← The Candace Cameron Bure Podcast
The Candace Cameron Bure Podcast
Asks The Experts: What do I do about Perimenopause and the Stress Hormone Rollercoaster? -Dr. Tabatha Barber.
01:06:08
Asks The Experts: What do I do about Perimenopause and the Stress Hormone Rollercoaster? -Dr. Tabatha Barber.
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- [00:00]
A
Before we get started, I am going on Tour for the first time ever this fall. November 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd in four special cities. Join me for laughs, games, full house trivia, real conversations around women's wellness, and I'll be taking audience questions, tickets and info@candace.com tour before we begin today's conversation, I want to give you a heads up. We will be talking about some sensitive subjects. This episode is intended for mature ears, so please listen with this in mind. Is tofu one of them?
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B
Yeah.
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A
Cause sometimes I'm like, honey, you actually need to eat some tofu because there's so much testosterone. I'm like, you need to lessen it a little bit. Eat the tofu. You know, one thing I love is sharing stories that inspire us to live with faith and courage and Truth and Treason is exactly that kind of story. It's based on the true life of Helmut Huebner, a teenager in Nazi Germany who couldn't stay silent with nothing more than a typewriter, he risked everything to tell the truth. It's heartbreaking, yes, but it is also deeply hopeful and incredibly inspiring. What gives me chills is that hidden in his name are the German words Mut U Ben practice courage. And that's exactly what this movie challenges us to do. If a teenager could be that brave, what excuse do we have? Parents, I especially encourage you to take your teens. Let this film spark conversation about truth, faith, and standing up for what's right. Truth and Treason opens in theaters October 17th. Get your tickets today@angel.com candice and don't miss this powerful story of courage and conviction. Grand Canyon University, an affordable private Christian university based in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the largest universities in the country. Praised for its culture of community and impact, GCU integrates the free market system, a welcoming Christian worldview, and free and open discourse into 369 academic programs with over 300 online join a nationwide community of learners redefining what online education looks like through academically rigorous, industry driven programs that can spark bold ideas and prepare you for a future that matters. In addition to federal grants and aid, GCU's online students received nearly $161 million in institutional scholarships in 2024. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private Christian Affordable Visit GCU Edu myoffer to see the scholarships you may qualify for. No matter who you are, life can feel like a roller coaster, but it's so much better when we go through it together. Welcome to the Candace Cameron Bure Podcast. My podcast is not about Me, I have made it for you. I'm here to share open conversations with my friends about life's challenges, celebrations, and everything in between. Right now, we are deep diving into women's health, our body and soul. Come join us. Hi, Dr. Tabitha. Thanks for coming back.
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B
Oh, my goodness. I'm so excited to keep this conversation going.
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A
I know I had so many questions from last week. My brain was just going a mile a minute. There's so much I wanted to talk about as you were talking, and then we were moving on from one subject to another. But it's so such an interesting topic for me. I can't quite get enough. And I'm just so grateful that you're here and at least we can explore some of these questions that I have and our listeners have. And today, we are going to head straight into perimenopause. I think this is the most asked question I get. And as I share life on social media, lots of women that follow me are around the same age, and we're all dealing with the same things. And we all want to know. We want to trade secrets, like, how do we get through this? How are you feeling? What are you doing for this and for that? And so we got a ton of questions about perimenopause. So let's just go straight into it. I have been told, which makes me laugh. The Internet told me. All of you told me, because they're like, are you in perimenopause? And I said, I don't think so. I still have a regular period every month, and I don't have any major symptoms. Maybe an occasional. My brain. I lose my brain once in a while, but nothing compared to some of the friends. I know what they're going through. And then the Internet told me, oh, no, girl, you're in perimenopause. You've been in perimenopause for 10 years because that's when it starts. And then some people are like, no, perimenopause starts once you miss your first period. That's the beginning of it.
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B
And.
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A
And the truth is, I have no idea when perimenopause starts. I go to my doctor, and he has told me that I have not started yet. And so, like, I'm gonna believe my doctor and not the Internet, but why don't you tell us when perimenopause starts?
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B
Well, let me just say that you and everybody are confused. You're not the only one. I hear this every single day. And there's a few reasons for it. The biggest reason is there wasn't really a set definition beyond the one or two year time period of transition into menopause. So that's what I learned 20 years ago. Plus years ago, going to medical school was menopause is. First of all, let's define menopause. Menopause is literally one day. It's when you. Yes, it's one day. We get all the attention. But truthfully, it's when you haven't had a period for a year and you're not on any hormonal birth control or anything like that. You just naturally are no longer ovulating and producing the hormones from your ovaries. So you hit that year mark, you are termed menopausal. So before that, there's this transition of perimenopause. And 20 plus years ago, it wasn't a big deal. Women didn't struggle the way they do now.
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A
Really.
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B
Yeah, yeah. Oh, I know. So women, they would have hot flashes night. So I remember my mom being so mean, she would just scream. And we were like, what's wrong with mom? She was going through that transition. But it didn't go on and on for years and really interfere with life to the point where it does for women nowadays. And so we have to ask, why is the Internet telling you at 35 you're in perimenopause? Why is that now? What the influencers are all saying, first of all, it's very trendy, but second of all, we're trying to explain what we're feeling and what we're going through. So that's what we're calling it. We're calling it perimenopause, when in reality it's hormonal chaos. And it may or may not be related to the natural decline of your ovarian function. Your ovaries might be under assault, they might not be functioning for other reasons. So we just blanket term, you're in perimenopause.
- [07:37]
A
I see. It's kind of like saying, oh, I have pms. It's just these are symptoms. So if I'm having symptoms that can look like they're related to perimenopause, people are just saying, oh, then I'm in perimenopause. Yes, however long those symptoms last. Right.
- [07:50]
B
And so you're, you know, this season you're talking about being on a roller coaster, which is life, but it's also our hormones during perimenopause. And so if you feel like your hormones are all over the place, then you're told you're in Perimenopause. It's not super helpful though, because it doesn't tell you why your hormones are misbehaving or what to do about them. So that's what we need to dive in today because a lot of women are being dismissed. Like, well, this is just how it is. This is the normal 15 year transition. Good luck. No, that's crazy.
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A
Well, that's encouraging to me. I know we have a lot of work to do to figure it out and understand it, but that's encouraging that it shouldn't be this 10 or 15 year period of our lives where our home hormones feel unbalanced.
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B
Yes, exactly. So we have to start unpacking it. Where in your life are you feeling this? Did you just have a baby? Are you on hormonal birth control? Did you just come off hormonal birth control? And then all the other important stuff. How are you living your life? Are you stressed out from dusk till dawn? So I love to teach women about our nervous system. Okay, everybody's stressed, right? So it's no big deal. I get the eye rolls. When I tell people they're stressed, they're like, I know, so are you. So is everybody who isn't stressed. Okay, well, we may be able to handle it mentally, but our physiology is responding to that stress and so we need to address that. So our nervous system is taking all of this input and responding back to us. So there's an autonomic part of our nervous system, a part that just automatically happens. You breathe. You don't have to. I mean, you can help it. But you just breathe. Your heart just beats, your stomach just digests. You don't tell it to digest. This autonomic nervous system is parasympathetic and sympathetic. Sympathetic might sound nice, but it's actually not. It's fight or flight. I feel stressed out. I'm either going to like go run and hide or I'm going to eat myself with Netflix. Like that is sympathetic dominance. Dominance. It's a bad place to be stuck in because if you're in that space, you can't be in parasympathetic mode. That's rest, digest and repair, where all your bodily functions work. So so many of us are stuck in this sympathetic dominance and it drives all this excess cortisol production.
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A
So is that a cycle that we would be in one or the other at one point or one time in our lives or during a month, or is that really just the state of our being? You're either in one or another.
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B
That's A great question. So you can't be in both at the same time, but you should have the flexibility to quickly go into sympathetic. If a bear's chasing you, you wanna feel fear and run. But then you wanna come back to parasympathetic. There's a book called why Zebras don't get Ulcers. It's because after they are out in the wild and they survive, they didn't. They go back to eating the grass. It doesn't faze them. They go back into parasympathetic mode. But we, we fixate on that bear for the next 20 hours. And what if this and what if that and we just.
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A
Right. Well, we have to tell our friends about this bear that almost attacked us. We have a story to tell over and over and over.
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B
Right. And the story grows when we do that. And then the feelings that we feel, they all flush back again. The cortisol comes back, the adrenaline comes back. You can tell me a story about being mad at somebody two years ago and those feelings will come back.
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A
Absolutely, absolutely. And also if you have suffered from ptsd, that is what that is as well.
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B
And those.
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A
Because I've been put in a situation where I had such a reaction that I didn't know my body was capable of to do that. So I had. I had flown to a city that I didn't have a good experience the last time I was there and I immediately started hyperventilating in the car I was having. And that's not me. Like, I'm not a person that normally has a panic attack and yet my body just took over. I was like, what is happening to me right now? But it was so scary and weird to be there.
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B
Right. And then you can be in that similar situation again. And it's a trigger because your body keeps the score of that memory of what happened and you will create those chemicals again and feel it all over. So what's happening is women are getting stuck in this sympathetic dominance mode and that is driving hormone dysfunction we can talk about. That is destroying their gut health, which is driving inflammation throughout their body and shutting down the ovaries. So at the end of the day, we were created to procreate. Our bodies are made to make babies. And if we are in survival mode, run from a bear, we're not going to go and get pregnant and have a baby. So the ovaries are the first thing to shut down offline when you are in constant survival mode. So we see this when young girls over exercise, they're super athletic Their body is under physical stress constantly. They stop having periods. That's a real thing. Or people who go through traumatic events. It affects their periods. Because your body is wise enough to say, she can't handle a pregnancy right now. She's in survival mode. She's in the cave right now. Okay.
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A
I never thought about that with athletes.
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B
Yeah. It's a.
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A
Because I know that they have either very, very short periods or sometimes no periods at all. But I didn't realize because their body is interpreting that as being under stress.
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B
Yeah. So it's called hypothalamic amenorrhea. And that's just talking about. The hypothalamus is a part of our brain that is receiving information from the ovaries. Remember that conversation we talked about last week? The brain feels the threat of the cortisol. So the ovaries don't just talk to the brain. Our adrenals talk to our brain. Our thyroid talks to our brain. All of our endocrine organs are talking in this, like, big symphony conversation. And so, unfortunately, conventional medicine has tried to silo everything. Like, if you have period problems, you go to the gynecologist. If you have ibs, you go to the gastroenterologist. If you have thyroid disease, you go to the endocrinologist. But it's all affecting each other. So one of the first signs of a thyroid dysfunction is that your period gets messed up. It either goes away, or it's coming every couple weeks, and it's super heavy. So if you don't understand all these connections and look at it in the bigger picture, you're going to really miss some things.
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A
Okay. So stress, your environment, can be a big factor. We talked last week a little bit about gut health, but I'm assuming that our gut is going to be a big factor in perimenopause.
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B
Yeah. And I would love to say we can all just eat healthier and be okay, but that is not what we are seeing. The more women I see in my functional medicine virtual practice, the more infections I see, especially since COVID So why?
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A
Why is that?
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B
Oh, my goodness. Okay, so there's a few things going on in the gut. We have the microbiome. It's this ecosystem of bacteria and parasites and fungi that make our good neurotransmitters. They help us break down our food, absorbs our vitamins and minerals, do all these things to keep us healthy. But you can have infections overgrow and take over the show. And there's certain bacteria that will actually produce a toxin called lipopolysaccharide, and they put it into your bloodstream and that creates inflammation everywhere in the body. So you have bacteria that can drive autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus and cause chronic joint pain or brain fog, Alzheimer's, these different things. There are bacteria associated with obesity and appetite, which I know you get so many questions about this. We can now look on functional stool testing. And there are two different bacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroides. When they are out of balance, women are more prone to having ferocious appetites and gaining weight and absorbing more calories from their food than their counterpart, who doesn't have that imbalance. So we're injecting ourselves with these GLP1 medications to get rid of our appetite. When it's a gut microbiome imbalance that, like, breaks my heart. So it's not always about just like cleaning up your diet. You might actually have bacteria that need to be killed off, that type of thing.
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A
How do you do that?
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B
So this is the cool part. God has given us herbs since the beginning of time that are on this planet that we now know kill off bacteria. They kill off parasites and yeast. And we have learned how to formulate them into supplements that you can use to heal your gut. So it's really profound.
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A
So when someone, you know, we talk so much about, or there's so many conversations right now about food noise. And that's something I very much struggle with. And some people don't know what that is, but to me, that food noise is very, very real. And yet there's friends that they're like, I don't know what that means. Like, describe that. And the. But the person who knows what that means, knows exactly what that means.
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B
Yes.
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A
And it's like the never ending thinking about food. You could even be full and you're still thinking about your next meal. But it's just coming from a place that, like, your, your mind just doesn't turn off the desire for food, even if you aren't hungry and you're just always thinking about it. And of course, I shared very openly about disordered eating for so many years of my life and having a much better handle on it now. But that noise, those thoughts never go away. It's like an obsession for food that I don't want to have. And it doesn't matter what weight you are, you can still have all of that food noise. It's not just people that you're looking at physically that are overweight that you Think, oh, well, they're the ones that never stop thinking about food. No, no, no. There's a lot of people that you would never think of, probably like me, that thinks about food all the time. And so are you saying that that is not just related to our gut, but particularly those two things in the microbiome that could cause that? Hmm.
- [19:12]
B
I'm so glad you asked this question. This has been one of my biggest struggles as well. So, as an OB gyn, I would be in my office running from room to room, seeing patients, and all I could hear was the donuts from the break room. I am not joking you. That is all I could think about. Or the birthday cake, because it was always somebody's birthday in the office.
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A
Right.
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B
Or there's, you know, the drug reps bringing the cookies or whatever. That stuff was literally talking to me all day. And so if I tried not to eat it, it would just get louder. So I would just give in and eat it till it was all gone so it would shut up. And this was a really profound thing that I finally broke free of. And, you know, that's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this, is because it really invades your life, and it makes you feel like a bad person, like something's wrong with you, like, why can't I just eat half the. The donut like she did? Why do I need two more?
- [20:12]
A
Right. I could never understand when I sat at lunch with a girlfriend and they could eat half of their burger and, like, five to 10 French fries and didn't even think twice about it. Yeah, I would sit. I. I will look at their. I will eat my whole plate and then be looking at their food like, are you going to eat that? Are you. Are you taking it home? Are you saving it for, like. I wouldn't stop thinking about their food. Yeah, that's food noise.
- [20:40]
B
Yes. It's a real thing. So I feel you. And when I started studying functional medicine and realizing what was happening, I realized two things. I was addicted to sugar, and I was addicted to gluten. So gluten is the protein that is in all of our wheat products, and it's in our products way more than it was for our grandmothers and our great grandmothers. And it's in everything because it's a thickening agent. It's like glue. And so they put it in sauces, they put it in creams and powders and toothpaste and all the things. So our immune system is seeing it in a way it never has before. And that's a whole nother discussion. But it actually affects the morphine receptors in our brain and gives us a high for, like, 10 to 20 minutes when we eat it. So it's like this dopamine hit of like, oh, my gosh, that feels so much better. And then you crash. And the same thing happens with sugar. So you get these endorphins that. That are released. They feel so good. And then when they go away, you want that back. So your brain is like, well, I know where to get that. It's in that donut right there. And so it really is this addiction that has to be broken, number one. And then it is the bacteria in your gut a lot of the times. Or it could be yeast. So I see a lot of women with yeast overgrowth, and I know it sounds a little crazy. Like, what do you mean? We got yeast living in our gut. We have yeast living everywhere. Some women have current vaginal yeast infections because their vaginal flora is off. And don't ask me why we call it flora in the vagina and microbiome in the gut. It's all bacteria. And, okay, things living in our body.
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A
Clarifying.
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B
But we also have a whole system living on our skin, so we can have a little bit of yeast on our skin. And some women will get yeast under their breasts or in their arms.
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A
I've had it on my face. Yes. Gone to my dermatologist multiple times. Like, that's yeast. Yeah. Like, how did I get that? Where did that come from?
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B
And women will get it in their hair. They'll get patches of hair loss from yeast overgrowth. And. And conventional doctors don't really treat this or understand this. So yeast will actually produce signals that go to your brain to say, give me more sugar, because that's what they love to eat. So these bacteria and things that live in us, they feed on what we feed.
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A
So what? When you're craving it, you really are craving it.
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B
Yeah. And it's not you, it's them.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So take away the shame, first and foremost, and realize that, you know, we just need to figure out what's going on in your gut. And then you talked about the brain and renewing your mind. This piece is really important for women to understand, is that we have these neural networks when we create a memory with something. I think of like a forest that has a nice path laid. You can see it a mile away. And you're going to walk on that path. It's all cleared. There's no leaves. It's just good, hard Dirt. If you want to think a new thought, have a new feeling, do a new thing, you have to walk on all the brush and debris and all the leaves and broken tree branches and create that new path. And that is harder to do. You, you, you tend to go back to the path that makes sense of like, oh, that's the easy path. I see that. And so it's about renewing your mind, but understanding that those pathways are driven in by all those chemicals that you have felt over and over again. So it does take a while to form that new path. And you gotta give yourself grace.
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A
Yeah, I, I did talk about this on an episode a previous season, but I did some intensive therapy at one point and I did some brain spotting and that's. That was creating new neuropathways for, like you said, some of the paths that are traveled. Well, it's easy to think those thoughts and go there. And I needed to create some new pathways. And it was, it felt like the silliest, craziest exercise. And I'm looking at like two different spots on a wall and I keep going back and forth, and yet I'm thinking. I'm like renewing my mind with the thought that I want to think and not what I. And I have naturally gone to all my life. Let me tell you, it really worked. It is, it was such a helpful thing. It sounded so woo woo and crazy to me, but I'm like, oh, this actually was really, really good. And it was retraining my. Yeah, my neural pathways and then. And putting all biblical thoughts into my mind and reminding myself what God says. And of course, you don't, you don't have to go do that in a professional setting. That's what your time with the Bible can, can be.
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B
But, and here's a simple little hack. You can put a rubber band on your wrist, okay. And every time you recognize that bad thought path, you snap your wrist and feel that pain. It disrupts you continuing to walk down that path. And it gives you the opportunity to say, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am more than a conqueror. And like, start pouring those scriptures over you of what God says about you. And, and that can really help you create new paths. I love the rubber band.
- [26:02]
A
Oh, that's a good, that's a good tool. You don't want to have to snap that rubber band. So let's keep talking perimenopause and.
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B
All.
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A
The effects of it. Let's talk about some of the symptoms. I know some of the symptoms are the night sweatshirt Brain fog. What else is there? I'm not experiencing all of them yet, so I'm trying to remember.
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B
I love that you're not going through it, because, let's be real, you're 49. I know you've shared that. That's amazing. The average age is 51. So the fact that you're not having symptoms is a really good indicator that you are taking care of yourself and you're doing all the right things and you have probably some good genetics as well. Okay, so really hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings are the classic ones. But before that, a lot of the time we see joint pain and muscle fatigue. Women, they, like, they just can't go to the gym anymore. They can't complete their workouts, and they, you know, chalk it up to whatever, and they stop going to the gym, stop moving, which makes it worse. And a little subtle weight gain starts to come on, especially if you've not had issues with it. That can be like a ding, ding, ding. Changes in your bowels, dry eyes. Ooh. Changes in your vision.
- [27:31]
A
Okay, well, I've had that. My vision went down the tubes in the last year. It is insane to me.
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B
That was one of my first indicators is all of a sudden, I couldn't read. I'm like, my kids are laughing at me. Why are you holding the phone this far away from your.
- [27:47]
A
I have a to glasses everywhere now around my house and in my backpack and in my car and on my bed stand and on my dresser and. Because I can barely read now.
- [27:58]
B
Yep.
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A
Without holding it two feet away, at least. And it's just getting further and further.
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B
Yes. So that is one of the first things. It's just we start functioning differently, and we just get told you're getting old.
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A
Right. It's like we are getting.
- [28:14]
B
We are getting old, but that's not the reason. So really, when we think about crazy symptoms like mood swings, depression, I personally, it came out of nowhere for me. I would love to share this because this was really eye opening for me. You know, I had been trained to believe that it was this transition. It was smooth, and it was kind of just slow over a year or two. But I just found myself on the couch one day, like, not wanting to see my patients, take care of my kids, get dressed, take a shower. I was just, like, out of nowhere overnight. And it literally took me three days to realize, oh, my gosh, I think my estrogen tanked. I got my labs checked. I had no estrogen. I put an estrogen patch on, and within about 48 hours. I felt like myself again.
- [29:09]
A
Wow. But you knew to do that, and most women don't know to do that. We just think we got in a slump and something's wrong. And I don't know that the first instinct is to go to our doctor or the gynecologist.
- [29:25]
B
Right. And it took me three days, which feels like a long time to me. I should have known it right away, but I was in it. You can't see the picture when you're in the frame. I was in it. And that was a really big lesson for me, that everybody's hormonal situation is unique and looks a little bit different. And when women are saying they are feeling different, they're not feeling like themselves. I'm a shell of myself. I don't want to touch my husband anymore. Like, we need to listen to that.
- [29:56]
A
Yeah.
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B
It's a real thing.
- [29:57]
A
Yeah.
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B
And the crazier part is that you might not feel like that next week. You might come out of it or you might go deeper. That is the roller coaster. You don't know how high the ride is and how low it goes. And so you want to be able to be informed and prepared somewhat of like, hey, this is going to be what's going to happen. These are the people I'm going to go to when, you know, I'm feeling this way. So my girlfriends now know if I stop texting them or if I stop answering the phone, they try harder because I retreat. I just like, check out.
- [30:38]
A
I didn't even think about that with my. With my peers, my friends, to check in. Just because these symptoms could be prevalent in their lives and that withdrawal is kind. That could be a symptom of that.
- [30:53]
B
Yeah.
- [30:53]
A
So that's really good information. What about. Because weight gain. I hear from everyone. And again on Instagram, guys, I'm on Instagram way too much. I doom scroll all day. It's bad. I also fly a lot, so I feel like just doom scroll for hours on a flight. But I follow a lot of different accounts for women my age. So I'm always looking at the ones that are funny, but then I'm looking at ones that are giving information. But the weight gain is so very real for women. And. And sometimes you'll see a video that says how I would work out in my 30s and within a calorie deficit. They're working out, they're lifting, they're this and that. And a week goes by and they've lost £2. And then you see the exact same protocol at 50 and they're up £3 in a week and they're like, I'm in a calorie deficit. I'm doing all of this, but I'm gaining weight. What is happening to my body? I'm excited to share something that's close to my heart. The History and the People of Israel as a follower of Jesus Israel is where it all started. It's where he walked, taught and ministered. The Bible reminds us that God never breaks his promises. Romans 11:28 says that the people of Israel are deeply loved because of the promises God made long ago and he's faithful to keep those promises. That's why I'm sharing with you about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. For over 40 years they've provided food, shelter and life saving aid to Israel's most vulnerable, especially Holocaust survivors and the elderly. Will you join me in standing with the people in Israel? To learn more and find out how you can help, visit ifcj.org that's ifcj.org I don't know about you, but I love to colorfully mark up my Bible and Mr. Pen is the company dedicated to creating pens and highlighters specifically to be used in your Bible. How cute is this? The ink doesn't bleed through the page and there are so many color palettes to choose from paired with their other products like transparent sticky tape, sticky notes and tabs, and washi tape and you can create the perfect combinations to make studying Scripture an even more meaningful experience. With over 1 million 5 star reviews on Amazon, they are the most popular Bible highlighters and pens on the market. That's why I use them. Whether you're looking to deepen your faith through study and reflection or or simply need a reliable pen for taking notes During a sermon, Mr. Penn has you covered. To get 10% off your first Mr. Pen order, go to Candacepens.com Join me in diving into the Word in 2025. Go to Candy Candicepens.com to get 10% off your Mr. Pen order. Hi friends. As the Christmas season gets closer, I'm reminded that there are millions of kids around the world who struggle to have their basic needs met. Operation Christmas Child is the world's largest Christmas project of its kind. The mission is simple but powerful to demonstrate God's love in a tangible way to children in need around the world and to share the good news of Jesus. Since 1993, more than 232 million shoeboxes have been given to children in over 170 countries, each one packed with school supplies toys and personal care items. And every box is an opportunity to share God's love. This year, the goal Is to reach 12 million more children, and you can be a part of it. During National Collection Week, November 17th through the 24th, drop off your shoe boxes at one of 5,000 locations nationwide or build one online. Visit samaritanspurse.org occ to get started. That's samaritanspurse.org occasional.
- [35:10]
B
Oh, my gosh. There's so much to unpack. I know we can't go deep into everything, but let's get an overview. So there are really five areas that I want women to think about when they're on this roller coaster. There is the natural lifespan of your ovaries. They're gonna decline. They're gonna stop producing hormones. So that's number one. We, we kind of talked about that with the, the cycle and everything. And all you can do is ride that out or you can go on hormone replacement, which I would love to talk about.
- [35:39]
A
Oh, yes. So I want to talk about that.
- [35:41]
B
So about that. But number two, your gut health, your food, all of that. Number three, your liver. So our liver is paramount as women, especially when we get into param perimenopause. It is our filter for everything. So when we make estrogens and we make three different kinds of estrogen, when we're done using it, it's. It's supposed to go to the liver to be metabolized, meaning broken down and gotten rid of through the body, through the urine or the stool. So that's a natural process that happens. But our liver alter also metabolizes a bunch of other stuff. It metabolizes alcohol and Benadryl and acetaminophen. All of these over the counter medications that women take way too much for all these symptoms. When were, you know, talking about, like, I can't sleep, let me take Benadryl, my joints hurt, let me take Tylenol. So your liver, every time it has to metabolize these exogenous things, it puts estrogen on the back burner. Because estrogen is endogenous. It's part of your body. It's not as toxic. And so if you're drinking alcohol every day, your liver continues to just back up that estrogen. We'll get to that later. We'll get to that later. I got to metabolize this alcohol. You start to get into this estrogen dominant state of way too much estrogen compared to progesterone.
- [37:11]
A
Oh, interesting. Okay, yeah.
- [37:13]
B
And that shows up as heavy periods, painful Periods, irritability, weight gain, all of the things. And so alcohol is toxic for a lot of reasons, but by and large, in perimenopause, it is driving this estrogen dominance and worsening your hormonal imbalance. And let me just add, progesterone and estrogen are supposed to keep each other in check. Estrogen's the growth hormone. Progesterone makes sure the growth doesn't overgrow. It keeps it in check. So cortisol, the stress, the bear running at us all day long, takes progesterone and uses it as an ingredient to make cortisol. So we steal our progesterone all day long with our stress. And so the estrogen keeps going up, up, and the progesterone keeps going down. And we are just like on this crazy roller coaster.
- [38:10]
A
So when it comes to alcohol, the very thing that we're actually using to soothe us, to calm us down, to make us relax, is actually doing the opposite. Yeah, it is killing our bodies. Is there a safe amount of alcohol to drink? And is a certain type of alcohol a little bit better for your body than others?
- [38:34]
B
I'm so glad you asked that. So, yes, alcohol has many issues. You know, for a long time we were told, have a glass of wine every day, it makes you healthy. The polyphenols in the red wine, all that stuff from the Mediterranean diet. Well, they didn't also tell us that these Mediterranean Italian women hike eight miles up and down a hill every day and eat olives and olive oil and all these healthy food, fishes and things, these fats. So, number one, our wine is full of pesticides and mold in this country. It's very toxic. So your liver is over.
- [39:11]
A
There's a lot. There's some that aren't, but. Yes, but many of them are.
- [39:14]
B
When you're saying like, is there a better option, you want to look for an organic wine or alcohol or something that is low sugar because we're also adding in some insulin resistance into this picture, which we haven't even talked about. But I want women to understand our bodies weren't meant to drink alcohol. I know this is going to be really unpopular and people are probably going to cancel me right now, but even one glass every night increases your risk of breast cancer by 23%.
- [39:44]
A
Oh, interesting.
- [39:45]
B
And two glasses every night, up to 50%. So it's dose dependent. The more you drink, the harder that liver has to work, the more DNA damage in cell damage so that those cells cannot function and repair and heal. They go on to develop Cancer. So it's the number one modifiable risk factor for breast cancer. Yet we keep blaming hormones. And it's not the hormones, it's the alcohol.
- [40:13]
A
Okay, it's the alcohol. And there's, it's really sugar, though.
- [40:19]
B
That is another piece of it. So alcohol gets turned into acetaldehyde and then into sugars. And then if you drink sugary drinks, which a lot of women do, we love our fancy cocktails. So it already has like 30 grams of sugar inside the alcohol. And the crazy thing is you're feeding that yeast again. And there are studies showing that the yeast then go on to do this fermentation process and they can create what looks to be an alcoholic liver because of too much alcohol. When it's the yeast producing ethyl aldehyde, this alcoholic chemical, it's called auto fermentation syndrome. So we are seeing more and more liver dysfunction as we feed the yeast and the yeast overgrowth and then they go into this auto process themselves. So I know it's a little scary, it's a little overwhelming, but the biggest point is that I would love just to see women bring alcohol back to special occasions. Like you mentioned, we're drinking it to de stress at the end of the day to feel better, to fall asleep. But I promise you, it's causing sleep disruption. It's waking you up at 2 or 3am, it's causing hot flashes more than the estrogen loss. And then that insulin resistance creeps up because you're consuming that sugar all the time.
- [41:48]
A
Yeah, yeah, I've noticed it. For me, I mean, I really enjoy a glass of wine and I drink less and less. And as I've been on this health journey since last October, I started again. I have really been trying to prepare myself to go into a new decade of my life and into my 50s, into the, into the best it can be. That's my motivation for all of this, is like, I don't, I don't want to have all of those symptoms if I don't have to. And I want to really prepare my body. I want to be mindful of it and I want to be aware of it and I want to get ahead of it. And so even as much as I love having a glass of wine, I've had less and less and less and I feel better and feel better and feel better. So I think that's, I, I mean, I think that's great if you do consume alcohol, to try it for a special occasion and not an every night thing. So what about flat out sugar, white sugar. I mean, we know white sugar is bad for us. And I, as a person who has craved sugar so much in my life, that's like a hard thing to stop. It's gotten better, but. But I. Sugar is just hard. And I feel like that is like a woman is kind of like, you could take away the alcohol, you could take the whisk. Don't take away my chocolate. Don't take away the sugar. I. I need it. I need it.
- [43:12]
B
Yeah. Well, I would recommend trying to get a little darker with your chocolate.
- [43:16]
A
Sure.
- [43:16]
B
The more you can have a higher chalk, you know, dark chocolate percentage, the better. But when the donuts used to talk to me and I had to break up with sugar, I ate so much fruit like it was my job. That was one thing. And I realized fruit didn't taste sweet to me because I had such a hyper palatable tongue Right. From all of these sugars. Especially if you're eating or drinking artificial sweeteners, they are like 10 times the for your taste buds specifically. So nothing will taste sweet to you. If you drink Diet Coke on a regular basis, it's going to take a minute. It's going to be a transition, but I promise you it is. So it is worth it.
- [43:59]
A
Crazy. When you remove that white sugar from your diet and then you do have a piece of ripe fruit, it is the best thing in the world.
- [44:10]
B
It tastes so good.
- [44:13]
A
Oh, my goodness. So can you share about toxins? How do we rid our lives of toxins? They're everywhere. They're in our home, they're at our work, they're in our environment, they're in our cleaning products, they're in our laundry detergent. I often feel like this is an impossible task to remove them. And again, I try to remove like one thing here, one thing there and make small changes over time. But sometimes I'm just like, you know what? This is the world we're living in. I just, I'm never gonna be that granola.
- [44:46]
B
Well, just being aware is a big step because as an OB gyn, I wasn't aware of any of this. I didn't know anything about toxins. And here it was like, destroying my patience because many of them are hormone disruptors or endocrine disruptors. So a lot of the toxins that we are bombarded with every day are binding to our estrogen receptors and sending warped signals like estrogen. So that is why we are seeing man boobs and man men with bellies and low testosterone and erectile dysfunction, because they have so Many estrogen disruptors that they're getting in through their food and their personal care.
- [45:27]
A
Is tofu one of them? Yeah. Because sometimes I'm like, honey, you actually need to eat some tofu. Because. Because there's so much testosterone, I'm like, you need to lessen it a little bit. Eat the tofu.
- [45:42]
B
Oh, that's awesome. I love that. He's healthy.
- [45:45]
A
Yes, he's healthy. He's healthy and I love it.
- [45:47]
B
I love it. Yes. So we see men who are eating the standard American diet, which we call it the SAD diet. It is very sad. It's very devoid of nutrition. So, you know, when you and I were little and you guys watching probably remember on tv, they would have the commercials of the little malnourished boy from Ethiopia, and he would just be real thin with the big tummy and please feed him. That same malnourishment is now showing up as obesity. So if you look at someone who is 50 or 100 pounds overweight, they have the same mineral and nutrient deficiencies as that Ethiopian child is just showing up differently.
- [46:28]
A
That's crazy.
- [46:29]
B
Yeah, because we're full of calories, but we're devoid of nutrition.
- [46:34]
A
Oh, wow.
- [46:35]
B
When I started to understand that, like, everything started to click. And I realized, like, being overweight, carrying extra weight, it is all a symptom. And toxins are almost the number one reason for it. Outside of the hormone imbalances and the gut issues, I mean, they all kind of go together. But here's what happens. We've created 10,000 plus chemicals in the world in the past 80 to 100 years that never existed before. We didn't have plastics. You know, our great grandmothers didn't, you know, have all these things and these forever chemicals, they get into our body. We eat them, we breathe them, we rub them on all the things, and then we don't have enzymes to break them down. Our body's like, what do we do with this? And so a lot of the times, if it can't be easily flushed out, we will soar in our fat cells. And so our fat cells get more metabolically active, they get fatter because they're full of toxins. And thank goodness they are, because we don't want those going to our vital organs, like our kidneys, our liver, our brain. Like, your fat is actually protecting you. It's keeping you safe from your toxic world. And so a lot of women will try and lose weight and they'll feel terrible. They'll have headaches and, like, cramps and just they'll feel toxic because those toxins are being dumped into the bloodstream as those fat cells are trying to burn off.
- [48:02]
A
Where are some of the most prevalent areas that we're getting our toxins from? Is it skincare? Is it our environment? Is it the cleaning products? Is it makeup?
- [48:16]
B
It depends on the person. So really take a look at your life and how you're living. The easiest things to start with is, are you heating any of your food in plastic? Are you using microwavable plastic dishes or buying the foods that are in the plastic trays and heating them as they.
- [48:34]
A
But I mean, there isn't every to go know if you're getting postmates, they all come in plastic containers.
- [48:40]
B
It's a little worse when the food is really hot. So like if you make soup, wait till it cools down. If you have to put it in plastic, I would prefer you put it in glass or ceramic. But okay, the hotter it is, the more those plastics will release their chemicals that are going to go into your food. Same with water bottles. If that water bottle is sitting in your car heating up in the sun, you don't want to drink it. It may have done that on the truck before it even got to you. So we just have to do our best, right? I know it is, but do your best. And so try not to heat your food in plastic. Try to find products that are clean and there's great sources now, like you can go to ewg.org environmental working group. They'll tell you exactly how safe or not safe something is. There's an app called Yucca which you can scan the barcode and they'll say like, oh gosh, don't use that or don't eat that. And that can be really helpful. So you're just trying to decrease the amount because this is how I think of toxins. We all have a bucket inside of us. Some have littler buckets, some have bigger buckets. And those buckets accumulate the toxins. And when it overflows, that's when you're starting to get symptomatic. So if you have chronic headaches, migraines, joint pains, things like that, your buckets probably overflowing and your liver is not emptying it out. So, okay, that's what, like we're not going to avoid the toxins. We're not all moving into the mountains. Like, let's be real, my kids eat garbage. They go to the fast food place because they're kids and so I don't beat them up about that. But we just have to find that balance and notice when our buckets are getting full and then love on our liver and help support that detox process.
- [50:32]
A
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm, I. We are, we are trying. It just feels like this slow process and again, overwhelming because it feels like every product out there has something wrong with it. And you're like. But I really like that. We do have some great podcast sponsors on this show, though, that are toxic free, toxin free, and it is, they're wonderful. So there are great brands out there, like you said, but we have to put in the work, we have to do the research.
- [51:04]
B
Yeah. And vote with your dollars. Like, if you don't buy the junk, they'll stop making it eventually, you know, or they'll change it. So keep working on that because that is gonna lessen all the symptoms you're suffering from and make that roller coaster smoother.
- [51:22]
A
Let's just talk about getting your blood work done because I have now done this. Getting the panels, doing testing, seeing what all of my numbers are. Having a qualified person explain all of those numbers to me have has been extremely helpful in my life. But sometimes I think when, when you don't even know what's going on, you don't know where to start. And yes, we can start with the things that you mentioned, but it is really important to go get that blood work done to understand where your body's at and where the numbers are. Can you talk about the importance of that?
- [51:59]
B
Yes, absolutely. Okay. So when women go to their ob GYN or their primary care doctor, they're usually told, okay, we'll do the standard panel for the year. Unfortunately, the majority of the things that they're checking in your blood are really for a hospitalized patient. I'm just going to be honest. It is telling you whether you are so sick that you need intervention or you're okay, you don't need to be in the hospital. And we over the years have taken all that hospital lab evaluation and we brought it into the office. So when a doctor does a tsh, a cmp, a comprehensive metabolic panel, a cbc, which is a complete blood panel, and tells you in a lipid panel for your cholesterol and tells you you're fine, we'll see you next year. That just means you don't have to be in the hospital, that your body is still enough in homeostasis, that your ph in your blood is okay, the electrolytes in your, in your blood are balanced, and you're going to survive another day. It's really not helpful. And it gives women such a false sense security that what they're doing is good and that they should just continue living the way that they're living. So I'm suspecting that your doctor did a little bit more than that. So when women come to see me, I look at a full thyroid panel because tsh, thyroid stimulating hormone. It's not even a thyroid hormone. It's a brain hormone. It's the brain talking to the thyroid. So we think if that is quote, unquote, in the normal range on the lab sheet, then you're okay. But it just means that you don't need to be hospitalized. It does not mean you're okay. We now understand that a TSH above 2 usually shows up as period issues and fertility issues. And it took us a long time to understand that. So now we try to get that TSH below 2 for optimal health for women. But I like to look at total T4, free T4, total T3, free T3, reverse T3, and thyroglobulin antibodies. So here's the deal. Women are diagnosed, millions of women all over this country and world with hypothyroidism. They are told their thyroid's just sluggish, they need medication. You're fine, but we need to know why your thyroid is acting that way. The thyroid doesn't just misbehave or become sluggish. That's not how God created our bodies to be. God created our bodies to actually thrive and function until the end. So if your thyroid is down regulating and not making enough thyroid hormone, it's because it's responding to something. It's saying, you have an infection over here that you're not dealing with, or you have a chronic cortisol issue you're not dealing with. We're going to divert resources and, and not let you lose weight because we have to use those resources elsewhere. So it's actually a symptom of something that needs to be addressed. So you need to be able to look at that full panel and those thyroglobulin antibodies, TPO and TG antibodies. That tells me if your immune system is attacking your thyroid, because that's not normal. Your immune system's supposed to protect you and attack everything in the outside world. But we are seeing autoimmune disease on the rise and the rise and the rise, and no one's checking it. And so I recently looked in Uptodate, which is like a research portal where doctors and medical students go to quickly find answers on what to do. I was like, I wonder what Uptodate says about thyroid antibodies. It says we don't typically recommend testing for them because there's no medical intervention that can be done. So this totally agrees with my training. It's discouraged to even diagnose the autoimmune thyroid disease because there isn't a pill to fix it. Wow. Fixes gut healing and diet and lifestyle intervention. So I mentioned I developed Hashimoto's at 17. I reversed that at one point. I had my antibody levels down to non existent because I cleaned up my diet and lifestyle so much. But no, there is no medication for it. But unfortunately, women are walking around not knowing that their immune system is confused and overreactive and attacking themselves. And that's why they don't want to work out and live their lives and do their daily activities.
- [56:41]
A
Yeah.
- [56:41]
B
So there's just so many things missing. So something as small as that lab test could change everything. But like you said, it has to be interpreted by a provider who understands. So women might get the test and. And be told they're normal or there's nothing they can do about it.
- [56:59]
A
So for people who can't see you, do you suggest that people see a functional medicine specialist?
- [57:08]
B
Yeah, I really do. I mean, I love my conventional colleagues, but conventional medicine was created to deal with acute issues, to fix your broken leg, to take you to surgery when your appendix bursts for these emergency situations. It. It was not designed to treat lifestyle disease. And that's what's happening. So we need to get to the root cause of the that. And there are functional providers all over the country. You can look on ifm.org and here's the cool thing. You no longer even need your doctor to order lab tests. You can go to ultalab test.com you can go to functionhealth.com and start taking ownership over your health and get those labs yourself and then find somebody to help you interpret them.
- [57:55]
A
That is so important. Take ownership over your own health. Thanks for that. Okay, let's go to some listener questions. This is from Cammie and Sheila. And they asked, have you experienced menopause? Belly.
- [58:10]
B
Okay, the muffin top.
- [58:12]
A
I was gonna say it's just muffin top. Or is it a fupa? Is that a bad word? I don't even know if it is. We'll cut this out.
- [58:22]
B
It's a real thing. Okay.
- [58:24]
A
I. Yeah. Yes and no. You know, have I felt bloated and all of that? Yes. But I'm. Fitness has been such a big part of my life for many years, so I don't think I've experienced that to the extent that some others have. What do you say about what? What can she, what can they do to help their menopause belly?
- [58:47]
B
That's one of the biggest complaints I get is why am I gaining weight in the midline? So estrogen is like Goldilocks. It has a sweet spot. It doesn't like to be too high or too low. Both cause weight gain. If it's too high or too low, okay. But in addition, cortisol, our stress hormone, is a fat storing hormone. It will pack on the weight around our midsection. That menopause belly is usually a sign of chronic stress. There's a third piece, insulin. Insulin. Insulin is what is produced when we eat any kind of carbohydrates, any kind of sugars, grains, fruits, vegetables. We release insulin to regulate our blood sugar and store it as fat for later. So it's another fat storing hormone. So this like perfect storm happens of your estrogens up and down, your cortisol's on the rise, and then you're becoming insulin resistant from all the toxins in your cells. And so it all goes to your waist. And it's not vanity. Here's the deal. This is actually a really big deal because it's weight gain around your organs, around your, inside your liver, you're developing fatty liver. And fatty liver is now the number one reason for liver transplant is now because of fat in our liver. It used to be alcoholism. It no longer is. It's because of our standard American diet and our stress and is packing the fat in our liver. So it's not vanity to get this taken care of. It's actually your health. It's a huge indicator.
- [60:25]
A
Kaylin asks, how do you feel about being a Christian and prioritizing fitness while also not letting it consume you? I love that question. This is something we talked so much about in previous episodes with Lisa. And so I encourage you to go back and watch those episodes. But, you know, I keep going to that Bible verse like, everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial. And it's really like, what, what are the reasons, what are the whys that fitness is important and why you want to do that? It really is important for our bodies and important for our health. Like God gave us a body to take care of, but how do we not let it consume you? Well, if that becomes your number one priority in life, so much so that it, you know, it's, it's all consuming for you, you put it above your relationship with God, above people, above whatever that if you're willing to. If it becomes more of a God to you than God himself is, then you have to ask yourself those hard questions. And I always like to think of the, the whys. And why am I doing it? Is it for health? Is it because I'm, I'm stewarding this body that God gave me? Or is it for vanity? Is it because I want to look better than my neighbor? Or I, I'm. What are my goals for that? And I'm not saying all of those things are, are bad. Listen, I'm, I'm way more vain than I wish that I were. You know, we all are. Yeah, we all are.
- [61:56]
B
So I, I'm.
- [61:57]
A
There's no finger pointing, but when you, when you get real with yourself and you have those conversations with God, I, I think you can absolutely be in a place to prioritize fitness in your life. I certainly do. But it's not my end all if I don't get my workout in. Like, I didn't. I'm not getting my workout in today. I didn't get my workout in yesterday. My days are too long. While I'm doing certain work. That's okay. It's not going to ruin my day because I miss my workout. However, it is a priority and I, I make it that way and I want to get that in. But, you know, you also have to. It's life.
- [62:35]
B
Right? Exactly. And I would encourage her to read First Corinthians and just ask God to give you some revelation and some wisdom around this because it says whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. So, like, you're saying our intentions of why we're exercising, and you've reached this point in your life where you're like, I just want to get off the toilet. I just want to get out of bed. I want to run around with my grandkids. I want to be able to pick this thing up off the floor or carry my. Here's what did it for me. I was traveling and I couldn't put my luggage in the overhead carrier. I felt like, so weak and pathetic. And this was like in my early 40s. And I vowed to never let that happen again. And I got so strong that I was like, putting the old gentleman's luggage up on there. I was like, yes, but, you know, First Corinthians 6, 19, and 20. Do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? You were bought at a price. Like God. Jesus shed his blood for you. I truly believe God gave us this body as part of our endeavor on this earth. We are supposed to struggle with it. We it is part of our story. And so he knows everything you're feeling, feeling. He, you know, he's not surprised by any of the bad feelings that you're having. Like, take it to him. I promise you, he wants you to be strong and love your body and take care of it and be a good steward of it.
- [64:13]
A
Yeah, that's great. Well, that's the end of today's episode, but make sure you come back next week. And don't forget we have a free whole body guide for you this season. Go to Candice.com to find the link. It's also in our show notes. And you're also going to find a spot@candice.com where you can ask questions for future episodes. And there's one more place you can ask questions and join a private podcast discussion group and it's called the Together Community. Download the app and learn how to become a monthly member@candice.com together. Until next time, Be grateful All day, every day. Candy Rock Entertainment all rights reserved.
- [65:05]
B
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