What Social Media Gets Wrong About Hormones: A Guide To What’s Real & What’s BS

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[00:00:00] LM: Hello, friends, and welcome to the Liz Moody podcast, where every week we’re sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I’m your host, Liz Moody, and I’m a bestselling author and long time journalist. Let’s dive in. There’s so much information on social media about your hormones, and today we’re going to break down what’s fact, what’s fear mongering, and what’s just plain wrong.

[00:00:25] Do you really have cortisol? How can you tell, and what can you do about it? How does intermittent fasting actually impact women’s hormones? Are spin classes and cold plunging bad for women? What really causes hormonal acne and hormonally rooted hair loss? And how can we get to the bottom of it? This is just the beginning of the questions that we ask in this episode.

[00:00:45] There is so much more incredible stuff. Joining me today is Lauren Papanos, a registered dietitian with a master’s in integrative nutrition. She is board certified in sports dietetics and functional endocrinology. Lauren is [00:01:00] the founder of the integrative nutrition practice Functional Fueling. She hosts the podcast Strengthen Hormones and she’s been featured in outlets like Forbes, Shape Magazine, Insider, PopSugar, and more.

[00:01:10] She is the perfect person to explain to us the ins and outs of hormones, how they impact our whole body health, and what the internet just gets so wrong about them, so let’s dive right in. One super quick note, I know that 50 percent of you listening to this episode do not follow the podcast. Take a second now to hit that follow or subscribe button, it is the best way to support the podcast, and it makes sure that episodes show up right in your feed.

[00:01:37] Go ahead, do it right now, I’ll wait. Trust me, you do not want to miss out on any of our upcoming shows. They are jam packed with science and stories that will change your life. All right, let’s get right into the episode. Lauren, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to have you here.

[00:01:54] We’re going to debunk some social media myths. We’re going to dive deep into hormones. So I want to just start off. There are a [00:02:00] lot of posts out there that are about how our hormones are out of whack. What does that mean? Are most of our hormones out of whack? How can we tell?

[00:02:09] LP: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of fear mongering out there, unfortunately, about it, right?

[00:02:12] And there’s so many different hormones in the body, so you always have to ask, well, what hormones are you referring to? And truthfully, none of us are ever going to have perfectly balanced hormones in every category. So it’s really about finding what are your goals and then where is the lack and what area do we need to maybe hone in specifically.

[00:02:29] Specifically where I think that the conversation gets a little bit confusing because people don’t like to think about context. They just like to say, oh, everyone has hormone imbalances, but is it a hunger hormone imbalance? Is it every productive hormone? A thyroid hormone imbalance? So yes, we see it in practice.

[00:02:45] Many, many individuals, especially women, are struggling with thyroid diseases that impact hormone levels, struggling with ovulatory dysfunction like PCOS and amenorrhea and such. We know that they are very, very common, especially for women in their reproductive years and [00:03:00] then going through different transitions like through pregnancy and menopause that make you more susceptible to these hormone imbalances occurring.

[00:03:07] But for some people that don’t have these hormone conditions. They might not have the perfectly balanced hormones set up, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to micromanage every aspect within their hormone health, if that makes sense.

[00:03:20] LM: How do we know if we should be addressing something hormonally versus it’s something else entirely?

[00:03:26] Well, hormones impact

[00:03:27] LP: virtually every component within our body. They’re just like these little communication signals. So they’re going to impact everything from like your energy levels to your cycle, to your hair growth, to your digestion speed. They virtually do impact everything. And so I always say that if something feels off, I would investigate hormones as a part of that conversation, but hormones are never the root cause.

[00:03:49] There’s always something deeper going on that’s causing the hormone imbalance. So if, say, constipation and bloating is your main concern, we might look at your thyroid hormone levels, but then we [00:04:00] have to ask, well, why are the thyroid hormone levels low? And then dive a little bit deeper to understand what’s going on that’s causing the thyroid hormone dysfunction.

[00:04:07] What types of things are usually root causes? There can be several nutritional deficiency and the whole conversation around just what we call like allostatic load. So really, what is the body’s cumulative stress response can be a big one. So many people are undernourished, whether it’s because they’re just not simply eating enough food because of diet culture and whatever else.

[00:04:27] So. Or they are not eating enough minerals because our soil is incredibly depleted, like those can be nutritional factors. It could be that someone is overexercising and or they have a lot of high cortisol that’s chronically elevated cortisol that’s suppressing their reproductive system. So those can all be potential factors.

[00:04:47] And then some people just genetically are more prone to hormone dysfunction. Some people we’ve seen in the literature have more sensitive HP axises, which is essentially how your brain is connecting to your thyroid hormone [00:05:00] system, your ovulatory system. So some people are more prone to undergoing a hormone dysfunction just because of their upbringing and genetics and such.

[00:05:09] Are all of our hormones testable? Pretty much, yeah. And not all of them are commonly tested. Like, GLP 1, for example, is a peptide slash hormone, not really something that we test for. You also don’t typically test, like, oxytocin levels, which is our love hormone. So there are some that aren’t commonly tested, but if you really wanted to, you could.

[00:05:29] But for the most part, things like all thyroid hormones, sex hormones, hunger hormones, are things that we would test and investigate depending on symptoms.

[00:05:37] LM: Would you recommend that pretty much everybody listening get a full hormone panel, or only if they have symptoms they’re trying to figure out what’s going on with?

[00:05:46] LP: I always say if you go looking for problems, you’re probably going to find it, right? So it depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re someone that loves to optimize and you love efficiency, like I’m someone where I’m like, if there is a better way to do this. [00:06:00] I would love to do it that way rather than spending way more time doing it in an efficient way.

[00:06:05] So to me, testing is great for that because it makes everything so much more efficient. You know exactly what’s going on and exactly how you should be eating and lifestyle and all of those factors. So I think it’s great for those individuals. There’s also people that struggle with health anxiety. And for individuals like that, sometimes I say, don’t.

[00:06:20] Don’t test your hormones. You know, if you think it’s going to make your cortisol levels worse, or it’s going to produce more mental psychological stress, it might not be the best option for you, at least right now. Maybe there’s other things we can work on as foundations before we

[00:06:35] LM: then move to hormone testing.

[00:06:37] And when you say hormone testing, are there specific tests we can be asking our doctor for if they’re not going to naturally be running the full panel?

[00:06:44] LP: Definitely. And a lot of doctors won’t test hormones because they don’t even want to touch it, because they are such a hard thing to treat, and there’s so many factors that go into it, and you really do have to be, like, working with the patient so hand in hand when you [00:07:00] find the answer.

[00:07:00] That there is a hormone imbalance because there’s just so many variables that influence it. Sometimes you’ll go to the endocrinologist. They’ll do like a full thyroid panel if they suspect that there’s thyroid disease at play, but oftentimes you’re just going to get a TSH, which is really just a screening tool to see.

[00:07:14] Maybe there could be thyroid disease at play, but it really doesn’t tell us like the full picture of what’s going on in the thyroid. And then sometimes you’ll be able to get like sex hormone levels like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone when you go to your OBGYN or. Sometimes even your primary care doctor will run it.

[00:07:30] However, if you don’t know how to test, then you’re not really getting good data. So a lot of times people will just go in and say, I want a hormone panel done, but then no one tells them, Oh, well, you need to make sure that if you’re trying to look at progesterone levels, you need to wait until seven days after you’ve ovulated because otherwise progesterone is basically absent throughout the rest of the menstrual cycle.

[00:07:50] So then they get their levels back and they don’t even know what range is to look in because every week your hormones are changing. If you don’t know when you tested, right, and then you get your levels back, you’re like, well, is that a [00:08:00] normal level because I was in the follicular phase or is it an abnormal level because I was in the luteal phase?

[00:08:05] So you really want to be like working with someone that can really instruct for you specifically when to test, what to test so that you have the right data and then you know what to do with it.

[00:08:15] LM: Okay, so we’re looking for RDs, doctors who are really specializing in hormones, because otherwise, even if we get the test, we’re not going to be able to interpret the data.

[00:08:23] LP: Exactly, yeah. I mean, testing is only as good as the treatment that comes after. You could get all the testing in the world, but then, if you don’t know what to do with that information, it really just creates more stress than it does help anything. If you could prescribe a general diet for all of us to have the healthiest hormones possible, what would you prescribe?

[00:08:40] It would be so hard to do because everyone’s hormone imbalances are so different and everyone’s hormones need something different. Just as a starting foundation, we know that insulin, which is a hormone that regulates blood sugar getting into our cells, heavily impacts other hormones in the body, like our cortisol levels and like our sex hormone levels.

[00:08:59] So I would say [00:09:00] first and foremost, is to ensure that you have really healthy blood sugar and insulin response throughout the day. And that’s on both sides of the spectrum. So making sure that we’re not getting into low blood sugar situations because that creates a cortisol response that then shuts down the HPT and HPO axis, which essentially our brain to ovary and thyroid communication.

[00:09:20] But then also making sure that we’re not having these big high blood sugar situations where something like insulin resistance could develop because that is definitely going to lead to more. ovulatory and menstrual type hormonal

[00:09:31] LM: complications. So to do that, do you recommend snacking frequently? Do you recommend three big meals?

[00:09:36] How are we achieving not too high and not too low blood sugar? Most people across the

[00:09:40] LP: board will do really well with having a meal that is well balanced, that has protein, fat, some type of fibrous carbohydrate with it, about every four to five hours. Generally, if you’re having a full meal, it’s Probably going to last you about four hours.

[00:09:54] That’s about how long the migrating motor complex it takes to like fully digest food. So you’re [00:10:00] probably going to end up in more of a high blood sugar or hypoglycemic state, usually like five to six hours after you’ve eaten. So generally if we’re eating a balanced meal, like every four to five hours, that’s a good way to support that.

[00:10:10] There are some caveats to that where people that are like over exercisers or people that have a condition called reactive hypoglycemia, they might need a different setup. So for people that have reactive hypoglycemia, which basically means like after they eat, they have this overproduction of insulin and their blood sugar shoots extremely low, they sometimes don’t do well with like any carbohydrate as part of their meal.

[00:10:31] They just need like a very protein forward meal. So there are some caveats to that, but I would say generally speaking, for most women in their reproductive years, they’re going to need a pretty equal balance of fibrous formed carbohydrates, proteins, and fats to be able to create the most healthy blood sugar response.

[00:10:48] LM: A lot of people on social media say that women shouldn’t intermittent fast because it’s bad for our hormones. What’s your take on that?

[00:10:55] LP: There is not substantial research to show that intermittent fasting is going to shut [00:11:00] off ovulatory function and things of that sort. But we do know that it can cause more issues with cortisol and that cortisol dysregulation causes HPA axis dysregulation.

[00:11:09] The HPA axis is the part in our brain that controls all of our hormones. So there can be some indirect effects that fasting has because of that. I always say that it comes down to looking at your total lifestyle stressors. We really have to understand, are you exercising? What are you doing for exercise?

[00:11:27] When are you exercising? How much are you eating? Because if you’re in a low calorie state, like you’re under eating, you’re over exercising, you’re not getting enough sleep. You are so stressed beyond belief. Fasting is just adding one more stressor to that equation and your body’s going to explode at some point, right?

[00:11:43] And you’re going to start to see your hormones affected because they’re always the last thing to

[00:11:46] LM: be come affected. If somebody is listening and they’re trying to suss out whether or not intermittent fasting would be helpful for them to include, what questions could they ask themselves?

[00:11:56] LP: I would say for the most part it’s not going to work for many people, [00:12:00] many women, in their reproductive years for sure.

[00:12:01] But the first thing I would ask is how does your nervous system feel when you are fasting? Do you feel like you’re getting into a hangry, shaky, sweaty type state whenever you are fasting? Are you waking up a lot in the middle of the night because that’s a sign that you are going hypoglycemic because you’ve been fasting for a long period of time?

[00:12:19] What does your overall cumulative stress look like right now in life? Are you sleeping at least 7 8 hours? Are you under a ton of work stress? Look at all of those variables and if you are going to fast, do it with your circadian rhythm. Make sure that you’re having the bulk of your meals in the early part of the day and that if you are going to be creating an extended time period in between dinner and breakfast, that it’s because you’re eating an earlier dinner, not because you’re eating a later breakfast.

[00:12:47] That’s a

[00:12:47] LM: really good tip. In your experience, what are people trying to achieve with intermittent fasting and is there an alternative better for our hormones way to achieve that? For the most part, people are trying to achieve weight loss,

[00:12:57] LP: right? They’re trying to restrict calories [00:13:00] and intermittent fasting does that because you can’t eat for many more hours.

[00:13:04] But we know from the literature that it’s not a superior mechanism for achieving weight loss, that at the end of the day, it’s not going to move the needle more in your ability to lose weight unless, say, for example, it maybe helps you with like appetite control. People, they find that that happens are just kind of more black or white thinkers, but you’re still eating less.

[00:13:23] And that’s why the weight loss is happening. I definitely think that we can do a better job by really working with our hunger hormones than intermittent fasting. Our hunger hormones are hormones like ghrelin, leptin, GLP 1 falls into that category as well. And so many people have dysregulated hunger hormones.

[00:13:41] They either have really low leptin levels, they have really high leptin levels where they’re leptin resistant. And so their brain isn’t getting the right senses from their stomach that they’re hungry and full. And so there’s this total lack of intuition with when they should be eating and it actually even disrupts like ovulation.

[00:13:59] We know [00:14:00] that leptin plays a role in the ovulatory response. It also disrupts fat oxidation. So when leptin Is low or when it’s really high. ’cause there’s leptin resistance. People aren’t going to burn fat as efficiently. Your body’s going to be more in a carbohydrate burning state, so it’s going to work against you if you don’t think about how to support your hunger hormones when you’re eating.

[00:14:20] Wait, why do so many of us have a dysregulated hunger

[00:14:23] LM: hormones?

[00:14:23] LP: There’s so many different reasons. So, leptin resistance is probably the most common, I would say, in the average U. S. population. It’s kind of like insulin resistance, right, where you have high levels of that hormone on blood testing, but because that hormone’s been high for so long, the cells are no longer responsive to the effects of that hormone.

[00:14:40] It’s not sending the same messages, the same feedback loop to the brain that it normally would be. And it can be because there is chronically high insulin levels. Like someone’s had dysregulated blood sugar for a substantial period of time. It could be because there is endocrine disruptors and things that are affecting that as well.

[00:14:58] On the other end of the spectrum, I would [00:15:00] say in practice, I see a lot more low leptin levels and it’s because people have been under eating for like such a long period of time that their body’s essentially in starvation mode, if you will. Right. Or their body’s like, uh, I’m going to hold on to everything that you are giving me, and there’s no understanding of hunger and fullness, and so the body almost just feels chronically hungry because it’s just trying to find the energy.

[00:15:22] But it’s not hungry. It’s getting the adequate energy, but your brain is hungry because those hormones aren’t sending the signals adequately.

[00:15:30] LM: Are there one or two things we could do at home to begin to address that?

[00:15:34] LP: Yeah, so if you have low leptin levels, we know that one of the best things is carbohydrates for increasing the leptin response, and it’s through the mechanism they have on insulin.

[00:15:44] There’s something in the literature that we refer to as Reefy Days. They’re pretty popular in like the bodybuilding community because when bodybuilders get really lean, their leptin levels get really low, and then their body’s like starving 24 7. Reefy Days are essentially where you increase your carbohydrate [00:16:00] content to be able to help stimulate that hormone leptin.

[00:16:03] So there’s something you might do once per week, once every few weeks, just to be able to create a leptin response and drop the chronic cortisol response that’s happening because your body has low leptin levels. So those can be one mechanism that help. Omega 3 fatty acids are just another compound that can help with leptin.

[00:16:20] So those are what are found in like salmon, sardines, all of your fatty fish. And you could supplement with them. I think omega 3 fatty acids are great for a ton of reasons for hormones and women’s health. But in particular for leptin levels, there is some research to show that there is benefit.

[00:16:36] LM: Okay, so two questions on that.

[00:16:38] Should we be getting our leptin levels tested and then proceeding or would you say that so many people have this problem that it’s probably worth trying these two things? Let’s do that first. There’s definitely symptoms

[00:16:49] LP: that you can suss out of like you probably have some issues going on here. If I look at like someone’s diet or maybe even you can look at your own intake and be like, I eat a lot, but I’m like, chronically hungry.

[00:16:59] Like, I [00:17:00] feel hungry 24 7. There’s probably some low leptin. If you have also been under eating, you’re like, I know that I’ve been dieting. I’ve been in a caloric deficit for a long period of time. Your leptin levels are low. It’s just a natural phenomenon that happens in the body. So those would be some very obvious signs that your low.

[00:17:18] But yeah, I love testing it, and all of our clients because I saw someone yesterday who she’s had so much lab work done and never had her leptin tested. We got our leptin tested. It was through the roof, she totally leptin resistant. And I’m like, no wonder you’re having so many of these metabolic symptoms.

[00:17:34] And so now it’s like this piece of the puzzle that we can really investigate further that has never been explored

[00:17:38] LM: before. Oh, I love that. Okay. And then my second question is, you say to eat carbs. Mm hmm. I assume you’re not meaning to, like, sit down with a loaf of challah. Like, what are we eating? Challah with butter smooshed into it’s like my favorite treat.

[00:17:51] But I assume that’s not what you mean. So what in your mind is the ideal carb to eat? Really,

[00:17:56] LP: we’re looking at complex carbohydrates. My favorite is legumes, honestly. I’ve seen so many [00:18:00] people’s continuous glucose monitor data over the years, and I think across the board, most people do really well with legumes.

[00:18:05] Some people digestively don’t do well, which is a whole other conversation that needs to be investigated, but blood sugar related. Your blood sugar will do really well with legumes because they have so much soluble fiber that slows down that blood sugar release, they’ve got a little bit of protein paired with them, and they’re great fiber for your gut bacteria too.

[00:18:19] So it could be legumes, it could be root vegetables potentially, so that would be things like sweet potatoes and parsnips, cassava, those types of options. If you are going to do fruit, I would just be mindful of like the sourcing and the volume of fruit because we know that like fructose in a liquid form especially, such as like high fructose corn syrup or agave, some of these more concentrated forms, they can be more.

[00:18:40] more problematic from a metabolic standpoint. So that would be what we’re looking for, for the main source of those carbohydrates. And we really want to make sure that we are prioritizing carbohydrates. So what people get wrong, right, is they’re like, Oh, well then that’s just a cheat day. And I’m like, no, that’s not a cheat day because a cheat day, people would describe as just like [00:19:00] having the challah with all the butter, but you’re not just eating carbs with that.

[00:19:03] You’re also getting in like all of the preservatives and endocrine disruptors with that, right? And you’re getting in all the Fat and fat doesn’t have the same response on leptin that carbohydrates do. And when fat and carbs are both really high together, that’s like the perfect environment for our body to be like, I’m gonna store all of this as energy.

[00:19:21] LM: Okay, interesting. And if we are eating legumes and root vegetables all the time, is this probably not an issue for us? Well, yes, if you don’t have low leptin levels, then it’s probably not something you need to adjust. But what if we identify with the part of like, I feel hungry all the time, blah, blah, blah, but, or maybe I’m having some metabolic issues, but I don’t know the root of them, but I do eat carbs on a somewhat regular basis.

[00:19:44] It

[00:19:44] LP: really goes down to how you’re eating them. So with stimulus days or refeed days, I call them stimulus days, but you’re basically doubling your normal amount of carbohydrate. Most people aren’t eating 50 percent of their plate carbs, at least in the healthier populations. We’re talking about like standard American diet, right?[00:20:00]

[00:20:00] But for the healthier populations, generally people are having like a small sweet potato. leptin. Like we’re talking about, about a hundred gram of carbohydrate increase from what you would naturally intake on that given day. And how often? Generally about like once per week, maybe once every couple weeks, and it really depends on how low your

[00:20:17] LM: leptin levels are.

[00:20:18] Okay. Let’s get into cortisol, which is another huge topic of conversation online. Can you explain cortisol to me like I’m five years old?

[00:20:27] LP: Yes. So cortisol is what we call our stress hormone. We have several stress hormones, but it’s our main one that’s released from our adrenal glands. Our adrenal glands are located just right on top of our kidneys, and they regulate mineral control and fluid balance, and then they also regulate our fight or flight.

[00:20:42] So, for your body being in run from it, Tiger or in a rest and digest, like a calm and rested sleeping type state. So there’s a lot of talk out there about like high cortisol being so problematic, right? Cortisol in the acute setting is actually very good for us. We need it. Like, You are [00:21:00] going to release cortisol during exercise.

[00:21:01] That’s how you get an adaptation. That’s how you get stronger and fitter from exercise. So we want some cortisol. It’s also anti inflammatory. That’s why when people have inflammation, they’re given prednisone, which is basically like artificial cortisol because it helps reduce inflammation in the body.

[00:21:16] It’s when we have chronically. elevated cortisol that we see issues where it almost does the opposite effect. It actually degrades us. It breaks down our immune system. It helps our body store more energy. It doesn’t mobilize energy, so it can be really problematic when it’s in chronically elevated levels.

[00:21:36] I think that the big issue is that people call it cortisol dysregulation or like high cortisol. Really I think we should be calling it like HPA axis dysregulation, which I know isn’t as like sexy sounding and more science y. See, but really that’s what we’re talking about is we’re talking about the HPA axis, which is our hypothalamus pituitary axis.

[00:21:55] It’s in our brain. So basically how our brain is talking to the rest of our [00:22:00] body that is dysregulated. It’s not working in the normal rhythms. And there’s not the adequate levels of hormones being released at the times that they should be. That’s really what we’re referring to when people are talking about cortisol being so problematic.

[00:22:13] And cortisol is part of that, but not all of it? Correct,

[00:22:16] LM: yes. Yeah, cortisol drives the HPA axis, though. Do you think that cortisol dysregulation or HPA axis dysregulation is as prevalent as social media would lead us to believe?

[00:22:27] LP: I think that it is, but it’s not always high cortisol. That’s the issue. And I get messages all the time.

[00:22:33] People are like, well, what about if I have low cortisol? And I’m like, you’re right. Nobody ever talks about low cortisol. And the reason why is because low cortisol happens after high cortisol. So the way that we treat it is almost the same as you would treat like high cortisol, right? So with any system in the body, the body works in overdrive.

[00:22:50] And then it’s like, I’m tired. I need to take a nap. And then it doesn’t work. As efficiently as it shows the same thing that happens with like diabetes development is like your body’s producing a lot of insulin and in the pancreas is [00:23:00] like, I’m tired. I can’t keep doing this. And then diabetes develops.

[00:23:03] It’s the same thing that happens with low cortisol is that you’ve been in a chronically high cortisol state. And then now you’re in a low cortisol state to where you’re not making any cortisol. And that’s generally when people feel the most symptomatic. That’s usually when they think they’re

[00:23:25] LM: What are some of the symptoms that are actually real signs of this dysregulation? Because online, there’s so many that people talk about.

[00:23:33] LP: Yeah, so both high and low are going to cause some similar symptoms, but generally the big one is going to be waking up in the morning feeling totally flat, feeling like you cannot get out of bed.

[00:23:43] That’s usually a sign there’s low cortisol in the morning time because cortisol is that hormone that wakes you up. Think of like cortisol is just being sunshine, right? When you see sun, when your pineal gland behind your eye gets exposed to sun, that’s what signals to make cortisol. So if we’re not seeing sun, then there’s not going to be adequate [00:24:00] cortisol production happening in the morning time.

[00:24:02] And then as your day goes on, on cortisol should really drop off at its lowest point in the evening, and then that’s what should signal to our body to make melatonin to help with sleep and recovery and such. So if you’re noticing that you don’t feel that jolt of energy in the morning, you probably have inadequate levels of cortisol.

[00:24:18] If you feel like in the evening time, you are not ready for bed, you are wired but tired. You probably are dealing with high cortisol levels, or if you’re waking up a lot in the middle of the night, especially like the classical two to four AM, that can be because there’s cortisol dysregulation that’s going on.

[00:24:34] A lot of times people will say that they also feel like super flatlined at around 3 p. m. That can also be an issue because naturally our cortisol drops quite a bit there and then it kind of comes back up. But if you’re noticing that that’s just super noticeable for you. There’s probably some cortisol dysfunction happening, and then there can be more severe symptoms like hair loss, anxiety, irritability, fast heart rates, and then all of the hormone, like sex hormone, thyroid symptoms, because if your [00:25:00] cortisol is out of balance, it’s going to cause issues with estrogen production, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid hormones, all of those hormones downstream.

[00:25:08] LM: Is it possible to test for cortisol because it’s changing all the time, right, which makes it kind of tricky to, because you’re only taking a test in one specific moment.

[00:25:16] LP: Yeah, so they can test through blood with cortisol, but the problem is that it gives you total cortisol, and it’s just that one plot in time, and most people when they go to like get their blood drawn, they’re usually in a pretty high cortisol state, right?

[00:25:26] So it’s not the greatest, but really the most accurate way to test for cortisol is either through saliva or urine, because we’re able to get the free level of that hormone. And the advantage is that you can do it at home, and so we can get what’s called a diurnal cortisol rhythm, where we can see what’s your cortisol when you first wake up, take another sample an hour later, and then we can see your cortisol awakening response, so basically what’s happening between when you wake up and an hour after, and then do one in the middle of the day, around 3 o’clock, again, before you go to bed, and then potentially if you wake up in the middle of the night, Again, while you’re sleeping.

[00:25:58] So the at home ones where they’re collecting [00:26:00] through sliver urine tend to be the most accurate. But still, I mean, it’s only a plot of one day, right? It’s only telling us what happened on that one day. So when I’m trying to look to see if there is more of that HPA axis dysregulation, I don’t really care about cortisol as much as I care about other adrenal hormones like DHEAS, and then looking at like thyroid hormones and sex hormones.

[00:26:21] Because if those are all depleted, we can really Assume that there is some cortisol dysregulation that’s going on.

[00:26:26] LM: Okay, that’s really interesting. Another thing that people often attribute to cortisol online is belly fat. How can we tell if our belly fat is hormonally related or not?

[00:26:36] LP: Yeah, so cortisol does increase visceral fat accumulation, which is the fat that’s around your organs.

[00:26:41] So you’re going to notice it in the abdominal area. It also increases insulin resistance. And when insulin is elevated, that’s when fat cells grow. So you definitely are going to be more in like a fat cell growth state is elevated cortisol because of the impact that it’s having on that hormone insulin.

[00:26:59] [00:27:00] Generally speaking, if your weight gain has really been in that one area, like in your abdominal area, or you’re noticing that maybe you used to store fat in like your legs and lower body, your arms, but now it’s starting to be redistributed towards your stomach, that’s likely a cortisol response because that is what cortisol naturally does, is that it redistributes that subcutaneous fat and then it also increases that visceral fat accumulation, which is that fat around our organs.

[00:27:27] LM: And if we are listening and we’re like, check, check, check, I have this visceral fat, I am tired but wired, all these things, do we treat these different things differently or are they treated all by getting your system back into a regulated state?

[00:27:39] LP: Yes, it would mostly be through getting your system back into a regulated state and looking at where can the room for improvement be.

[00:27:45] Is it like, Maybe there’s nutritional low hanging fruit that’s causing the cortisol dysregulation because what you eat and when you eat has a huge impact on cortisol production. Is it like the exercise you’re doing or the balance of when you’re exercising versus when you’re sleeping? [00:28:00] Is it sleep that we need to address?

[00:28:01] You know, there’s so many areas that can be explored within that that are going to impact cortisol that it may be one area that you really need to hone in on or

[00:28:09] LM: it might be accumulation of multiple. Let’s chat through some of those. So, for the person who’s listening, and they’re likely not going to go to a doctor, but they just want like a, let’s get my system back into balance, rough plan.

[00:28:20] Can you give us ideally what we should be eating, ideally how we should be moving, what type of movement maybe we should be avoiding, and then any other lifestyle habits we should be addressing?

[00:28:28] LP: Definitely. So we talked earlier about the importance of blood sugar, and that’s going to be a big one for cortisol, because there’s two things that increase cortisol.

[00:28:36] That’s our body being under stress. psychological stress, physical stress, right? And then our body being in a low blood sugar state. So our body naturally has to make cortisol and it’s going to do it at the expense of every other hormone because it’s a survival hormone. And our body makes it mainly to keep blood sugar levels regulated so that we never get into a really low blood sugar state because we would die if we were really low blood sugar.

[00:28:57] So when our blood sugar gets really low, our [00:29:00] body releases more of that cortisol. So just by working on like regular eating patterns where you’re not going more than six hours, you’re making sure that when you’re eating that. It is creating a healthy blood sugar response. That’s a really good way to support your cortisol rhythms.

[00:29:13] Also making sure that you’re getting adequate minerals. The adrenal glands are like I mentioned, they also regulate mineral corticoid production. So minerals and vitamin C are incredibly important for your adrenal function.

[00:29:26] LM: Wait, can we stop there? Cause there’s a. Cortisol cocktail that’s really viral online, and it’s coconut water, orange juice, and then electrolytes or sea salt.

[00:29:34] So is that why? Because it’s basically vitamin C and electrolytes? Exactly. Yeah.

[00:29:39] LP: And your adrenals are really rich in those. Vitamin C is actually most concentrated in your adrenal glands. And then when your body’s making more cortisol, you actually release more minerals into your and sodium into your urine.

[00:29:50] So you become depleted and then you need those to then make adequate hormones. And so then the whole feedback loop essentially gets impacted. Wait, so do you approve of the [00:30:00] cortisol cocktail? I do, but I think it needs a few tweaks to it. Okay. Yeah, because with the minerals, so you are getting a little bit through unrefined salt.

[00:30:08] You’re getting other minerals besides just sodium, but I mean like microscopic levels. And you’re not just losing sodium when your adrenals are under stress. You’re also losing magnesium, zinc, calcium, phosphorus. So really it would be better if we used more of like a mineral complex. And there are some liquid brands that you can get online that you can add in that have those in there, or you can take like a mineral complex supplement, potentially alongside of it, put it inside the drink.

[00:30:33] I also think that with the orange juice. Orange juice is pretty loaded in fructose. Like, generally it’s going to spike your blood sugar pretty abruptly. And, you know, carbohydrates are great for lowering cortisol. So you’re probably gonna get some cortisol suppression just because of that blood sugar spike.

[00:30:46] But what’s gonna happen after that, right? Everyone metabolizes that sugar differently. So I would prefer lower sugar vitamin C options. And then you can definitely do the coconut water. That gives you a ton of potassium. If you want, you can also use something [00:31:00] like cream of tartar, which is just a spice that you get in the spice section, and it doesn’t add any liquid change to it.

[00:31:05] It’s just adding the potassium source.

[00:31:07] LM: Oh, that’s interesting. It sounds gross. It doesn’t taste like anything, honestly. If you had to create, like, a dream cortisol, like, drink or snack, though, and you could use anything, what would you say? I do this for clients all the

[00:31:18] LP: time, and we usually will base it off their mineral level, so I’ll see, like, where they’re deficient, and then I’ll create, like, their own little mineral.

[00:31:24] But generally I would say across the board it would have cream of tartar for the potassium. It would have a salt. So I like to use Celtic salt for people that have Hashimoto’s because it doesn’t have any iodine and iodine can be really inflammatory to the thyroid. But for individuals that don’t have Hashimoto’s, then something like Redman’s or a different type of unrefined salt is fine.

[00:31:45] And then you can use a mineral complex of some sort. So there’s like some different liquid brand options or capsules that you can use alongside of it. I do a mineral complex like as a capsule. And then the vitamin C source. So like half of a lemon to be able to get that vitamin [00:32:00] C in there. And then eight ounces of water and just mix it together.

[00:32:02] LM: Okay. And then are there any other. Food or beverages that you feel like we should be adding in or eliminating for this ideal cortisol plan?

[00:32:10] LP: Not really foods that you need to be adding in, but just like I said, you know, make sure that you’ve got good stable blood sugar with how you’re pairing your foods together and don’t eliminate carbs because carbohydrates do lower cortisol.

[00:32:21] So yeah, you don’t want to go crazy with them to where they’re causing this dysregulated blood sugar response, but if you’re eating them within the right balance of your meal, they are actually going to suppress cortisol.

[00:32:32] LM: Okay, and then exercise, there’s a lot of confusion about what impact different types of exercise have on our cortisol levels, so can you clear it up?

[00:32:40] LP: Yeah, so exercise in general is going to create a cortisol response because exercise is a physiological stressor, and it’s a good stressor, but it does create a cortisol response because of that, and that’s how you get the adaptation, so it really depends on the type of exercise you’re doing. From the literature, we know that the higher in the intensity, the The more cortisol, which intuitively makes sense, [00:33:00] right?

[00:33:00] Like if you’ve done a soul cycle class, you’re like, yes, my cortisol is through the roof right now. It’s pretty intuitive to know what’s causing more of that cortisol response. Generally, more of your resistance training and higher intensity interval training is going to create more of a cortisol response.

[00:33:13] And then more aerobic based exercise creates less of a cortisol response. Is

[00:33:18] LM: that high cortisol response bad though? Is it like a hormesis effect where it’s a good stressor because it’s brief and we want that? Or is it bad because we want to keep our cortisol levels less or more balanced?

[00:33:29] LP: It can be okay.

[00:33:30] It can be like the hormesis response, like you’re mentioning. The big thing is what’s happening after. Like, are you getting back into the parasympathetic? The, low cortisol state because a lot of people aren’t. They’re like finishing their workout at 5 a. m., they haven’t eaten, so they’re like adding more cortisol to the mix, and they’re getting done with the workout, rushing to work, not eating again for another couple of hours, adding coffee to the mix.

[00:33:50] Yeah. So it really is about the environment and then also the frequency. So if you’re doing something high intensity every day like that, that’s going to cause more of this adrenal dysfunction [00:34:00] than if you’re dosing it, you know, here and there, one or two times per week, and you’re allowing adequate recovery.

[00:34:05] It’s. all about that recovery. The recovery is really where all the magic

[00:34:08] LM: happens for exercise. And I know that you’re really deep into the exercise science world. Do you have favorite types of exercise for hormones? Ones we should definitely be including? Yeah, we work with a lot of athletes,

[00:34:19] LP: but we also work with a lot of women that are not athletes that are just like, I like to exercise, right?

[00:34:23] And so I would say for those individuals where they’re not competing in like an athletic event, then really focusing on the exercise. Full body compound resistance training. So where you are engaging multiple joints. So say like a squat, right? You’ve got your hip, you’ve got your knee, you’ve got your ankle engaged versus doing a leg extension.

[00:34:39] That would be a compound type of exercise. So full body resistance training. I like usually three times per week, but some people can only tolerate two. It just depends on where you are in your healing process of life. And then something that is a low intensity aerobic exercise. So that would be something like zone two, which some people might be familiar with.

[00:34:58] There’s some controversy [00:35:00] around Zone 2 right now because people are like, well, it still does create a cortisol response and it does, any exercise does, but it’s not to the degree that you would get through these like middle intensity zones. That’s where a lot of athletes train, but that’s also where a lot of free radicals are formed and more of that cortisol production happens.

[00:35:16] So what are examples of the middle? A lot of times when you’re running, you’re going to be in the middle for sure. What are other examples? Like any of your circuit type classes, really? Like Orange Theory? Orange Theory. Yeah. Yeah. Are you, you’re not

[00:35:27] LM: a fan of Orange Theory for hormones? I’m not. No. Yeah.

[00:35:30] Basically because your cortisol will spike too much and you can’t get it to come down and you’re creating these free radicals. In a nutshell, why are you not a fan of Orange Theory? All of those

[00:35:40] LP: reasons plus the fact that I’m all about like efficiency for your hormones and it’s not getting you a hormonal response.

[00:35:48] So, like with resistance training, you are creating. A muscle growth process, right? And with that, you’re getting increased insulin sensitivity. So after you get on resistance training, you are like a [00:36:00] sponge to carbohydrate and your body is going to be able to then store that into muscle rather than it creating more metabolic issues for individuals.

[00:36:09] So I like to really focus on what’s going to move a needle the most for your hormones and what’s going to cause the least detrimental effect. And I just don’t think that there’s enough benefit that they’re creating. And a little enough amount of

[00:36:21] LM: detriment, if that makes sense. Okay, I love that. Okay, and just to synthesize all of this for people listening who probably suspect they have some sort of hormonal imbalance, hence why they clicked on this episode, just give us like a seven day ideal in your mind plan.

[00:36:35] Yeah, so

[00:36:37] LP: our workout program that we’ve designed is called strength and hormones. We do three days per week of full body resistance training. So they’re like 45 minute workouts. It’s some type of lower body exercise, compound movement, some type of upper body. So you’re probably going to squat, you’re going to hinge.

[00:36:49] So some type of dead lifting type fashion, you’re going to push. So some type of pushing motions, some type of pulling motion, and then some type of like core stability. So that would be something you would do three times per week. [00:37:00] They’re following a progressive overload model to where every week they’re intensifying the volume, the intensity.

[00:37:09] The day’s in between would be where you may be focusing on that zone to more building that aerobic base, helping your body recover. We know that aerobic exercise actually helps our body in stressful situations, not be as stressed. So it kind of does the opposite of like what caffeine does, where caffeine actually makes your body like more sensitive to stress.

[00:37:29] Whereas with Zone 2, an aerobic based exercise, it actually makes your body more robust against

[00:37:35] LM: stress, if you will. So give us a specific prescription there so that we’re still avoiding that middle that you talked about. Yeah. So Zone 2 is

[00:37:41] LP: technically 60 70 percent of your VO2max. So if you want to do a VO2max test, you can.

[00:37:47] Otherwise, there’s VO2max calculators online where you can find what it is. It’s usually an average equation is 220 minus your age. So that’s like a good place to start. And then you basically just take 60 to 70 percent of that and that’s the heart rate zone you should be in. And then if [00:38:00] you have some way of tracking heart rate or you can test it through your neck, then you can test your heart rate when you’re doing those type of workouts.

[00:38:06] For me, I usually do them in like an incline walk and that seems to work really well. I also sometimes will do it cycling and just at like a continuous pace. I technically have not seen very many people be able to do it while running and have not seen very many people do it while walking unless you’re like hiking.

[00:38:21] So it’s kind of this like in between between a flat ground walk and a more type of like running motion. And then walking, what impact does just walking have on our hormones? Walking is like zone one. It’s not quite at the intensity of zone two, but it’s still building the aerobic system, but really I just see it as like a low impact form of movement.

[00:38:42] So it’s increasing your non exercise activity, thermogenesis. So basically our body is like caloric expenditure at rest. It’s great for your mental wellbeing. You know, walking is like one of the most natural forms of movement for humans. Right. So I think it’s just a great way for like mobility and for just overall

[00:38:57] LM: wellbeing.

[00:38:58] So walking throughout the day by [00:39:00] doing. This strength training and then this thing that gets our heart rate up throughout the rest of the week. Okay, cool. For our hormones, do you prefer morning or evening workout?

[00:39:09] LP: So in the research, we know that the best hormonal response happens around like 3 p. m. from like resistance training.

[00:39:14] Oh, cool. I’ll tell our bosses. Yeah, exactly. But I really don’t think many people have the ability to do that. So yeah, I don’t think it really matters. The most important thing is the environment. So like when you’re doing these resistance training workouts, you’re getting a cortisol response from them.

[00:39:28] Don’t do them fasted. Like, it’s just Working against yourself, you know, if you have to do the zone two workouts fasted, because those are like on your days when you have to start work early, you’re probably fine. Like, it’s probably not going to kill your hormone health unless maybe your body’s really, really sensitive.

[00:39:41] But for the most part, it’s just about like, do you have the time to be able to just get something in your stomach before you engage in this type of workout? Do you have an ideal pre workout meal? There’s been some cool research recently that showed that when women have higher estrogen levels, so like particularly around ovulation or like during pregnancy or whatever situation, there might be high estrogen, [00:40:00] that your collagen synthesis decreases after exercise, and if you ingest 30 grams of collagen prior to exercise, that that actually mitigates that effect.

[00:40:09] Ooh. Yeah, and vitamin C actually paired with collagen. supports collagen synthesis. So you can do like a citrus fruit, pair it with some collagen peptides, maybe have your adrenal

[00:40:20] LM: cocktail with that. Yeah. And that would be a really good pre workout. I do my green smoothie before I work out. And then I do more of a protein rich, like breakfast, breakfast after I work out usually.

[00:40:30] And my smoothies. smoothie has berries, which have vitamin C and I often put collagen in. And I put protein powder in so it’s actually got protein but it’s not like something I’m eating. Yeah. And I’ll do that before I work out. Is that good? Yeah. Smoothies are great. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Just a carbs and protein is really the goal.

[00:40:43] Yeah. I have berries. I have greens. Nice. I love it. And avocado, I love it. My smoothie is like the joy of my life. Okay. Another thing online people talk about a lot is that women shouldn’t be cold plunging because it’s bad for their hormones. What are your thoughts on that?

[00:40:55] LP: There is some research that shows that acutely that cold punching does increase [00:41:00] cortisol levels, but to my knowledge, there’s nothing out there on chronic cortisol elevation.

[00:41:05] And that’s really

[00:41:06] LM: what we care about. It’s again, the internet is getting confused between acute and chronic, and we really want to be focusing on chronic, but it’s tricky because too much acute does lead to chronic, correct?

[00:41:16] LP: Yeah, and some people, like I’ve seen individuals who have an autoimmune disease and they’re in a flare and they’re waking up to do cold plunge at 5 a.

[00:41:22] m. and they’ve only slept 5 hours, like, it’s all about the context, right? Like, that’s probably not the best for your hormones because your body’s already in this high cortisol state and then you’re adding cold plunging to the mix, but if you aren’t in that type of situation, then it’s probably not going to cause a detrimental chronic effect.

[00:41:38] Will it cause

[00:41:39] LM: a bad effect? Positive effect, though, because we’re ostensibly doing it like I love how cold plunging makes me feel in the moment, but I’m also kind of hoping for some sort of long term benefit.

[00:41:46] LP: Yeah, and there’s some research for sure that shows the benefit metabolically, that it can also maybe help with like, long term stress response to kind of similar to what I mentioned with like exercise in general, anytime that our body gets used to this little micro [00:42:00] stressor, it definitely increases our body stress capacity.

[00:42:03] So I think that there definitely can be more long term. benefits potentially for it. There is a little bit of research I’ve seen with animal models in particular, where they’ve shown that cold plunging can cause ovulatory dysfunction. So it may impact the menstrual cycle, but I haven’t seen that actually in patients, but I also haven’t seen someone like cold plunging every day in like a way that it’s harmful for them.

[00:42:24] LM: What’s your conservative recommendation for somebody who wants to. experiment with cold exposure but wants to have positive like net positive impacts on their health.

[00:42:33] LP: Yeah. So I would say make sure that you’re doing it at like a later part in the day. Maybe you’re doing it like a couple hours after exercise, right?

[00:42:39] So it’s not like right on top of it. I would also just make sure that after you get done cold plunging that you’re getting your body back into the parasympathetic state. So a lot of places they pair like breath work with cold plunging. I think that’s really great because it’s helping to be able to stimulate vagal tone.

[00:42:54] It’s helping to be able to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is that. Opposite of high [00:43:00] cortisol state. So if we can get the body back into the parasympathetic state after exercise, after cold plunging, we should be able to shut off that chronic cortisol response. And then we’re only dealing with that very acute cortisol stressor.

[00:43:14] LM: And then are there other lifestyle practices that are helpful for our cortisol regulation, our HPA axis

[00:43:21] LP: regulation? Overall, I would say the foundations of sleep, right? So, are you sleeping adequately? And if not, what’s the bottleneck that’s impacting that? Our cortisol is waking us up in the middle of the night.

[00:43:31] Yeah, well. How are we supposed to sleep adequately? And oftentimes it’s because people are going hypoglycemic when they’re sleeping. Okay, so talk to me about that. Yeah, so basically what happens is that you’ve eaten, right, your last meal of the day, whenever that was, and then your body’s burning through glycogen, it’s burning off all those carbohydrates and that sugar that’s in the system, and then at some point, your glycogen’s going to get really low, and then that’s when your blood sugar drops, and you might get into like the 40s to 60s, and then your body gets naturally woken up, because like I said earlier, cortisol [00:44:00] increases by two things, by stress, You’re not stressed when you’re sleeping, and by hypoglycemia.

[00:44:05] So that’s a huge cause of why, especially so many women see this happen around like perimenopause. They’re like, why am I waking up so much in the middle of the night? Is it like hormones? Is it what? And it’s so often just because of hypoglycemia. So what’s the fix? It can be sometimes having a snack before you go to bed.

[00:44:20] If you’re eating dinner really early, then I’ll see that a lot more in people because then your body, like, if you’ve eaten at 5, you’ve probably burned through all your glycogen by 3 a. m. But it’s also tricky because they tell you not to eat too late because that disrupts your sleep as well. Well, it’s really just about the volume of what you eat, for sure.

[00:44:35] So if you’re having, like, a little snack, it’s not going to impact your sleep. We’re more so talking about, like, if you were having, like, a whole barbecue plate dinner an hour before bed, right? And if it’s like really high in fat where it’s going to slow digestion, then that would be something. But carbs actually help increase the serotonin to melatonin conversion.

[00:44:51] So by having a little bit of carbohydrate with your dinner, it actually does help to be able to induce a better sleep response. So it could even just be [00:45:00] doing like a small snack right before you go to bed that just has good balance. Like it has a little bit of carbs. It has a little bit of protein, a little bit of fat so that you’re getting a little bit of a blood sugar bump, but really we’re creating a very stable, Stable blood sugar response to where you have some complex carbohydrates that are gonna burn slowly and then you’ve got that protein and fat there to be able to slow down the digestion and absorption of those carbs.

[00:45:19] LM: Okay. What are ideal cortisol balancing bedtime snack?

[00:45:24] LP: Yeah, so I mean, it could be that you do like avocado with sourdough toast and some Turkey slices on top of it. Like that would be your carbs. It would be your fat, it would be your protein. I’m always going to go back to legumes because like I said, they’re one of my absolute favorites for just really healthy, stable blood sugar response and those give you carbs and protein.

[00:45:41] So you could do like a black bean salad that has some avocado in it. You could make a smoothie if you wanted to and do something kind of similar to what you’re talking about that maybe has some berries, some protein or collagen and some avocado in it. That would fit all those criteria.

[00:45:54] LM: Interesting.

[00:45:55] Maybe I should move my smoothie to, like, a little treat before bed. Yeah, you could [00:46:00] definitely consider something like that. Yeah, that’s interesting. Okay, are there any other habits, like, if you could wave a wand and have all of us be doing a few different habits during the day, what would those

[00:46:08] LP: be? Sun.

[00:46:10] Honestly, I think as one of the most underlooked and underappreciated aspects to our hormone function, just getting outside, like get outside first thing in the morning, get sun on your eyes. When you first wake up in the first 15 to 30 minutes, try to get sun again in the middle of the day. It’s one of the best ways to build a sink.

[00:46:25] Your hormones, because everything in your body, your hormones included are all regulated by clocks, all regulated by that circadian rhythm. And if you’re not getting sun exposure. You’re just confusing all of your hormones, like they don’t know when they should be made because hormones are all made at certain times of the day and that’s why we call it our circadian rhythm because it’s this rhythm that happens within that 24 hour cycle.

[00:46:45] So we really want to make sure that we are focusing on that sunlight in the daytime and then really focusing on more of a dark environment, maybe using things like red light therapy that can further help with that in the evening time. Are you into blue light blocking glasses? I mean, I use [00:47:00] it when I work at my computer because that gives me like a headache if I’m looking at the blue light all day, but in the evening time, I just don’t think that they block enough to where it’s gonna stop the melatonin production, and I know it’s not fun and no one wants to do it, but honestly, like, put your phone away, don’t watch TV, like, act like you’re in a cave.

[00:47:19] LM: I had a circadian rhythm expert from Oxford on the podcast. He said that TV is way better than phones because the screen is so much further away. Yeah, that would make total sense. So if you have to choose if you can’t go into a cave and read a book, like, do TV versus scrolling on your phone is what he said.

[00:47:35] Okay, if you could wave a wand and have us eliminate some habits that we all commonly do, what would you say? And don’t just say, like, stop stressing, because we’re all trying and it’s really hard.

[00:47:44] LP: And I would never say that because that’s one of my biggest pet peeves is when people say, just reduce stress.

[00:47:48] Because it’s like, well, that would be nice. So tell us, if you know how though, do tell us, because like, I, I would love to know. I just always say control the controllables when it comes to that, you know, because our body doesn’t know the difference between stress. So like the things [00:48:00] we can control is what we eat and how nutrition creates a stress response, like our workouts, we can control those things, you know, we can’t control like the family, the work stress.

[00:48:09] So those are more of the uncontrollables. And so when those are out of, Whack, then reduce the other areas that are in your control, and it’s like always this ebb and this flow between that stress response.

[00:48:18] LM: Are there any stress relieving practices that you’ve seen in your own clients have had like an outsize result?

[00:48:24] I

[00:48:25] LP: would say the biggest one is getting outside. I think that’s probably the most profound effect on people’s stress response. Like just taking a quick break, because I think so often either, A, we are inside all day and we’re not getting that sun exposure or B, you’re just like going constantly from one thing to the next.

[00:48:42] One of the best piece of advice that a therapist ever gave me was to create more buffer in my day. And it’s been something I’ve like taken with me and I’ll take it to the grave. But because I’m such like an efficiency person, I’m always like, Oh, well, let me stack all these things on top so that I can get done quicker.

[00:48:57] And all that did was just create more [00:49:00] of like an anxiety rush in my body. And so then now it’s like, okay, I’m going to give myself 10 extra minutes than I think that that’s going to take at my slowest. And yeah, it sometimes stinks because you’re sitting there with like nothing to do. But how much does when you have nothing to do, parasympathetic state?

[00:49:17] LM: I had Alyssa Eppel, who’s one of the world’s leading stress experts on the podcast, and I asked her what was the lowest hanging fruit that we could all do to like eliminate a source of stress in our life. And she said, rushing. She was like, we put rushing on ourselves by the way that we schedule our lives.

[00:49:31] Can we give ourselves more of that buffer and we’ll feel a profound effect. It’s truly radical. Is there anything that you feel like people should know about cortisol or this HPA axis that we haven’t talked about, especially things that people could do that would have a noticeable impact at home? Yeah.

[00:49:46] LP: The biggest thing that I think people don’t think about as it comes to cortisol is that the people that struggle the most with cortisol and HPA axis dysregulation are the people that are under eating and over exercising. We cannot [00:50:00] reduce our cortisol response if we don’t address those two areas. Like, we have to be looking at ways to better balance how much we’re eating, when we’re eating throughout the day, and how much exercise that we’re doing or your cortisol dysregulation is never going to get any better.

[00:50:14] Let’s go

[00:50:15] LM: into hormonal acne. How do we know if our acne is hormonal in root? So there’s

[00:50:21] LP: always those face mapping things you’ll see online that say if it’s on your jaw area that that’s generally hormonal related and there is some merit to that. Like, I definitely see a correlation between that, but if you notice that your hormonal acne has gotten worse since hormone things have changed, like maybe you’ve noticed that since you came off birth control, your acne has increased or since your cycles have become more irregular, your acne has decreased.

[00:50:44] Come about those can be more helpful. Telltale signs that it is hormonal in nature. So like there’s other types of hormone imbalances that are at play. I also find that it tends to be a lot more cystic and there tends to be more white heads that are present because the hormonal changes [00:51:00] of like high cortisol and high androgen.

[00:51:02] So things like high testosterone increase sebum production, which is that oil that’s under the skin that causes the acne to form. Right. If there is larger white heads and more cysts. that are happening, then generally that is more hormonal in nature because sometimes people have what we call fungal acne and those are much smaller.

[00:51:19] They don’t typically have the big cystic white heads on them, and those are actually more rooted in the gut or can be like mold exposure and things that are increasing the body’s fungal load.

[00:51:29] LM: Is there any low hanging

[00:51:30] LP: fruit for hormonal acne? Well, a lot of times it’s because women have high levels of those androgens, like with PCOS.

[00:51:37] So anything we can do to suppress androgen production is going to be super helpful. Anything we can do to lower cortisol production, like all the things we talked about is going to be super helpful. We haven’t talked a ton about androgens, but androgens are pretty heavily driven through insulin as well.

[00:51:52] So if you can improve and lower your insulin response by improving your blood sugar response, that can be a really substantial way [00:52:00] to have an impact. Also, just incorporating more anti inflammatories and antioxidants can be really valuable. I find a lot of women with hormonal acne are extremely deficient in omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin E, vitamin A, and we see that clinically like within testing, but then also just looking within the diet and like what they’re supplementing with.

[00:52:19] So just making sure that you are getting enough of these natural anti inflammatories and antioxidants in because those are what are going to stop that inflammatory response from happening. Can you explain androgens

[00:52:29] LM: to me? Like I’m five.

[00:52:29] LP: Yeah, I know. It’s always, I’m always like androgens like testosterone because people are like, what is an androgen?

[00:52:34] But testosterone is really the easiest one to think about because I think that’s the one we know most about. But androgens, we call them like this male like class of hormones, but I don’t really like that reference term because women have them too. We just have less of them generally than men have. But testosterone is the main one that we think of within androgens.

[00:52:52] But you also have ones like androstenedione, DHEA, DHEAS that are mainly made by the adrenal glands. [00:53:00] So you make androgens from the ovaries as testosterone. And you make androgens from the adrenal glands. You actually make more androgens from the adrenal glands than you do even the ovaries. So there’s quite a bit of contribution that happens there, but they’re what are going to cause male pattern baldness or like hair loss on the head.

[00:53:17] And both men and women, they’re going to cause more of the abnormal hair follicles and areas like the mustache and like chin region. So women are generally going to experience like dark horse facial hair growth, and then they’re going to cause more of that oil production. So you’re going to see an increase in oily skin, oily hair, because they increase that sebum.

[00:53:36] LM: Hair loss is something that I hear from listeners about all of the time. So if somebody is listening and they’re experiencing that, what would you do for them?

[00:53:44] LP: We have to look at what’s the cause of the hair loss for sure. So we know that thyroid hormones play a really big role. So with hair growth, there’s three phases of the growth, the rest, and then the transition state, we call it, that’s like in between there.

[00:53:57] And thyroid hormones actually control that rest [00:54:00] and growth state. So if you have abnormal thyroid hormone levels, you have receptors for thyroid hormones, really every hormone all over the body. So that can be one of the causes as to why hair loss or hair regrowth isn’t happening at the speed that it should be because Those receptors aren’t getting the hormones that they need, and those thyroid hormones actually control how your hair follicle absorbs vitamins and hormones too.

[00:54:23] So if you’re not absorbing adequate magnesium and zinc and these minerals that are needed for hair development, then that also can lead to hair loss. So sometimes it is a matter of people just Aren’t getting the nutritional needs that they have and whether that’s they’re not eating enough because maybe they’re on like a very restricted diet or they’re not absorbing well enough because there’s gut issues and things going on.

[00:54:43] That can be a big cause. I also recently have been seeing a lot of like high iron situations because I think that a lot of women are instructed to take iron because it’s often thought of as a common deficiency for women. But high iron can also cause hair [00:55:00] loss as well because it causes oxidative stress and inflammation in the body.

[00:55:05] So there can be several causes. Inflammation, high levels of those androgenic hormones, mineral deficiencies or low thyroid hormone levels. stress. Also, we know that when people get like a immune system infection, or if you get like COVID or something like that, the reason why it causes hair loss is because of the infection, the inflammatory response on the immune system.

[00:55:26] So sometimes it’s more obscure where like all of those other reasons don’t check out, but like maybe someone has reactivated Epstein Barr virus, EBV, or they have molds. illness or they have other types of infections that are going on that are causing the hair follicle to be in that sleep mode, essentially.

[00:55:44] And then do you have

[00:55:44] LM: to treat whatever that extra issue is? Exactly, yeah. Are you a fan of hair growth

[00:55:50] LP: supplements? I don’t think they work for most people, honestly, because everyone’s cause of hair loss, it’s just like fatigue. There’s so many different potential causes that unless you [00:56:00] know what’s causing the hair loss.

[00:56:02] They’re generally not going to work. Like oftentimes the common ones that are on the market, they have adaptogens to help regulate that cortisol response. They have DHT blockers like saw palmetto in them to help lower those androgenic hormones. But what if that’s not the reason that your hair loss is happening?

[00:56:19] Then like, what if it’s because you have high iron? And nothing you’re taking in the hair supplement is helping lower your iron levels, then you’re not going to get very far. So I just see a lot of people waste their money on it. And honestly, I’m just such more a fan of get the testing done to all the testing that’s going to evaluate what could be your cause of hair loss and then go from there with your supplementation.

[00:56:38] LM: Okay, so, if you have hair loss, what test should you be asking your doctor for to get to the root of it?

[00:56:43] LP: Yeah, if you know that you’ve had a infection recently, I would definitely do a CBC, and if you know that, like, you had mono at one point in your life and potentially it reactivated, then maybe you retest some of the EBV markers as well.

[00:56:56] But generally speaking, for most people, those aren’t really necessary, unless there’s some weird autoimmune [00:57:00] stuff going on, but I would definitely do some vitamin and mineral testing. Test your B vitamin levels, test your ferritin, your iron levels, test mineral levels, like magnesium, zinc, calcium, all of those, so that you have a broad idea of, is there enough vitamins and minerals?

[00:57:15] Check all of your thyroid hormone levels, check your TSH, your free T4, your free T3, your reverse T3, because that’s going to tell us if there’s a thyroid hormones there to help pull those nutrients in, right? And then also look at those androgenic hormones. Test for things like testosterone, your free testosterone and total testosterone.

[00:57:32] Test your DHEAS levels, remember that’s another androgen that’s made mainly by the adrenal glands. If you can do a cortisol test, maybe do it. I don’t usually, because like I said, we can gather more information on cortisol from other metrics, but at least getting some of those androgens like the DHEAS and the testosterone can be a really valuable piece of the puzzle.

[00:57:50] LM: I’m going to speed round just some stuff I’ve seen online that I want you to say whether or not it’s true. Does aluminum mimic estrogen and negatively impact female hormones? Should [00:58:00] we be avoiding it in our deodorant?

[00:58:01] LP: There is some literature that it can function as an endocrine disruptor, but it’s not 100 percent conclusive as to, like, how much aluminum exposure would do that.

[00:58:10] With endocrine disruptors, just like aluminum, they all work really the same mechanism, where they just impair your body’s ability for your own hormones to dock to those receptors. So, it’s not necessarily going to, like, put more estrogen into your body, it’s going to mimic the effects of estrogen through docking to those receptors where your body’s own estrogen should be going.

[00:58:29] LM: Interesting. Would you say avoid, or is it just about not overloading with these types of things? If you’re gonna use it every once in a while, I

[00:58:35] LP: don’t think it’s gonna kill you, but I would definitely try to avoid it in your everyday life. Are there other endocrine disruptors that you think we should be watching out for?

[00:58:43] So many. Yes, and I think a lot of people know about the plastics and your parabens and phthalates that are in a lot of beauty products, but no one ever talks about other endocrine disruptors like heavy metals and mycotoxins and things that are in a lot of our food that we eat. You know, a lot of your healthy foods are really high in heavy [00:59:00] metals, like it’s one of the big issues with plant protein powders.

[00:59:02] They’re super high in heavy metals. Brown rice and rice, really high levels of arsenic, dark chocolate, super high levels of cadmium. We see really high levels of lead and cadmium in spices that you get at the grocery store. So, yes, if you’re using small amounts of these, you’re probably okay, but I can’t tell you how often I see people are eating so many of these healthy foods, if you will, like even the most organic brands out there, and their heavy metal levels are through the roof, and that’s part of what’s causing

[00:59:27] LM: the endocrine disrupting effects.

[00:59:28] So how should we be thinking about that? Because we shouldn’t be like avoiding spices and protein powder in rice. You can definitely find alternative

[00:59:35] LP: options within those categories. So go to a egg based or a bone broth based protein or something that doesn’t have plants because it’s mainly when plants are concentrated that they’re going to be high in heavy metals because heavy metals are naturally occurring in the soil.

[00:59:49] Yeah. So just use a different type of protein powder. The plant ones are the worst when it comes to that.

[00:59:54] LM: If somebody vegan is listening, what would you say to them?

[00:59:56] LP: They have heavy metal tested plant protein powders. Okay. So just really look for [01:00:00] Yeah. Yeah. Companies will always Advertise if they do it and they’ll share their heavy metal reports because they’re paying extra money for that heavy metal testing.

[01:00:07] They want you to know when it’s there. Okay,

[01:00:09] LM: and then for spices, is it just like use Sparingly? Because I love spices. I spice my food a lot.

[01:00:16] LP: There are definitely brands that are safer that are out there. So like Consumer Reports did a good analysis on this a few years ago, so you can check out their resource on it where they tell you some of the safer brands.

[01:00:25] I think it was like 365 Organic was one of the worst ones, but Simply Organic was better, which I think is like the Sprouts brand. Simply

[01:00:32] LM: Organic’s my favorite brand. Okay, so yeah, you might be okay there. Okay.

[01:00:35] LP: And then some of herbs and spices are worse than others, like basil was bad all across the board.

[01:00:39] Basil was like. black pepper was fine across the board. So it really depends on what you’re using. I’m a fan of just like trying to use as many fresh herbs as possible because they’re going to give you more flavor and you don’t have to concentrate them as much. And you get so many good actually heavy metal chelating effects.

[01:00:53] So like parsley and cilantro, they’re actually natural heavy metal chelators, which means they pull heavy metals out of the body. [01:01:00] And you generally aren’t going to buy dried parsley and cilantro. I mean, I guess you could, but there’s something you can easily incorporate fresh into food that have so much flavor.

[01:01:07] LM: And yeah. Does that have enough of an effect to be worth it? Like you see people sticking the chlorophyll drops in their water online and they’re saying, Oh, it’s pulling the heavy metals out of your body. Is it actually having a noticeable measurable effect? Yeah, a lot of these things like the dose they

[01:01:20] LP: use isn’t crazy.

[01:01:21] It’s like two tablespoons, a quarter of a cup, like it’s definitely a dose that would be achievable.

[01:01:27] LM: Okay,

[01:01:27] LP: and if we made a smoothie with fresh basil in it, that would have a real effect. I don’t think basil is a heavy metal chelator, but if you made it with like cilantro, yes, that would, or chlorella, definitely.

[01:01:38] And then you can also use like heavier guns, I call them, which are things like activated charcoal and between clays. They’re not for everyone. They can cause like worsening of constipation if you’re dealing with that, but they are a little bit stronger than would be some of these natural herbs. Does hand sanitizer disrupt your

[01:01:53] LM: hormones?

[01:01:54] LP: If it’s fragranced, it could, because then it would have the phthalates in it, which would be an endocrine disruptor. [01:02:00] But to my knowledge, there is no known endocrine disrupting effects of the alcohol that’s the main base. What is BHT and does it actually disrupt our endocrine

[01:02:07] LM: system?

[01:02:07] LP: Yeah, so BHT is an additive that’s used a lot in a lot of your processed foods that helps to prevent oil oxidation.

[01:02:14] So many people might have experienced this before. If you cook with like a low temperature oil at high temperatures, it oxidizes and goes rancid and it tastes disgusting. So they use BHT to be able to prevent that oxidation from happening. Some newer companies are using like more natural things like vitamin E instead of that because vitamin E does a similar thing.

[01:02:31] But there have been known endocrine disrupting effects of it. So same thing, binding to those receptors where estrogen should be. be going and mimicking estrogen to a degree. It’s mainly going to be in a lot of your processed foods. So in like your Twinkies and your Fritos and things of that sort, it’s not something that’s naturally occurring in healthy package stuff.

[01:02:52] I haven’t seen it be something that’s prevalent.

[01:02:54] LM: Okay. But you would say like largely avoid it, but it’s kind of easy to avoid. Yeah. Unless you’re [01:03:00] eating like hostess donuts every night. Are there any other things that you feel like are commonly misunderstood about our hormones, especially online? I think

[01:03:08] LP: everyone’s just like grouping them into one category of like, this is hormone imbalance, or do this for balanced hormones.

[01:03:15] There’s so much nuance into that conversation. Like, what hormones are we talking about? What are the imbalances? I think that’s one of the big issues with cycle syncing that’s out there. There’s so much nuance to, like, how we sync our cycles that we really have to be talking about individual types of hormone systems, thyroid hormones themselves, sex hormones themselves, not hormones as a whole.

[01:03:36] LM: Mm, okay, I love that. Can you leave us with just one homework assignment, something that we could all do as soon as we turn off this podcast to begin to take care of our hormones?

[01:03:46] LP: Yeah, evaluate your day, look at like where you need more buffer time in your day to bring down that chronic cortisol response, like evaluate like what are you doing in the week and that total stress load, your whole stress bucket, what are you doing for exercise?

[01:03:58] Do you have a rhythm? Do you [01:04:00] have a plan to it? Are you just going balls to the wall every day just to go balls the wall every day, right? How often are you eating generally throughout the day? Do you even know what you’re eating? When you are eating, so many people, when I ask them, they’re like, I don’t know when I last ate, or I don’t even know what I ate.

[01:04:13] So do you even have an idea of like your meal regularity? So just really taking a full evaluation of what do your common daily routines look like? Because it’s not about what we do 10 percent of the time, it’s what we do 90 percent of the time. So you really want to look at the things that you’re doing the majority of the time, both within exercise, how you’re eating, your lifestyle factors.

[01:04:33] Those are what are going to move a meal the most when it comes to hormones. Transcribed Love that. Can you tell us a little bit about where people can find you and what types of offerings you have? Yeah, so my practice is called Functional Fueling. Our website is functionalfueling. com and then I’m over on Instagram at functional.

[01:04:45] fueling. I have a podcast called the Strength in Hormones podcast and really our goal is we’re working with endocrine conditions. So women that have things like hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s, PCOS. And really providing root cause solutions with food as medicine being the main [01:05:00] source of treatment and using lab testing to really be able to help us understand where someone needs support.

[01:05:06] We have a program called Inflammation Harmony that’s also a really great starting place for someone who’s maybe not ready to dive into testing but really wants to start to address the root causes of what’s causing the hormonal dysfunction because inflammation is a huge aspect for hormone dysfunction.

[01:05:19] LM: Love that. Well, thank you, Lauren. Yes, thank you. That’s all for this episode of the Liz Moody Podcast. If you loved this episode, one of the best ways that you can support the pod is by sending a link to your friends, your family, your partner, your co workers, you name it. You’re helping grow the podcast and you’re helping the people you love change their lives.

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[01:06:15] Oh, just one more thing. It’s the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.