The Underlying Causes And Solutions For Women’s Hormonal Imbalances

even simple meditation 15 minutes twice a day can cut back on can significantly cut in half the amount of hot flashes a woman has [Music] hey everybody its dr. Mark Hyman welcome to a special episode of the doctors pharmacy that's pharmacy land half a day I may see why a place for conversations that matter and if you've had any hormone issues whether it's menstrual issues or menopause or perimenopause or bad pap tests or anything this is the podcast you should listen to it's with my colleague and friend and partner with the ultra wellness center dr. Elizabeth boham and she's joining us on today's special episode of house call on the doctors pharmacy and she's an incredible doctor she's had struggles with herself with hormone issues and breast cancer so she knows a lot about this and we focus on chronic diseases that nobody else can figure out and get people better when no one else can using a very different model of care called functional medicine so I'm super excited to have you here Liz thank you for joining thank you so much for having me mark alright let's get into it how prevalent are hormone imbalances for women oh man I mean when I see a woman you know so often we're dealing with hormone imbalances they're so prevalent you know everything from as you mentioned PMS to you know to issues with menopause and perimenopause to issues with estrogen dominance right or over over levels of estrogen high levels of estrogen in the body which can lead to breast tenderness or more PMS or cancers like uterine cancer and breast cancer fluid retention and heavy bleeding that to symptoms yeah so so we're really thinking about hormones and hormone balance when anybody comes into the office so I mean that's something I think that that's an area so common right 75 percent of women suffer from PMS how is that normal it's not a normal state of biology brain abnormal state right just because it's so common doesn't mean it's actually optimal right absolutely so then we need to ask that question why why are the hormones out of balance and we look at everything from how is the body metabolizing their hormones how is the microbiome and how is that influencing it how is the person dealing with stress and is that influencing their hormone balanced yeah so you know you want to look at look at the whole body when you're trying to figure out what may be out of balance with somebody's hormones infertility issues I mean getting so common no common you know so 107 couples it's big and and so when you go to a regular doctor and you have this you know symptoms of PMS or heavy bleeding or you know menopause like what do they do it's so often they'll say okay I'm gonna put you on birth control pills oh yeah right right like if with with PMS and or regular cycles or perimenopause that is the common response you know let's just start some birth control pills and that's gonna even everything out that's safe I don't know I mean it's a good question right I mean there's there are side effects to birth control pills you know we see we see we see stroke and blood clots with some women birth control pills infections fixing microbiome absolutely there's some there's some women where we know that the longer you've been on birth control pills or if you're on them more than ten years or if you're you know your risk for breast cancer goes up so there is an association with long term use of birth control pills just breast cancer yeah yeah so you take the pill for a long time and your risk of breast cancer goes up yeah for women when they're on the birth control pill or if they've been on it a long time they have a slightly higher risk and you know so that's something we got to pay attention to not everybody handles the hormones in the birth control pills the same being prescribed birth control for birth control the uses a medical therapy for hormone imbalances when there's a very different way of treating it absolutely works better for you the women feel better and their hormones get imbalanced without nasty side effects of stroke and cancer right right I mean you really want to hydrate migraines - absolutely so you want to ask well why is there that imbalance in the hormones and and what may be out of balance for that woman you know I think perimenopause is such an interesting time where we get a lot of women who come in to the office at that time because they're just feeling so crummy right perimenopause is the timeframe between when you're between when your cycles are normal and you can easily get work you could get pregnant and menopause so perimenopause are those years you know you know it's can be they can be like 10 13 years perimenopause and it's can occur anytime you can go into menopause anytime between 45 and 55 that's typical and that perimenopause can be 10 6 to 10 to 13 years beforehand before you actually go into menopause is considered perimenopause and it just matter yeah I mean there's there's just the this the hormones are not as regular and consistent right so what happens a lot in perimenopause is during those years women will have what are called an ovule Ettore cycles hmm so so they don't ovulate every time they have a monthly cycle right and so those an ovule Ettore cycles meaning no ovulation that month results in less progesterone being produced in the body because when you late that's when you make progesterone right if you're sort of weaning down your years of reproductive life you don't necessarily make progesterone you're ovulating every cycle you get these high levels of estrogen right that causes a lot of these symptoms lots and heavy bleeding and then PMS and mood issues and sleep issues and migraines and all this stuff that women suffer from it is so unnecessary right you think of it as you know when you're having regular cycles with ovulation you have estrogen and progesterone and they sort of balance each other out and then when you're in those perimenopausal years you're gonna have so many women will have cycles where they don't have that progesterone spike so it feels like their body feels like it's higher an estrogen because they don't have that progesterone to balance it off and so you feel like you have high estrogen and and like you mentioned you get more breast tenderness or more clotting or heavy or bleeding and and the low progesterone makes us often feel crummy so you can be more irritable you can just you know cranky harder time sleeping because progesterone really is a calming hormone and it helps us helps women helps people sleep better so when it's low many times you don't sleep as well you'll have you regular sleep patterns where you've never had that before and-and-and you just feel more irritable and cranky and and and and you know it's it's important to understand that we know a lot about what causes these imbalances and we know a lot about how to fix them except your traditional doctor is just not doing it yeah one of the things that we know create hormone imbalance that make things worse for women and and by the way you know just to sort of a little aside you know it's not just sex hormones that get out of balance and when you when you see this sort of period of life around perimenopause there's like four different hormones that are all interacting it all kind of gets screwed up one is insulin and blood sugar yeah because you're you know you're often the Sandwich Generation you're you have kids and your parents are getting older and you're trying to have a career and it's like it's a lot going on at that time for women often yep and then they have estrogen and balances and progesterone they have adrenal imbalances because their adrenal glands or their stress response and they're highly stressed and that time of life so their adrenals interact with the sex hormones and screw that up and then of course you've got thyroid thrown in there in a lot of cases so you got thyroid adrenal sex hormones insulin and so it's like a big mishmash of hormone chaos yeah and actually you can fix it absolutely like so easy to fix and functional medicine yeah yeah and I'm so glad you brought that up because all of our hormones are interrelated they're all playing off each other they're all influencing each other and so that's important to really understand because because that's how we can really help women feel better yeah so when you really focus on the adrenal glands for example so you have you have two adrenal glands typically they sit up on top of your kidneys and those glands produce cortisol and they produce DHEA and they a bunch of other things yeah so cortisol is one of your stress hormones so when you're under a lot of stress if you're under chronic stress for example I mean you you know your body is going to be producing a lot of cortisol all the time and so what can happen what can happen is then the body is spending all this time making cortisol to handle that that chronic stress you're under you're dealing with your your kids and then your parents as you talked about you know you're working all the time your job yeah you're not giving your body enough time to rest you're not getting enough sleep you might not be eating right you know you might be just running from one thing to the other it may not be taking the time to do your meditation or your exercise right you're just not doing that self-care which is so important for your adrenal glands and when that's when that's happening then then your body spending all this time producing cortisol that it can't do as good a job at producing progesterone yeah right right and so the head it's like a chicken wired thing it's all connected it's not like all separate right and so then you have more of those signs of low progesterone which we talked about before which is a regular sleep irritability you know more crankiness more PMS right so so it's really important that we step back and say okay how can we support your adrenal glands and and that's really a lot of self-care you know by saying okay I need to give my time myself time to rest I need to give myself enough time to sleep exactly gotta get my meditation in right and and I think that makes a big difference it can really help with with balancing the hormones we know right that even simple meditation 15 minutes twice a day can cut back on can significantly cut in half the amount of hot flash as a woman has during those perimenopause that we haven't even talked about how flashes yeah well I mean let's talk about the things that screw up your hormones right yeah so sugar yes that causes in some resistance that causes more estrogen be made and all the imbalances right right we were talking about how when you when you get more insulin resistance you gain more weight around the belly right and we know that when we gain more weight around the belly we have more of that aromatase enzyme which makes more estrogen and again throws us out of balance and what about alcohol yeah alcohol alcohol really is a concern because the because the way alcohol there's multiple ways that alcohol can impact risk of breast cancer for example but it also seems to result in a higher level of free estrogen in the body yeah and so you know in it we know it disrupts sleep it's a liver toxin yeah and it literally impedes the body's ability to metabolize estrogen yep and I've seen studies that was shocking to me where people were on hormone replacement and drinking and their liver just can't handle it and estrogen levels spike yeah and their risk goes up so we have you know enormous link there even like I remember a study I read years ago which was if what woman had a glass of wine a day it increases their risk of breast cancer by 40 percent yeah you know unfortunately there's a linear relationship between alcohol and breast cancer risk so for every drink a woman drinks per day like every time she increases the amount of she drinks per day her risk of breast cancer goes up even further so you know what's considered moderation for women is five or less drinks a week with a drink being you know five ounces of wine or you know what yeah but I very much no it's not true and that's how you're a whole week but what's interesting is you're right there has been even studies showing that even even one drink a day is linked with an increased risk of breast cancer and and maybe because it is impairing well partly because it's impairing our liver and our ability to detoxify and it's shifting estrogen levels and it also depletes the body of B vitamins so there's so many so many impacts that alcohol has there yeah and even even the microbiome plays a role in your hormone balance right right absolutely right that's something we're always measuring right we're looking at how the body is metabolizing hormones and and and we're looking at the microbiome and I think that that's important when we're dealing with a woman in perimenopause like sometimes they're they just don't even understand why am I feeling this way you know why am i all of a sudden more irritable why am I having a harder time with my periods you know why are they heavier why can't I sleep why am I getting hot flashes now right and so sometimes just educating them is a great first place to start and a lot of times women just feel better when they start to understand okay this is this is good you know I'm I hormones are shifting and then what can I do to support them yeah hi everyone its dr. Mark Hyman so two quick things number one thanks so much for listening to this week's podcast it really means a lot to me if you love the podcast I really appreciate you sharing with your friends and family second I want to tell you about a brand new newsletter I started called marks picks every week I'm gonna send out a list of a few things that I've been using take my own health the next level this could be books podcasts research that I found supplement recommendations recipes or even gadgets I use a few of those and if you'd like to get access to this free weekly list all you have to do is visit dr. Hyman com forward slash picks that's dr. Hyman com forward slash picks I'll only email you once a week I promise and I'll never send you anything else besides my own recommendations so just go to dr. Hyman com4 slash picks that's P I see KS to sign up free today and we were talking about how great meditation is right because it's yeah yeah and in the things you know we see typically the women who have the worst problems have the worst diet the most stress they drink too much they don't exercise they don't get they have lots of stress they don't meditate it's not rocket science why hormones get screwed up right and and we know how to intervene using a very specific diagnostic test that we do at Ultra wanna Center to actually help map out what's happening when the hormones because estrogen metabolism we can see how to really be sophisticated manipulating those hormones so they actually they they're better we can fix the gut in the microbiome we can look for environmental toxins which act like estrogens in the body and get rid of those or heavy metals and we can actually have an impact through using various foods to help whether it's flax seeds or other broccoli family help estrogen metabolism certain soy products that are our whole food soy products are good and and then we can kind of get people hormones to kind of work better we may want to even use nutrients and you were talking about so flora fame which is a powerful broccoli chemical that you can take and there's a whole cocktail of things we use to help estrogen metabolism we should probably talk about soy a little bit because honestly this is probably the most common question I get because people are so confused yes about soy soy or not eat soy so so soy right soy foods are in they have these things called phytoestrogens in them and this is what got everybody nervous right so they have these they have these these components these phytonutrients these components in them that can actually impact the estrogen receptor and so for you know a bunch of years ago oncologists used to say oh no it can impact the estrogen receptor I don't want you to eat soy but what we know actually is that they they bind to the estrogen receptor preventing your own estrogen from binding to the estrogen receptor and as a result you have a lower estrogen like impact in the body so multiple studies have shown that that soy is actually associated with a lower rate of breast cancer and it's a good point like tofu tempeh yes natto miso soy so MAME right right those are whole soy products they're not industrial food and most soy we're eating today is industrial soy yeah turned in all kinds of weird ingredients like soy burgers and and so I could hot dogs and texturized vegetable protein that gets inserted all kinds of protein bars and isolated soy protein which very different than regular whole soy and that may be a cancer and a mole suddenly so I think it's important to realize it you know it's it's you know food is a modulator and it usually helps the body do what it does rather than interfere with it and so sometimes it's true would like to eat too much broccoli or whatever you raw broccoli gonna affect your thyroid but the the phytoestrogens in soy actually help to act more like a thermos they keep things balanced right mm-hm and and I think you know recommending those whole soy foods is great and I think that's a really easy thing to do flax seeds also really help flax seeds in the gut yep the crock broccoli family vegetables simple dietary things and getting more fiber to help them biotic stand the gut getting rid of all the starch a sugar the process food all those ingredients alcohol there's really simple things you can do ya like balancing your blood sugar balancing your blood sugar by making sure that every meal has a good source of healthy fat has a good source of fiber and has a good source of protein right so that prevents the spikes in blood sugar and the spikes and insulin right so you you make sure your meals are balanced like that then you won't get those ups and downs in your in your energy and so you just feel better and that helps with that helps with all you know preventing those at that high insulin B binging on carbs and sugar to get your energy up and all that right right right so then that helps with the balance of all the hormones as you were mentioning earlier and and so you know when a woman is going through perimenopause you know the first place we look at is okay what are these personalized lifestyle factors what can we really focus on with them I mean there might be times where we at the ultra Wellness Center may use some hormones to help but just wrong to help with their sleep if necessary but many times just a woman understanding what's going on and then making some shifts in their lifestyle can make a huge impact and make them feel better yeah and and so you had this patient who had no struggle with sleep and she was 45 and she had never had problem before and woke up all the time at night sweats and she was terribly not well and what did you find with her right so you know we found so she was 45 so she was in perimenopause we checked her hormones at day 20 in her cycle so what we ended up finding was her progesterone was low right so she how she was in those anovulatory cycles like we had mentioned earlier and and her progesterone was low so what we really worked on was supporting her her progesterone production with supporting her adrenal gland you know taking good self-care getting good rest doing her meditation we also worked on metabolizing her estrogen so she had some variations in her genetics and she ended up having some we work to really lower her estrogen levels with with with you know the cruciferous vegetables folate rich foods we added in some supplements that actually on top of that were helpful and you know she did much better she really started to feel better and we also you know we got her off of we got her off a caffeine because we know that caffeine can impact sleep more and it might not have bothered her in the past but during this transition in her life it was really impacting her sleep and her irritability so we got her off of the caffeine and we also saw when we did that her hot flashes significantly decreased and her sleep started to improve yeah and you just see so many of these patients who suffer with things like PMS paramedic pause or sleep issues or mood issues or depression or migraines which are common when your hormones out of balance right or or abnormal pap tests or we call dysfunctional uterine bleeding which you have cloths and painful periods and I you know it makes me really angry when I see these patients because they're not getting the advice they need they're not actually given a doorway into a way of thinking and diagnosis and treatment that actually fixes their problems yep and they're either told they're you know you know emotional or they're anxious or they give me a present or they give them a hormone treatment which you know sometimes it's okay but a lot of times it's it's not the right hormones it's you know giving them a birth control pill or giving them premarin and and and what we see in functional medicine is by working in this way using the thyroid approach and the adrenal treatments and the insulin approach that you know fixing they had some resistance and fixing the estrogen metabolism and thank God and the toxins you know it's it's a it's different for every woman but you sort of look at what's for them the issue when you then personalize it and you can create an incredible roadmap for women to feel good and get rid of PMS and get rid of heavy bleeding and get rid of the cramps and get rid of migraines and get rid of the sleeping hot flash issues and so forth right so it's a pretty exciting model that I think you know it's one of the best applications of functional medicine is helping women with all these hormone imbalances that are actually relatively easy to fix yeah I would agree that'll create it's really fun it's a fun place to be yeah there's one patient I had normal Pap test cuz you know that's a big thing for women right yes cervical cancer and screening and you know what they do is they they screen you and then they then they say well you know come back if it's worse and then they cut your cervix out or they do some surgical thing they burn it or you know that has consequences and it may save your life but it's not necessarily the only thing you can do right and I had you know one woman very very interesting when she had really abnormal pap tests but when I checked her she had these weird genes that made it hard for to metabolize estrogen the methylation genes the things I have to do with B vitamins and she also had some nutritional deficiencies and various things we just we just fixed it up and then we gave her we gave her methylfolate and we had various nutrients b6 which helps estrogen metabolism and we also gave her something called indole-3 carbinol which essentially is broccoli pill yep and there's a lot of research on how if you have an abnormal pap test if you take these phytochemicals that help estrogen metabolism you actually have reversal and I can't tell you how many patients I've had with using this app to help them get there like 3,000 micrograms of methylfolate again want the methyl form but 3,000 micrograms of methylfolate really can be helpful in terms of reversing that cervical dysplasia right and and of course we always go with food and like the folate rich foods are your foliage or green leafy veggies but but when there's actual dysplasia in the cervix when we give that higher dose of methylfolate that it can it's we really can have to be very helpful so powerful there's so many things like you know we talked a little bit earlier maybe we need to do another podcast on this but fertility is such an issue right one in seven couples are infertile it's increasing and it has to do with things that are often treatable or reversible not using tons of hormones or intra fertilization or all these things and you know I've had so many patients in my practice who couldn't get pregnant and you treat them using a functional medicine approach and they can just think of - right now once a 44 year old woman who actually was so sick with all kinds of issues want to have another baby couldn't get pregnant and got pregnant naturally after we fixed fixed another one was about a 38 year old woman who also struggled with infertility and she later just had her baby last week and it's so gratifying to me to see that that you know we can actually focus on how to treat these things using food there's old textbooks written on this and fertility diet written by Walter Willett which talks about how sugar is a big factor for infertility huge you know and people don't realize that they're eating bread or anything sugar and other thing oh it's fine but right actually maybe it caused their fertility so that whole connection with that high insulin and your hormones yeah and it's so connected so I if anybody's asking out there as a woman there's probably a few out there I would I would really not accept the traditional messaging from treating conventional doctors that you just have to suffer through all this yeah PMS again is one of those things it's relatively easy to fix using this functional medicine approach yeah whether we use you know diet exercise supplements various kinds of herbs nutrients even sometimes you know natural hormones like progesterone can make a huge difference and if we do use hormones we actually use bioidentical hormones which things like premarin is horse urine pregnant mares urine and it produces all these secondary metabolites and more more clay to give stroke and cancer and chris's inflammation in the vibration increases c-reactive protein I mean it's like not great and and by using a different approach using bioidentical hormones delivered through the skin or certain ways have a profound benefit to women and um I think we're gonna have to come back and do another podcast on menopause because we'd even talk about hormone replacement therapy which is a whole big category of thinking about how do you actually find the right dose in the right person and the right way is delivering the right method that actually has the most benefit because there are risk to it but but I think we can mitigate those risks using this whole approach absolutely I agree so what do you think as a woman about any last words to women and what what they should think about when it comes to their hormones and being out of balance yeah I mean I think really appreciate the connection with all the difference with all the different hormones in the body that you know when you really work to support your your adrenal gland when you really work to manage your stress when you really work to get enough sleep and rest that really helps with your hormones rebalancing themselves and I think that I think that that's a really important area that you know so often women are just taking care of others right they're taking care of their kids are taking care of their spouse are taking care of their parents and they really need to take this time to say okay maybe maybe some of these symptoms are telling me that I've got to start taking care of myself yeah and and that really can make a huge difference sort of like on the airplane they tell you to put the mask on your face before you put on your kids you know that's what woman needs is and it's hard because women are programmed in our culture to be caretakers to help everybody else to neglect themselves and feel guilty and bad if they do at a night and I think it's really important that men women start to put themselves first and actually prioritize their own well-being which will help everything in their life absolutely well dr. boham Liz thank you so much for being on the doctors pharmacy I really love having you on this little mini episode we're doing regularly called house call that helps guide people on what to do people want to learn more about hormone imbalance what tests they should do the kinds of therapies that are effective there's a free information on the website dr. Hyman calm foolish last UWC and you can go there and download it and it's a great guide you can come see us at the ultra Wellness Center in Lenox Massachusetts you can try to find a functional medicine doctor in your area but I encourage you not to just suffer through the misery of hormone imbalance because we have a way to figure it out so thank you so much for being on the podcast that's it for this week's house call if you enjoyed this mini episode of the doctors pharmacy share with your friends and family on social media leave a comment we'd love to hear from you subscribe wherever you get your podcast and we'll see you next time on the doctors pharmacy thank you Mark [Music]

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 80,780

Keywords: dr. mark hyman, elizabeth boham, ultrawellness center, functional medicine, doctor’s farmacy, pms, perimenopause, hormonal health, balance hormones, menopause, women’s health, adrenal support, adrenals

Id: 73kjIRmlhwc

Length: 28min 35sec (1715 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020