickly and remove toxins and waste product. So how do you get ideal sleep? Number one is don't be looking at electronics for two hours before you go to sleep. And if you really have to wear blue blocking glasses.

Don't watch news shows before bed. They only get you all riled up and you're gonna have trouble settling down to asleep. Have your bed room rather be a sanctuary for sleep and sex. it's not the dining room, it not your office, It's a sanctuary. Meditation before bed will help get you ready. An Epsom salt bath before a bed, will get help you get ready and especially a really hot bath. Because what happens is when you out of that hot back, your body cools down and cooling is a signal to your to go to sleep.

Keeping your bedroom cool at night helps to keep you in a deeper sleep. And we have natural things that we use to help people with their sleep, like melatonin, valerian, passionflower, and magnesium. Maintaining supportive connections, whether it's family, friends. When you hug somebody, oxytocin gets released. And the secret of health for both mind and body is to mourn, not to morn for the past, worry about the future or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

And that's the end of our slideshow and I'm happy to take questions. If you would like a copy of the slideshows, If you would like to get on our mailing list, if you'd like a consultation, you can let us know by texting this number, 562-280-1191 and let know what you're interested in and supply your name, your phone number and your email address. So with that, I will open it up to questions and, let's see, we have a couple of items in the chat. Let's start with those. You mentioned thyroid is responsible for body regulation.

Could it also cause the body to overheat or cause to be at higher temperature than usual? Yes. So we've talked, I talk mainly about low thyroid, and I'll get to you, Yvonne. Hold on one second. I'm glad you put your hand up. We talk mainly about low thyroid function because that's mainly what I run into in my practice. But if your thyroid is overactive, you'll have the exact opposite. You'll feel hot all the time. you will feel hyper and jittery. Your hair instead of being dry will be oily. And so that hyperthyroidism or over active thyroid can cause your body to feel warmer than usual.

Hot flashes, which happen due to low estrogen, also can make your body feel hotter than it should and feel like it's overheating. Thank you, Kerry Gold Butter. I don't know why that just flipped my mind. Anyhow, thanks a lot to Ellen for letting me know. And Stephanie says, very excited for her hot bath later tonight and we need eight hugs a day. So have you gotten your hugs today? Good. And Yvonne, do you want to ask a question? Do you have your hand up? Yes. Thank you so much. It's good to hear you speaking on all this.

I haven't had a chance lately, but you mentioned a company called Wellness Meats? Wellness meats. Yeah. I don't know if it's wellnessmeats.com, but anyhow, it is called Wellness Meats and if you look it up, you can see what they have to offer. They offer all types of meat and poultry, some cheeses, and it all grass fed. That's where I've been sourcing my meat supply from lately. Could you mention how many milligrams? Because I've done 500 milligrams of magnesium once I found out that can help. Oh, so really good question about magnesium.

Everybody has different tolerance. So some people take 200 milligrams and they have diarrhea. Magnesium can cause loose stool. There are other people that are on 1000 or 1200 a day. I don't really think you can overdose yourself on magnesium. So we tell people to use it to bow tolerance, meaning until your stools are too loose and uncomfortable. And whether that's for sleep or muscle cramps or anxiety, You know, you start out trying a low dose, like 200 milligrams or 400 milligrams, and then you can start working your way up and look at is this having the desired benefit and is it tolerable as far as your valve go?

And any other questions? You can raise your hand or just speak out. I know it was a long talk. Oh, go ahead. You mentioned, and I was trying to write as quick as I could, you mentioned 40% that the brain cells, they kind of shrink when you first fall asleep and how does that work? They shrink during the first half of sleep. and that spinal cerebrospinal fluid that circulates all around your brain, you know, it's the fluid they pick out if you have a spinal tap,

Sleep, recovery, and closing Q&A 50:00

because they're trying to figure out, if have meningitis or something like that, It goes all up and down your spinal cord and in and around brain. But it doesn't flow very quickly during the day. There's not a lot of space for it. And so there are supporting cells called astrocytes in the brain and they actually shrink down and leave more space between the cells of the brain for this fluid to circulate so that it can carry out waste products. That's awesome. Thank you. It's amazing. And this has only really been figured out, I think, in the last five to 10 years.

I mean, this is pretty new knowledge. Before then, the scientific and medical field was just puzzled about, like I said, why would we be unconscious hours a day? How could that be good for us? And we're finding out all of these things that go on. And in the wee hours of the morning, the last four hours sleep during what is called REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep, that is your most creative time of day. A lot of times people will wake up from sleep and go, I've got it. They have something they've been mulling over or they'll suddenly have a creative idea of something that they have been working on, so that's your creative and memory consolidation time.

So all of the things that you've found out about the day before kind of go into a filing cabinet in your brain and get integrated. So sleep is important for your memory, your mood, weight, blood sugar, cardiovascular status. Sleep is so important to all those things. Let's see, and we have a question from Stephanie. Do IUDs have the same harmful effects as birth control pills? So there are a variety of types of intrauterine devices or IUDs. Some of them are plastic only and they act pretty much locally inside the uterus and do not have system-wide effects on hormones.

some have copper wire kind of around the stem and can cause some problems with high copper. And there are intrauterine devices that have progesterone and the Mirena IUD has pro gesterones. Although it's only supposed to act inside the uterus on the lining of the ureth, in fact, a majority of women, I think it 50 or 60%, it actually will prevent ovulation. So what that tells me is the hormones in the intrauterine device are not just staying inside the uterus, they are getting into circulation and affecting your ovlation and how your ovarian function.

However, and that affects some women a lot that they are not able to tolerate. It's an artificial progesterone, it can cause irritability, mood changes. And some woman are able tolerate those hormone changes, but I would say compared to birth control pills, It is less of a dose of hormone. I was an OBGYN for 25 years and prescribed lots of birth-control pills because people had a need to prevent pregnancy. However, the further I have gotten into restorative medicine, The more I see problems from prolonged birth control pill use.

And so it's really a important individual decision. Not getting pregnant is really important for people at certain times in their lives or throughout their life. On the other hand, I feel like people need to be informed if they're gonna be on birth control pills. You can end up depleted in B12 and folate, you can ended up with very high copper and low zinc, which can cause mood problems and other problems. So there are some long-term effects from birth-control pills, as well as the effects of using synthetic estrogen and progesterone, breast swelling and mood changes and bloating and fluid retention, so a whole variety of things.

But I don't want anyone to interpret that I think people shouldn't be on birth control pills. There's a time and a place for it. They're used beyond when they should be used. So they're use for women in perimenopause, they are used for woman in menopausal, They are use people who have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a metabolic problem. And so using birth-control pills for contraception if that's the best option for you is the thing to do. There are lots of other ways to treat some of the changes of perimenopause and menopausal and polycystic ovarian syndrome without using birth control pills.

So that when I think alternatives really should be considered. Then a question for hormone replacement therapy, is it more dangerous to take progesterone with estrogen if you don't have a uterus or riskier regarding cancer? So this question harks back to the 1960s and 1970s where Premarin, and there was a book written, I don't remember the name of the doctor. It was called Forever Feminine. And it was about the use of hormones to maintain health in menopause. The hormone that they used was Premrin, which is derived from horses urine, pregnant mare's urine.

That's how it got its name. It was, and women were given Premarin all by itself. And if you use estrogen, whether it's Premrin or even a bioidentical estrogen for prolonged periods of time, it can stimulate the lining of the uterus and eventually cause a uterine lining cancer. So for people who have a Uterus, It is important to use progesterone to balance out the estrogen effects and prevent that from happening. And it does if you have it properly balanced. Even if somebody does not have their uterus, we still recommend using progesterone because it had so many other benefits.

You don't need it to balanced out estrogen and uterine lining, but you want it for its calming effects, its sleep effects. It's mood effects. And so we tend to give progesterone even if somebody does not have a uterus any longer. Any other questions? You've all been so patient. This has been a real long presentation. I just want to mention again, because I mentioned it at the beginning for people that join later next month on Tuesday, October 11th at noon, I will be doing an Instagram live on burning mouth syndrome and mast cell activation.

So those of you with burning mouse syndrome may want to tune in for that because it's considered to be one of the important underlying causes of burning out syndrome. And yes, Yvonne, let's take one last question from you and then we will wrap up. Oh, you can see this. You were muted. Yes, I can hear you now. OK, You can. See this part of your video on YouTube. We are going to post it to YouTube in the next couple of days and then we send out a message to let to give you the link. I'm going, can I share this with my other friends in that?

Oh by all means. Okay, share away. we want to get the word out. People have suffered for so long because they can understand this stuff and don't know where to go for help and then go see their doctors and they're not addressed. So this, this empowers you with the tools to advocate for yourself. You're, you're you have a hormone problem. That's right. We need the minerals. Now you know. That is right, thank you Dr. Skylar. You know that I do a little bit of grandma's remedies variety of stuff and I am going to share you on my Zoom the next time I come around and I'm going to talk about all this.

And of course, remind them where I got the information from. So thank you. Thank you so much. and thank for being such an active participant, Yvonne. Got it. Empowerment. Great. Absolutely. Knowledge is power, right? That's right. Well, great. I want to thank everybody for and participating and listening and showing an interest and we will see you next time. Yes.