Top Causes for Brutal Menopause Symptoms
Episode 233
In this episode of Integrative You Radio, Dr. Nicole Rivera explores the hidden causes behind menopausal symptoms, emphasizing that hormone imbalances often stem from issues like blood sugar dysregulation and liver dysfunction. She explains how conditions such as insulin resistance and fatty liver can exacerbate menopausal experiences and underscores the importance of addressing these root causes rather than just the symptoms. Dr. Nicole also discusses the impact of gut health and undiagnosed infections on reproductive issues, challenging conventional approaches that focus solely on hormone replacement therapy. By understanding the body's natural adaptations to stressors, listeners can gain insights into more effective and holistic ways to manage menopause and improve overall health. Tune in to learn more! What you’ll learn: Root Causes of Menopausal Symptoms: Blood sugar dysregulation and liver dysfunction are major factors influencing menopausal symptoms, often more than hormonal imbalances themselves. Holistic Health Approach: Addressing underlying conditions like insulin resistance, fatty liver, and gut health is crucial for the effective management of menopausal symptoms. Limitations of Hormone Therapy: Solely relying on hormone replacement therapy can create additional health issues; understanding the body's natural adaptations offers more sustainable solutions. Quotes: "If your liver is jacked up and your pancreas is jacked up, you're going to have hormonal issues." - Dr. Nicole "Your body doesn't fail you. Your body adapts to the stressors that exist."- Dr. Nicole Curious about Integrative You? Dive into Integrative You Radio with Dr. Nicole Rivera, where she explores the intersections of holistic health, personal growth, and living in alignment with your core values. Each episode provides insights and practical advice to help you achieve a more fulfilling and energized life Links: Website: Integrative You Instagram: Dr. Nicole Rivera Interested in Concierge
Topics: symptoms, menopause, health, integrative, liver, menopausal, nicole, unknown
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Top Causes for Brutal Menopause Symptoms
- Hormonal imbalances contributing to menopause symptoms are frequently driven by underlying blood sugar and liver health issues.
- Conditions like insulin resistance and fatty liver disease can directly worsen menopausal symptoms.
- A holistic approach focusing on these root causes, alongside gut health and potential infections, is more effective than relying solely on hormone replacement therapy.
- Understanding that your body adapts to stressors, rather than failing, offers a more empowering framework for managing menopause.
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place. **Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place.
**Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. This is Integrative U Radio. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative U.
**Unknown:** Dr. Nicole rolling solo today, and we are talking about menopause. And so when it comes to menopause, I cannot tell you how many women come to me and say, "I'm in menopause," or, "I think I'm in menopause," or, "I'm in perimenopause." And we dig in, we do the diagnostics, we realize that their hormones are not the root of the issue. Their hormones are an effect of other things that are the root of the issue, which we're gonna talk about today.
**Unknown:** And then they start their healing program, and some are happy about it and some are not. They get their period back, even late 40s, 50s, late 50s, et cetera. And so I wanna talk more about this idea of menopause because there are so many different scenarios that we hear about as women. We hear about women that have horrific menopausal symptoms.
**Unknown:** We have other women that say, "I, I just stopped getting my period. I had no other symptoms." And it's difficult for people to, to know where they're gonna fall. And it's also difficult to wrap your head around, like, how do some individuals have such extreme symptoms and others have zero symptoms? How does that make any sense?
**Unknown:** Because if, if it was just menopause is menopause, then everyone would have somewhat of a similar experience. But it's not the case at all. And so there are a lot of factors from different medications that you've been on in your life, if you've gone through chemotherapy treatment for cancer. There's, those are, there's a lot of pieces that can contribute to menopausal symptoms.
**Unknown:** But if we wanna backtrack and we wanna zoom out and we wanna look at even if the- it was medication-induced, chemotherapy-induced. And so in the event that an individual is having menopausal symptoms, let's call it moderate to extreme, there's a theme, and this theme didn't start with the loss of the period. This is a theme that has been going on, diagnosed or not. And this is something that, unfortunately, is overlooked by most conventional medicine, but I will tell you this, what we're about to talk about is a problem for more than 90% of the population, and what we're talking about is blood sugar dysregulation and liver issues.
**Unknown:** Those are the two that I wanna start with. I do wanna shed light on different reproductive, uterine, vaginal things as well that are also connected to gut issues. That's gonna be the second part of this. But the main thing that I wanna drive home right now is the health of your liver and the health of your pancreas are two determining factors of what menopause will be like for you.
**Unknown:** So if you have diabetes, if you have insulin resistance, if you have, uh, Type 1 diabetes, the autoimmune, if you've had pancreatitis in the past, if you have fatty liver, if you have autoimmune liver, if you've had elevated liver enzymes, if you've had your gallbladder removed 'cause your gallbladder's connected to your liver. If you've had any of those things, you are gonna probably have some significant symptoms when it comes to menopause, and this is why. Insulin is one of the hormones made by your pancreas that helps you to regulate your blood sugar. Insulin is a hormone.
**Unknown:** Insulin works in tandem with your sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. And then we have your liver, and your liver is w- the primary organ that helps with the m- with metabolizing excess hormones, specifically estrogen. So what that means is your liver says, "Oh, there's way too much estrogen floating around. Chop it up and get rid of it.
**Unknown:** Metabolize it. Break it down." So if your liver can't do that, you're going to have excess estrogen, which is then going to create problems with your other hormones. Everything is about a balance, so if one goes up, there's gonna have to be a counterbalance of the others. It's like a domino effect.
**Unknown:** The same thing, if your insulin is constantly up, down, up, down, and then it gets to the point that you're insulin resistant, which means that your cells don't even know how to use insulin anymore and your blood sugar is elevated, not only do you have a boatload of inflammation in your body and you probably can't lose weight and you're a little puffy and your rings get tight and your feet get big by the end of the day and all that fun stuff-But you're also going to have a cascade effect into your hormones because if you have excess sugar in your blood, you're going to drive up your estrogen, and estrogen drives up your fat tissue, and then your fat tissue makes more estrogen. So I'm not asking you to follow every single one of these biochemical pathways that I'm mentioning right now, but the moral of the story is, is if your liver is jacked up and your pancreas is jacked up, you're going to have hormonal issues, which is probably in your non-menopausal years causing you to have painful periods or causing you to have endometriosis or causing you to have irregular periods or having you get migraines or diarrhea with your periods. It's causing all of those things. And then your menopause kicks in and now you're gonna have significant symptoms with your menopause, from your hot flashes to your completely being drenched at night to your hair and your skin changing, fatigue, all of it.
**Unknown:** So let's kind of break down what liver and pancreatic issues look like in the average person. So let's start with the pancreas and the blood sugar. So the average person with pancreatic dysfunction that is going completely unrecognized is the person who wakes up with no appetite in the morning. They have a cup of coffee to, it suppresses their appetite a little bit further.
**Unknown:** Now they're getting into maybe 11:00, maybe 12:00, some people even into the 2:00 PM, complete afternoon by the time they have their first meal of the day. But by the time they actually eat, they're starving. So intu- intuitively, their body wants carbohydrates. That carbohydrate might be something healthy.
**Unknown:** It might be a, uh, smoothie bowl. It might be a sushi with a bunch of rice. It might be a rice bowl. Or it might be full-blown just unhealthy carbs like pizza, french fries, burger, et cetera.
**Unknown:** So now you eat, and your blood sugar spikes r- really high because it was so low 'cause you didn't eat. Spikes, crashes. Now you're tired. Now you're trying to grab a cup of coffee.
**Unknown:** Maybe you're getting caffeine from a soda from the vending machine. Maybe you're looking for a little bit of chocolate. Now you're getting into the evening hours. Again, "Oh, gosh, I'm starving." You're prepping dinner at home.
**Unknown:** You're snacking on your cheese and crackers 'cause you can't even wait for dinner to be ready, and now you eat your dinner and you're like, "Ugh, I wanna get on the couch, but where's the ice cream?" Very, very typical of a rollercoaster blood sugar. Spike, crash, spike, crash, spike, crash. The longer that goes on, the more difficult it is for your blood sugar to do what it is supposed to do, your insulin to do what it's supposed to do. This is something that starts to lead to brain fog, low energy levels, weight gain.
**Unknown:** And you're not getting diagnosed with diabetes because it takes a long, long time for that to happen. So you're going to your primary care, and they're testing your glucose levels, and they're like, "You're fine. Everything's fine." In reality, there are a variety of markers to be ran to look at your pancreatic function, from your insulin to your amylase to your lipase to your glucose to your hemoglobin A1C. Those are just a couple of markers that you should be able to access through your primary care.
**Unknown:** Now, the liver on the other hand, this is the primary one that goes super, super undiagnosed. If you've listened to other podcasts, you've heard me say this before. It was probably eight years ago now that I discovered an autoimmune liver panel, and it was actually by accident. I thought I was running a different panel.
**Unknown:** That code was expired, so LabCorp or Quest will run the code that's most similar, and the code that was most similar was an autoimmune liver panel, and it came up positive for this individual. And I was kind of like, "What is this panel? How have I not known about it?" And so because the liver is such a primary focus for me working with my clients, which I'll explain why, I was like, "I'm gonna start running this panel on most of my clients 'cause I wanna really know where their liver is at." And the reason I say this is because the typical markers to run to look at the liver is AST and ALT. Those are two enzyme markers that are only gonna come up elevated when someone has acute liver inflammation, meaning, like, there is something happening right now that is making their liver super inflamed.
**Unknown:** But the thing is that most people have chronic issues with their liver. It's been going on a long, long time because nowadays kids are being born with a jacked up liver. One of the primary reasons for them being jaundice. There are liver issues from day one, and the reason is because there are studies now proving that there are almost 200 chemicals in the amniotic fluid, so kids or the fetus is floating in amniotic fluid filled with chemicals.
**Unknown:** So your liver helps you to break down and metabolize chemicals, toxins, medications, caffeine, any of these chemical compounds. It helps to break it down. So I always laugh when p- I talk to people and I'm like, "Oh, your liver is showing up stressed or inflamed." "I don't even drink." I'm like, "Drinking is, like, the teeniest little part" ... I don't wanna say the teeniest part.
**Unknown:** It, it's one of the smallest things of all the things that can stress your liver, from tap water to the pesticides on the food to all the chemicals in the personal products that we lather our bodies in, shampoo our heads with, to the, the Vaseline you put on your baby's butt, to the, the cleaning products in your house, to the fertilizers in your yard, the mosquito spray that you spray on your property.The, the chemicals that are on golf courses, like, shall I go on? The medications, the Tylenol, the Pamprin, the, the pharmaceutical prescription drugs, like your liver has to break down and metabolize all of that. It has to break down that cup of coffee you drink every day or multiple times a day. That is the reason why people will say, "Oh, my God, I was fine when I was young, and now I'm, now I'm 25 and I have one glass of wine, I feel like I'm gonna die for five days." Like, that's not the wine per se.
**Unknown:** Don't get me wrong, most wine is shit unless you live in Italy or France. But it's, it's the fact that your, your liver is already congested. It's already inflamed by your teens and your 20s, so it can't metabolize things the way that it used to. And so if that's what's happening, it's like you can't drink caffeine anymore.
**Unknown:** You can't drink a glass of wine anymore. Like, the-- you're allergic to everything. Everything fucks up your stomach. Like, that's a sign that your liver is completely messed up.
**Unknown:** If your-- you can't lose weight no matter what you do, your liver is messed up. If your skin looks like shit, your liver is messed up. Your head-to-toe eczema, dermatomyositis, whatever, like that is... it's a liver issue.
**Unknown:** Your liver is at the center of almost any disease from brain fog, to autoimmunity, to skin, hormones, et cetera. And if I, if I didn't say this already, over ninety-five percent of the people that I test, that autoimmune liver panel, it's positive in eight years, kids included. It is a huge problem. The other thing, the past year, I've been testing heavy metals in the urine just through LabCorp and Quest.
**Unknown:** And for those of you that are seasoned functional mediciners, you know that that's not a good test. And I ran it because I was having a lot of difficulty with using a private lab for a kid, and we were only trying to do urine. And I was like, "Let's just do this one test, and let's see if it yields any valuable information." This kid's arsenic level was through the roof. I was like, "That's kind of interesting." So tested a few other people that are big golfers because golf courses have very specific pesticides that are arsenic-based.
**Unknown:** And so everyone in the past year, elevated arsenic, and it's definitely hard to say exactly where it's coming from. But another very interesting fact about arsenic is arsenic is something, the organic version of arsenic, arsenic is in the earth's crust, like the organic version. Then there's inorganic versions of arsenic, which are the toxic man-made forms. So organic arsenic from the earth can actually be absorbed by the body when the body is trying to protect itself from radiation.
**Unknown:** And how many of us are walking around with an iPhone 12, 13, 14, 15 in our pockets, in our Lululemon belt bags, wearing it right over our heart? So it's... radiation is a huge part of it, and that could be a driving force behind the arsenic. I'm derailing.
**Unknown:** So the moral of the story is, is those two systems need to be looked at in the event that you're having horrific menopausal symptoms. And chances are they are the catalyst. But the other thing too is that there are so many women walking around with silent urinary tract vaginal infections. So many women.
**Unknown:** People will ask me all the time, they're like, "Why are you running this urine panel for like chlamydia and gonorrhea?" And I'm like, "No, no, no." I'm like, "Yes, the panel has those in it, but the panel is looking at some bacterias that are less talked about, like ureaplasma, mycoplasma, that are in the urinary tract or vaginal tract or both that are going undetected, but are the reason for women needing ablations, for women having bad menopause, bad periods, endometriosis, fibroids, cysts, et cetera." And so that's another avenue that has to be investigated. The other thing, go hop on Google. I never tell people to hop on Google because it's like, you know, terrifying usually when people Google things. But if you wanted to Google the anatomy of the pelvic bowl, the anatomy of the urinary tract bladder, vaginal tract uterus, and rectum, you're gonna find that they literally line up.
**Unknown:** They share walls. Here's your rectum, here's your vaginal tract, here's your urinary tract as a woman, obviously. And so a lot of people are walking around with gut issues. Some, they're diagnosed, some are just like, "Eh, my gut's just not great.
**Unknown:** I don't poop very well. You know, I have blood sometimes. I have hemorrhoids," so on and so forth. And what I find is that if those problems go on long enough, and now you start to have ulcerations or you start to have leaky gut, which essentially is ulcerations or permeability in your gut, you can have the bacteria of your gut now start to get into the lymph nodes of your pelvic bowl, and then eventually get into the urinary and vaginal tract.
**Unknown:** So there is a huge correlation to women dealing with reproductive issues that are, it's actually all coming from either diagnosed or undiagnosed gut issues. So these are all things that have to be taken into consideration because the first thing that we're told is bioidentical hormones or hormone replacement therapy. And I'm not gonna say that doesn't make you feel better. If you...
**Unknown:** if, if your hormones are messed up, because your hormones will be messed up with this going on, youFix the hormone problem and you will start to feel better. But the problem is, is that your body's really, really fucking smart. And so if you wanna put hormones in, then your body's gonna adapt. It's going to say, "Where did, where did that come from?
**Unknown:** Okay, shut down the pituitary gland of the brain, which is stimulating for hormone production. Shut down adrenal function because that, that might be why we're producing too, too many hormones." So you start to create a lot of problems when you put exogenous hormones in because your body knows how to do its job. There's obviously obstacles like the liver, like the pancreas, the insulin, the infection. Those are the obstacles that are messing up the hormones, and your body adapted.
**Unknown:** Your body adapted to those issues. So now you disregard those issues, not saying intentionally, and you go and you start putting hormones in because your hormone test is messed up and nobody looked at anything else, and now you're creating a different set of problems. And also, is anybody talking about the long-term effects of putting estrogen creams on your body or using estrogen-based suppositories and how that can be a catalyst for, um, weight gain? That could be a catalyst for cancerous growth.
**Unknown:** Nobody's talking about that either. Or that could be a catalyst in neurological degeneration. So it's really understanding your body knows what to do, but your body will adapt. We call it disease, but it's really distress, and it's your body adapting to the current circumstances.
**Unknown:** We need to think differently about disease. We need to think differently about pathologizing everything and thinking your body failed you. Your body doesn't fail you. Your body adapts to the stressors that exist, and that is what nobody's fucking talking about.
**Unknown:** Your body adapts. A cancer cell is an adaption. Everything is an adaption. So are you gonna look at the root cause and figure out what the fuck is wrong so that you can solve it, or are you just gonna keep using poisonous pharmaceuticals that are not solving the problem, they're just creating a boatload of side effects that you need more medication for later?
**Unknown:** Like, the system is designed very, very intelligently, and we need to think outside the box, and we need to understand that we have the power to change those circumstances and not rely on these exogenous compounds. It's, it's just, it's a crazy idea when you really think about it from a different lens. We... Like, how long have medications been in the picture?
**Unknown:** The past 75, 80 years. What did people do before? Did everyone just die? People, more people are dying young now.
**Unknown:** People survived way longer, even without pharmaceuticals, without vaccines, without all of that. People are sicker than they've ever been. Kids are sicker than they've ever been, and it's an adaption to the stress from pollutants, from actual mental stress, from this skewed culture that is not about people. It's about, "Don't trust people.
**Unknown:** Hate people. Watch your back." You know? There's so many fucking layers to it, like I could be here all day. But the point is, is that you have the power to find the root cause.
**Unknown:** It takes diagnostics, it takes data, but there is always a solution. And remember, when you're, when you think your body is failing you, it's an adaption. Your body is doing intelligently what it knows how to do, which is keep you alive, and that adaption can look like really bad menopause. That adaption can look like a, quote-unquote, "disease." It can look like pain.
**Unknown:** It can look like a cancer cell. It's a matter of figuring out what caused the stress that caused the adaption. Gonna mic that, drop that right there. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio.
**Unknown:** We appreciate all of your support. We love your comments. Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
Further reading
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