← The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
554. What Happens to Your Body when Estrogen Drops and Why I Chose to go High Estrogen Despite My Cancer Diagnosis
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Welcome to the Thyroid Fixer podcast where we dive deep into the world of thyroid and hormones. Especially for you ladies navigating perimenopause and menopause, and really for anyone struggling with hypothyroidism. I'm your host, Dr. Amy, thyroid and hormone specialist and CEO of a global telemedicine practice where we prescribe the right thyroid treatment and bioidentical hormones to all 50 states and most of Canada, helping you become that badass human that you're meant to be. So if you're battling weight gain and heroin loss, you can't lose weight no matter what you do, your energy levels are plummeting and your libido left town. Then you're in the right place and you have found your tribe. Remember, I want you to embrace every inch of that badass woman that you truly are. So if you're ready to dive in and fix things, let's get started. Just a quick heads up before we dive in. A new study looked at how 5G exposure impacts the brain and the nervous system. 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So let me spell it out for you. Q U A N T U M U P G R A D E I O. And then you're gonna use the code Dr. Amy to try it out for 15 days for free. You have questions about your thyroid, about your labs, what they mean. What about your hormones? What about insulin? Why are you gaining weight? Why are you so tired? Why are you losing your hair? Why won't my doctor listen to me? Why won't my doctor test these things? All of these questions that you have running around in your brain. And you know that if you just had the answers that that could push you over the edge into optimal health, that you could be that badass human that you are meant to be. Well, I got you covered there because I am going live every single week in the just fix your thyroid Facebook group. That is my Facebook group. A beautiful community just filled with amazing people. Where I am in there, my nurse practitioners are in there, my health coaches are in there. There are patients in there that have been with me for so long, they're experts in their own right, and they answered just the way that I would. So we have you completely covered in this group. So not only can you post your question every single day, every single hour, if you want, you can mark your calendars for our weekly live Q and A sessions where you get to ask your question to me and I'm going to answer it live on air. And not only that, we are doing product giveaways. We're doing working with our team giveaways. You're going to want to be in there and actually be live on that call. If you're at work going in the closet, just shut the door. Take minutes for yourself, Take a half an hour for yourself. Take an hour for yourself so that you can get the information that you need to bring yourself into optimization land, where you're not looking sideways at a brownie and gaining weight at the same time, where you can feel amazing every single day. Because that's my goal for you. You know that I love, love, love to answer your questions, and this is the place where you can get them answered live. When I was first diagnosed with uterine cancer back in April, I was, as I've shared previously in another podcast, which we can link below, I was on the Wiley Protocol arrhythmic dosing, and that included days of very high estrogen or estradiol application dosing. And then it would fluctuate through the months where you would go high and then low. And the whole purpose was to induce a cycle. Now, as I've explained in the podcast that I did on my entire cancer journey, really laying it out for all of you, because all of this, all of this information is to help you. So I laid it out in an individual podcast, taking you from beginning to end. You can go back and listen to that. I'm just giving you a brief overview here to set the tone, set the context for what we're going to talk about today. And that's what happens to your body when estrogen levels plummet. It Was a very eye opening experience for me. So backing up, I started rhythmic dosing. Because like I've shared in the past, I do these things really to kind of try it out for you, to try it out for my patients to see if this is something viable that we want to start doing in practice. And I wanted to really see how I felt. Now, if you look at my physiology and we are all unique, we are all different, I shout that from the rooftops, I die on that hill. That you are a unique individual. You're not a study, you're not an algorithm, you shouldn't be treated as such. That's why I despise these cookie cutter online telehealth clinics that treat everyone the same. You are so beautiful and unique that we all need to find out, you need to find out exactly what's going to work for you. So my experimentation and my really whole journey, thyroid and hormone journey, has led me to see that I do better on higher doses. I am just one of those people. Now we have patients in the clinic that are very, very sensitive and they respond to smaller doses, smaller doses of T3, lower doses of estradiol. We go up in their estradiol patch or their cream and they're bloated and they're descended and they immediately go into this estrogen dominant state. I am not one of those people. I am one that tolerates and my body very much likes higher doses of things, whether it's T3, estrogen, whatever, progesterone. The only thing that I stay a little bit low on is testosterone. I do perfectly well at 10 milligrams once a week of testipinate injection. That's it, that's all I need. But when it comes to the rest of the hormones and my thyroid, I need a higher dose. So naturally, when I heard about rhythmic dosing and dosing higher on estrogen and progesterone throughout the month I was in. It's fine. And I did great on it. Absolutely fantastic until April of 2025 when I got the call that my biopsy came back with cancer. Now, let's break this down because this is where the controversy comes in. That biopsy showed that my particular cancer cells were estrogen receptor positive. And maybe some of you that have gone through a breast cancer diagnosis, that rings a bell. ER positive, EP positive, progesterone receptor positive, ER negative. There's so many terms as to how a specific cancer cell plays with our hormones, but we have to remember this, hormones do not cause cancer. If they did, 16, 17 and 18 year olds, 15 year olds nowadays, 14 year olds nowadays would have cancer, all kinds of cancer. We would see it running rampant through our adolescent population, moving into puberty. Or a bunch of pregnant women would all of a sudden have cancer. Because at those points of time in a woman's life, she has surging estrogen levels, surging hormone levels. Hormones do not cause cancer. And if you want to go deeper on that particular topic, I'm going to link below the podcast I did with Dr. Jen Simmons, breast cancer expert. She breaks down what that ER positive, ER negative actually means in the context of bioidentical hormone replacement. It's not something you need to worry about. Dive into the work of Dr. Lindsay Bergson. I interviewed her as well. We can link that in the show notes too. You can go on a podcast binge. All correlating and tying into this topic, Dr. Lindsey Bergson, a D E. S daughter, breast cancer survivor. She had it when she was 30 years old. She's now 75 and looks 50. She's been using hormones her entire life and uses them on her patients with breast cancer. So at that point in time that I got my diagnosis and I saw that estrogen receptor positive marker, my immediate reaction, because this is what happens when you hear the big C, you react. You don't necessarily respond. You don't respond until later. First you react. So my initial reaction was, oh my gosh, I just need to drop my estrogen dose. I, I, I need to just pause the rhythmic dosing for right now. I need to go back down. I'm gonna slap on a patch. So I started with a 0.1 milligram patch. Now some of you listening to this might be like, oh my God, I'm at 025 and I feel like that's enough estrogen for me. I'm on a.05 and that's enough. I had two 0.1 milligram patches on. Essentially, I was taking.02 0.2 milligrams of estradiol in a patch form. And I started that in April after I got the call. Now, from April until June, when my surgery was scheduled for my hysterectomy to remove the container that contained the cancer, I felt changes in my body that were indescribable. Now, mind you, you have to remember that I never really went through menopause through, I'm using air quotes. I never experienced hot flashes or the vaginal dryness. I jumped on hormones prior to my hormones going in the toilet. And that is what I recommend. All of y' all do, too. That's why we catch you in perimenopause. That's why I encourage women everywhere to, when you're working with someone, make sure that they don't just treat your thyroid, that they're treating thyroid and hormones at the same time. Because unless you're 25 years old, you're going to need hormones. Even women in their 30s, the progesterone starts to drop. That interferes with T4 to T3 conversion. Sleep, anxiety, mood, brain function, your bones, the whole deal. And yes, low progesterone can produce hot flashes as well. So I caught my hormones in perimenopause. I never went through a menopausal transition where I felt menopausal symptoms until April. And what that did is it opened my eyes to what many women out there are actually going through and how quickly our body responds when our estrogen levels drop. It was eye opening and shocking, to say the least. The first thing I noticed. And listen, I double checked with some of my colleagues on this because I couldn't even believe it. I couldn't even wrap my mind around how quickly this occurred. The first thing that occurred was my skin. The skin on my arms, the skin on my face, under my chin, on my knees, my legs, everywhere. The skin immediately lost its elastic elasticity. I started seeing, and I joke about this. I've joked about this in the past, but this time it was real. I started seeing my mom's skin. You ladies know what I'm talking about. We used to look at our moms as they were aging. My mom has since passed. Love. Your mom used to look at you when you were aging and thought, oh, man. Like, her skin's just all, like, creepy together. Like, it's all, like, wrinkled and like a. Like a pile. Like, all creepy. I'm never going to be like that. That's because she's old. Little did I know at the time it was because she had no estrogen and she was a victim of the Women's Health Initiative study. I remember when mom was on estrogen at one point in time and then she wasn't, which I also believe contributed to her Alzheimer's and ultimately her death. But because we know that estrogen reduces your risk of Alzheimer's by 67%, don't sit there and be like she's referencing something that doesn't make sense. No, it actually does make sense. Replacement of estrogen. That's why I'm encouraging you to get on it in perimenopause. So it doesn't totally plummet. Reduces your risk of Alzheimer's by 67%. But I saw her skin change and I thought, that's not going to be me. And then it was. That's the first thing I noticed was dramatic, drastic skin changes, followed by the vaginal dryness, the moodiness. All of a sudden, like, what in the hell is happening? It's like one day my emotions were gone and I didn't give a about anything. That also kind of occurs in menopause or after you crest the age of 50. It's good and bad to the next day where I'm crying over dog commercials. The onset of symptoms that occurred from me not even pulling my estradiolani's reducing my estradiol. The amount of symptoms that hit so quickly was jaw dropping, hot flashes and night sweats. Those can occur really within the first week of you dropping your estradiol dose. Or obviously if you're doing this au naturel and you have not yet started hormones, but you are definitely in perimenopause and menopause and you're. Or you know, your estrogen is in the toilet. If you are officially in menopause, where you've gone a year without a period, at least that's what conventional medicine dictates. That's what we term menopause. If you're there and you're not on estradiol yet, then I guarantee you're suffering with these symptoms. Let me know how quickly they came on for you. So look back over the last 12 months when your period stopped, and now we know that estrogen is fluctuating, moving, going on a roller coaster before that. So you may have had some low estrogen troughs prior to you completely losing your cycle again. That's why we start hormones and perimenopause. However, think to that point when you were officially done having cycle. Like, you're like, oh, now it's been one month. Now it's been two months. Now I'm at three. Oh, now I'm at four with no cycle. What symptoms were starting to come on for you then? Because I guarantee they happened quickly. Loss of libido. That's a big one. Vaginal dryness. How about a little bit of pain during intercourse? All of a sudden you're having sex, the lubrication is not there. You got to break out the artificial lube. And you're like, you know, this just. This is not as pleasurable. It's kind of uncomfortable. And then you start avoiding. You start avoiding sex. Sleep disturbances. Now I'm not talking about just waking up in the middle of the night, hot flashing and kicking off the covers. Estrogen helps regulate serotonin and melatonin, so lower levels. This is where the mood thing comes in with the serotonin. Melatonin helps you sleep. Now, many of us are already on melatonin anyway, so you may or may not notice that impact. If you have a sleep aid in the mix already helping you out, or let's say you started on progesterone, but you haven't yet started on estradiol yet, that progesterone is going to help you sleep. So that might not be something that you notice right away, or it might be maybe some of these things are really hitting home for you. You're like, oh, my God, I know exactly what she's talking about. Brain fog and memory lapses. So I remember. I remember this in April because now I'm back on higher levels of estradiol. So now my memory's back, but I remember searching for words. And it's like, it's. It's that moment. I know so many of you are resonating right now where you know what the word is because you've said this before. You have said this thing, this concept, this thought previously, and you start to say it again and you just. It's not, ah, what is that? It's just not happening. The words are not coming. You're stumbling, and in your mind you're going, I know this, but I can't think of it right now. Fat gain around the belly, that's a big one. Estrogen helps to regulate insulin and fat distribution, so a decline equals increased abdominal fat. Now, where I started noticing it was my flanks. You know, the. The. The back love handles, they call those flanks. Isn't that a beautiful word? And again, above my knees. So the skin got loose and, like a little fat pocket started occurring right above my knees. Do you hear me? Are you resonating? Are you now looking at your knees, at the skin on your knees and grabbing the fat pad above your knees? I know you are. That occurred. Dry skin, thinning hair, brittle nails that. Listen, that occurs really, really quickly. I already talked about the crepey skin. Now when your skin gets dry, it gets even more wrinkled. Do you want to know the biggest health secret that nobody is talking about? Everything. I mean, everything starts in your gut. But every day your gut is fighting the silent war against all the processed foods and the stress and the pesticides and the toxins in the air that you breathe. And Then when your gut's in trouble, your whole body feels it, not just your gut. So here's where it gets a little bit crazy. Most people are spending money on probiotics that don't even work. I see this every day in the practice. Why? Because 99% of those traditional brands die in your stomach acid before they even reach your gut. So you might as well just flush them down the drain. That's what makes Just Thrive spore based probiotic completely different. I have tried it and I am sold. I am totally sold. And when I learn more about it, after I interviewed the founder of Just Thrive, my eyes were opened up. I said, this is why I see no change in patients when they throw in a typical probiotic that they got at the grocery store or at the nutrition shop. You need these live probiotic strains in order to do anything in your gut. Just Live is the only one clinically proven to arrive at 100% alive in your gut. That is crazy. 100%. And it does something no other probiotic can. It turns your gut into an antioxidant factory, creating protective compounds exactly where you need the most. So that means better digestion, better immunity, more energy, a lot easier weight management. Just Thrive probiotic comes in capsule or berry flavored gummies. So there's an option for everyone in the family. So if you're actually ready to transform your health in 2025, you gotta take this 90 day challenge, love the way you feel, or get a full product refund, no questions asked. So to join the gut health revolution and take control of your health today, visit justthrive.com and save 20% on your first 90 day bottle of Just Thrive Probiotic with the promo code Dr. Amy D R A M I E. So don't forget to check out all their other natural, clinically proven products to to like their newest product, digestive bitters, focus and memory gluten away and more. So that's Just Thrive. J U S T T H R I V E Health H E A L T H.com promo code Dr. Amy D R A M I E so literally you could be looking in the mirror one day and the next day you're like, did what just. What just happened? What just happened to my face? There's a new wrinkle here. There's a loss of, loss of elasticity here. It's almost like the texture has gone really, really bad. All of a sudden you start staying away from the 10x mirrors because the 1x normal mirror is bad enough. Immediate skin changes because estrogen helps to keep the skin, your scalp and your nails hydrated. It works with collagen as a building block. Joint pain and stiffness. Estrogen has anti inflammatory effects. A decline can trigger joint discomfort, especially in your hips. Ladies, this is such a common side effect of a decrease in estrogen. And we don't even tie it together. Some of you do. Some of you have. Because some of you have even reported to me that you notice an immediate change in your hip pain when we start optimizing your estradiol. But other women chalk it up to overuse. I'm getting old. Maybe I need a hip transplant. Maybe you just need estrogen. Maybe that joint pain is from your loss of estrogen. That beautiful joint lubricant. Yes. It lubricates our vagina and our joints and our skin. That is how beautiful estrogen is. Frequent UTIs. Now, I did not experience this, but I definitely hear this from patients. Why am I getting UTIs all of a sudden? I haven't had these since I was like 16 years old when my mom taught me to wipe from the front to the back and make sure you pee after sex. Frequent UTIs are huge. And again, when we look at the elderly population, when I look at my mom, she was having a lot of frequent UTIs as she aged. And in the elderly population, that can directly affect your brain and your cognition and your memory. Heart health risks. Now, estrogen protects arteries. The loss of estrogen, you might see increase in your ldl. You might notice changes in the particle sizes. Now, all of a sudden your doctor is telling you you need to go on a statin. Now, again, that particular symptom did not happen for me, but it can happen. This is what happens to our body when our estrogen levels start to decline. So what did I do and what choices did I make? Many of you have asked this, and I have been very forthcoming this entire time about my cancer journey. And I will continue to do so as I have so many more interviews and so much more information to give you and to share with you of what I have unpacked and uncovered during this journey. But I have decided. I made the decision to go back on my higher dose of estradiol, made that decision because that's what my body does well on. And as soon as I shifted into what my dose is. Now, I'm not saying this to encourage you to increase your estradiol. I'm saying this in the context of personalization, of optimization. What works for you might not work for somebody else. And what works for someone else might not work for you, but it is about finding your perfect dose because you are a unique individual. I needed to find my perfect dose. And I think I'm getting there. I think I'm getting there. So what are we at? We are two months now since. Two months and one day since my surgery. After my surgery, I started climbing back up in my estradiol with the distinct plan and with the knowledge that I already have from my Dutch test and from my DNA that I will. And I am taking things to make sure I metabolize my estrogen properly. I am taking my estrogen fixer, which contains a dim. I am also adding on calcium D glucarate. I am adding in resveratrol and quercetin that helps the body methylate and process estrogen. I'm doing my sauna. I'm making sure I detox. I'm supporting my MTHFR genetic mutation with tetrahydrofolate, with methylfolate. I'm taking my B fixer to support my B vitamins. I'm keeping my D up. I'm doing all of the things to make my body uninhabitable for cancer and I am doing all the things to make sure that I properly use that estradiol and then detox it. Use it for good, push it out. Use it for good, push it out. And if you're not pooping every day, I'm going to tell you you will become estrogen dominant because that is the number one thing that we can be doing to make sure that we process our hormones is poop. Everybody has all these detox protocols out there. No, just poop. Make sure you poop every day. If you have to take extra magnesium, if you have to fix your thyroid because that's low and that's slowing your gastric motility, make sure you poop every day. So I am doing all these things and then I do plan on doing another Dutch test. I will do more frequent lab work to check my estradiol, my estrone, which is the breakdown. So by the way, for anyone listening who does not know this, your total estrogens are broken up into estradiol, estrone and estriol. Estriol is mainly present during pregnancy, although recommended or. Or referred to. I'll say that again. Research referred to by Dr. Lindsey Berkson shows that estriol actually does have some anti cancer properties to it there. It's a big debate. It's a huge debate amongst all hormone providers, but it's one of Those things where it's like, well, it's not going to hurt to add it in. So I am doing some estriol as well. But the breakdown of estrogen to estradiol or E2, estrone is E1 and estriol is E3. I'm of the double check, my nits. Either way, we don't want higher estrone to estradiol. We want the estrone lower than the estradiol. Now, if you refer back to the podcast I did with Dr. Betty Murray where she reviewed my Dutch test, she referenced a lab marker called estrone sulfate. Ironically, I tried to get this on myself and the lab didn't do it. So I don't know if this is a marker that just is not available through conventional labs like Queston Labcorp, but I need to try it again. They didn't, they didn't pull it, so we don't have that information. But that I will also pull every so often when I do my labs and I will look at my Dutch test results more often. I will most likely, I don't recommend this for everyone, but I will most likely do a repeat Dutch test about once every four to six months. Easily four to six months just to stay on top of that 4, 2, 4 and 16 oh pathway as I try to push more to the 2 and out of the 16 and the 4 because I weight more heavily on those two pathways, which are more growth pathways for estrogen growth promotion and that can be the growth of your boobs and your hips or that can be the growth of cancer. So it's all about keeping those levels in check. It's not about avoiding, it's not about putting our head in the sand. It's not about classifying estradiol as bad or good in two different columns. Hormones are not bad. If hormones were bad, we wouldn't have them. Our, our creator, our God would not have made us with hormones. And once again, if estrogen was bad, if high hormones were bad, kids and pregnant women would be at the top of the list for cancer. We would see just this huge rash of cancer outbreaks in the teenage population and in pregnant women. And we don't. So I am very, very comfortable with going back to my higher estradiol levels. That's what I've been doing. I'll keep you updated on all of my testing and what comes of it, but I wanted to share just my own eye opening experience of my estrogen levels plummeting. And if you're a woman out there listening, just resonating with absolutely everything I just said, believe me, I have a whole new deep feeling of appreciation and compassion and empathy for you. Because prior to this experience, I knew the importance of hormones. I can rattle off what each hormone does in the body and how vital it is for life and quality of life, for prevention of disease, for protection of your bones, your brain, your breasts, your heart. But I never experienced that drop in estrogen. This was the first time. And this now allows me so much more understanding of all of you, so much more understanding of patients that come into the practice and they're one year, five years, 10 years, God forbid, 20 years with no hormones. That's not the way that we should be living. And listen, the same goes for you dudes. When you lose your testosterone, your quality of life plummets. Plummets. Because that's your main hormone. That's your motivator. That's your get shit done hormone. The same as it is for us. That's also your erection hormone. That's your body composition hormone. Dad bods are not cool. Dad bods are bad. Dad bods mean that you have excess abdominal fat and man boobs. Dad bods mean that you have too much estrogen and too little testosterone and that you're treating your body like a circus. So just stop. Men and women, hormones give us life and quality of life. We can't live without them. You have to find the right balance. You have to find what works for you. Yeah, it takes working with somebody that knows what the hell they're doing with hormones and with thyroid, because they all go together. You can't do one without the other. But just please know, please know this. I have mad love and compassion for you. I'm going to say it again, just compassion, empathy, understanding, appreciation. I want to give all of you a hug. I want to take you under my wing and just give you hormones. I want to give you a hug and hormones. That's going to be a new saying. Hugs and hormones all around. Let's do it. But please know that what you're experiencing is real. And what you're experiencing doesn't have to be either. Because now I can officially say that my skin has gotten a little bit better. It's never going to go back all the way to what it was in, let's say, March before my cancer diagnosis and before I dropped my estradiol dose. Is that gonna go back to that? I am rubbing Karen Martell's Estriol cream on my arms. I will. I mixed that with C60 and I just put that on my C60 purple power, C60 power. My friend Jess McNaughton's company and I put that and Estriol on my arms. Has definitely gotten better. Yes, shameless plug for both of those companies because I love them. Definitely gotten better. But it's not going to go all the way back. It's just not. If I can save that 48, 49, 50 year old woman that you're starting to or or or earlier. If you're going into earlier menopause, maybe your mom went into early menopause. That's just in your genetics. If I can save you from that estradiol cliff, then I've done my job. Then I am happy. So Hugs and hormones all around. Make sure that you are optimizing and customizing and personalizing your dose of hormones. But for God's sake don't go without them because it's a wild, hellish ride down. It's just. It's just all down and I don't want you to be there where I was. So that is my message to you all tied into one big podcast here. Hugs and Hormones. I could title it that but might not get many clicks. Hugs and hormones all around. Personalize your dose. Don't let your estroge fall off a cliff. Mad love to all of my perimenopause and menopausal ladies out there. My heart is with you and I'm here to help if you need it. The information shared on the Thyroid Fixer Podcast is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you you may have regarding a medical condition, treatment or before making changes to your healthcare regimen, including medications, supplements or other therapies. Use of the information provided in this podcast does not establish a doctor, patient or client provider relationship between you and the host or between you and any other healthcare professionals featured on the show. Any medical opinions or statements made by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or affiliated parties. Statements regarding dietary supplements or health related products mentioned in this podcast have not been evaluated by the fda. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Some episodes of the Thyroid Fixer Podcast may include sponsorships or affiliate links. The host may receive compensation for discussing or promoting certain products or services. Any such sponsorships or affiliations will be clearly disclosed during the episode. All opinions expressed are those of the hosts or guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of any sponsors. The inclusion of a product or service does not imply endorsement by any healthcare professional featured on this podcast.