EP. 13: Female Hormonal Health
What affects your hormones, especially your estrogen levels? Well, high-intensity exercises, stress, lack of sleep, certain foods, mineral deficiencies, eating estrogen-generating foods, and allowing toxins to be absorbed from beauty products... in other words, so many things!
Anti-nutrients from things like genetically modified 'Frankenfoods' like monosodium glutamate (MSG) and Soy Protein Isolate can affect the production of estrogen in the body. Estrogen hormones are made in the ovaries, the liver, your adrenals, and in your breasts. Many autoimmune diseases and cancers have been linked to the consumption of unfermented and highly processed soy which is often the format we have access to in the United States. Think baby formula, protein bars, and tofu. Whereas, research shows that China has one of the lowest rates of breast cancer. This actually makes sense because they consume fermented soy (Miso, Natto, and Tempeh) which cultivates healthy gut bacteria.
Let's talk about how we take care of our estrogen levels, today!
You can download your copy of the Estrogen Dominance Questionnaire which you can review with your provider.
Show Notes
0:00:00
Hi everyone, welcome to another week and another podcast. So I have a really good topic. It's a broad topic. So we're going to start with women's health. So many of you have reached out to me about perimenopause, menopause, breast cancer, endometriosis, adenomyosis, all of these other health conditions. So I figured we would start with discussing women's health in general
0:00:33
and kind of streamlining it and targeting each of these topics. Unfortunately, at least from what I've seen in practice the last 15 years, there's a huge gap, right? You go to your primary care, you say you're not feeling right.
0:00:47
They might run a thyroid, a CBC, a CMP, everything's normal or comes back normal. You might be at the high end of the range or the low end of the range and they just say, well you're just a busy mom or you're just overly stressed or they kind of make you think it's in your head. I'll never forget what really got me into alternative health myself because my family's medical. As a lot of my listeners know, I have two brothers that are doctors, my grandma was a nurse, and I have many nieces and
0:01:25
nephews in the medical field too. So we're pretty medically based and that's how I was raised. I was kind of raised that alternative medicine was quackery until my mom took me to a naturopath and it helped me. So I'll give you a little bit of backstory. About 10 or 12 I had really bad ovarian pain. I went to the OB-GYN and they gave me a shot of progesterone.
0:01:52
Because what else were you gonna do? That would help dissolve the cyst. I gained 10 pounds, 10, 15 pounds, which at five, four was a lot of weight for me at that age. So that was a little traumatizing. And then they suggested, because the ovarian cysts kept coming back, that I start on birth control, right? So that's what I did. And I was on birth
0:02:15
control, geez, until my early 20s. And that was a roller coaster as many of you guys can probably relate. I gained an additional 20 to 25 pounds and just it wreaked havoc on my mental health and I'll never forget my mom took me to the gynecologist and we met in his office and we had concerns about you know weight gain and mental health and body image and that was well before Instagram was a big thing and all the social media and he just said he looked straight at me and my mom and he said
0:02:53
well if she doesn't put it in her mouth she's not going to gain weight and that to this day has stuck with me and my cousin there's a long history of you know hormonal issues and just health issues that we want to avoid so that's just something that stuck with me so long story short I went to a naturopath He put me on a myriad of herbs such as like false unicorn red raspberry tea. We did acupuncture We cleaned up my diet. Imagine that right diet affecting your hormones. We talked about toxins. I lost all the weight
0:03:32
I got on a good exercise program. I felt great and no issues, no issues since then. Getting off the birth control was one of the best things I've done and I've heard from so many patients. You know, society kind of makes you feel empowered as a woman that you have control over your reproductive health
0:03:51
and that managing your periods is a good thing. And for some, it very well may be, but it's also harmful. Those synthetic hormones are harmful. They're not natural. And we kind of become a slave to this societal norm
0:04:08
of taking control of our reproductive health and using the birth control to balance hormones when there's other ways much more healthy and natural to do it that won't impact long-term breast cancer risks and fertility. So for me, what I ended up switching to just purely for birth control was the copper IUD,
0:04:29
which does have some side effects but very minimal and it's a non-hormonal. It's one of the only non-hormonal birth controls outside of like the diaphragm and condom and things like that. That's long-term and you don't have to think about it. So that's always my go-to if a patient asks me about birth control. But this is a pretty heavy topic so I wanted to share some thoughts with you. Again, please send me DMs or questions and we can even open up a podcast
0:04:59
featuring some of you about sharing your experience with reproductive health and what's worked for you, what hasn't worked for you. I feel like this is a topic that again, there's a huge gap in information. And unfortunately, it comes down to you to ask the right questions and take control of your health, even though you see your primary and your OB-GYN.
0:05:22
So one of the biggest things that we can do diet-wise, so let's first talk about diet, because you guys know, obviously, I'm a nutritionist, soy. Right, so we talked about corn and soy being genetically modified. What happens with that is when we looked at the studies
0:05:44
in China, and soy's been around forever, when we looked at the studies in China, it does really help with perimenopause and menopause. It is a phytoestrogen, so it helps to balance hormones. However, what we did as Americans is we took soy and we process it so much that it concentrates the level of estrogens in the food product and obviously that's not good for the
0:06:11
body. So we'll talk about healthy forms of soy. Soy of course is from the bean family and in the popular ones you know tofu, soy milk, tofurkey, all those what I call frankenfoods, they're not natural, they're processed soy. Soy is a great source of protein, but the healthy and correct types of soy. So the other challenge with soy not only being processed and concentrating the levels of estrogen is it's genetically modified. So we don't want that in our system either, because we've talked about that.
0:06:51
We use GMO corn and soy to fatten up livestock, right? It'll do the same thing to us. Healthy forms of soy, so when you look at China and Eastern cultures, they use miso, natto, and tempeh. So fermented soy. Fermented soy, again, has that bacteria
0:07:10
that's healthy for the gut. So you get gut health, you get healthy proteins. That is a good source of soy. One of my favorite forms of eating soy, besides miso soup, is natto. So if you have a favorite sushi place,
0:07:30
which of course in Finley I do, they have natto rolls, and they also just have natto that can be served in a ball so I highly recommend that. If you like fermented foods they're kind of slimy and slippery but they're so good they have that umami taste so try that. But soy of course has to be properly fermented to neutralize some toxins so again fermented soy is ideal when you
0:07:59
turkey, soy burgers, meatless hot dogs, all of that. Those have something in there called partially hydrogenated soy, or soy protein isolate is another one. So on a lot of your protein bars, what I want you guys to look at
0:08:17
is look for the ingredient soy protein isolate. Number one, it's not natural. It's an extraction of soy and it's highly processed. That itself has been linked to higher toxic estrogen levels and we'll talk here in a bit about healthy estrogen and not healthy estrogen. But again, if you look at cultures over in the Eastern Hemisphere, they are miso, tempeh, natto, soy sauce or gluten-free soy sauce and just a little bit of tofu, not a lot of
0:08:54
tofu. Whereas for us, we don't really do the fermented soy. So we want to be careful with what type of soy we're ingesting for our hormonal health and it's in more ingredients than you look at, I bet. So what we find too is if fermented. The fermentation process neutralizes toxins, but it also helps address anti-nutrients. So, unfermented soybeans contain nutrients, anti-nutrients, that inhibit
0:09:26
absorption of other nutrients and actually affect the thyroid. Oh my gosh, hormones and thyroid are related, right? So, these anti-nutrients Hormones and thyroid are related, right? So these anti-nutrients, of course, ideally they're in the soybean to protect it from nature,
0:09:44
but they've been linked to PMS, endometriosis, reproductive issues for both men and women, allergies, immune issues, ADHD, ADD, cancer, loss of libido, you name it. The groups most at risk, and I want you guys to listen, infants taking soy baby formula, right? We just did a podcast on baby formula. Look at that number one
0:10:06
ingredient and make sure it's not soy. I know that's a really popular ingredient in baby formula. Vegetarians eating a high soy diet. So I used to be vegetarian. I used to be vegan even for a couple years, and I felt great for about six months, and then I felt completely awful. I had joint pain, I was tired, I looked malnourished. You can certainly do it right
0:10:36
if it's a strong belief in animal safety, but from a health standpoint, we're meant to eat meat, right? And as soon as I started adding fish and eggs and other animal proteins in, I felt significantly better. My knee pain went away. I gained weight, which was needed, and I just felt better. And when we have my husband on a podcast, we'll talk about that, because when I started
0:11:07
dating him, I was gluten-free and vegan, right? So try to take somebody out on a date eating that diet. The other groups most at risk are women midlife going heavy on soy because they're told to eat soy for their perimenopause or their menopause. So soy is a really big factor. The nutrient, and you guys can always look this up further on your own if you have questions DM me, phytates. Phytates work in the GI tract and they actually bind minerals. So your zinc, your copper, your iron,
0:11:41
your magnesium and your calcium. We know they have a strong affinity for zinc. Zinc, we learned with COVID, is significant for immune health. It's active in over 300 enzyme processes. It's important for reproductive health.
0:11:57
We know that, you know, it helps with sperm count. It's huge for nerve functioning, brain development, so zinc's a really big one. And the other ones are enzyme inhibitors. Again, that will affect digestion, cause discomfort, bloating. Anyone with naturally low levels of digestive enzymes, such as the elderly, would suffer the most from the enzyme inhibiting action of soy.
0:12:29
So if you have gut stuff, look at what you're eating and see how much soy is in there. The other component in soy that is harmful, especially for us ladies, are substances that block thyroid hormone production and can cause a goiter formation.
0:12:47
These guys, appropriately named, are called goitogens. So we know the thyroid is like this, I always think of it as this master conductor in an orchestra. It is the main endocrine orchestrator. So if that doesn't stoke the cellular furnaces, which are the mitochondria, if that sounds familiar we'll talk about that much more in the future, they're the little powerhouses of the cells. When thyroid production is low, energy levels are low,
0:13:18
as well as body heat is low. So hypothyroid, right, you're cold, you lose the outer third part of your eyebrows, you don't have much hair on your body, weight gain, fatigue, brain fog, all of that. There's a specific product or component called genistein
0:13:37
that'll actually block thyroid production. So if you're eating a lot of soy, make sure you get your thyroid checked, right? Regardless, make sure you get your thyroid checked in a full panel, like TSH, T3, T4, and it wouldn't hurt to just do your antibodies as well.
0:13:52
Phytates, again, can accentuate this because they bind up zinc and copper, and we need those trace minerals for thyroid production. If you look at a good thyroid supplement, a lot of times it'll have selenium in there, like we've talked about Brazil nuts having selenium.
0:14:09
You need all those minerals for that full picture of thyroid health. So, that's something to look at. So, goitrogens to avoid, besides soy. Tobacco, which is interesting. Medications, some medications can do that and this isn't a very common
0:14:30
ingredient anymore but millet. Millet will block thyroid production. Healthy goitrogens. So these are components that will help the thyroid production and balance hormones. Cruciferous vegetables. So your broccoli, your cauliflower, your cabbage, your kale, strawberries fall into that category, radishes, turnips, and they're good if they're just lightly cooked. And there are some benefits to genistein, it's not all bad.
0:15:02
In the past, with genistein and soy, women have of course been encouraged to have it to alleviate symptoms of menopause, right? And to protect against loss of bone, bone loss and breast cancer. Commercial soybean products offer levels as high as 20 to 60 milligrams per serving. To put it in perspective, when we looked at the studies in China called
0:15:27
the China study about soy, the Asian diet of fermented soybean products with like miso and tempeh and natto, they only have 5 milligrams of genistein. And it's, again, it's more bioavailable because it's from fermented soy. Genistein actually will slow the growth of blood vessels to tumors,
0:15:49
and it can slow cellular energy. A study found that eating high levels slowed hair growth by 60 to 80%. So if you're being on a vegetarian and you're eating a lot of soy, and you're not having good hair,
0:16:03
might be the thyroid and not enough minerals. This is a really cool study. A decade ago, they studied 8,000 Asian men and showed that those consuming the highest amounts of tofu had smaller brain size and three times the rate of senile dementia
0:16:21
as those who ate the lowest amounts. So just things to consider. As far as other names with soy ingredients, so this is where it gets tricky. We know that 93% of soy is genetically modified, right? So if it's soy, assume it's GMO.
0:16:39
So look in your ingredients if they have something called monosodium glutamate, MSG, right? That's everywhere. I know my husband just got this taco seasoning. It wasn't organic, it wasn't gluten-free. Well, it did have gluten in it, but it wasn't certified gluten-free. And it had natural flavorings. And I'm like, I'm not eating that because of the soy, right? And he just rolled his eyes. Natural flavorings, vegetable broths, textured plant proteins, and hydrolyzed vegetable protein. So if it goes by those
0:17:26
names, it's soy in disguise, but MSG is the most popular. As far as estrogen, so let's talk about a little bit about estrogen production. So we know soy is the main trigger with affecting estrogen and thyroid in our diet. With estrogen, I want you guys to think about where we make our estrogen as women. Men make it too, but as women. Obviously the ovaries, right? When you're pregnant, the placenta will make estrogen. So if you're, and I've noticed this,
0:18:05
if you're a girl mom, if you've had both, girl and boys, and you gain more weight with a girl, it's the extra estrogen, right? You're making some, the placenta's making some, it's just estrogen overload, and you definitely carry a girl differently than a boy.
0:18:20
So ovaries make estrogen and then placenta. The other places that make it, so you might say, okay, well, if you've had a hysterectomy, you don't have ovaries anymore. Maybe they left one or two, maybe they didn't. But let's assume we don't have ovaries
0:18:38
and we're not pregnant, we don't have a placenta. So where the heck are we getting our estrogen? Diet's a big one, but where do we make it? The liver. There's a saying in nutrition when the ovaries are on vacation, so when we're in menopause
0:18:53
or when they're removed, the adrenals make the estrogen. And then of course, breasts. And again, they might be there for you, they might not be. But liver, adrenals, and breasts. So if you've noticed, when you have hormone dysfunction, thyroid's involved, but also the liver and the adrenal stress. If you notice your hot flashes are worse with stress or
0:19:18
your periods are worse with stress, there's a huge trigger with stress, the adrenal glands and the liver. So even more important to have a healthy liver and healthy cortisol levels. As far as estrogen goes, not all estrogen is bad, right? We have really good estrogen and then we have some bad estrogen. Good estrogen, and I will spare you the biochemical name, I want you to think of two estrogen being good, the number two. Hydroxyestrone, hydroxyestradiol, methoxyestrone, those are all good estrogen. These guys inhibit cancer growth and they help with hormones, right?
0:20:06
Hormone production and hormone balancing. Bad estrogen, I want you to think of 4 and 16. Those are bad. And yes, we can test for these. And yes, most doctors don't test for these. 4, actually, you want the levels to be as low as they can be because it's bad. High levels can cause DNA damage, cancer, and 16 will actually encourage tumor development. So 2 is good, 4 and 16 are bad. And so when you look at your labs, when you get your labs back, and this is something I always look at, if a patient has say a cholesterol level of 216, I don't care. I
0:20:49
don't get worked up about it. I know they want you less than 200. The old levels used to be 220 and 240. You need fat, right? You need fat for hormone production. You make all your testosterone, your estrogen, your progesterone. You make everything from fat. So we want healthy cholesterol. That's the key, healthy. DHEA is the main steroid hormone in the body. And from that there's metabolism to testosterone, estradiol, and then the estrogen can go one of two ways. It can become good, it
0:21:24
can become 16, or it can become bad. And it's purely influenced by our environment and what we produce ourselves. And yes, if you have this teeter-totter of two and four and 16, and you're more bad than good, you can tip that scale. There's a lot nutritionally that we can do. Of course, stress relief, right?
0:21:48
Yoga, meditation, prayer, journaling, whatever works for you. The big one are cruciferous vegetables. So cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, those will help to metabolize bad to good. The extract in those cruciferous vegetables is called DIMM, and again I'll spare you the biochemical name. The other
0:22:11
form is called indole-3-carbinol or I3C. So those can be taken as supplements. They're just therapeutic doses of cruciferous vegetables basically and they will metabolize your estrogen. Soy, healthy soy that we talked about right, natto, miso, tempeh, flaxseed is a good source and then omega-3 fatty acids which if you're eating the standard American diet you're more 6 than 3 dominant and that can indicate increasing long-term risk for cervical, breast, uterine, prostate, yes
0:23:04
guys should get checked too, and other estrogen sensitive cancers. So just because, and this is something that always kind of drives me nuts. If you have the genetics for breast cancer and you take your ovaries out, you take your breasts away, you still are making estrogen, you still have that DNA, you still have that ability to trigger that DNA.
0:23:27
You're just removing the main players, right? So you have to kind of look at the big picture. I will link for you guys the lab test that you can get to test your estrogen to see how two and 16 ratios are. These are not medical tests, they're considered functional. So again, a lot of doctors A, don't know about them,
0:23:48
and B, don't test about them. It's easy to collect, a lot of them are first morning urine. And even for men with history of prostate cancer, it's good to get the estrogen check because that's related. The other thing is important to consider. So we've talked about soy, we've talked about estrogen levels. Think about all the
0:24:15
factors involved. So I talked about like selenium and zinc and copper for the thyroid. Vitamin D. We've talked about vitamin D with liver metabolism. You also need it for healthy estrogen. So if you're low in vitamin D, that's a problem. Vitamin B12 and B6, you need those guys for liver and estrogen metabolism. Magnesium, I can't tell you how many patients I have on magnesium. I take it, my kids take it. It's necessary for healthy estrogen. And then of course indole-3-carbinol or DIMM. So you can either choose to get those through your diet,
0:24:53
or if you want to kind of jumpstart things, you can take them as a supplement, or you can do both. The problem with some of these estrogen components, right? So we've got endogenous estrogen, estrogen that we make based on our environment. We have phytoestrogens.
0:25:14
So phyto meaning plant, estrogens. Those are flax, red raspberry, tofu, soy, all of that. Any plant that affects estrogen. The other ones, and we have talked quite a bit about plastics and endocrine disruptors with our Makeup Dump podcast, are called xenoestrogens.
0:25:39
Xeno meaning foreign, estrogens. So these little stinkers, they actually have a high affinity for that binding site at the cells. So if you think about it, you have a binding site here, you have your estrogen coming down. Estrogen will bind and cause a reaction in your body,
0:25:56
which is what we want. Xenoestrogens will knock everybody else out, bind, and then cause unintended signals such as cancer and affect your DNA. So where are xenoestrogens? They're everywhere. You will drive yourself nuts trying to get rid of all of them, but if we can do the good, better, and best, right, kind of minimize things, that's ideally what we want. Xenoestrogens are also called EDCs, endocrine disrupting chemicals, hormone disruptors.
0:26:31
These guys will affect cell growth and increase cell division. So we have estrogen receptors in breast tissue, we have pesticides that act as xenoestrogens, these are called petrochemicals, right? So if you use anything that has petroleum in it, which is why I told you guys with our makeup dump, if it has petroleum, don't use it. It affects your estrogen. So makeups, room deodorizers, I know I was a target a couple weeks ago and I heard a couple talking about their list and using Febreze. Candles, we want healthy candles.
0:27:21
Besides cosmetics, plastic water bottles, which we've all heard, which of course leaving a hot water bottle in the car and drinking out of it is a big no-no. We know this because the heat actually leaches that plastic into the water. Same thing with plastic Tupperware. If you've had Tupperware and it has spaghetti in it and you put it in the microwave, you can never get that Tupperware cleaned. Why is that? Well, the acidity from the tomatoes leaches the plastic and that goes into your food. We don't want that. So try to address where
0:27:57
you have the most plastic exposure and xenoestrogens and minimize it. I will put a link for an estrogen dominance quiz, right? So things that we were taught, and I'm going to go, I'm going to age myself a little bit, I'm going to go back even like the 70s. So things that were taught in the 70s and 80s forward that are normal, right? PMS, heavy periods with clotting, endometriosis, infertility, decreased libido, panic attacks, migraine headaches, weight gain around your period.
0:28:37
Those aren't normal, right? We're not, I know it sounds crazy, we're not meant to have those symptoms when we're ovulating and when we're having our period. I just had a patient last week, she has three kids, and they would love another one.
0:28:52
And she has seen many doctors around here, they did a couple tests and they're like, well, you're just infertile. All of a sudden, you're just infertile. And so I gave her some resources on what I experienced and what has helped us,
0:29:06
just because that's not the right answer. You just don't go from having three kids to just being infertile. It doesn't work that way. Just like with your periods. Ovarian cysts aren't normal and endometriosis isn't normal. Hot flashes during perimenopause and menopause, yeah, hormonal swings, absolutely normal. But that's why God gave us herbs and natural medicine to help with those things. We can all navigate those waters with natural intervention. So I will also post for you
0:29:43
guys to a list of xenoestrogens, toxins, false estrogens, so of course plastics, medications, detergents, fabric softeners, hair dye, herbicides, birth control pills, BPA, we know all of this. So I'll post that for you guys. As far as foods that balance estrogen, let's talk about that a little bit. Healthy soy, right?
0:30:14
Making sure we have D and B6. Real fats, you guys know I love fat. So olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, nuts. We don't want seed oils. We don't. So no canola, no vegetable, no soybean.
0:30:37
Nothing hydrogenated, nothing partially hydrogenated. Make sure that you're looking ingredients, especially with baked goods. We know that white flour and white sugar nutritionally empty and will wreak havoc on estrogen. And then go for natural sweeteners, right?
0:30:54
Honey, molasses, maple syrup. If you have to do something like stevia or monk fruit, it's still a better option, right? The better best, better option than the artificial sweeteners. Minerals, just like magnesium,
0:31:08
most of us are depleted in trace minerals. Phytic acid and phytates are not only in soy, but they're in whole grains, oats and wheat. Those will actually help deplete the body of minerals as well. Unless, and I know some of you do this,
0:31:25
you soak or you sprout it, right? Which is great. Most important, we need iodine for the thyroid. Sometimes I'll recommend that as a supplement, sometimes I won't, it just depends on what the T3 and T4 look like. Most of us are deficient. Interesting enough, and you
0:31:45
guys can look this up, the Japanese have one of the lowest rates of breast cancer. Yeah? Miso soup or bonito broth, that has about 12.5 milligrams of iodine in it. Supplements don't have that for the most part. When the tsunami hit, I'll never forget this, what, 10 years ago, eight years ago now, I couldn't buy iodine because it was all soaked up
0:32:12
over there to try to address the radiation, right? Because you want to protect your thyroid. Iodine is huge for hormone health and thyroid. Zinc and magnesium, which of course we've talked about. We don't want to do omega-6s, right? So again, no seed oils. We want to make sure we get healthy omega-3s. So whether that's walnuts or
0:32:37
salmon or shrimp, flax, coconut oil, avocados, healthy omegas. Limit the caffeine. And you guys have probably noticed this. Your doctor might have told you to watch the caffeine if you have fibrocystic breasts or it makes your periods worse. You do wanna limit your caffeine. It's hard on the endocrine system.
0:33:00
And that's coming back to the adrenal glands with cortisol, right, fight or flight, with estrogen balance. Good substitutions for caffeine, I love maca powder, maca roots. It won't give you the jitters, it gives you natural energy, it tastes
0:33:18
like butterscotch which is even better. And then the other place to avoid toxins that I did not mention is cookware. Yeah, we use, and my husband laughs, we just have like two cast-iron skillets and then I have a copper pans from my mom from the 60s and 70s. That's all we have. Teflon is nasty. You don't want to cook a turkey in a plastic bag. You don't want to cook anything in a plastic bag. Don't put it in the microwave. Same thing, right? And of course organic, free-range, wild. Other things that
0:33:55
will affect estrogen. Not sleeping. Yeah? No electronics 30 minutes before bed at the minimum. If you are on electronics a lot, I love blue light glasses. When you sleep, you heal and you produce hormones at night. So they're not going to be balanced if you're not sleeping. And of course, for new moms, that's hard. Supplement wisely.
0:34:24
So you want to, you know, in a perfect world, we'd get up with the sun, which I've mentioned, we'd get our vitamin D naturally, we'd go to bed when it's dark, we'd be by the ocean getting all those minerals from the ocean breeze, which of course we can't do, right?
0:34:40
And we barely have time to exercise. So just do what you can when you can, make sure your vitamin D levels are good on blood work, start taking magnesium, with estrogen, you don't wanna do HIIT work. You don't wanna do high intensity exercise.
0:34:55
Why? Because your body thinks it's being chased by a bear. Right? It's putting you in fight or flight. And your body's already stressed out. So more calming exercises, more intentional exercises,
0:35:09
walking, biking's even fine, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga, Sex, any of those are fine. Swimming, we're coming into pool season, so swimming's great. And then again, balancing another hormone called Leptin. Leptin and ghrelin.
0:35:27
There's a lot of research with Leptin and ghrelin being affected by cell phone use, by not sleeping, being connected to obesity. So leptin is, if you haven't heard of this, it's a master hormone in the body that controls hunger and feelings of being satiated.
0:35:47
It's created by fat tissue, so the more overweight somebody is, the higher the leptins are, right? Which messes up the feedback system with being satiated and being hungry. It's really kind of, think of it as the lookout hormone.
0:36:09
It's the gatekeeper of fat metabolism. So it monitors how much energy an organism takes in. It maintains the energy, regulates hunger. It's directly tied to insulin, so it's really important to regulate your leptin. High leptin, of course being overweight connects with this. High blood pressure, obesity, heart disease,
0:36:30
infertility, blood sugar problems, and stroke. So we want to keep that in balance. What can cause our leptin to be funky? Yeah, high fructose corn syrup. That's another one, look with MSG. If it has high fructose corn syrup, do not use it.
0:36:47
High stress, right, we're all stressed. Simple carbs, lack of sleep, I know you guys are all nodding your head right now. High insulin levels, overeating, exercising too much. If I have a patient that says, Dr. Heck, I am getting up at four,
0:37:04
I'm working out for two hours, I'm fasting until noon, why am I not losing weight? Well, your leptin's out of balance, number one. And you're exercising too much, that's hard for the body. And grain consumption.
0:37:16
Even more reason to be grain-free, at the very least be gluten-free, because those can all affect the leptin. So how do we fix leptin? Another component with estrogen. Watch your starches, right?
0:37:29
Refined foods, sugars, tons of protein and healthy fats first thing in the morning. Eggs, healthy bacon, if you want to do avocado toast on sprouted grain bread, that's fine. High protein and high fat. Be in bed by 10 at the very least, depending on what time you get up. Get outside, even if it's for 20 minutes.
0:37:59
Take your shoes off, walk on the stones, walk in the grass, do some grounding, watch the toxins. Toxins will affect your leptin. And then again just kind of having that good omega-3, omega-6 balance. So we've covered a lot today. We've talked about estrogen, a little bit about cortisol, diet influences, thyroid health a little bit, and then of course that leptin and ghrelin. So I'm looking forward to your questions
0:38:31
because I know you guys will have many questions. Send me those DM or post. You can always use the contact form as well. And if there's any other questions or suggestions for future topics, I welcome those. So have a great weekend.
Transcribed with Cockatoo