Healing + Human Potential
The Truth About Women’s Hormones: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You - Dr. Sarah Daccarett | EP 75
Tue, 11 Feb 2025
Are we missing key answers about our own health? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Sarah Daccarett to talk about the hidden gaps in women’s health research and why so much of what we know about hormones is outdated. We explore how medical studies have historically focused on men, leaving women without clear answers on hormone balance, infertility, and perimenopause. Sarah shares why common treatments like birth control might not be the solution we think they are and what we should know before making decisions about our health. We also dive into environmental toxins, the impact of stress, and how hormone levels affect everything from energy to mental clarity. Sarah explains how we can support our bodies naturally, what actually works, and why many women struggle despite doing “all the right things.” If you’ve ever felt dismissed by a doctor or wondered if your body was trying to tell you something, this conversation is for you. === GUEST LINKS Instagram: @sarahdaccarettmd Website: https://innerbalance.com/ === Have you watched our previous episode with Dr Kelly Brogan? Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vPgPpzeVmrY ==== Alyssa Nobriga International, LLC - Disclaimer This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. We shall in no event be held liable to any party for any reason arising directly or indirectly for the use or interpretation of the information presented in this video. Copyright 2023, Alyssa Nobriga International, LLC - All rights reserved. === Website: alyssanobriga.com Instagram: @alyssanobriga TikTok - @alyssanobriga Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6b5s2xbA2d3pETSvYBZ9YR Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healing-human-potential/id1705626495
Chapter 1: Why is women's hormonal health lagging behind?
It's actually embarrassing to say how far behind we are in women's health, especially hormonal health. We're a decade behind men's and we're a decade even further behind transgender health. So we've made more progress with transgender population than we have with women over the age of 30. Doctors are not trained in medical school at all about hormonal health.
And even doctors think that birth control is hormones. We need to be questioning that. Is this healthy? Like our hormones are built to protect us. They tell every process how to function. So if you take that away, then you are potentially increasing health risks for a young patient, especially 13-year-olds or 15-year-olds long-term.
When women in their 30s are like doing all the supplements, all the things to try to stop this aging because they can feel it. But if they knew that, hey, you can prevent this and you can slow this down a lot just by using your own natural hormones, then that'd be great if you could prevent wrinkles and hair loss and weight gain. We used to tell women like, you got to go through menopause.
We would even sometimes take away their hormones, which is unbelievably cruel. We don't believe in that philosophy anymore. All the data shows that You don't have to ever go through menopause if you don't want to. This is entirely your choice. There's only one difference between perimenopause and menopause. They have exactly the same symptoms.
The only difference is... Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast, where today we're going to talk about how birth control might be affecting your bodies in ways that you're not even expecting. We're joined by Dr. Sarah Dacorette to dive into all of these topics.
And so if you're ready to understand your hormones, connect with your body and take actionable steps towards living a more vibrant, healthy life, this episode is for you. Amazing. I'm so happy that you're here. And I'm just going to like drive right in because there's so many questions I want to ask you. I'm curious because I know hormone health can be like a mystery for a lot of women.
And so I'm curious just to hear your opinion, why there's a lack of research and understanding about women's health and how that actually affects the care that we get in the long term.
It's true. It's actually embarrassing to say how far behind we are in women's health, especially hormonal health. We're a decade behind men's, and we're a decade even further behind transgender health. So we've made more progress with transgender population than we have with women over the age of 30. for example, for hormone, even in innovation approach, reference intervals, everything.
And there's always, you know, it's actually not that surprising, I guess. We have a huge gender data gap with everything. And then, you know, we've all in medicine, all the studies have been geared towards men. Women have cycles. And so our hormones fluctuate and potentially they complicated studies or drug studies. pharmaceuticals, the dosings built for men.
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Chapter 2: Is birth control affecting women's health negatively?
Women, if they could understand anything from today, if they can understand that birth control is the opposite, it suppresses the production of your hormone. That's what makes you infertile. It stops the production of your own estrogen and progesterone. And we need to be questioning that. Women need to, for their daughters, and they need to be like, is this healthy?
Our hormones are built to protect us from a lot of different things. They tell every process how to function. So if you take that away, then you're, potentially increasing health risks for a young patient, especially 13-year-olds or 15-year-olds long-term. How do we know how that impacts your fertility? How do we know how that impacts your mental health?
As soon as women, young women especially, start birth control, we see an increase in suicidal ideation, right? Like, you know, there could become depression. There's depression, anxiety, irritability. They can't sleep. Mental health is huge. Like, why are, you know, and you're increasing the risk with birth control. There's certainly a better way to treat acne.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes sense. Anything that's natural, there's an intelligence in nature. And so when we're just pushing it down so we can skip a period or to help our acne, like you're saying, there's other options for people. I know that there's so much infertility.
Talk to us about infertility and why you think there's so much going on right now or what the current research says about it.
It's wild how much there is. And I think that when we look at men, we know that their testosterone levels, for example, are 50% lower. There's some statistics about how much lower they are now than they were even 100 years ago. The same thing is for women. I think women need to recognize that their estrogen and progesterone levels are very, very low and it's making them infertile.
What's causing that in a 25-year-old? You know, I think in a 30 and above, our ancestors were probably not ever meant to live that long. So we weren't really meant to have babies maybe past 30. And so that might be aging. That just might be biological. There are ovaries are failing us.
But when you have a 22 year old or 23 or 25, what we're seeing really young women with low hormone levels, what's causing this and it's likely environmental. I mean, you can speculate all the plastics and toxins and there's phthalates.
I mean, women are inundated with beauty products that have fragrances in them, chemicals, like they're putting them on their skin, they're all over their body, for example. And this, and then But I think largely it's just like the chemicals around us that they can't avoid no matter how much they try to eliminate these toxins. They're everywhere.
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Chapter 3: What misconceptions exist about women's menstrual cycles?
Yeah. I felt so much compassion for teenage boys. I was like, wow. Okay. It was a humbling experience.
Yeah. I think what we want, like, so we get our natural receptivity and libido from estrogen. I think it's interesting that we know that estrogen binds to the same receptors as MDMA, for example. Yeah. And it allows that openness and receptivity that we need in order for libido to happen. And so it's not just like women are more complicated. I don't just need a little, like, I'm not a small man.
I don't need a small dose of testosterone to get my libido. I'm a little bit more complicated. I'm going to need estrogen, progesterone, all the other things in place. But like when you're trying to personalize HRT, like hormone replacement therapy, I want to see, I will first see how you metabolize your hormones and to see what your body does. And then we can use things to like adjust.
Like if you're making too much testosterone, there's a lot of Chinese herbs and like green tea, for example, matcha tea. It's one of the most amazing things for women. It's like one of my most favorite things. So like everybody could do matcha green tea, you would, you know, and that is how we can kind of keep testosterone in check a little bit, for example.
So that's how you can make it more personal. Like, what am I doing? Am I, and sometimes the foods that we eat or the diet that we maintain or exercise level will, um, alter these fluctuations in hormones and we have control over that.
Yeah. And I think it's good that you just keep inviting people to listen to their body and test different things out. And I know that we were talking about sexuality and that obviously hormones can affect our libido and our sexual health and that sexual shame can also be a big part of our culture, especially for women. And so in terms of
your work with women, what have you seen support their healing journey physically, emotionally around sexuality?
Women sometimes come into my office and that's what their concern is that their relationship is, um, in jeopardy because they, they don't want, you know, they don't want to be intimate with their husband anymore. It's like sex can be painful, but even before then they don't feel like it or they're irritated by their husbands. And, um,
You know, we've completely normalized erectile dysfunction for men over the last decade. We'll talk about it. You can get Viagra like anywhere online. It's just like a normal thing over a certain age, like even young men. And we didn't used to talk about it like we do now.
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