Dr. Jessica Shepherd
Appearances
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And then finally, they're like, we've got it down. We've done enough rehearsal. We're ready to do the job.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's receiving, delivery and receiving. It's the most important part, I would say, of a hormone because they want to get that message across. And then the hormones that disassemble, you know, so the job now is kind of falling apart, is what's happening in perimenopause and menopause. What do you mean, disassemble?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Well, when we go through a hormone decline, which is the opposite of what we're doing when we're getting towards puberty and adolescence, perimenopause is they're like, biologically, we're not going to be doing that delivery system anymore. We're going to slow down this project now. And people are like, okay, then I'll come off here. I'm just not going to show up to work anymore.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And that's when you start to see the fluctuation of what happens to hormones in the perimenopausal phase. So they're kind of saying that job that we used to do for 30 plus years is of giving off an egg at a certain time every part of the month, we're not really doing that anymore.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So that's when you start to see the offloading of what happens with hormones, which is why we now experience all those symptoms in perimenopause.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
They do, but their decline is much slower over a longer timeframe.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so that's why you still can have men who are in their 70s and 80s still being able to have or contribute sperm and you get pregnant, but we no longer can after a certain age, which is why women experience menopause.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Well, all hormones for men and women obviously play that specific role. But when we speak to just women and how they're going to experience life, I think that's the best way to frame it is how are you experiencing life? What's contributing to the factors that really are kind of key and specific to women? I would say estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, as well as our thyroid hormones.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But men do have thyroid hormones as well, as well as estrogen and testosterone. We just have it in different levels. But for women, I would say estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and our thyroid hormones.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So they're kind of like in separate pods, but they're kind of in the same neighborhood and really contribute towards each other. But estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I usually like to categorize it as maybe if we were to say our menopausal, metabolic, and mitochondrial hormones. And so cortisol is really, I like to put it in the metabolic kind of family of when we talk about hormones because it has such a broad impact on our entire body system.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So metabolic means the things that function in how we regulate the activity of our entire body. So metabolically, we would say if you have metabolic hormones that are being shifted, that's usually when we talk to insulin and glucose and how our body is able to absorb glucose, utilize glucose as a fuel. So cortisol really has a lot to do with that as far as metabolic functions. Okay.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So I would definitely say what we have started to see, you know, over the last few decades is typically when we start our period, that age has become younger. Why? And so that age has become younger because of environmental factors. A lot of the things that we have in our environment, a lot of the foods that we eat. So it actually is something that we should be researching in a way of
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
why is this happening? And is this something that has implications on our life later on? And when I say later on, like your 50s and- I would think so. Absolutely. You know why? Because cortisol, which we kind of bring it back into the conversation a little, has a lot to do with, is this the reason why we're starting to see our women or young girls starting to have their periods at a younger age?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so what's happening is you're starting to have this onboarding, right? We talked about this complexity of our bodies and the systems and how it's being regulated. So the onboarding time is a little bit earlier now. And so what's happening is that estrogen is starting to rev up because our bodies want to release this egg in order to have a menstrual cycle. And so it starts that process earlier.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And estrogen and progesterone are going to be those key hormones that are going to filter into... When am I going to be high? When am I going to be low? We talked about how they're coming into themselves as a system and a bodily function in order to accomplish an event, which is your menstrual cycle. So what is the role of estrogen?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Estrogen really, I like to call it our vitality hormone because we really see when we look at our menstrual cycle or even when women come to me and they have changes in their menstrual cycle, we typically like to say, how is estrogen functioning? And as a vitality hormone, What is it contributing? Maybe it's a little bit too much here or a little too little.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And how can we alter it in a way where you can get back to your, maybe your normal rhythm or your normal menstrual cycle? So it builds up when we're starting our period and it really is creating, your body's in default actually to get pregnant, which is the whole reason for your menstrual cycle is to conceive and to get pregnant.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I would say biologically, that's what, if we were to look at it just from like key, you know, key framework.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's designed biologically to do that function.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
What I want to make sure that we understand is it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to do that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But I think that society does teach us that that's what you're designed to do and that's what you're supposed to do.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And I would say that once you understand that, then you can embrace it for what it is. Okay.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Right. And work with it and not work against it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Everyone is born with the amount of hormones or the hormones that we have. How they function changes during the life cycle. Wait, you are born with the amount of hormones you have? Well, not the amount, but you have the hormone. Okay, gotcha. How they function changes over the course of our lives, which is why we see those changes At adolescence and then perimenopause.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And that's why I love the body. It is so complex, but so elegant because it was always there. But the need for it to do the job that it was designed to do at that time in your life, that's when it knows I need to start doing this. So it's the onboarding. But that's what I love about the kind of basic fundamental part of the body. And that's why we should embrace every part of our lives.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Stress. And that's where cortisol is our stress hormone, and it responds to stress. And so when we have stressors that are showing up early in our lives... a lot of it has to do with the experiences that we have, environmental factors and food, then that's why we're starting to see that girls are starting to have their periods much younger.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's more so that the cortisol is responding to these stressors and then onboarding much too early or much too high of a level. than when it's supposed to. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. It enters the scene when it shouldn't be.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And we're like, you're not really supposed to be appearing at this part of the script, but you're here. And so now we were going to respond to you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So the roles that they're playing is getting the body ready for this now 30-year or maybe 20-year thing that they're going to be doing. So that's when you start to see like the breasts enlarge, you start to see hair growth, right? You sort of see changes in the external genitalia. And that has a lot to do with how the hormones are responding.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's getting the body ready and also to do the thing that we talked about, to get ready for pregnancy. And that's what the body has the capacity to do in your reproductive years. And so that's when women start to see changes in their moods. I mean, how many times have you heard...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
adolescent girls and going through puberty, again, yes, that mood is there because our neurotransmitters, which are also hormones, are responding to these changes when we start to onboard our estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone to do the function of the period. So when you move into your 20s, What is, what's going on with hormones?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Hormones are, at this point, should be functioning very consistently. We know what our job is. We're having a cycle. We may get pregnant, go through the pregnancy,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
repeat baseline what we're doing again so that's when it should be kind of we should be okay this is typically when women might start to come in with issues with maybe pain with their cycles or maybe heavier cycles yes yeah and so it really should be kind of even keel during this time frame but that's not what we always see so
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
When women come in, I always like to peel the layers back. Okay. Because that's very subjective. And subjective meaning everyone has different experiences. What are their tolerance to that experience? What's going on in their life? How do they deal with stressors? And I'll give you an example.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And this is where I love the beauty of these conversations is to always recognize that everyone has a different template and everyone has a different experience in life. And so a lot of my women, especially women of color who come in, have different stressors.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And because of what's going on in their environment, whether that's racism, whether that's poverty, whether that's increased stress or that's the cortisol, a lot of what they're experiencing is a lot different to women who are not in those particular environments. And so that's part of peeling the layers back, especially as a physician.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
When women come into me is not looking at just the issue that's going on and saying, what else is going on in your life? And that's the mind body connection. And so when we are able to look at those factors versus maybe it's a food issue, there are a lot of foods that can change how our hormones respond.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So your processed foods, your foods that have high glycemic index, that have a lot of sugar, a lot of soft drinks. I do see a lot of my patients who are in that timeframe when I look at their diet. I'm like, let's start here. Because for me, that's a lifestyle change that can impact you greatly. And I don't necessarily have to put you on a medication. So that might be a better way of looking at it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And also with exercise. Exercise does have a beautiful way of releasing... other chemicals and hormones in our body that can help regulate our period, but we have to utilize that. And then also stressors, what's going on in your life. It's notorious for stressors. Women come in and they will say, I'm having all these changes in my cycle, whether it's heavier, lighter, irregular, doesn't matter.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I will always ask them, what's going on in your personal life? What's going on in work life? And again, when we have that session, that's why OBGYNs are actually usually said that they're also psychologists because we absorb a lot of what's going on in their life when they come in for a visit.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Categorically, and I will say that like emphatically, because our lifestyle and how we conduct our lives on the outside with those factors of food, nutrition, exercise really does change the game. And that's why we are starting to see when we get into later life or even in midlife, that that is also a very important part of what your body's going to be able to do.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Your body can only do what you give it. And if we're not giving it the things that it can thrive, then that's when it's like, I may not be able to perform at my best ability.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I'm so glad you asked this question because what does it have to do with the mind? Because the brain usually is the control center for a lot of hormones. So it is the one that is going to tell the ovary, I need you to kind of give off a little bit of estrogen today. We're going to give off this much. We're going to dial it down on this day because we're getting ready for ovulation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
All those different messages are usually generated from the brain.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So imagine what happens with our neurotransmitters when we undergo stressful situations, whether it's something that happens when you're crossing the street and you almost run over by a car versus exactly what you said, a stressor in life that's really taking over all your thoughts, your everyday life, that your brain can respond to that in a way where it's trying to help you cope with that stress.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But what happens is when we have stress, the brain can't give off the message to all the other hormones in the way that it could when it wasn't as distracted. And that's why we have to, as physicians, get better at mind-body connection.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah, hormonal acne, again, when we think of, there's different types of acne, just there can be stuff that is due to chemicals that maybe, you know, you're using on your face that are not the best, but usually a lot is hormonal. And you can actually sometimes tell by where it is on your body. What? Where you're getting, yes.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So most hormonal acne can be mostly in kind of the area by right under the eyes or the chin. Why does it go there? Because when we're thinking of where the hormones, you have receptors all over your body that respond to hormones.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so the receptors that maybe respond more to estrogen or testosterone, there's going to be features or areas on your face that are going to be more prone to the actual area of the breakout, right? And so when we think of what kind of spurs on these changes in hormones, which will then trigger hormonal, a lot of it has to do with testosterone.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Testosterone has a lot to do with sebaceous glands, right? So our sebaceous glands are the ones on all parts of our body that hold the oil. Because we need oil. You know, your face, that's how our body functions. We need oil secretion. But when there's a buildup of those areas and in the glands...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
can be an increase in testosterone as well, which then elicit the buildup of oil, which then you get bacteria and then you have acne. Wow. Yeah. And so do you see this a lot with 20-year-olds? I do. They come in and usually what is the best way to treat them? So it's a great relationship we have with dermatologists because they'll have these patients come into them.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And a lot of dermatologists will actually send the patient back to an OBGYN because typically we will put them on birth control pills to kind of help quiet down this kind of overwhelm of hormones and it responds to that. And a lot of it has to do with the testosterone feature of what's being elevated, what's creating that message being sent, and then you have the outcome of the hormonal acne.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I want them to know that the body is really trying to get to homeostasis. And homeostasis is just that kind of perfect balance that the body needs to be able to do the functions that it wants to do. Now, when we're on birth control, the goal of birth control is to somewhat suppress or kind of decrease the activity of your hormones that your body naturally produces. Okay.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And when it does that, it is doing the job of what it's supposed to be doing is preventing pregnancy by decreasing the suppression or rather the release of an egg, right? Your body's in default to get pregnant every month. Right. So it wants to release an egg. So what happens to all those hormones in your body if it's suppressing? They're still there.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
They're still doing what they're supposed to be doing, but the birth control is kind of keeping it a little bit more suppressed so it can't do the function it wants to do. So when you come off, now you're lifting off this veil that was always there and suppressing. So now your hormones are like... we can go back to what we were doing. And it's trying to find that homeostasis.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And sometimes you might have highs, sometimes you might have lows.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Immediate gratification is usually what we want when it comes to our bodies. And I always am coaching my patients to give their bodies grace. And when I say that in a timeframe, that may be three to six months. I've had some patients who may take nine months to a year to kind of regulate and get back to what they used to be.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But just like after pregnancy, we always want our bodies to kind of be perfect like eight weeks after. But our body doesn't function like that. And so even in the perimenopausal phase, going through these changes, we need to give our bodies more grace and time. to do the thing that it's designed to do, but we can't push the agenda as quickly as we would like.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So three to six months, usually I would say, give it that timeframe. And when they come back in, I'll be like, well, where are we? Because remember, it's a gradient. They may see that they're improving over three to six months, but maybe not getting all the way back to where they were. And so maybe we can push out time a little bit more.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah. You aren't going to see... Changes. And a lot of that has to do with we were not used to seeing what the body was naturally doing for that long. So now when you're exposed to it, you're like, this is off-putting or this is weird. But really the body may be like, oh, I was kind of doing this all along. We just weren't really aware of it because we had some suppression.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So that can be changes in how your cycle comes back. People may experience that it's heavier or maybe they are having longer cycles in duration. And that may be because the birth control is kind of not doing what it wanted to do. You also may see changes in skin. You may also see changes in hair. What changes do you see in hair?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So hair, you can start to see that maybe they're gonna have more thinning or falling out of their hair because it's the shift in the hormones, right? So it's not that there's something wrong all the time.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
When there is a lump of hair in your hands, it does feel so wrong. What the body is trying to do is get back to that homeostasis, right? But why are you losing hair? Because it's the shift, right? So you were suppressing your hormones with this birth control. And now that you're lifting it off, it can skyrocket back to what it wanted to be, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's like, oh, well, no one's kind of keeping me down. I'm going to come out. And the hair cycle is impacted by hormones, right? So how our hair goes through cycles and phases of growth, when it falls out, when it's going to be what it wants to be within the cycle. Those can all change due to what our hormones are telling it, right? Hormones are chemical deliverers.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Absolutely. There are estrogen receptors all over the body. You know, in Generation M, there is like this. I was like, this diagram has to go in this book because we have typecast estrogen and progesterone just to the pelvis. Just to the pelvis.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I know it's talking to your brain. It's talking to your muscle, your heart, which is exactly why we see when estrogen goes down after menopause, what do we have? We have heart disease. Our bones are weaker. Our brain goes through this fog. And that's because estrogen receptors are there. So if it's not able to deliver the message...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
then that area of your body is like, I'm not going to function the way that I used to or would like to because estrogen is not there.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
You know what I say is the most fascinating is the brain. And you know why? Because even as an OBGYN, it's like you know it, but you don't know it. I don't think I realized how much of an impact that estrogen makes on the brain until maybe five, 10 years ago. So what impact does it make on the brain? It has an impact on mood.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It has an impact on cognition, how we're able to function, how we're able to use our prefrontal cortex. We become more limbic in our responses. What does limbic mean? Limbic means that emotional, right? That kind of jump to the, right? And what do we hear? That women who are in their perimenopausal phase are more moody, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Absolutely.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's a drop, so it's the fluctuation. It may go down, then come up really quick. But unfortunately, in perimenopause, it's going down, but it's not really coming back up. It's like, I'm really going down, and I'm not coming back up. And so that's why you start to see in between the ages of 45 and 55, we have the most diagnoses of anxiety and depression. It makes so much sense.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Because this is when estrogen, our key response, our key hormone in how it interacts with the brain is going to be impacted because our mood, our neurotransmitters, our dopamine. After menopause, we start to see that dopamine receptors are 30% less. And so if that's our hormone that's going to be around to make us feel good, and now it's not there anymore, what do you think is going to happen?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so this is why it's so crucial that people understand the mind-body connection is so important. And you are not alone during this journey. You are not the only one who's experiencing this. And the more that we can look inward and say, I'm going through this, I'm going to be okay, but I also understand why, wouldn't that make someone feel better?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Do you see how it impacts careers? It impacts relationships. Your personal life. Yeah, you're feeling you're going through just like this. And that's what women used to come in and tell me because they couldn't put their finger on it. They would say, I don't feel right. Something's off. I feel like I'm just so emotional. I can watch TV and cry at a commercial or someone can say one thing to me
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
and I will snap. And they feel as if it's an out-of-body experience. They're literally watching themselves have these responses.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I'm just doubly excited to be here. You are someone who I've listened to for a long time, and the ability to be able to share my little slice of life with you and with everyone here, I love it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Mel, this is why this conversation is so important for a 20 and 30-year-old.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So let's bring it back to the reproductive phase, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So our body's designed to do this. We know in the reproductive phase as OBGYNs, we start to see a change and a decline in egg quality and the ability to get pregnant spontaneously after the age of 35. Okay. And why do you think?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Estrogen and progesterone, which impacts what we're able to do with releasing that follicle, right? So our chemical messenger is not able to tell the ovary We're going to fire off an egg as readily, right? So it's like, I'm not doing it this month. Or the quality of the egg, not really going to be that great. And then testosterone is also taking a decline, although it is more subtle.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But that's where we start to see that drop in estrogen, which is some women, especially, I'm one of them who had kids later on in our age.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
They use geriatric pregnancy. Yeah, what the... Who came up with that? I... Clearly not a woman. Not a woman. Yes. And so even I start to see a lot of my patients having kids later on in their life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
What happens is usually after they deliver, they start to experience the perimenopausal kind of symptoms, hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, because they've kind of entered into that phase just like very quickly after delivering their children.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Well, what we do know is looking at it from a pregnancy perspective in the ability to get pregnant after the age of 35 versus after 40. And then 42 is another marker when we're thinking of fertility of when it really starts to drop off. And so the ability to get pregnant in your 20s
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
you know improvements in health and sanitation and medical research you know what we haven't accounted for that gap in life expectancy with now estrogen still gone and that's why we still see women living longer yes that's great i'm all for that but we're living life in poor quality of health and we're seeing these health measures of what women typically they have more dementia they have more osteoporosis they have more heart disease number one killer of women
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
is because that estrogen was gone, but we're still living longer.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
51, 52.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So it makes sense biologically that estrogen is kind of tanked. Yep. And the life expectancy of what the body is able to do because estrogen is not there. 50 or 60 years ago. Is going to be. Not a problem. Not a problem. Makes sense. But now we have improved with science, technology, nutrition, sanitation to our 70s and 80s, but we have not accommodated the body to function without estrogen.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But isn't that the analogy that of what we're told to do. Just keep going. I don't care if you feel crazy. I don't care if your bones are breaking. Just keep going. And so this allows us, again, to take that step back and have more grace with our bodies. But it's because we now understand the biology of our bodies.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But there are ways that you can help your body do better things. In other words, optimize the ability for the body to do it even in the absence of estrogen and progesterone.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
What are the most important things? I would say nutrition and exercise because those are fundamental things you can do every day or even if it's four times a week. But those are things that are giving our metabolic health and our mitochondrial health the best ways that they can function even in the absence or the decline of some of these hormones. So that's going to be...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Paying attention to decreasing your processed foods, your sugar, because your body just doesn't respond to it as readily as it did in 20s and 30s, which I would not advocate for people just because they're 20 and 30 to eat these types of foods, but then also exercise and weight training to be able to build that muscle up so it can utilize the glucose better so that your body's just not sitting with the glucose.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's not necessarily that they're entering it earlier. It's that we do have a significant change of hormones in pregnancy. And what we do see is after pregnancy, so in the postpartum phase, you're going to have that shift again, trying to get back to homeostasis. What you have taught us, Dr. Shepard, you got to give your body grace. Give your body grace.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
nine months to a year it could take till you feel like yourself again so if you think that's nine months postpartum nine months typically for a pregnancy that's almost like a year and a half time frame and so in that year and a half is where you start to see that now they're entering into the natural kind of fluctuation on the decline towards menopause and so it does seem a little jarring or quick but really the body was already on its way gotcha
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And now we've kind of distracted our body or ourselves from what was happening because we were pregnant. And then after, your body's like, well, I was still going in this direction. I'm going to continue to go in that direction.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I would say, you know, for everyone who's listening and even myself, I think this is where this really resonates is I'm going through that journey as well, but why am I here and where do I want to be? And that really is that opportunity of self-care to say, I get to be in charge of myself. And many times we don't take that time to say, what is really going on?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Well, that would be me. I'm perimenopausal, proud of it. But perimenopause has been more of a confusing term, I think, in what we've seen in this menopause surge, because menopause is very clinical in its definition. But perimenopause is confusing because it can last anywhere from three years, seven years, 10 years, because everyone's different in that decline and fluctuation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But it's truly when our hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are starting to go down and shift down and you start to have these symptoms here or there. Some people may not have symptoms. I mean, wouldn't that start when you're 35?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Some people, I have had patients, and I would definitely say, sometimes I'm like, wow, you are pretty young, but I'm never going to take that experience away from them, that they may start to experience symptoms of perimenopause. So...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
This could be the experience and the timeframe. So I would definitely say... hot flashes and night sweats kind of here or there. People will be like, did I just have a hot flash? And then you may not feel it again for months. Definite change in weight. I've had so many women who come in and being like, I'm doing the same two mile run. I'm doing the same elliptical for an hour.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And now the weight's going absolutely nowhere. Irregularity in periods. That's where we start to see lighter, heavier. Now I have two times a month. Now I skip three months. Then it came back. And a lot of that has to do with that fluctuation. Remember the car assembly line? Some people didn't show up to work that day. They're just like, I'm not doing the assembly line.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yes. And so those start to happen through that timeframe.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Why did we gain weight there? So we gain for multiple reasons. Again, it's never just one thing. So our fat cells do respond to estrogen. We know that the estrogen receptors are all over the body.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Right. So think about when you're pregnant and you do gain weight. That's for a safety reason to kind of cushion the body to accommodate the pregnancy, right? So fat cells do respond to estrogen. I thought it was because I was eating my way through the entire day.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
We can blame it on the fat cells, but there's accommodations into how they respond. So they can shrink, they can get bigger, they can migrate, and then they can usually go back. So typically after pregnancy, a lot of people will go back to the way that their bodies appeared before.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
In perimenopause, that response, remember we said chemical messengers, but if there's no estrogen, the receptors, they're waiting for it. It's not responding. So fat cells can enlarge, but maybe they now don't have the capacity to shrink. Oh, wait a minute.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Because that's when we really start to push away all the narratives and the stories and what society tells us. And that really is this transformation in life is to take some time, take pause and say, why am I here and where do I want to be?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So it goes from your hips and your butt, which is what we see in 20s and 30s, right? Because that's where it's supposed to be in that timeframe. And then it migrates to that abdominal area, the fanny pack area, because the estrogen is like, well, we're not responding in that way. But we're also going to shift now where the fat cells are. So they kind of migrate more to that area.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's the biology of the body. It's really what your body is designed to do as we get older. Because even men go through that. They don't go through it as, I would say, maybe as rapidly or profound as women. But you do notice, too, as men start to age, they get that. They start to look pregnant.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But they also have estrogen as well, just smaller amounts. But this is the beauty in what the body is designed to do. It does it even though we don't love for it to do it. But it does happen during that time frame, a lot to do with estrogen. And also our muscle. Our muscle starts to decrease as well. So if you have, if you think of like a pie graph. Why does our muscle start to decrease? Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So this is, again, because estrogen receptors are in the muscle.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Right. Well, not necessarily strong. Strong is more of like a power kind of force thing, but the actual muscle mass. So the amount.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
If you think of a pie graph and maybe most of it was filled out with muscle and a little bit of fat content there in the pie graph, as we start to age, that pie graph shifts and we start to see the fat increase. I don't want it to increase.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Neither do I. This is not what I want either. But the muscle mass... starts to decrease as well as the fat mass is increasing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Wow. Yeah. And so we have the ability, you'd asked earlier. This is not fair, Dr. Shepard.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Why don't we just like help us? Life is not fair. And this is one of those things that you're like, if we could maybe take this part out, but you'd said it earlier about, is there a way to, you know, maybe stave off this kind of hormone change? We can't, but we can fix the pie graph, which is why I say that weight training. Okay, I have a crazy question.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Actually, there is research that is actually mentioned in Generation M of how do we prolong, not necessarily the period, how do we prolong the durability and duration of estrogen?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
How do we keep the ovary alive in the sense of allowing it to still emit estrogen on its own? And that's where the research is really looking at. Because what did we say? There's a gap. Life expectancy, because estrogen was down. Now we're living longer. If we could fill that gap with
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
having estrogen around naturally, then there is a likelihood that we would start to see decline in heart disease, decline in osteoporosis, decline in dementia. And that would be an amazing, innovative way for us to have better quality of life, even though we're living longer.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Absolutely. So I'm glad we are in this day and age in science where we can definitely say that there is an impact in how women live their lives and decreasing their risk of death. In osteoporosis, I'll start with osteoporosis, because when we actually look at the recommendations, even from the Menopause Society, which when they say If you take HRT, this is what it's going to help with.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Now, we know that it helps with the symptoms of menopause, hot flashes, night sets, etc. But when we look at bone health, it is actually proven that estrogen impacts bone health in a good way, obviously. But it's not our first line of therapy. They haven't said it's a first line of therapy.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
If someone comes in and they're like, I have osteopenia, which is like weakening of the bone, that I should say, you should automatically go on estrogen. But we know it helps. So that is there for osteoporosis. Now, dementia, brain health, which to me is like fundamentally one of the biggest parts.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I would actually echo exactly what you're saying, because even in the clinical space, we need to do a better job at saying, we know this, this is data, and we should be encouraging our patients to consider, because the goal is not to say that everyone has to be on it, like it's mandated, but to give you
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
the data, the literature, so that you know the reason why, and you get to make that decision for yourself. But if I'm not giving you that information or that choice, you may not even know to make that decision for yourself.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Now, that was one of the studies when they looked at the WHI, which is 20 years ago. And now we have so much better research that links estrogen depletion and decline and what that does for later on in life when we look at dementia. So I'll give you numbers that make sense. When we look at Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative diseases, 70% of those cases are women.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So clearly there's a link between why are women getting this more than males? And the answer is because when we look at that sharp estrogen decline, estrogen is one of the best anti-inflammatory substances in our body.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So when we lose estrogen, we have an increase in inflammation and that inflammation causes our neurons to have hardened plaques, which lead later down the line because the course of how it builds and how it shows up is as much as 30 years. So that's why you start to see women having dementia in their 70s and 80s, but the process started back in their 50s. Why? Because of estrogen decline. Wow.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
This is one of the biggest questions now that we see in hormone replacement therapy and perimenopause. What we used to do, and this is again when I was training, which was about 15, 18 years ago, is that we would wait till women reached menopause. It's like they almost had to prove it. They would come in in buckets of sweat and I would be like, well, when was your last period?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And they're like, well, it was five months ago. And I'm like, so sorry, can't offer you HRT. We have now gotten into a day and age where we know if your hormones are declining and fluctuating and you're having a symptom, I absolutely should be offering you hormone replacement therapy as something. Why wouldn't we? It's the car analogy again.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Why am I going to wait until there's no more car or no more gas in the engine, but I'm still plugging away? Why wouldn't when the indicator comes on, why would I not say, this is a great opportunity for me to get gas? the same thing with hormones. Why are we depleting ourselves?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Why are we allowing women to feel their absolute worst before we will offer them something that is going to help how they feel and their vitality? So what about women who are not candidates for it? What are their options? So their options, so there are actually a lot of options. I would, well, maybe not a lot, but there are options.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah, it actually started from the OB world, right? Bringing babies into the world. And that was so fascinating to me. And it's very exciting. And as I was going through residency, still love OB is when I really realized that there is this whole scope of a woman's life outside of pregnancy.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so coming from a day and age when there were no options, I think that it's really amazing that we are able to offer that. I think that the list of who cannot take hormone replacement therapy is probably good to go over so that everyone can make sure that if I am or not, I need to know. Great. So this would be someone who has a personal history. right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
They themselves have had breast cancer and specifically a hormone receptor positive type of cancer, right? It responds to hormones. So the reason why I kind of doubled down on personal history is that there is a lot around breast cancer when we think I've had a family member, a cousin, an aunt, that doesn't put you in the same category as having a personal history of breast cancer.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's a very nuanced conversation. Okay. And you definitely should be talking to your doctor specifically about what type of cancer that you've had, the course of cancer that has taken on your life, but also the age of when you were diagnosed and what that means. Okay. And the second thing is if you've had an Pulmonary embolism, you've had a clot in your lung.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Or even if you've had maybe a very large event of a clot somewhere else in your body, it has to be pretty significant for you not to be a candidate for hormone replacement therapy. And why do those two things... make you not a candidate for hormone replacement therapy?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
That's a great question because of the hormones and the response of the body, whether it's the clot or the breast cancer, that introducing hormones again may precipitate or cause another event like that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah, because there's a history of has your family had it and been exposed to and what was that and why? Do you have a genetic predisposition to that same cancer in your family? So those, again, that should be where that list is being kind of narrowed down when you talk to your doctor. But I want women to, even if they have a family history, that's where the conversation starts.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I've had so many women who are like, oh, I can't do it. Then they just never talk about it. And I'm like, but what if, what if you found yourself that you can be exposed to it? Wouldn't that be great? Is there an age where it's too late to start hormone replacement therapy?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But when I really started to see women, whether it was in their adolescence or even later on in life, is that there's still so much to be taken care of that we really have that ability to interact and build relationship with women. And that's where I really thrived. And so that after residency, I actually did a surgical fellowship because I loved being in the OR. I love being able to
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
This is another beautiful question because for a long time from that WHI study 20 years ago, we used to say you can't start hormones now. if you've started 10 years after your last period, which is clinically menopause, or after the age of 60. And so we have shifted those, quite frankly, and again, it's a nuanced conversation, but there are plenty of women
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And we know it's safe to start after the age of 60 and also more than 10 years after menopause, especially that last one I just said. Because what if you experience menopause at 42, 45, which is not typical, but what if you did? And now you're 55 hearing us today and you're like, well, it's 10 years. I can't start hormone replacement therapy. Absolutely.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
You should be in your doctor's office saying, is this a possibility for me?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
You know what might happen? You might feel better.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah. There's so many women who, again, going back to the, I'm going to numb, not really feeling that, but you are. And so many women, once they get on hormone replacement therapy, that exact example that you gave, 55-year-old who maybe went 10 years.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah. A lot of women don't understand how they could feel because we subject ourselves to feeling, I don't feel great, but I'm just going to keep going. And the other thing that we talked about, what do we say? Osteoporosis, heart disease. So it may not have the same effect. I will make that statement if you started hormone replacement earlier. Right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I had a patient who came in and again, nuanced conversation. She was 67, but she was still having hot flashes, which is again, not typical because usually they'll wane and they'll go down, you know, in your 50s. She was still experiencing them to a way where it's impacting her quality of life. So I did have that conversation with her. She was very nervous. And I said, well, here's what we'll do.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Why not give yourself the chance to And what if we just trial and see how you feel after three to six months? She's still on it. How did she feel? She felt amazing. She was like, why was I living like this for so long?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And the diligence. And I think the conversations, because... Someone else could walk in behind her who's the same age or even maybe younger. And we're like, maybe you're not the candidate. But we had the conversation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But if we're not having the conversation, then there's nothing to talk about.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I think that this is where, when I talk about grieving the loss of what we used to be, that's where the mind and body come in. And so being able to modulate how our body functions has a lot to do with what we give it. And so giving it that loving care with looking at our diet, but also alternatives, which I advocate for all of my patients, is things such as mindfulness, meditation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
really take something very complex and transform in a way that's helpful for them in the operating room, and then coming back to who are you and how can I help you there?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
How do we take the brain and allow it to not be as jittery and over-processed and over-stimulated? Comes with how we are able to teach it to quiet down. Acupuncture. Tai Chi has actually been shown in study to help decrease some hot flashes and night sweats, vasomotor symptoms for women.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And even if you think of the culture of Asians, Asian women, if you look at a study, they had their vasomotor symptoms and menopausal symptoms for a shorter duration and not as intense.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Oh, that's the fancy word for it? That's the fancy word for those two.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so when you look at their- Sounds sexier too. Doesn't it? Yes. It doesn't like make it so, you're like, that doesn't sound, I'm having a vasomotor symptom. Is that they have shorter duration, decrease intensity. And a lot of that has to do with their lifestyle, their practice, what they eat, what they consume, but how they live their lives.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And also the practices that they do with movement of their body and being able to create the mind and the body throughout this whole transition.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
No, it's kind of like you're hijacking and bypassing the actual decline in hormones, but using the other parts of the body to elevate those and to optimize those parts of the body to offset what's going on biologically with the hormones.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Right, because our dopamine and our serotonin, our neurotransmitters, which when we see depression, they are decreased. You just said when you exercise, you get that flood of dopamine, you get that increase in serotonin, which is going to elevate our mood in lieu of losing hormones.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I'll name three that are really categorical to sleep. And the reason why sleep is so important, let's lay the foundation, is that sleep actually is critical for our body in repair and recovery. And if our body's not able to do that, then it cannot function well.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So when people have sleep disorders or sleep issues, these are the people that we see later getting obstructive sleep disorder, heart disease, asthma issues. and also increase in obesity, right? So all things that are going to continue to decrease in quality of life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And most of the surgeries that I was doing, a lot of times it had to do with women in their midlife. And so when they would come into me with their diagnosis, whether that was fibroids, endometriosis, I got to sit with them and talk to them about this diagnosis. But what actually came out in the visit was all the other things that were going on in their life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So now that we have that foundation of why sleep is so important, the three hormones that are crucial for that are going to be your estrogen, your progesterone, and your cortisol. And your cortisol, which I'll start with, has to do with your circadian rhythm, the reasons why we sleep, why we should sleep certain times.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And cortisol has releases throughout the night, usually in the midnight and then early in the morning around 5 a.m. Okay. So if your cortisol, remember, these are chemical messengers that work on a timeframe.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Stress, life, and estrogen as well.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Right? So the estrogen decline now gives you hot flashes and night sweats. So now you're waking up at the middle of the night because you're having a night sweat. So then your circadian rhythm, which was impacted by cortisol, is also taking a hit. It's deregulated and you're not getting good sleep quality. And then progesterone, progesterone is the comfy hormone. It likes to relax us.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It likes us to kind of settle down and feel good. And so we're also having fluctuations in progesterone. So it can't do the job that it really would like to do, which is give you sleep quality and relaxation. So all of these different turns and like declines and it's impacting our sleep, which then impacts our health.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And that's why we're starting to see that sleep or sleep health rather is so imperative and we need to pay more attention to our sleep.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yes. So this is where we look at repleting maybe our hormones. Hormone replacement therapy can be a vehicle or a tool to kind of get you back to where you need to be hormonally. But then also we can look at practices. A lot of times during that kind of deregulation or brain, a lot of women will say, my mind just races at night.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Ruminating. So decreasing rumination is where we need to do our work, our homework with quieting the brain down. So that is gonna be your meditation and your mindfulness, taking the screen away before you go to bed. I'm talking to myself as I say that. And then the other thing is actually when we look at CBD, and what it's able to do as well has been helpful.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It is very important, and I'll say this candidly, you have to know where you're sourcing it from. And so CBD, we have endocannabinoid receptors in our bodies, which also contribute to relaxation, is that you have to appreciate where it's being sourced and then seeing... is to have CBN, which is another part of the plant that actually helps with relaxation. So that's another way as well.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So mindfulness, that's our homework, making sure what are you eating? There are foods that are going to be inflammatory and going to kick off that cortisol. So decline in alcohol. Oh. Decline in processed foods and sugar. You're fired, Dr. Shepard.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Absolutely. I've seen it through and through. I think that even in my personal life, I was starting to see sleep disturbances. And I had to take a real hard stop and being like, what's really going on? And taking that time to, again, reflect on yourself. And I think that is self-care. Sometimes self-care, yeah, can be getting a manicure or a pedicure.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so that's where I started to see our physical health has so much more to do with the mind-body connection. So they would come in and have a certain disease or something that was going on. And I was like, I know I can help you there because that's a surgical thing that I know I'm very skilled to do.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But how am I going to take care of myself requires peeling away the layers of saying, am I contributing to the best version of myself or not? And what are the ways that I can do that? And am I going to pay attention to myself?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
What does the thyroid do? The thyroid is this cute little organ that is the metabolic kind of engine of our bodies. It really is... Kind of the, we're going to go at this pace, at this rate. We're going to make things go quick. We're going to make things go slow. Which is why when people have hypo, which is less levels of that thyroid hormone, things are moving slower, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Typically, they'll gain a little bit more weight. They're a little bit more sluggish, have fatigue syndromes. And then people who have too much of that thyroid... They're doing things too fast. It's like this metabolic train is like really pumping. It's like the speed train. And you're like, slow it down. So the goal is to keep it in that range where everything is moving right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It's kind of like, is that the Goldilocks? A little bit too much, a little bit too little, just enough. So we want it in that just enough phase.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so when we start to see you can have heat intolerance if it's too much and cold intolerance if it's too slow. So the goal really is to kind of keep it in that homeostasis. And so when that starts to shift, it is very interconnected with estrogen.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so we start to see a little bit more thyroid issues as women go through perimenopause and menopause because the estrogen is not there to talk to the thyroid.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Oh, that is one of the, I would say that is one of the hormones we can definitely see on labs.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Absolutely. Gotcha, and then how do you treat it? So you can treat it either through medication, depending on if it's severely too high or too low. That's when a patient needs medication to kind of get it to homeostasis. Then you do have people who have symptoms, and it may not be all the way out of that kind of normal range, That's how you can impact with diet.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
That's how you can impact with exercise as well. And so it's really important that you understand your body. If it's changing, if something is happening that doesn't feel right to you, to make sure that you see your doctor because the goal is not to wait until you're like completely just feeling horrible and then now we do have a problem.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But what I'm really paying attention to are the other things that you're telling me that's going on with your life and your career, taking care of your kids, your relationship. And that really has so much more to do with how we show up and what we're able to capacitate, what we're able to take in.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
is that if it's shifting in that normal range to too high or too low, but it's not quite disease state yet, that we know that, right? And so that, again, is the preventative portion of why we need to take care of our bodies before we hit that wall and now we're in disease.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
PCOS is one of those. I wish it were termed differently. It stands for polycystic ovarian syndrome. So when we use the word syndrome in medicine, it means it has a variety of different things that contribute to the disorder. Okay. So it's not just one specific thing. So the reason why it's a syndrome is because it relates to the amount of follicles in your ovaries may be increased, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So your body is supposed to be doing a certain thing. So I'll give you an example. If it's supposed to say, I'm using arbitrary numbers here. If you're going to have five follicles in your ovary, And that's what it does every month. And now someone has 20. That's different. It should do, right? So you're going to have kind of these fluctuations of hormones.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So now we're back to the hormone part of the syndrome, which is we usually see an increase in testosterone, right? So everything is supposed to be at the level it's supposed to be. So now if testosterone is a little bit higher, it's going to be sending messages not in the way or the amount or frequency that it should be. So there's another thing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
is how we have our cycles right so you start to see your cycles be more irregular i've had patients who have severe pcos and they won't have a period for like nine months or a year then they'll get one just randomly so you have all these changes that are ovarian in nature but the real heart of pcos is actually a metabolic disease so i'll go back to what metabolic means is really the function of how your body is doing internally usually from a glucose and insulin perspective
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
We spend so much time doubling down on the ovaries malfunctioning and it's an issue there. But really, a lot of it has to do with gut health, nutrition, and insulin and glucose.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I would say that's what we typically treat it with. Do I, am I a fan of what we typically treat it with? No, because then we're just focusing on the ovarian portion of it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So many of my patients, I work with functional nutritionists, but I also use that timeframe to saying maybe, so for example, now put you on a GLP, which can then impact your insulin and glucose and then shift the body's ability to function the way it should.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Well, to balance the insulin and glucose and the metabolic health portion of PCOS. And a lot of times the diseases that we have are from a metabolic perspective. And so that's why when we look at the studies now with GLP-1s, yes, you get the benefit of weight loss or people are on it because they're diabetics.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And that's when I was like, something's going on in this midlife that I need to pay attention to more.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So endometriosis, which is, I'm so glad I spent 10 years being a minimally invasive gynecologist because that's the patients we would see, mainly were endometriosis patients, is that it is when the lining, so when we have our uterus, we have that little kind of cavity within our uterus, which is where we shed endometrium and the lining and we get our period. Okay.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I love that you just put that perspective to it. But that's exactly what it is. And so when you shed the lining, that lining is only supposed to be there in that cavity. What happens is when that tissue may go somewhere else... It could go on the bowel. It could go on the uterus. It could go on the bladder.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So it kind of like trails and ends up in other places in the abdominal cavity.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah, it can kind of travel in other places.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
gets to those places, it causes pain. Most common symptom of endometriosis is pain and also infertility, right? Because it's impacting the other organs in the reproductive system. Now, we do know that it's an underdiagnosed disease. One in 10 women will have endometriosis. One in 10? One in 10. They may not experience it the same, but we are underdiagnosing it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And the other thing is that there is somewhat of a genetic predisposition or a likelihood of getting endometriosis if you had your mother and or sister have endometriosis.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
The best way to treat it is to look at it from the root cause, which is estrogen. So if we are able to say, how can we decrease the level of estrogen that's creating this inflammatory response? So there are many ways that we can do that. Some people are put on birth control. Remember we talked about suppressing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
We can also use medications that are specifically designed to decrease estrogen specifically for that reason, for endometriosis. And then some people need surgery. And the reason they need surgery is because it creates these kind of adhesions or these kind of scar tissue in the pelvis. And so that can cause the pain and or infertility.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And we can go in there as a minimally invasive surgeon and get those kind of nodules and adhesions out. And that's how the patient can feel better. So there's a lot of different ways that we can actually impact endometriosis, which is why we should be talking about it more.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I want to start with skin because we all know when we're in our younger years, ages that our skin is very kind of, it glows, it has this ability to not have wrinkles. And so as we start to age, which is a biological feature of what we're going to go through, decline in estrogen, can't then go to that part of our skin that impacts the collagen, which gives us our ability to be plump, to be firm.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so what do we start to see as we age is decline in estrogen now can't support the collagen, which is the framework of that structure and the ability for our skin to do that. So another example is pregnancy, right? In pregnancy, we usually see, which is a different type of estrogen, but it's a severe increase, right? Because that's what supports the pregnancy.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
A lot of women will say, my skin in pregnancy and my hair in pregnancy is just phenomenal. And the reason is, is because there's this amazing estrogen support. When the baby comes out and the estrogen declines, a lot of people are like, now I'm losing my hair or my skin is really, really crappy. That has to do with that balance of estrogen.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So now when we're losing estrogen at a decline and it's not coming back, the skin responds. It's like, estrogen's not around. I can't be plump. I'm going to have these wrinkles. My skin is starting to sag a little. And that's because of the estrogen can contribute to the collagen, which is scaffold. Gotcha. So is there anything that you can do to...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yes. So it's the way that you can do it directly on your skin, which is when now we start to hear more about estrogen creams that you can apply to your skin, right? And then that stimulates collagen growth? So it's the collagen growth, but also the blood flow. Estrogen is a very big proponent of blood flow and vascularity, two areas. And that's what we need in order for our skin to look
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
plump and not have the issues that it has in addition to the collagen. Yes. And so then the other part of that is if a woman is on hormone replacement therapy and she's either taking a pill, a patch, a cream, she's now giving her body back that estrogen, which allows it again to have the replenishment of estrogen, which supports our skin.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I think that there is a lot of consumerism. So there's a lot of products out there that are not necessarily going to get you the outcome that you want. Mm-hmm. And so when we look at skin products specifically, I think as we're getting older, we need to look at products that have maybe retinol, retin-A, that have things that actually are supporting collagen. Estrogen is one of those things.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But it doesn't necessarily mean because something claims to get the outcome that you're going to do it. The other thing that I would say is we have to watch our diet.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
So what we're inputting into our body has a lot to do with what the skin is able to do, whether that's with foods that are supporting hydration, whether it's foods that's supporting vitamin deficiencies that have a lot to do with what we go through in menopause. But our gut, right, our gut health is always very impactful for how our skin can respond to.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I think that top food should be obviously your protein intake, which can help your muscle, but also antioxidants. I love blueberries. I don't think that it's a power food and everyone just has to eat a blueberry. But what I do know is it has so many ways that it can kind of fill your day, whether it's a snack, whether it's added to something.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
that it has the antioxidants, which is also very helpful for our kind of gut health. And the last thing that I think is looking at how we use our omega fatty acids is an important part. So that would be like in nuts. I think nuts are a great snack, but also salmon has omega fatty three acids as well. So that's important, again, for our gut health.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And again, I think that when we look at our diet, not everyone responds. And that's why I don't love power foods is some people just don't respond the same way to certain foods. So making sure that you maybe talk to a nutritionist as you go through these stages in life because your body is going to respond differently and find out what's best for you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And just don't take everything that you hear and think that's going to apply to me.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yes, absolutely. Because the things that served your skin well when you're in your 20s and 30s are probably not going to serve it in the same way. One, because of how our skin absorbs product is going to be different. How does it change? It changes where it's not as porous.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Porous just means if you were to think of like a screen on a window and things that can go in versus come out, those things change because maybe it's more porous and it doesn't allow for the things that really should be staying in. It kind of seeps out. The other thing is that we have hot flashes and night sweats. So that increases the amount of sweat that is going to be around our face.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so that actually impacts it as well. And then we talked about the whole collagen and the estrogen, which is not there. So there is multiple layers of why the skincare should change. And
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Things that I think are important to incorporate are, we talked about Retin-A earlier, but also when we look at maybe using devices that get to a deeper level of our skin to help restore that vitality to our skin, but also helping correct that. some of the things on a deeper layer that we could never get to just from washing our face. Like what? Like lasers.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I think lasers are a beautiful way that people should, if they can, because sometimes they are pricey, but even if you have the opportunity to get a laser treatment, I think intermittently those can, again, create this better foundation so that when we go home and maintain with other products, we're having a good foundation. Let's talk about thinning hair.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Our hair has cycles. It has a growth phase, right? So it goes through these different cycles. And estrogen is a very big part of those cycles and how long it's going to stay maybe in the growth phase. And so that's, again, akin to when we were pregnant is we started to see a lot more hair growth because it stayed in that phase longer.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
It will help you, but it's not going to solve the problem. What is the problem? I think that the problem is our decline in estrogen is not able to impact the hair follicles. It's not allowing to bring the blood flow to the hair follicles for growth. but also the growth phase.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Because if estrogen is a big part of how long it's going to stay in the growth cycle of your hair, then when you're taking away estrogen, it can't stay in that phase forever.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I would say hormone in the sense of thyroid. Thyroid is that, but also going back to our lifestyle factors. What are some environmental factors? Are you taking maybe medications that are contributing to hair? What foods are you eating? And are you stressed?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I think that there are products that actually work. So for example, minoxidil. Minoxidil is an actual medication that's used for hair growth and helping in that hair cycle and maximizing the hair cycle, but also creating vasodilation, which just means opening the vessels and allowing the blood to flow to that area more. So it does work.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
The caveat to that is when you're not using it, then it can't do the thing that it's going to do. So you may have some hair changes or hair growth cycle changes when you stop the drug.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I think hormonal health represents who we are as women. And the more that we vilify it or kind of fight against it, then that's not ultimately helping who we can be in our best version of ourselves. And so this transition really should be embraced and it really can herald the change in who we think of ourselves in identity, in relationships, in our power, in our advocacy for ourselves.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so I don't want you to leave yourself behind. You should never leave yourself behind and bring yourself into this transition with your hormones in a way that it can be beautifully constructed to be the best version of yourself.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I would say that the recreation of yourself requires that inner look into having self-care and self-love because we all deserve it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so as you go through transitions in your life, whether it's adolescence, whether it's pregnancy, whether it's menopause, is those are moments in which you get to reflect inward and decide what would I like to do for myself and asking the important questions of who am I and where would I like to be?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yeah, not at all. I think pregnancy, you said it perfectly there, is that's what society tells us, what our worth is in the reproductive years. But even as you said it, in your experience, which was similar to mine as far as getting your period, you're just kind of like, okay, I'm going to figure this out. But that was something that had to do with just self. right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
My parting words would be that we all have this opportunity to change the journey of what we've been given, whether that's with circumstances, whether that's with our family life, whether that's with obstacles we go through, to recreate and redirect who we are in our health. But our health really requires the ability to take mind-body connection and And many times we dissociate and we disconnect.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And I would encourage anyone who's listening today and anyone that they can tell is that the importance of who we are in the end requires a mind-body connection. And I encourage everyone to take that opportunity to do that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Okay, great. Here we go. I'm so excited. That was so unexpected when I walked out. I'm typically not like a crier, and I was like, oh, my God. It was, yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
You good?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
All right, let's get you on TV. I know. I'm just so grateful. Thank you. You were just magnificent.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
But no one was really paying attention to that. But when it came to now you have to take care of someone else, society's like, here's your importance. And then we dive into it because we're kind of feeding into that. Not to say that pregnancy is important, that we don't love it, but now we're fascinated and kind of giving more towards because we have to take care of someone else. When we Right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Stitcher.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Oh, no, that wasn't part of the memo.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
I think hormones are these beautiful, complex messengers. So it's like we have these little mailmen that are, or male women, going around delivering messages every day. Like they are consistent. They know what they're supposed to be doing. And our bodies are beautiful machines. And they're meant to be
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Well, oil machines with these messengers giving off these messages, whether it's to an organ like the brain or the ovaries, hormones are probably one of the most important parts of how our machine runs.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
You know, we should go inward and talk about these hormones, but it's actually the delivery of a kind of chemical. Okay. Yeah, it's a chemical that's released. And from these messages that are being sent, then someone can respond. So it's like, I'm giving you a message and you're supposed to be doing this today at this time.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
And so as we go through our lives, we usually through our younger years in our reproductive life, have these hormones that are giving off these messages and they're just going like clockwork. They're like, I know where I'm supposed to be. I know what time I'm supposed to go off. And then we start to see that the hormones... have little glitches. They don't want to show up to work.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Some of the messages aren't being delivered. And that's where we start to see those changes and fluctuations, which is why exactly, like you said, we need to be having these conversations about hormones earlier so that we're aware before they just kind of kaput and they're out.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
Yes, because they are now getting the response of we now biologically want to start to deliver our follicles, right? So we're born with the amount of eggs that we'll ever have. Okay. But the delivery of when they're gonna release every month
The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Ultimate Guide to Women’s Hormones: Use Science to Reset Your Body, Balance Mood, & Feel Amazing
starts at a certain time because our bodies are again beautiful machines which they know when they're going to start this process so in the the ramping up for this actual delivery of like guys we got a job to do we got a new design of a job that we have to start yep everyone's running around because they're like where am i supposed to be okay you're there okay wait am i supposed to be doing this and over time which is when you start to see that fluctuation everyone's getting ready for the job