Your Hormones Might Not Be To Blame
Episode 129
In today’s episode of Integrative Wellness Radio, Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick unfold the widely spread misconceptions about hormones. Hormones have a bad rap: they get blamed for so many things but it’s often not the root cause or the only issue present. Dr. Nicole digs deep into the types of testing that are best for uncovering the foundational issues that act as a stem for irregular hormone levels. She also discusses the many things that are influencing our hormone levels and how conventional medicine is just a quick fix. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Interested in working with IWG? Book a complimentary consult call to learn more using this link: https://bit.ly/IWRcall2021 Noteworthy Time Stamps: 2:44 People’s hormones are usually off 5:53 Supplements and herbs are just a ‘temporary relief’ 6:23 Things influencing our hormones 9:34 Fight or flight mode puts hormones on the back burner 10:18 The deficiencies that lead to hormonal imbalance 12:29 There’s no way it’s JUST hormones 13:13 Hormonal effects on menstrual cycle 15:50 IWG’s approach to low-grade infections 22:26 Stress is all perception 25:33 Most people utilize ‘dopamine high’ to overcome stress hormones 28:06 It’s impossible to balance out a neurological problem with a chemical fix 32:33 How blood sugar can impact hormones 35:34 Better testing will decipher the foundational issues in the body
Topics: hormones, unknown, stress, because, tied, many, root, integrative
Key takeaways from this episode
- And that's because the hormones are tied to the brain, they're tied to our neurotransmitters, they're tied to our stress levels, they're tied to our gut, and they're also tied to our immune system. **Unknown:** They're also tied to our energetic systems.
- Nick and Dr. **Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
- But secondary to that is, do you need to do different testing in order to decipher what is the root of your hormones being off as well? **Unknown:** Well, I guess simply put, it's like hormones get blamed for a lot of problems, a lot of symptoms that we have.
- So we are actually moving into the theme of the month, uh, which is actually all about hormones. **Unknown:** Hormones is such a hot topic because most of us, especially as women, can relate to feeling hormonally off at least at some point in the month.
- So I guess easily put, the hormones are usually the cause of our symptoms, but they're never the root cause.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nick and Dr. **Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
And today we really wanna give an overview of what those different things are so that you can have clarity on, you know, is your hormones stemming from an underlying issue?
Transcript
**Unknown:** I've been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on the- Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative Wellness Radio. I am Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole Rivera, and I am here with my co-host, Dr. Nick Carathas. What's up, everybody? So we are actually moving into the theme of the month, uh, which is actually all about hormones.
**Unknown:** Hormones is such a hot topic because most of us, especially as women, can relate to feeling hormonally off at least at some point in the month. And, uh, in addition to that, when it comes to men, there's a lot of men that are constantly kind of checking in on their testosterone levels, and if that is for, um, different types of exercise purposes, bodybuilding, et cetera, or some type of competition. Uh, Dr. Nick is, uh, showing his muscles.
**Unknown:** So with- Or, or lack of. So with that being said, when it comes to hormones, you know, the biggest thing that we want to touch on today is that it's not always black and white, uh, in order to always just look at the hormones as functioning on their own or functioning independently of a variety of other systems, deficiencies, and stressors on the body because there are many, many, many things that can impact our hormones. And today we really wanna give an overview of what those different things are so that you can have clarity on, you know, is your hormones stemming from an underlying issue? But secondary to that is, do you need to do different testing in order to decipher what is the root of your hormones being off as well?
**Unknown:** Well, I guess simply put, it's like hormones get blamed for a lot of problems, a lot of symptoms that we have. And people come in and saying like, you know, the, "I know my hormone's off," whether it's coming from a thyroid or whether it's- Mm-hmm ... coming from, like, your adrenals are burnt out. Um, and looking deeper, it's like that's what they expect to be treated, is the hormones.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. And it doesn't always work that way. Yeah, and I think that's just such a huge point because the hormones are usually off, but it's more so that the approach needs to deal with any underlying issues because hormones are usually off because they're an effect. And that's because the hormones are tied to the brain, they're tied to our neurotransmitters, they're tied to our stress levels, they're tied to our gut, and they're also tied to our immune system.
**Unknown:** They're also tied to our energetic systems. And our energetic systems, which is really the foundation of what acupuncture is, which is meridian-based medicine. And, you know, when it comes to all of these different things that can impact our hormones, you know, you can feel easily right now, just like with that list, a little overwhelmed thinking like, "Well, where the heck is it coming from?" But that's really the beauty of looking at the body from an integrative approach, is being able to decipher, you know, what hormones are off, number one. Number two is, are the hormones truly the problem, or is it stemming from an underlying foundational problem?
**Unknown:** Which is usually the case for a lot of the clients that we see. So I guess easily put, the hormones are usually the cause of our symptoms, but they're never the root cause. They're always an effect of a deeper underlying problem. Well, I think one of the, uh, the most interesting things that I heard at a functional medicine conference was when you're talking about hormones, there are about two h- 200 different, uh, co-factors that need to be sufficient to run the pathways.
**Unknown:** So this is things like zinc, folate, B12, B6, et cetera. A lot of these nutrients that unfortunately a lot of us are deficient in, which we're gonna touch on. But there's various co-factors that are needed, but then also at the end of the day, you're dealing with a system that is comprised of the brain, so we have the pituitary hypothalamus gland, then we have the thyroid, then we have the adrenals, and then we have the reproductive system. And all of those systems have to be talking to each other in this perfect symphony, and then we also need to have sufficient amounts of these co-factors in order to make sure that the hormones are converted and produced and broken down if there's too much.
**Unknown:** And one of the other things that this physician said was, "If you think that you're going to perfectly balance that orchestra by providing a supplement or a medication, good luck." Mm-hmm. And it was very eye-opening to me at that point of, you know, it, it's true. To think that we can manipulate all of those systems and all of the pathways and al- all of the co-factors to be in perfect symphony, we're kind of fighting a losing battle. It'd be a big merry-go-round.
**Unknown:** Yeah. Yes. 100%. And this is also one of the reasons why a lot of people use everything from different types of supplements or herbs or even bioidenticals, birth control, and they use these modalities and they feel temporary relief.
**Unknown:** And then sometimes the relief wears off, or they decide, "Okay, I'm gonna try to get off of this or, or eliminate this," and they go right back to where they were. Sometimes even worse Exactly, and it's because there was always a foundational issue, and it was never being addressed. We were just trying to create, you know, or correct an imbalance that was more of an effect. So some of the top things that are affecting us from a hormonal perspective or can influence the imbalances of these pathways is, number one is gonna be toxins.
**Unknown:** And I think a lot of us have heard of BPA. You know, we're hearing about, you know, BPA-free plastics, and the BPA is a chemical that's in a lot of our plastics that they have actually found to be a hormone disruptor. So for those of you that see the BPA and, you know, or the, uh, non-BPA and you're, you know, steering away from it, not everybody understands the reason why we're avoiding it, and it's primarily because they found it to be a hormone disruptor. But that is one of many- Mm-hmm ...
**Unknown:** hormone disruptors in our food as well as in our personal products. The other thing, too, is related to the immune system. Um, when our immune system is under a lot of stress, knowingly or unknowingly, um, and we're dealing with maybe a lot of different infections, maybe we're getting chronic urinary tract infections, chronic yeast infections, um, chronic sore throats, ear infections, whatever the case may be, um, the immune system being on high alert, your body almost thinks it's in survival mode. So there are a lot of things that get put on the back burner when your immune system has to funnel its energy to survival, which is protecting you or trying to eradicate these infections.
**Unknown:** It's always putting out a fire. Exactly. Um, in addition to that, then we also have emotional stress, and, uh, I think the, the most fascinating thing that we don't always consider is that, especially being from New Jersey, Nick is from Iowa, so he can definitely, uh, piggyback off of this, but, you know how many New Jersey, New York women especially just say, "Well, yeah, I have stress, but I can handle stress." I'm fine. Yeah.
**Unknown:** I'm fine. I'm fine. And we're, you know, we're constantly juggling because that's what we are used to, or we wanna be, you know, super mom, super woman, career woman, et cetera. And, you know, the most fascinating thing about, um, the evolution of our bodies and our genetics is we actually haven't changed that much.
**Unknown:** So back in the day when you were threatened, um, or you were in a survive- survival, um, situation, like AKA you go into the fight or flight, um, your body literally thinks you're going to either fight a tiger or run. So that same response happens when we get that nasty email from our boss, or, you know, we get into a fight with our spouse, or, you know, we deal with some other unfavorable situation. And what I see just working with a lot of people is, like, it is simple, like that nasty email, but it, then it's the rumination. You know?
**Unknown:** It's just like it's replay, and y- you think about it all day long, and when you get a break, it pops back up, and it's because of, like, that hasn't been balanced out. But the nervous system doesn't care if it's, like, if it's a replay or if it's a real event. It's constantly pushing that body into that sympathetic state, that fight or flight- Mm-hmm ... which you can never heal when you're in that sympathetic state.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. It's like the body's either growing and healing, or it's just surviving, trying to protect itself. Mm-hmm. You can't, you can't do both at the same time.
**Unknown:** Well, the fight or flight is your body is, is moving into that sympathetic response, and the easiest way to say it is that if your body is in a survival mode, and it's in this sympathetic response or, again, fight or flight, there's a couple of things that are not important if you're about to fight the tiger or run from it, and one of those things is reproducing. Yep. So hormones are going on the back burner because if you're about to fight a tiger, nobody's trying to have a baby. Um, and then, you know, coming back to even just a very simplistic reason for hormones being off is deficiencies.
**Unknown:** You know, there's so many people that are struggling with gut issues nowadays, and there's such an epidemic of GERD, um, reflux, indigestion, heartburn. We're taking Tums. You know, we're taking all of these over-the-counter meds to try to buffer that. But a lot of our, um, what they're called, they're called methyl donors, which is pretty much our folate and our B12 and our B6.
**Unknown:** For those of you listening, think about it, females especially, is when you take a prenatal to improve your fertility, uh, you're usually taking a prenatal that contains all of those nutrients because they're very, very important for your hormones and also the development of the baby. So if you are very deficient in those types of, um, methyl donors, then you're easily going to have your hormones be out of balance. So it could be as simple as that. Could be.
**Unknown:** Um, and then in addition to the deficiencies, if you're having, you know, different issues with your digestive system, you might also be struggling with blood sugar, and a lot of people nowadays are struggling with either pre-diabetic diabetes, or they're even struggling with hypoglycemia, which is when the blood sugar is too low. And interesting enough, blood sugar and your cortisol levels play hand-in-hand with each other. So the way that you can kinda connect this to your symptoms is if you're a person who is not necessarily waking up refreshed, maybe you're not sleeping very well, you're crashing middle of the day, you need your midday coffee, chances are your cortisol is probably out of balance, and that can definitely come from blood sugar instability as well. Yep.
**Unknown:** That's why a lot of people going on this keto diet as well as even doing intermittent fasting are feeling really great results 'cause it's actually helping to correct their blood sugar. Yeah, and the, the blood sugar goes to the brain. Uh, it helps out with the actual neuro- neurotransmitter balancing. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** But then a precursor for most our tran- transmitters are your hormones. So it's just a- Yes ... it's a big circle there, and it's like when one gets off, it just affects the whole pathway. And I think that's really probably the most important thing for people to take away from today is that-There's, there's no way that it's just the hormones.
**Unknown:** It's just not possible when you understand physiology, which o- obviously a lot of us don't understand physiology. But there's no possible way that your hormones are the only thing out of balance. There is usually going to be another component or a combination of components. So it's a matter of evaluating all of those different systems and all of those possibilities so that you can resolve your hormonal imbalance once and for all.
**Unknown:** I like it. So as we kind of dive in, um, and talk a little bit more about this immune system component, so I think it's really important for people to understand this point because I know that when I found it out I was like kind of like mouth dropped aha moment, is a lot of women leading up to their period have different symptoms. Some women say, "Oh, gosh, I'm so moody." Some women say, "Oh, my goodness," like, "I wanna eat everything." And then some women get really bad stomach problems, and other women get migraines or even headaches. And then there's other women that don't have any of that.
**Unknown:** They just are like, "Oh, I don't even know that my period's coming, and it's a breeze." So there is a reason for that, and one of the major reasons is because leading up to your period, your body demands more energy to be focused on your menstrual cycle. So if you have different things that are stressing out your immune system, maybe it's a low-grade urinary tract that you're not even aware of until it gets really bad, and then you usually go, you know, for your antibiotics. So if you have these low-grade bacterial infections maybe in your gut, maybe in your urinary tract, maybe in your tonsils, maybe in your gums, then your immune system is going to be, going to be tending to that. It's going to be giving a lot of energy to fighting those bad things off.
**Unknown:** Same thing goes for toxins. It's gonna be focusing in on get the bad stuff out 'cause that's the job of the immune system. So now leading up to your menstrual cycle, you ha- all of your energy has to get derailed 'cause it has to prepare you for your menstrual cycle. So what happens is, is because now the immune system becomes somewhat suppressed because all the energy is being allocated somewhere else, we start to have these odd symptoms that come to the surface.
**Unknown:** And that's why it's different across the board. So maybe if you have immune system stress happening in your gut, maybe you have some bacterial infections that you're unaware of, and maybe you have, you know, low-grade irritable bowel syndrome, you might be the person who gets constipated or has diarrhea leading up to your period. And even the... I've had people come in, and, like, I have heart, heartburn- Mm ...
**Unknown:** um, during that same time. And that would be more so an infection in their stomach, which is up near the left ribcage. So there's many, many possibilities for the reasons why we have those different symptoms leading up to our period. It's not just hormones.
**Unknown:** It's that your menstrual cycle is derailing your immune system, which is currently stressed. And some people might be thinking, "Well, why doesn't this come up, you know, in my testing, or why doesn't it come up in my annual blood work?" Is most of the time if you're... The only way that somebody's looking for infections is if you are having chronic fevers or maybe you're having diarrhea for over two weeks or you see an infectious disease doctor. So doctors are not traditionally looking for infections unless something really bad is happening, and one of the things that we constantly evaluate for is these low-grade chronic infections.
**Unknown:** I'm smiling. W- I was like, why is Nick smiling? 'Cause I was just gonna bring that up, and, like, most physicians are looking for the white blood cells to be high 'cause that means that their immune s- system's having a reaction, AKA they're fighting something. But most people are, when they're glancing over blood work, aren't looking for, like, oh, this is actually a little bit more low than it should be.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. Instead of, oh, you're healthy, you're not fighting something, it's actually, oh, your immune system's tired. Yeah, and I think that's a really important point because some, uh, people that get regular blood work probably are f- somewhat familiar with the WBCs, which is white blood cell count. And the white blood cell count, like Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick said, is if it's high, that's when there's an alert from the doctor, but if it is low, chronically low, that means your immune system is chronically stressed. So it's definitely an important thing to consider. But again- And tho- and those are the people that are like, "Well, I haven't been sick in years." It's like- Yeah ... you haven't been sick 'cause your immune system hasn't had enough energy to be able to, to fight anything.
**Unknown:** I tell those people- ... they're chronically sick. You're just low-grade sick all the time. You just don't even know any different.
**Unknown:** And I can only speak from experience 'cause that was me. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, your, uh, your white blood cell count was, uh, bottomed out when we did your testing initially.
**Unknown:** Yeah, it was bad. Yeah. So you can thank, uh, Cambodia and all your f- your friends you acquired. It was a little more than that, but that was a big part of it, for sure.
**Unknown:** Yeah. So- Parasite friends. Yeah, so that's the thing is, you know, for, for us, we've been on our own health journey, and we've definitely had our array of different things that have showed up in our testing over the years. But, um, you know, w- we, we know what we know now because, partly because of our own journey and then also partly because of what we see over and over and over again in clinical practice.
**Unknown:** And I always tell my female patients that come in, and they're like, "It's my thyroid. It's my hormones." It's like, "Okay, we're just gonna let the testing uncover what, you know, what's going on, look at the big picture." And most of these women have their hormones completely correct without addressing them by specifically just getting rid of either the infectious burden, the toxic burden, um, or decreasing their stress level, which is what we wanna talk about next. And, you know, I wanna piggyback, we wanna talk about it right now, but also changing out, doesn't have to be necessarily just personal products- Mm-hmm ... but your environment.
**Unknown:** You know, there's a lot of flame retardants in everything, and that can disrupt, uh, hormones and the- Yeah. I know. I think if people really understood the toxicity in our environment, they would w- wanna live literally in a bubble. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** Um- Or at least on an island. So I think for sake of not overwhelming the audience is, I think, a really, really fantastic, uh, tool is an app called Think Dirty. It's a completely free app that you can download, and it can give you insight as to the toxins in your personal products or if your personal products are toxic.And the great thing about it is it lists out the, uh, ingredients that are toxic, and it tells you what they do and if they are a hormone disruptor. And then secondarily is if you scroll down, it'll actually give you, um, good swaps, like- Hmm ...
**Unknown:** a healthier swap. What is that? Think Dirty? So EWG was the- That's what- ...
**Unknown:** original. Yeah. Um, and EWG is still fantastic, but Think Dirty seems to be a little bit more updated- Hmm ... with, um, a lot of the newer companies and products.
**Unknown:** I haven't heard of Think Dirty. Yeah. It breaks it down really nicely because it has descriptions for the people that wanna read. Everything's color-coded th- for the people that are more visual.
**Unknown:** Um, but it definitely has a lot of great information. One thing that I will say that I personally learned by using the Think Dirty app is that, you know, you kind of assume when you're seeking out better personal products, that the brand will be the same across the board. So you think like, "Okay, if I buy this brand, then all of their items are healthy," and that's actually not true. Um, I actually bought a shampoo recently, and I bought the hydration version of the shampoo, and the whole line is pretty healthy, but go figure, the one that I bought, the Hydrate Shampoo, and the only reason I actually looked up the specific one is because when I got the shampoo, it was purple.
**Unknown:** And I was like, "Well, that's kind of interesting. I can't imagine how natural this is if it's purple." Um, so when I looked it up, it goes one through eight. Eight is most toxic. It was an eight.
**Unknown:** That's the one you gave me to use? No, I don't think so. Did I? Here, you can use this one, honey.
**Unknown:** Uh, so it's definitely important to, uh, to utilize those tools because, you know, you think you're buying a brand and everything is gonna be good within that brand, but that's not necessarily always how it works. Yeah. Um- Well, it's the same thing with, like, supplement companies. Like, there's a couple supplements that they, like, crush and make really well.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. But then, you know, there's the rest of the line that's- Mm-hmm ... maybe not necessarily bad, but it's not as good as the select few. It's true.
**Unknown:** It's true. I think it goes across the board for a lot of different things. So getting into stress, I think that this is just so significant because we're not always thinking about our hormones in relation to being compromised because of our day-to-day lifestyle, stress levels, emotional, you know, things that we're holding onto. We, we definitely are not always connecting those dots because, you know, we're just in this mindset of, "Well, everybody has stress.
**Unknown:** You know, life is stressful, and you just gotta, you know, put your head down and roll with it and get through it." And when you actually look at what stress is, it, it's a hormone. You have, um, adrenaline is technically a stress hormone. Um, norepinephrine, epinephrine, which are interchangeable with adrenaline, th- those are stress hormones. Cortisol is a stress hormone.
**Unknown:** So there are many stress hormones that if they are really chronically high, they are going to compromise our production of our other hormones, which is going to be our feel-good hormones, like our neurotransmitters, and also our sex hormones. So being in this co- chronic state of stress, also known as fight or flight, is 100% going to derail our hormones. That's it, Nick? No, just sta- just a stare?
**Unknown:** There's so many directions I wanna go with this one. Um, I mean, when you look at stress, it's, it's all a perception, uh, 'cause what's stressful for one person isn't stressful for another person. Mm-hmm. And what's assumed a negative stress for, for you might actually be more of a positive stress for me.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. Um, and that's really just going back and really understanding, you know, your purpose, your value, what's important to you, um, and l- aligning your life and your decisions to pretty much be, uh, a combination of support and challenge to help you experience those things. Um- Well, stress is 100% a perception because, you know, when we're... A lot of times we're looking at something as being unlucky or being a bad scenario, but we're not always looking beyond the, the now and thinking about how this potentially can serve us in the future.
**Unknown:** Like, something as simple as, like, losing your job. You know, losing your job, it's, it's a hit to your ego. You know, there's that moment of, you know, deathly fear of, how am I going to make money? How am I gonna support my family?
**Unknown:** You know, there's all the thoughts that go into your mind for the, you know, the, the now of what's happening. But, you know, this actually happened to my mom, and she was so devastated that she lost her job. But at the end of the day, she hated her job. She talked every day about how much she hated it.
**Unknown:** And I was like, "Isn't this a positive for you? You know, you're able to... You know, it'll be a little stressful in this transition, but being able to now, you know, relieve yourself of something that stressed you out every day and take that first step towards something that you potentially want to do." And obviously, you know, that's a scary thing for a lot of people. But, um, you know, we, we definitely...
**Unknown:** It comes down to the perception of it and, and what we make of it. And, and the nice thing is to understand that you can support the stress in so many different pathways, you know, because so many different pathways are affected. You know, it's like- Mm-hmm ... you might not have, you know, the time to go through and, you know, actually go out and balance out the emotions and see the perceptions of the good and the bad, uh, with it.
**Unknown:** But then, you know, you can also look and maybe say, like, "I'm gonna take these herbal remedies, and this is gonna help support, uh, my nervous system or help- Mm-hmm ... balance out, you know, my-HPA axis, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenals. Like it's just all that is is really just the, the pathway- Mm-hmm ... that when inflammation comes into the brain and goes into the, the H, the hypothalamus- Mm-hmm ...
**Unknown:** that says, "All right, I'm stressed." And then that inflammation goes down and finally turns into a hormone, into the adrenals, to produce cortisol or epinephrine or norepinephrine and says, "All right, we're stressed." Mm-hmm. Um, so you can support it in so many different ways. But the interesting thing, a lot of our, um, tools that we use, and if you wanna call them tools, but when we have the stress or when, you know, we're in a crappy situation, um, we usually then are supplementing in not the best way. So what I mean by that is we're utilizing things like caffeine.
**Unknown:** We're utilizing things like sugar to give us like a very temporary, uh, dopamine high- Mm-hmm ... which makes us feel good in the moment. And, you know, I think everyone can relate to this to some different capacity, but when we're stressed, some people smoke a cigarette. When we're stressed, some people drink a glass of wine.
**Unknown:** Uh, when we're stressed, some people want chocolate, sugar, um, they wanna go for a run, whatever the case may be. All of those tools or modalities are a way that we give ourself a temporary dopamine high to try to overcome all of the excess of those stress hormones. So there's a lot of things that we do intuitively to try to autocorrect, but at the end of the day, one of the biggest things we need to do is, is figure out the strategies to de-stress, which unfortunately, in my opinion, there are not a lot of quality tools out there. Because most of the time we seek out some type of counseling, which is obviously beneficial for a lot of people, but some people, the counseling ends up being them telling their traumatic story over and over and over again, which induces stress hormones every time they talk about it, and it literally starts to rewire their nervous system to a point that it's very difficult for their nerve system to bounce back.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. And that's definitely some of the cases that we work with is when it's gotten so plasticized, like meaning that their nervous system is so, is wired so wrong because of all of that stress and all of that rumination, AKA saying things over and over and over again, that, you know, we use different tools like neurofeedback. We use different tools, um, like one of our technology is called bioresonance. Like we use these different tools to help the nervous system rewire.
**Unknown:** And that's like a ... If you're listening right now, what you just said is tremendously, vastly important. Mm-hmm. Because like if you're trying to change a hormone and understanding that a hormone's made in an organ, and really it's that organ has information sent to it via your nervous system to tell the organ to say, "Hey, I'm gonna produce this chemical, this hormone- Mm-hmm ...
**Unknown:** this neurotransmitter." And it's like if you've plasticized this nervous system to constantly be, you know, firing and wiring in this one specific pattern and it's all through this stressed out pattern, that you're never going to balance out a chemical through trying to fight it with a chemical because- Mm-hmm ... it's not a chemical problem. Mm. It's a neurological problem.
**Unknown:** And you can support it, like you said, you know, we have, we're intelligent beings, like whether we're gonna go for alcohol or chocolate or whatever it is- Mm-hmm ... it's like that's our unconscious saying, "This is gonna help us." It's not a, you know, long-term sustainable help. Mm-hmm. But it's the body saying, "We can kind of hack the system short-term chemically." It'd be more intelligent to do it, you know, with some- Mm-hmm ...
**Unknown:** herbs or something like that. But in the meantime, let's start really working on the nervous system and creating these different neural pathways and allowing the communication process to go from, you know, this sympathetic to more of a parasympathetic healing, relaxing. Mm-hmm. Well, I think that's huge, and I think that we wanna try to kind of piece this all together, um, as we were wrapping up with the, with the podcast because, you know, this is a lot of information, and what you can clearly see that hormones can be influenced by so many different avenues.
**Unknown:** But I think that, you know, some of the most common things that we see within the practice are a few. And number one is the neurological system, is really evaluating is the neurological system stressed because meaning the neurological system, the pituitary gland is the control center of your thyroid, your adrenals, and your, and your reproductive sex hormones. So you have to make sure that that control center is actually working. One of the most common things that I personally see that is affecting the pituitary gland is mold toxicity.
**Unknown:** Um, mold toxicity can be from an environmental, um, issue, but it also can be from overuse of antibiotics because antibiotics are made from mold. A lot of people don't know that. So if you have an allergy to penicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin, chances are you potentially have been exposed to mold. Maybe it was through overuse of antibiotics.
**Unknown:** Maybe it was from an environmental issue. Um, the other thing too is the, is the brain getting what it needs? Is the pituitary gland getting what it needs? And that comes back to blood sugar and blood flow.And if you're not having proper blood flow, 'cause maybe you have hi- or, um, hypotension, maybe you have low blood pressure, maybe you have high blood pressure, that is impacting your brain.
**Unknown:** That is not just necessarily a cardiovascular issue. Your brain needs oxygen from blood flow. So your blood pressure can dictate the health of your pituitary gland. And then secondary to that, if you're diabetic, pre-diabetic, hypoglycemic, that will also impact your pituitary gland, because your brain needs glucose to function optimally.
**Unknown:** And there's tons of studies now that's shown if you have high, uh, blood sugar, uh, the smaller the brain you have. Yes. And that just causes stress. Yes.
**Unknown:** And then it's like if you, talking about blood flow, one of the biggest things, you know, whether it's mold, whether it's other infections, um, but it's really just it's stuck there. It's not able to those- whether infection toxicity is unable to leave, uh, leave the brain. Mm-hmm. So it's like we've had tons of podcasts earlier talking about the lymphatic system being stuck.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. Um, but really it's this, uh, insufficiency of, um, the veins, the- Mm-hmm ... the blood leaving the brain that's also creating a lot of the stress onto the hypothalamus that can- And usually those are the people getting headaches and migraines- Yeah ... as well.
**Unknown:** Um, and just a side note on that is one very common thing that I see when the blood is having trouble flowing out of the head, which is more of a vein issue, these are the people that get a lot of problems behind the eye, like a bad pressure behind the eye, and that has to do with the jugular vein. Um, one of the biggest things that I see is that you have a s- something called your sagittal sinus, which is, uh, partly where your, um, cerebral spinal fluid flows. Um, and it separates left and right hemisphere, and a very, very common thing that I see is either toxins, like things like mercury or aluminum that are neurotoxic. Mercury comes from the silver fillings.
**Unknown:** Aluminum is something we put on our armpits every day when we use antiperspirant. Um, and I also see different infections in that area too, the most common probably being strep that could be correlated with autoimmune brain conditions like PANDAS. Um, and I also see the herpes simplex virus quite often. I- I would say, uh, actually coxsackie is another one.
**Unknown:** Yeah, I was gonna say coxsackie's a decent common- That's very common. So there's definitely, when it comes to the brain and the pituitary dysfunction, we have the blood sugar to consider, we have the blood flow to consider, but then we also have to look at, you know, is the blood, uh, flow being compromised because of toxins and infections that are stressing the neurological system? So these things have to be evaluated if you're trying to figure out what is causing your hormones to be off. You have to look at the control center.
**Unknown:** We're always trying to work, um, bottom up when it comes to hormones. Very rarely, um, is anyone doing any type of support for the pituitary gland. We're always trying to either induce more thyroid hormone or we're trying to induce, um, more of the, like, feel-good hormones, like serotonin or dopamine. We're not necessarily always looking at the control center, which is the pituitary gland.
**Unknown:** And if we start looking at that, we probably will find more success with balancing the thyroid, improving people's energy levels, and getting their menstrual cycle on track. Definitely more sustainable, you know, 'cause you can help somebody, but then if you haven't fixed the, the deepest root as cause- Mm-hmm ... and you stop, it's slowly gonna creep back up. Well, and another thing that we wanna, um, we're gonna be talking about this month on the podcast is getting a little bit more into some of these common conditions that women deal with, everything from endometriosis to polycystic ovarian syndrome, um, and even in addition to, like, uterine fibroids and polyps.
**Unknown:** But, you know, one thing that we do see pretty often that can throw off the hormones is if we have chronic infections in those organs, like the uterus, um, or we have, you know, cysts on the ovaries and things like that. Even around the bladder. Exactly. Because your urinary tract and your vaginal tract are in such close proximity, so it is very, very common that you're going to have the same types of bacterias or, or yeast that can affect both of those tracts.
**Unknown:** And with that being said, if you have those chronic infections that keep coming and going, that can definitely throw off your reproductive communication with the other parts of your endocrine system, like the pituitary gland. So sometimes it's, you know, uh, top-down and sometimes it's bottom-up. So it really depends, and you just have to have someone looking at you from that perspective to take all of those things into consideration to see what is the root that is really throwing off your hormones. Love it.
**Unknown:** And last but not least is, you know, you have to evaluate the gut. You have to look to see, are you massively deficient in all of these different co-factors, these methyl donors, which are the folate, the B6, the B12, pretty much all the array of the B vitamins. And can, and can you digest them? Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** Exactly. So are you just deficient in them because you can't absorb them or because you're not getting them in your diet? Because all of those co-factors allow for your hormones to be produced properly. So some people it's going to be more of this neurological component, some people it's more of a toxicity component, and then there's other people that it's more so just a deficiency issue.
**Unknown:** So there is testing that is available to really evaluate all of these different systems and decipher what is the root, especially for those of you that have been on your thyroid medication for years upon years and, you know, you're constantly having to up the dose, lower the dose, up the dose, lower the dose because it's not fixing the root. Um, and same thing with women that are on, you know, bioidentical hormones or, you know, they've had various, um, surgeries to remove endometriosis or cysts or fibroids or polyps. Like, there's something going on that's being missed. Especially if they keep coming back.
**Unknown:** Yeah. Exactly. They only come back because the problem, the underlying problem hasn't been resolved. Um, and it's very common nowadays that women are getting, um, you know, different types of, like, procedures, like DNCs and ablations.
**Unknown:** They're, they're calling it... Uh, what was, what did she call it the other day? I had a patient and, oh, she was saying it's the modern, their, her, uh, gynecologist called it the modern-day hysterectomy, and they're pretty much going in and doing an ablation on the uterine tissue, which is pretty muchUh, propelling women into menopause- Mm-hmm ... at a very early age.
**Unknown:** And, you know, this is something that we see a lot, a lot of issues with later down the line because there was a major reason why, um, they were having either the excess bleeding or they were having, you know, the, the massive growth of tissue, uh, which is called endometriosis, and it was being overlooked. And, you know, they... It got to the point that it was so severe that they had to go and get that procedure. So even regardless of after that procedure, you really need to still decipher what is stressing the system, um, because if it's not affecting that, then it's going to still potentially affect the adrenals, the thyroid, and the brain.
**Unknown:** It's a lot of information in this one today. I know. Well, um, stick with us this month. We're gonna talk a lot more about different hormonal conditions.
**Unknown:** We hope you really enjoyed this just to have a foundation to understand how hormones work and what can affect them. Um, so definitely leave us a review, um, or subscribe to our podcast because we have a lot more great things coming to you. All right, thanks, guys. Thank you.
**Unknown:** We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com.
**Unknown:** All night, no sleep. 'Cause I feel like I'm always dreaming. Wide awake, that's okay
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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.
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