I recently had a great interview with my friend, Dr. Linda! We talked all about the journey of menopause, hormones, and the experience of being a woman. Here’s the transcript of episode 78 if you’d like to read it!
Thanks for being here!
Also, if you’d rather watch it on YouTube, click here.
If you’d like to listen on Apple, click here.
And on Spotify, you can click here.
My guest today is the most amazing Dr. Linda. And well, I know she has a last name, but she’s just Dr. Linda to me. She’s a chiropractic and functional medicine practitioner and a real wealth of knowledge when it comes to women, menopause, hormone specialist, and she helps women all day long.
What do you call it, Linda? What should our menopause season be? Oh, it should be more of a rebirth season. It shouldn’t be like you’re pausing in life. To me, I look at menopause as it’s a new opportunity.
There’s so much wisdom with it that comes with it. You know, it’s been, I believe that it’s been, it’s just looked down upon, like, oh, you’re getting old. And I used to equate that back in when I was in my thirties and forties.
I’m like, oh, that’s an old woman. And I’m like, oh crap. I’m her.
We’re here. Here we are. I’m like, I’m there.
I’m, I’m, I’m past halftime. Yeah. Look at life.
We look at it in quarters, like, you know, 25, the first 25 years, the second 25 years, the third, the third quarter, the fourth quarter. All right. I’m past halftime.
So yeah, but it’s exciting. It’s so many beautiful changes can happen as a result of this. However, if you don’t prepare what you do in your twenties and your thirties impacts everything of what happens in your perimenopause forties and in your fifties.
So why don’t we kind of just like preface this? Because there’s so many women that they think I’m in menopause. I’m like, well, when you look at menopause, you want to look at kind of like perimenopause menopause and postmenopause. So perimenopause is that whole few years.
It could be five to 10 years. You’re still having a period. You’re just in hormonal decline, meaning that your hormones are kind of doing this.
They’re very unpredictable, specifically estrogen and progesterone. Menopause is really just that one day that it’s like, okay, the baby factory is closed. No more babies.
It’s 12 months. I have not had a period that’s officially I’m in menopause and postmenopause is everything thereafter. It’s like, she’s, she’s a closed down and now we have a different job.
So really when we look at it, it’s always, cause I love teaching this to women. I look at hormones as a game. I said, if you know that, um, if you know the players, how to manage the players, you can still kick butt.
Even at halftime, you kind of reassess your life and you’re like, all right, queen Esther is, I call her, um, estrogen. I call her the queen and she’s in everybody’s business. And that’s how I say, she is our testosterone.
However, when we start to lose her in life, it’s just like, it’s a little chaotic. It’s like mama in the kitchen. When you’re in the kitchen, it’s like everything runs smoothly.
It’s like, okay, honey, you chop the onions. You do this. You do that.
Where’s this? Where’s that? It’s in the second drawer. It’s in the pantry. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right. We’re like, that’s queen estrogen. She like knows where everything is.
She’s like, boom, boom, boom, boom. You go here, you do this, do that. Well, what happens is when we start going through that change of life, where we get that estrogen decline or queen Esther, it’s like, she’s not around.
It’s like, everyone’s like, okay, what do we do? Where’s this? Where’s that? There’s, there’s so much more chaos that happens. And so I always say, we got to look at the, like the three really big hormones are going to be estrogen, progesterone. Okay.
Estrogen. She’s our queen. She’s a little sass.
You know, she keeps things in control. Progesterone is her sidekick. She’s the bestie.
She’s like, queen, you’re getting a lot of control. Calm down a little bit or just chill. And she’s like, okay.
And you got testosterone. She’s kind of gives me a little bit of sass. You know, I named them all.
I call her Tessa. She’s a little bit sassy gets in there and she’s like, all right, I’m here. Party on, you know? So those are like three major hormones that really impact a lot of us women when we’re going through that change of life.
But then we also have the thyroid hormone, which the thyroid, I call her, she is the CEO of every single cell in our body. And we literally have like 30 to 40 trillion cells and they all have a parking space for the queen. So what do you think’s going to happen when it’s just like the queen’s not around the parking space is available for her to come in and like, you know, get things going, but she’s not around anymore.
But you also have that thyroid hormone, which also has a parking space, but she depends on estrogen and progesterone as well. You know, things get like a little bit wacky while like, oh my gosh. And when women think like, oh, I’m just going to get on hormone replacement therapy and everything’s going to be good.
No, that’s just one part of it. So there’s a lot. And then of course there’s the other one, I call her Courtney cortisol.
We have all heard about cortisol, right? That she’s, we call her the stress hormone. She comes in and she’s just like, all right, there’s a mess here. Let’s clean it up.
And then she leaves. She’s not, she’s like, comes out with the big guns and cleans up the mess and she bails. But when she hangs out too long, it’s like give a woman a gun and she’s hormonal.
She’s shooting everything up. You don’t want her around that long. You just want her to come in, take care of business.
And she’s kind of like, um, the ambulance comes in, let’s get the dead bodies out of here. Let’s get out of here. Yeah.
And a lot of people are not aware that their cortisol levels have been at 9 million for the last 10 years, just because of life because of stressors, because of being in fight or flight, because of running families and businesses and going to your jobs and all of the things. And we’re just not aware sometimes of what, what would be indications that levels are out of control until all of a sudden they’re all out of control and we’re approaching 50 ish around there like I am. And, um, then everything’s on fire.
So first I want to ask, a lot of people asked, what labs do you ask for? So I’m going to my doctor. I want to get my blood tests. I want to see where all my levels are.
What do we need to get? So like I have two, I have two young daughters. I, I did check their, um, hormone levels in their twenties. I want to know, I’m like, you have to have a baseline.
Okay. So I did check estrogen and testosterone. I’m checking cortisol.
I’m checking those hormones. Typically. Um, most doctors are going to run a CBC, a CMP, and, um, a lipid panel, which is cholesterol.
The CBC basically tells you red blood cells, white blood cells. And in those, in those labs, you can actually pick up infections. You can pick up anemias.
However, some doctors are not trained to look at them that way I am. So it’s, it’s very different. Um, and then you have your CMP, which will tell you a lot about your minerals, your electrolytes also tell you, um, um, liver enzymes, also glucose, which is a big, big factor in, um, once it comes, once, um, menopause kicks in perimenopause, and you also have cholesterol, which everyone just like freaks out about cholesterol, but you need healthy cholesterol levels in order to know that you’re making enough hormones.
Your hormones depend on healthy cholesterol levels. And just because a woman’s cholesterol levels do go up, which they will in times of stress, because you have more of a hormonal demand, the cholesterol level is going to go up during menopause. It’s also going to go up, you know, because our thyroid starts to shut down because we have less estrogen.
We have less progesterone. Shall we say you’ve got to start with those three. You got to check vitamin D got to check iron levels.
You have to check, um, we say, uh, of course, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, um, full thyroid panel. I’m talking about antibodies, free T3, free T4. I also check, um, sex hormone binding globulin, which is, it’s like the little transport system for, um, the hormones.
So that’s also important. Um, I personally check, I have my panel, um, um, check fasting, um, cortisol, I’ve seen fasting insulin. I was on check cortisol.
We check DHEA as well. So there’s, there’s a slew of, of hormones to check in there. And of course, if a woman is still cycling, um, LH and FSH, or some of the, there’s more of a, um, a pituitary hormone that we check.
So those are some of the labs. Typically most doctors will not even check it. They’ll check the first three that I told you, the CBC, the CMP, and your lipid panel.
That’s about it. You’re lucky if they’ll add vitamin D and B12 in there, but you need vitamin D for your hormones to work properly. You also need B vitamins.
You also need iron for your thyroid to work properly, which is, I call her the fat burning hormone or fat burning gland. So those are some of the markers that you have to, um, really look at. Unfortunately, I always say, um, health is stacked against us women.
You know, for one, most of the research out there is done on men, even mice. They won’t pick female mice because they’re too erratic. They want predictability.
So they’re going to choose men. If you look at most of the funding, who is it given to? It’s given to male researchers, not female researchers. It’s like, when we say something, it’s like, well, where’s the research? And if a man says something, it’s just like, they just take it as gospel.
So we’re already, it’s already kind of stacked against us. It’s almost like we have to prove our worth, which is bull crap, you know? And so, so much is stacked against us. Like we think that just because we’re a, we’re a woman that we know, we’re less than, so we don’t, we don’t need to figure out what’s going on with them.
They’re just good for babies. So it’s so- Well, it’s really interesting. So I’ve had several people say that everything that we’re looking at, most of the studies that we’re looking at and reading is about the, it’s done on the male body.
So we really have to be careful because we’re so completely different. And that’s why you’re here and a male doctor, no offense, male doctors, and no offense at all. It’s just, I, if I’m talking about women and menopause, then I want to find someone who’s crushing it and looks like you and walks the walk and talks the talk and knows what to do to be thriving like you are.
And so I think just anyone around, you know, in the country listening, I mean, obviously you can work with Linda and if you can find, you know, a woman doctor, I think you’re just going to have some better feedback. Yeah. I think that’s the key right there.
Yeah. Some questions that I always ask, how can I talk to my doctor regarding this? And like I said, no offense, there’s a lot of great doctors. There’s a lot of great female doctors, but let me tell you this, I’m sorry.
I don’t know what it’s going to be like to have an erection or have issues with that. Just like a man is not going to know what it’s like to have vaginal issues. I don’t care how many women you have seen in your practice, you’re watching a woman eat you.
It’s like watching 10,000 women eat ice cream and go, Oh, this is so good. But you have no idea what it’s like to taste the ice cream because you’ve never tasted it. Yes.
I’m like, there’s a difference between actually experiencing it and seeing it. You go to a young female doctor, all she knows, or a nurse practitioner, all they know is what they were taught in school. They get one hour of what do you do with a woman that’s 40 and over in menopause? One hour.
Yeah. What? That’s ridiculous. And an OBGYN gets six hours.
Yeah. One out of five OBGYNs out there. And most women think I need to go see my OBGYN because I think I’m having hormonal issues.
They don’t know. All they know is like, what are they? They make money having babies, making babies, you know, helping women make babies, delivering babies. Yeah.
Make money sitting down and having a conversation. Well, my OBGYN is a 70 year old woman and I chose her on purpose. And it’s not because of the, it’s, you know, not just being a woman, but to your point, because she’s been through menopause.
So it’s called moral authority. You have the experience and then also with everything else where each of us are on chemistry sets. And so you talk about that all the time.
So the first question was about, besides the labs, let’s talk about optimal levels and how would you determine what is optimal? Because a lot of times it seems everybody has a different number, especially when it comes to cholesterol, but I want to talk about hormone levels first, these specifics, estradiol, T3, T4, progesterone, DHEA. How do you know? Are you, you, you have, obviously you would have to give the feedback from the client. I’m feeling better would be a great thumbs up.
That’s how, you know, but what are you looking for when you first see the labs the first time? Absolutely. It’s a combination of both. So when we look at labs, we were getting the lab results.
Okay. You have this range. Okay.
Well, you’re normal compared to whom? Yeah. Who’s going to, who’s going to the lab, who’s going to the labs. Yes.
Their blood work drawn. Every person I seen there, I’m like, oh, they have this, this, this I’ve been trained for so many years. So I start picking up, but they have a liver issue.
They have a gut issue. That person has some blood sugar issues I’m watching. And it’s so funny.
It’s like so many times I go in there, I walk in and they just look at me like, what are you doing here? You know? Cause it’s like, I don’t look like everyone else because, you know, I look at labs very, very differently, but also to, to, I always say you cannot manage what you can’t measure. So for one, you want to look at labs at what are the optimal ranges? Where is my body going to be optimal? There’s all, there’s some optimal ranges, but also we have to look at it’s your health. It’s your menopause.
It’s you’re the end of one. You’re your own lab. Just because Jane next door is taking ashwagandha, rhodiola, mushrooms, taking 20 different supplements every single morning.
She gets up, she puts her hiking vest on. She’s out walking for an hour. She comes home.
She’s awesome. For other woman, it’s like, I’m tired just watching you. You got to look at as a practitioner, it’s like, I have to listen to the patient, the person that is in front of me, but I also have to look at their labs.
I’m like, if someone comes in and they’re telling me, you know, my cholesterol level was, was high. I went to my doctor and they put me on statins. But before, when my cholesterol level was high, I was, I didn’t feel anything.
I was feeling great. My skin was healthy. I was going to the bathroom.
I had my brain was firing. Everything was great. As soon as I got on the statins, I start feeling like crap.
So then you listen, it’s like, okay, well, let’s look at some of your other markers. Cholesterol elevated by itself does not mean a thing. Let’s look at your thyroid.
Let’s look at homocysteine. Let’s look at your inflammatory markers. Let’s look at glucose.
Let’s look at insulin. Let’s look at other markers. Right? So each of your clients, you do have a range and there’s like a range on your labs, but what do you, do you find that people are very greatly in the way they feel let’s go to estradiol, you know, in a 300 versus somebody else could feel great at a 100.
Okay. Is everybody different? Oh, absolutely. So when it comes to like estradiol, like specifically, you know, estradiol being there’s different types of, when we talk about hormones, a lot of women think estrogen, but there’s different, there’s three types of estrogen.
That’s estrone, also known as E1, estradiol, which is our queen. And then there’s estriol, which is E3, which is more dominant during pregnancy. So E1 is more dominant in women that are going through, are in menopause, E2 women that are cycling, E3 women and that are pregnant.
So typically what we have seen because of some of the studies there, they just want to give women just a tiny bit, just kind of take the edge off of having those vasomotor symptoms, like the hot flashes, I can’t sleep because really that’s what it will help with. So that’s when doctors will give you the least possible just to kind of take the edge off. But if you want to see an impact from a neurological perspective, also from a musculoskeletal perspective, we’re looking at at least a ranges of 60.
That is at 60. I mean, if your ranges are at 30 or 40, it’s like, you’re not getting those protective benefits. You’re not getting the neuroprotective benefits and you’re not getting the musculoskeletal protective benefits as well.
So really, if you want, if you’re at 60 or higher and you’re say you’re at a hundred and you feel awesome, you’re killing it at a hundred, then do it. That’s fine. When it comes to hormones, I’m a such a strong believer that you really should be testing more frequently, not, oh, I’m going to go get my blood work up once a year.
I’m sorry. I don’t think once a year is enough. Personally, I test at least four times a year.
There’s four seasons in a year. We go and take our vehicles unless you drive an electric car to go get your oil change, maybe four times a year, right? There’s certain things that we do. The body’s the same way.
And there’s times where my thyroid was a little bit wonky. So I was checking it pretty regularly, but I was also going what I was feeling with. And it also depended on the patient.
You know, there’s also, of course, that mental component in there where they look at their labs and they let their labs tell them how they’re going to feel. You have to look at both. It’s just not one thing.
So when I look at estradiol, I’m always looking at, okay, I want to see a little bit like 60 up and above. When we look at testosterone, you know, there’s so much controversy. Or if you look at testosterone, if you look at some of the ranges, I think in lab core, it’s like you’re normal.
If you’re at 0.0 to about 4.0, I’m like, you’re normal. If you’re at 0.0, that’s normal. Yeah.
So when it comes to testosterone, we want to look at free testosterone. Okay. Free tells you, total tells you what’s bound and unbound.
Free tells you what is available for your body to use. I like to see everything at that upper half, closer to the four. That’s what I see.
And I, I mean, I, once again, when I talk to, um, to my, to my female clients, patients, you know, I’m like, how are you feeling? What are you doing? Are you doing all this other stuff? Cause there’s a lot of lifestyle stuff that we’re going to, we can get into in regards to hormone replacement therapy. You shouldn’t even be called hormone replacement therapy. It should just be menopausal therapy.
Yeah. Hormone booster therapy. How about that? Yeah.
I love that. You know, it’s in, there’s a lot of, um, so much fear has been thrown into that also with women when it comes to hormones, you know, thank you to the, you know, the, the whole women’s health initiative study, which is a flawed study to start from. And, you know, a lot of that there’s so much changes going on with, with that and taking a second look and it’s like, oh, I think we screwed up, but you know, it’s kind of hard to admit when you’re wrong, you know, it’s just like, when you’re taught a certain way, um, that’s all, you know, right.
And it’s embarrassing at times. I mean, I had to go back and say, you know what, no, having, having cholesterol levels that are low, it’s not the best thing for you, you know, asking for, um, some women is not the best for you. You know, it’s once bio individuality is what we have to look at.
I just, sorry to interrupt, but someone did ask the question about what is the difference between synthetic hormones and bio-identical hormones? Could you answer that question real quick? Sure. Well, both of them are being in labs. Okay.
So when you’re looking at like, um, bio-identical, we always are looking at where, where are they sourced from their, their source, the source is different. Whereas the synthetic, um, in most of the synthetic, you’re going to the oral that has to go through the liver and it’s going to promote clotting. Okay.
That’s what the women’s study was. That’s what they used in the women’s health initiative. So when you’re looking at there’s different types of, um, hormone therapy that you can use for one, if you look at, um, hormone replacement therapy in the form of their screens.
Okay. There’s, um, there’s the, the topical for there’s patches or a lot of women, their law doctors don’t prescribe oral anymore. And there’s also pellets.
There’s trochees as well. Um, I’ve tried them all because I’ve experimented with all of them. And I think this is where each woman has to figure out what’s best for her.
There’s some doctors that they’re going to push pellets. It’s a big money maker. It is just going to be honest with you.
Um, but that’s their bread and butter. That’s how they make a living. Um, I think just like, um, just hormones and pellet therapy is not the best thing for a patient.
If they are not taking into consideration all the other factors like liver, your gut health, you know, diet, exercise, kind of like Ozempic, you know, that’s a whole different conversation, but that if you use it properly, then I think it’s okay. But once again, that’s a bio individuality type of situation. And you have to ask the client in front of you, the patient in front of you, what are your goals? You know, I, I kind of assumed that maybe I shouldn’t, but ask you, um, you know, whenever I see females that come in and they’ve been athletes their entire life, you know, they’re like, I started playing sports when I was 10 years old.
And they’re very competitive. They’re alpha females. It’s like, let’s get stuff done.
Let’s go, go, go, go. You have to look at, okay, her hormonal levels. She may do better thriving with higher testosterone levels.
Whereas the woman that didn’t play any sports, she was just like, you know, kind of just an artsy person. I like to paint. I like to do crafts, nothing wrong with that.
Each woman is different. I’m more driven of like, let’s go, let’s get stuff done. Growing up around mostly men.
I’ve been driven. I’m like that. They call me that alpha woman or that woman that’s like, let’s get stuff done.
You know, and as business, as business owners, most women that are business owners, you have kind of that little alpha that little, you have to have that drive. Otherwise you’re not going to succeed in business. We have to, we have to drive a little bit.
There’s kind of that balance. The problem has come where it’s like, we think we can do things like men. We can’t.
That’s just the reality of it. We can’t, if there’s a fire, if there’s a fire at our house, I hope there’s more male firefighters and female fire firefighters coming in to save me because they are stronger. You know, they can be the same age, but I bet you the men are going to be stronger by then the female by default.
I’m not saying she can’t be as strong, but she’s going to have to do a lot more work to reach that same level of what the capacity of what he can do things. So when it comes to hormones, once again, it’s very, it’s a bio-individuality. How do you feel? How are your other mechanisms working? How are the, how’s the liver working? How is the gut working? There’s so much in there.
What is your sleep like? What, how do you, what do you do for stress? How do you manage stress? What are you eating? Right now? I want to talk about the, the sleep because then at the other categories, we have physical symptoms and then we have emotional symptoms because everybody’s questions were either, you usually had, you know, they’re in one or two categories. So the most common ones are the interrupted sweet sleep and then the sweating at night. And then the emotional, you know, my, one of my questions is, is this just going to, we’re just going to have to accept the fact that there’s going to be just days.
We want to murder everybody. I had to laugh out loud at that one. So let’s talk about the most common symptoms are sleep, weight gain, sweating at night.
Okay. What is the root cause? Well, it goes back to our beautiful queen, queen, I would say our beautiful queen, queen Esther. So because estrogen impact, she impacts acetylcholine.
She impacts BDNF. She impacts dopamine. Those are all, you know, chemical messengers that impact one serotonin is a really a good one there which is a precursor to melatonin.
Serotonin makes us feel happy. You know, we love serotonin. It helps, but also helps us with our sleep.
You know, we also have, it impacts dopamine. Dopamine is like, let’s go girls. We got this.
We can do this. You know, she impacts all these other systems in our body. That’s why I said, she’s the life of the party because she impacts all these other neurotransmitters, all these other systems in our body.
That’s why there’s times where it’s just like, yeah, we just want to murder, you know, murder somebody. And it’s kind of like, or your husband or your kids say something to you, your husband will say, you know, gosh, you’re a little bit grumpy. It’s like, oh, don’t even go there.
No, it’s like, you just want to, you know, or you’ve changed. It’s like, no crap. Yeah.
And it’s frustrating because we all know what that feels like. And we don’t want to feel that way. And we’re frustrated that we feel frustrated.
I don’t want to be frustrated. But the brain, but the brain does change. There’s some new research and I love her.
If you haven’t, if you know, the listeners have not dug into her work and I’m, I keep digging into her work is Dr. Lisa Musconi. She’s a neurophysicist and just, just as a very super intelligent woman. She comes from neuroscientists, both her mother and father at the age of 18.
She was around all these neuroscientists, but also she’s like double certified board certified, like in nuclear medicine. So it’s quite interesting. Some of the research she’s doing with the brain.
So what’s beautiful about the research now, because we, there is not a lot of there’s no money that goes into research for women’s brain, less, less, less, less for menopausal women, but even the brain just even less. So what’s interesting is there’s a part, there’s a great matter part in the brain. Okay.
Which when it’s about 40% of our brain that changes when we go through that change of life, you know, that when you’re when you’re in your twenties and in your thirties, you can hold onto the baby. You can be on the phone. You could be cooking.
You could be doing laundry. You’re like multitasking. You can like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
You’ve just like, you got it all together. It’s like, you know, you have a problem, give it to a woman that’s in her twenties and thirties. She’s on it.
She’ll find the answer like that. You give that same problem, that same challenge to a woman that’s in her forties at her brain is changing because of estrogen, estradiol. She’s going to like fumble a lot more because we also have less gray matter.
And so we also have less estrogen. We, our brain is like full of parking spaces that wants estrogen in there, but we have less of it. Yeah.
So most of the physical symptoms and emotional symptoms is most likely because estradiol is too low. Is that what you’re saying? Yep. And our brain does change because think about it.
It’s kind of like when you have a room, a house with five or six bedrooms and you have kids, every single room is set up for the, for the, the child, right? When they leave the house, it’s like, okay, well now that becomes the hobby room, you know, the craft room that becomes the exercise room that becomes the sitting room. The kids are like, they don’t visit as much. So the rooms change that happens to our brain as well.
So you’re saying that your kids actually do move out eventually. Is that what you’re telling me? Yeah. So I don’t want mine to move out.
I would love to have my kids at home because they bring such a beautiful vivacious energy too. I love having kids around, you know, they say the darndest thing, but so what happens, our brain does change. It’s like, we’re wired to like, you’re like, we’re that mama bear.
It’s like, oh no, no, you didn’t. It’s like kids, they would, they would always, they would try something and I’m like, stop, don’t even go there. And they’re like, does she have like eyes in back of her head, you know? And it’s like, as you get older, they’re like, mom, I already told you that like three or four times and they will be talking to me, but I’m in front of the computer working.
I’m like, honey, don’t talk to me when I’m in front of my computer, because my brain is now wired differently than it was when I was in my twenties and my thirties. And I could do a million things. I was just like, no problem.
I don’t see why not everybody can, can do this, you know, however, as we do go through that change of life, as we do lose some of that estrogen, our brain does change, you know, and it’s going to change even by, by default, because once again, we don’t need those same neural connections that we needed when we were in our twenties, just having babies when you’re in your forties, fifties and beyond. So you can give a woman a task, give her one task and just go to town on that task. You’re like, whoa, dang, I didn’t even think about that compared to, I mean, you just give her one task and just focus on that.
And then that brings another problem with women that the billions of dollars that are lost as a woman goes through menopause and why a lot of women go through so many challenges with not moving up that corporate ladder once they hit their forties. That’s why a lot of women go through divorce as well, because it’s not firing off in synchronicity as it was before when your hormones were like, Ooh, very predictable. When you get into your forties and fifties, it’s like, Ooh, it’s like, you’re like the Tasmanian devil.
One day you’re happy. The other day, it’s like, you want to rip their eyes out. So there are some changes that happen, but you know, what’s super important.
I always say there’s always a backup. I always think of God made our body so beautiful. I said, there’s always a backup.
One of our backup systems, we say the backup quarterbacks, not going to be a star quarterback, but we don’t need the star anymore since we don’t have kids, though. Maybe we’re going to be grandparents, but you do have another backup system. That’s where your adrenal glands come in.
Okay. Adrenals also make testosterone. You actually, most people do not know this and probably most doctors don’t even know this, but your estrogen comes from testosterone.
And your adrenal glands make testosterone. And so you need testosterone to make estrogen. And so, but the adrenal glands also remember adrenals make cortisol.
She comes in and she kind of is like, there’s, you know, there’s drama, there’s stress. She comes in, does her thing, then she leaves. However, when we are under that constant stress, it’s just like, sorry, honey, estrogen, you’re on the backup right now.
I need to handle all this stress. Estrogen, you don’t, we don’t need her right now. We have stress.
I’m sorry. I keep interrupting. It’s really important for listeners to, who are, may not be aware of being under stress because we’re so used to a certain go, go, go 24 seven.
Yep. So could you please explain to women, what does it feel like when your body is when making too much cortisol for too long? So there’s different types of, well, let’s talk about different types of stressors and how the body. So basically I always, when I see patients in my practice, whether it’s for physical medicine, whether it’s for functional medicine, I always say, I know that this root cause is going to be stress.
Physical stress can be anything from, you’re not recovering from your workouts. You’re not sleeping enough. You’re sitting all day.
You can go work out for an hour, but if you’re sitting all day long at your desk, you’re not moving enough. That’s another type of stress. You were in an injury.
You were in a car accident. Okay. Those are some of the physical stressors.
The chemical stress is anything and everything that goes into your body and it is around your body. So when we’re looking at chemical stressors, we’re looking at the food. We’re looking at the soil.
We’re looking at what our cleaning products are. We’re looking at our carpets, what’s in our home. We’re looking at mold.
Okay. We’re looking at smog. We’re looking at water.
Okay. So that’s so we got the physical, we got the chemical, and then we have the emotional stressors. The emotional stressors are how our relationships with our, you know, with our kids, with our partners at work, in our community, we’re looking at all those types of stressors.
So a person says, I’m not stressed. Oh, and you also have your chemical stressors that will contribute to the chaos in your gut, which has a huge connecting with the brain and how your brain functions. So you have that gut brain connection.
All of those stressors are going to impact your gut, which make those neurotransmitters. We’re talking about serotonin. We talk about dopamine.
We’re talking about GABA. We’re talking about those chemical messengers that impact how you feel. And so when your body is under stress, you’re making cortisol.
Cortisol is actually creating so much chaos where it actually will destroy some of those brain cells, for one. Number two, it also impacts your gut. And I want to get into something with the gut and how to optimize gut and even how exercise impacts the gut.
Definitely. Probably less than 0.001% of people know, but it will, you’ll have something like called leaky gut, okay, which is intestinal permeability. And so when you have that, it’s just like, oh, okay, you’re eating good food, but it’s like putting, it’s like putting premium gas in a gas tank with holes.
You’re not going to get the optimal, you know, fuel and mileage for your vehicle when you have holes in your gas tank. And that’s also what happens when we have like, when we have leaky gut because of what adrenal makes cortisol. What are the markers to say if someone says, I think my gut’s okay.
I’m not sure. I think I eat pretty clean and I’m, you know, trying to mitigating some chemicals and I think I’m doing okay in this area. What are some markers that would show that the gut needs some love? So one of the best tests I really, I love doing GI testing, but you can even look at some blood tests.
And what I will look at is I will look at fasting insulin. And I will also look at glucose because those create inflammation. Of course, when there’s inflammation, who starts to show up cortisol is going to show up.
I also look at total protein. I look at albumin. I look at globulin.
I look at uric acid. Those are some other markers that I look at and say, huh, what’s going on in here? Um, I look at the white blood cell count. I look at, um, what’s going on there.
It’s just like a lot of times when there’s infections in the body, I’m always going to look at immunity. And that’s going to, that tells me gut. I go back.
So those markers tell you the immune system is and 16 years, you system is in the gut. And so if a person like autoimmunity, 100% of the time of the people that have come in to see me, um, their guts a mess in women or GI issues, because once again, even estradiol member, the queen, she’s in everybody’s business. She also impacts your gut.
She’s so important. And so, um, yeah, it’s just, it’s all interconnected. I think the fault here with, um, traditional medicine going into allopathic medicine, they’re taught in, they’re taught to look at, okay, you look at just one thing, send it to that specialist.
The more niche you are, the more of a God you are in medicine. It’s like, I specialize in this one little itty bitty piece of the body. You’re the specialist, you get paid more.
So that’s what they’re taught. They’re not taught to look at everything is connected. You know, everything is, we need, we need each other.
It’s a, it’s a community. And it’s the same thing when it comes to the gut that is, that is overlooked. And it’s probably hasn’t been until the last 10 to 15 years, maybe even 20 years where the gut has really been taken seriously.
Right. Remember with functional medicine training, they were talking about the gut and I’m like, what the heck does that have anything to do with hormones or brain health or joint health or, you know, cardiovascular issues? It’s like, no, it has everything. And as I continue to dig into the research, especially even right now with, um, menopause and women having that visceral fat, that menopause, that mental belly in here, the gut is huge.
It plays a huge role in that. So you’re staying glucose would be high uric acid, be high, all those things that you listed, I want to put everything in the show notes would be on the high, on the high end. That would tell you that it could be on the high or low like globulin, um, globulin total protein, whether it’s either high or low can also, um, impact that albumin as well.
So, yeah, there, there’s a lot that you can even, you can look at that as, um, and like I said, I always, I’ll look at the, um, the CBC is why I look at the white blood cells, um, and then the, the subsets of the white blood cell. So, yeah, there’s, there’s just so much and it’s like, and I always geek out on this and it’s funny. Like, um, so many times I will, um, you know, my husband’s like my best friend.
So I’m like, Oh my gosh, you’re not going to believe this. He probably knows more about women’s health than probably any other man out there because of it. It just, it really excites me.
It excites me, but it also saddens me that there’s so many women. They’re not getting the help that they need. You know, it’s like, there’s, there are neural endocrine changes that are happening from a logical perspective or to an endocrine, uh, endocrine system perspective.
There is a change, you know, we, we need to look at that. And we, just like you just mentioned as one example of that, you can have chronic stress, not know it. And chronic stress can cause all kinds of symptoms.
So it really comes down to really getting to know your body and taking good, doing the research and taking, maybe seeing a few different professionals. And then you are the one that’s in charge of yourself. See what works for you.
Test it out. I think everything is instead of someone told me this. And so I will just do this.
Why, why don’t we open our minds just a little bit? And I, that’s why I love having these conversations. Let’s look at the whole body and see what we can test here. And then let’s test that.
And then let’s test that as in some, some HRT, and then try the micro microbiome. You have a whole protocol on how to just, you know, reduce all the inflammation and clean out your gut. And I’ll put that link on in the show notes as well.
If anybody wants to, wants to look at that, but it’s so important. I feel what you’re saying now is looking at the gut, how it affects the brain, how the brain affects the body and all of your systems and organs and cells. And I love that we’re talking about it now.
It’s never too late. It doesn’t matter if you never took a blood test for 50 years, it doesn’t matter. Take one now and then see where you are and then test.
Everything’s going to be a test from there on. Exactly. Something you said that was, I think is worth mentioning is about the mind.
Yeah. We underestimate the power of our mind in any time a person, like when I have patients or whenever I talk to someone, I’m, I’m very mindful of the words that they use. I, they’re like, I, this, I have, I am, and I’m like, everything after I is going to seek you out.
I have this. So it’s like they own it. It’s like it becomes such a limitation because they fight for their eyes.
And so I say, if you’re fighting, I am this will, whatever follows I, or I am, and you’re really just locked into that. It better be a good story because putting your story, you’re creating a story of your life by the words that you’re speaking. A hundred percent.
And it’s just like the story of our life now is because of the words that we’re speaking is because of the thoughts that we’re thinking. And I love that. I love the, I love your work because you will get into when, you know, really exploring the mind is just amazing.
You know, it’s just like exploring the brain and it’s like a, it’s really a new frontier. And it’s just like, I mean, part of, part of studying this. And while I feel that I kind of set apart from a lot of other practitioners, because I love to study everything from getting into the quantum field and, and getting into it, really exploring the mind and how it works and how we can make ourselves sick just by thought alone.
We can make ourselves sick by thought alone. Why can’t we make ourselves well with our thoughts? We have over 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. And most of those thoughts are the same that we had yesterday.
Yes. And people get stuck in that program, their program every single day to start and do the same thing. They wake up in the morning and they’re like, Oh, let me see if my pain is there.
It’s there. Okay. Now I can get up, you know, but we get to program every single day.
And if you have a hard time with that, if you really truly believe that menopause is going to be horrible, you’re definitely going to gain weight. You’re going to have all these symptoms that you’ve heard about, because I remember 20 years ago, I heard all these people, all the, all the things I saw my friends gain weight. I saw their hair thin.
They would always complain about everything that they’re going through, but I didn’t, it didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t connect with it because I didn’t have any of those. I didn’t have any of the same experiences. So I didn’t really even, I didn’t realize I was owning those and I was being programmed with, this is how it is.
It’s just going to suck. And you’re going to be fat and miserable for the rest of your life until I started doing mindset work. And as I get older, and as I got to be closer to those symptoms, and then I, you know, you have helped me optimize all my levels and I feel amazing.
Um, but I didn’t, I, now I know how powerful the mind is. And thank you for saying that, but that’s why I love my work as well, because sometimes we are not consciously, we don’t consciously know that we are thinking these thoughts a hundred times a day. Oh, I couldn’t sleep last night.
I was tossing and turning. This is, I must be in menopause and it’s going to be horrible. And it’s old and I’m going to be old now.
And it’s just, and if that is the MO, if that’s your main fluctuations of thoughts, as you go into your fifties, then you can just start there because you can completely let that go. And you completely rewire to feel the way that Linda talks about it. Now it’s exciting.
It’s a second half of life. We’re in the third quarter comeback. We’re going to be bad-ass.
You can change whatever it is that you feel you’ve already made up your mind about what this, the next 25 years is going to be. Doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to hold onto that.
It can be released and replaced and that’s number one. I think that, I think that’s, I love this part. I love this part because it is missed out by so many practitioners and just people in general.
Like I will listen to the conversations. I’m like, Oh my gosh, I cannot hear these people. And so anywhere I go, I typically, I have my headphones on at the gym.
I’m always listening to something that’s going to be my brain. So I very rarely listen to music. I do listen to music sometimes, but it’s just like, I just want to learn.
And I’m like, okay, I got to look up that research paper, pull out my little phone. And I’m like, okay, notes, look up da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And go in.
And so it’s just so important of like, you speak and your cells are always listening. Those 30 to 40,000 or 40 trillion cells are hearing what you’re saying. We can make ourselves sick.
Just like you’re at the gym and you’re like, come on, the trainer’s pushing you. Come on, you got this. Come on, Karen, one more.
And you’re like, I can. Yes, you can. And it’s like, Oh, and then you, you do it.
And it’s like, wow, you know, he said I could do it. So then I started to believe that I could do this. Yes.
So the, just the, the thought in the belief is simply a thought we keep thinking. And we fight so much for our limiting beliefs, because it takes us off the hook to explore something new, which will take us out of our whole program, because we want to do things we were all programmed to do things a specific way. And when you interrupt that program, it’s like you get pissed off.
But you sometimes interrupt that program in order to create a new, a new solution, a new ending a new chapter. And so that’s what’s very difficult with a lot of women. And so yes, the brain does change.
Yes, our body does change, but it doesn’t have to change for the worst. There are other backup systems. One of the most common questions that I know because we’re running out of out of time right now, but I do I, I really believe it’s super important to emphasize because the number one thing that women come to see me for, besides the vasomotor symptoms of I have thought hot flashes and sleep, I guess we can, I don’t know, which one should we do? Should we do sleep? Or should we do exercise? We’re probably gonna have to do a part two here.
But you definitely will do a part two. So many questions. Yeah.
I’m so grateful for everybody who submitted questions, by the way. We will get to we will get to answer all of them. We’re just going to do a part two.
Yeah. So please proceed. Big one is the visceral fat.
It’s that mental mental belly. That’s that belly fat. They’re like, I am working out.
You know, I’m eating better. I’m cutting my cutting my calories. I’m doing carnivore.
I’m doing keto. And they’re like, and I cannot get rid of this belly fat. I’m spending an hour doing zone two training and I’m still not getting rid of this belly fat.
All right. Newsflash here, ladies. You’re not going to get rid of the belly fat with zone two training.
You’re not you’re just going to create more of a cortisol response. Like in the mornings. We’ve talked a couple times.
I go for a walk in the morning. That’s my soul food. I don’t count that as my workout.
That is my soul food. When I get to talk to God, I get to just be grateful. I’m just happy that I can I thank my body from head to toe.
Thank you, brain. Thank you. I thank you this.
I’m just in full gratitude when I’m out for a walk in the morning. I don’t count that as exercise. I put on a weighted vest.
You know, it’s hard to get my heart rate up being a been a runner all my life. Okay. So that’s not going to do anything for my visceral fat at all.
Okay. The biggest thing that women can do that’s going to change that visceral fat is they have to do intense sprint interval training. I’m talking about you’re like running that hundred yard dash for 20, 30 seconds.
That tiger is chasing you and you’re going to be dinner. You got to take off. You’ve got to do at least five of those.
If you do that three times a week, you’re going to, you’re going to get rid of that visceral fat versus doing zone two cardio 45 minutes, five days a week or three days a week. Why that happen is because it changes your gut microbiome. You get into, I have a, what’s called a hypoxic state.
It’s like, I can’t use this. What happens is you got these gut bugs. They’re called formicides.
They hold onto fat and where that whole microbiome comes in, they hold onto fat. And so if you have that imbalance, guess what? You’re going to hold onto that belly fat. However, when you’re doing that sprint interval training, that changes your microbiome to get rid of those fat bugs.
It also changes the hormones balance and the inflammation. Because when you’re doing that one hour of cardio every day, going to the theory, does orange theory doing all that workout every single day. And you’re wondering why am I not losing weight? Because your gut microbiome has not changed in the way that’s the beauty about exercise.
It’s just like, I love it. When you do that sprint interval training, you’re changing your microbiome. Is that cool or what? So cool.
Women don’t. And so they think that it’s like, Oh, I’m going to do the sit-ups, you know? And like I said, I’m going to go do those long cardio. No, that’s, that’s what I call soul food.
That’s food for your brain, just to like, put you in that gratitude to reduce that cortisol spike. But if you’re out there, just pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, you’re going to make yourself fat or you’re going to hold onto that visceral fat. So it’s super important that you do that sprint interval training.
It’s super important that you get that fiber. You need a diverse microbiome also to get rid of that visceral fat, that belly fat. So there’s a huge connection with that.
So exercise, it’s like, wow, that’s why, and also doing, um, um, we say muscle is the, um, is the organ of longevity. And so you, you, we need to be lifting heavy weights that also impacts our microbiome, which is going to impact that visceral fat that we’re getting. And if you want to get rid of that cellulite, so I wanted to be awesome.
Yeah. You always say that you were like, you got to live to be shit forever. And it’s like, yeah, we know we need to lose weight.
I mean, we need to do weights. We know weight training is good for osteoporosis. Like we’ve all heard these kind of colloquial wisdoms, however you say that word like these.
Oh yeah. You got osteoporosis, you’re going to have strong bones. So you need, you need to always lift weights.
Like I think most people have heard something around that before, but I don’t think most people have ever heard. And I didn’t, I didn’t know this until you just said that, that it, it changes your microbiome and how important the gut is. I was just going to say, sorry, my naturopath just told me, he said that one of the biggest biomarkers, if you’re going to survive from something major, like a heart surgery, we were talking about John is your muscle mass.
Why is that? A thousand percent? Well, it’s the, it’s the organ of longevity for one muscle also is, um, I always tell women, I’m like, you got to make sure you don’t lose muscle mass. You know, it is the organ of longevity. The it’s, it’s a glucose disposal site.
Okay. However, this is what happens estrogen when we were younger and we had lots of estrogen, we had acted in myosin, which are fibers that cause a muscle contraction. We had estrogen to do that.
We don’t have enough estrogen anymore. So now we have to get that muscle contraction from pushing heavy shit. As you said, you said it, I was quoting you.
Yeah, we have, that’s why we have to live heavy weight. Cause now we’re getting the central nervous system response. We’re not getting that hormonal response.
So that’s another reason why we have to lift heavy weight because, um, also we come, um, more insulin sensitive in the less muscle you have, the more insulin resistance you become. So it is, that’s why women you’re losing muscle mass. And that’s why you’re having more glucose issues.
That’s why your fasting glucose and insulin are going up. And you’re like, I haven’t even changed anything. I’m doing everything the same.
I’m like, but that’s what are those little tweaks exercise, do push heavy stuff, do the sprint interval training, increase your fiber. If you do those things, you are going to do so much better. You’ve got to have at least one gram of protein per your ideal body weight.
Or like I always should tell my patients minimum, 100 grams, minimum of 100 grams. I’m always just like, that’s the minimum. As soon as I get them on that, I’m like, okay, let’s start increasing your protein in this way.
Yeah. Because if you have put on some weight, maybe you weigh one 50, but you’re set, you’d like to be 130. Or, you know, that’s your optimal weight.
Then you would do one, you would do 130 grams of protein. You could do between a 30 and 150. But once again, don’t look, don’t let them see this is where the scale comes in.
They’ll throw it out unless you have a scale that’s going to show your muscle mass and bone and you know, what’s muscle, what’s bone, because your body composition, I’ve had patients where they did not lose a pound, but their whole body just changed. They’re like, I wear like a dress three sizes smaller, my body, my scales the same. But they, but they lost all this fat, and they gained muscle, muscle weighs more, it’s your organ of longevity.
And just by having more muscle in your body, you’re likely to survive a lot of those core morbidities that people have challenges with, with, you know, stroke, with heart attack, you know, diabetes, cancer, just the fact that you, you’re not becoming sarcopenic, you’re losing muscle. Yeah, I just got one of those scales. Do you have one at home? I just got one.
Yeah. And then the muscle mass and then the body. It’s so cool.
And I love it. Yes. So that’s awesome to look at.
Thank you so much, Dr. Linda, we are going to get to the rest of the questions in part two. Thank you so much for taking your time and energy to be with us and share your wisdom and answer so many questions that I got. I appreciate you so much.
Absolutely. I love it. Thank you so much.
