A Quickstart Guide to Women’s Hormones (part 2)

Betty Rocker (00:15):
Welcome back, Rockstar. So great to have you here today. Let’s continue our conversation from last time about key hormone players as it’s really just something that continues to fascinate me. And I believe that the more we understand how our body works, the more empowered we are to seek care when we need it, and really the less scary it is when things seem to be happening beyond what we can see and control. So if you haven’t listened to episode nine yet, be sure to add that to your playlist because in that episode we talked about some important players in our hormone symphony like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, adrenaline and cortisol. And it’s especially important as women to understand their role over the course of our lives because of course, hormones don’t act by themselves.

(01:05)
They’re all quote unquote players in a carefully orchestrated system. I said orchestrated, and I truly mean like an orchestra. And this orchestra must play a balanced and carefully regulated symphony in order for us to feel our best, look our best and live a long healthy life in a strong body. Our bodies are composed of 60 to 90 trillion cells that all communicate with each other. And sometimes the symptoms you are noticing in say, low energy, gaining body fat, losing muscle, and other things could be caused by an imbalance in one hormone. But very often it’s the interplay of different hormones that make us take notice when they’re out of sync. Now, the primary driver of our metabolism is our thyroid, which regulates the rate at which energy is consumed by our cells. And that’s a pretty important pace to set because it has everything to do with our energy production, our nutrient absorption, and the detoxification of wastes.

(02:09)
The thyroid itself is a butterfly shaped gland in your lower neck, just below the atoms apple area, and it secretes the hormones. T four and T three levels of T four in our bloodstream are continuously being monitored by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in our brain. When levels are low, the thyroid stimulating hormone is released, stimulating the thyroid to produce more T four and the circulating T four is actually converted into T three. So along with governing cellular metabolism, the thyroid also acts on our blood pressure, our breathing, digestion and nerve function. So it’s interacting with a vast array of body systems and cells. Pretty important stuff. Remember in our last episode I mentioned that hormones all have like target cells. One example of this that directly relates to us as women is that the cells of our ovaries have thyroid receptors and the cells of the thyroid gland have ovarian receptors.

(03:08)
This means that estrogen, which is the hormone produced by the ovaries and the thyroid hormone interact and deeply affect each other. Your metabolism and energy are intimately connected by your monthly cycle to fertility, to your libido. And when the ovaries stop making estrogen, the thyroid is affected. When thyroid hormones become imbalanced, our reproductive functions are totally impacted. And low estrogen or low progesterone can leave you with either a slowed or overactive thyroid. As we age, our levels of the thyroid hormone T four diminish and the conversion of T four to T three also slows down. This means all those important things, the thyroid influences can stop working optimally. And communication between the cells begins to break down. If we reference our four pillars of health, which are sleep, nutrition, stress management, and exercise, they all influence our hormone balance. Stress is of course one of the big factors of our hormone function along with the adrenals.

(04:14)
The thyroid hormones are one of the most susceptible to imbalance in our fast-paced lifestyle. No surprise there probably. And when the thyroid is imbalanced, it can produce too much or too little of the thyroid hormone. Have you heard the story of Goldilocks in the three bears where she had to have a bed that wasn’t too big or too small, she wanted it to be just right. Well, that’s what we want for our thyroid. Actually. We don’t want too much or too little. We want that balance to be just right and it’s crazy, but an imbalance, thyroid affects a lot of people, and women have an approximately seven times greater risk for developing thyroid problems than do men. So men, if you’re listening, thank you by the way. And you can support the women in your life who may be dealing with symptoms they dismiss as the side effects of aging to get the care they may need by seeing a doctor and getting their blood tested.

(05:07)
So encourage that behavior. And ladies, this goes for the men in your life too. We all have a thyroid and thyroid hormones. The Colorado thyroid disease prevalence study found the rate of hypothyroidism in the general population to be approximately 10%, which might actually sound low, but they added with an estimated 13 million undiagnosed cases of low thyroid among American adults. So you may have heard of hypothyroidism, that’s when too little thyroid hormone is produced, and it’s often diagnosed, like we were saying, and more common than too much thyroid hormone. And since our thyroid hormones regulate our metabolic rate, low levels tend to cause unwanted weight gain, depression, low energy and cold intolerance. It also affects our mood, has an impact on our PMS symptoms, impacts the immune response and our libido. On the flip side of that is what’s known as hyperthyroidism, which is where the thyroid becomes overactive, producing too much thyroid and this can damage your cells, making it hard to gain weight.

(06:12)
This can also create that tired but wired feeling, uh, when high thyroid levels can cause hyper energy levels, it’s hypothyroidism or the low thyroid. Like we said, that’s the most common in women during the perimenopausal and postmenopausal years. And in my research I found that some 26% of women in or near menopause are diagnosed with low thyroid. And I just sit here imagining all the cases that are undiagnosed because I know that so many of the women I know are such caregivers, often putting themselves last and running themselves into the ground trying to do it all. You know, during a perimenopause, ovulation slows down and eventually stops at menopause leading to a dramatic drop in progesterone. This deficiency may lead to estrogen dominance, which is the hormonal imbalance most strongly associated with low thyroid symptoms and the development of hypothyroidism. For more about estrogen and progesterone, listen to our last episode and stay tuned for some amazing conversations coming up with a couple of incredible doctors who will delve much more deeply into these topics.

(07:18)
So what we want is that Goldilocks thyroid balance, the just right balance. And if you suspect you’re having symptoms of an imbalance, thyroid getting checked by your doctor really should be at the top of your list. A great doctor is going to look at other hormones that may also be impacting you as these hormones are not just a couple of isolated instruments in the band, it’s a whole symphony orchestra playing together. So don’t downplay your symptoms or chalk it up just to the aging process. Not only is it important to establish some boundaries around your own self-care, it’s essential for your health and longevity to listen to your body. If something feels off, get it checked out, you are so worth it. And you know it’s, it might not always be hormone related, it could be your gut health, it could be something to do with, uh, for instance, a, a mold issue. Um, it could be so many different things affecting you. It’s so important to seek the care of a good physician and really take the time to figure this stuff out because our body is just such an amazing connected organism and you are really the one in the driver’s seat. So listen to those, those that symphony orchestra, listen to yourselves, listen to your body. Your intuition is so strong and you know when something feels off. Let’s take a quick break and come right back.

(08:49)
Okay, so speaking of the symphony of all those players in our symphony orchestra, I promised you in our last that I would talk more about one of the key hormone players and the regulation of our body fat, and that is insulin. We talked about it back in episode seven when we were talking about nutritional strategies to see results faster. And we talked about Alicia’s story. So let’s do a quick refresher. Insulin is a crucial and important hormone that helps balance our blood sugar. When we eat our blood sugar rises, the carbohydrates we eat break down into glucose molecules and give us energy. Insulin is the hormone our cells have a receptor for to accept that glucose, which gives us the fuel we need to run. What we want here is also the Goldilocks experience. Not too much sugar, not too little sugar, just the right amount of sugar.

(09:39)
So after you eat your blood sugar rises, the pancreas secretes insulin, which ushers the glucose into your cells for energy, the energy that you need in that moment to to live your life. And insulin is kind of like the key that opens the cell door lock to let the glucose in. So it’s a very important mechanism. That’s why I say it’s crucial and important. Glucose that you don’t need for energy right now gets shuttled to your liver, which can store a set amount daily as glycogen and also to your muscles, which can store an amount determined really by how much muscle tissue you have, which is one more reason it pays to be active and exercise. Now, keeping your blood sugar stable is important for steady energy to think, move, function, all the things we do for life. So when your blood sugar starts to drop because you haven’t say eaten in a while, glucagon, which is insulin’s counterpoint hormone, is released also from your pancreas and it breaks down stored glucose in your liver.

(10:36)
So you can use it for energy, which helps to keep your blood sugar levels stable and makes sure you continue to have energy. It’s a pretty cool system. This whole loop is pretty sophisticated and normally you would never have to think about it, but sometimes insulin just gets totally overloaded because we eat a lot of sugar or eat a lot of foods that turn into sugar in the body. Now insulin is a hard worker and when there’s a lot of sugar to process, it just jumps right into the fray to try and put it all in your cells. But your cells are full, your liver’s at capacity, your muscles don’t have any more space. So it does the only thing it can do, which is to put it in storage, which is your fat cells. Now, we may not be super excited about the fact that we’re snoring fat, but the truth is your body is pretty amazing.

(11:24)
And this function is an important one because if you don’t need energy and your storage tanks are full, that sugar has to go somewhere. The problem is when this happens too often, uh, a dangerous condition known as insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type two diabetes, can actually start to occur. And if insulin is that key that unlocks the cell door to allow glucose in insulin resistance is what happens when the key gets jammed up and it can’t unlock the door anymore. So once insulin resistance develops the muscles fat and liver cells don’t respond to it properly leading to a chain reaction in the body, that impacts the effectiveness and balance of other hormones as well. And we’ve been talking about how our hormones don’t usually place solo acts in the band. High insulin can be caused by the overconsumption of sugar, as we’ve just talked about, and it can also be caused by dips in our sex hormones.

(12:17)
For example, estrogen is actually a big helper in our cells for optimizing the insulin response. When our estrogen levels are low and our body fat is going up, our insulin receptors become less functional and the body can’t handle glucose as efficiently and low estrogen levels can make us crave sugar leading to insulin levels spiking when we give in to those cravings with like crappy carbs, which sets us up for erratic energy and weight gain. It’s kind of like a merry-go-round of one bad thing after another inside your body. And the risk of developing insulin resistance is also increased by elevated cortisol levels. And as you know, cortisol is the hormone it gets triggered by stress. One of the reasons we wanna make sure we’re really paying attention to that stress management pillar of our health, that elevated cortisol will contribute to weight gain, it can compromise our immune system and increase our risk of heart disease, which is the number one cause of death in America.

(13:16)
So really watch out for those processed foods. Foods with added sugars, soda, alcohol, going to low fat in your nutrient intake, which will be less satisfying ultimately. And also speed up how fast sugar gets into your bloodstream. The quick side note on that, when we include healthy fat from Whole Foods in our diet, the fat slows down how quickly food leaves our stomach. Also having the effect of regulating our blood sugar, making it so insulin doesn’t have to work as hard. When we eat fiber dense whole food carbohydrates, there is a similar effect where the sugar doesn’t hit your bloodstream as quickly as the stripped down processed carbs do. And when we include protein in our meals, which is actually even more satisfying than fat or carbs, we are less likely to overeat, have cravings, and also protein supports so many other essential functions we need for good health and fitness. I actually recommend making protein the first thing you decide on and include in your plate, and then build the rest of your meals around that. And if you wanna hear more about balancing your blood sugar protein consumption in more of these topics, be sure to go back and listen to episodes five and seven where I go in depth about this stuff and are seeing results faster series.

(14:37)
Now let’s talk a little bit more about cravings. I know they can be crazy, hard to resist, and clearly our cravings can be caused by hormonal imbalances like we talked about in the last episode. And by imbalanced eating or a lack of key nutrients we need, there are actually a couple of key hormones I thought you’d like to know about that are responsible for our hunger and fullness, and these really make a big impact on our appetite and our choices with this portion sizes we eat and they’re really important. So ghrelin, our hunger hormone is secreted in the stomach and your stomach makes it when it’s empty and it stimulates our appetite and prepares the body for food. On the flip side of us getting hungry is leptin our fullness hormone, which signals us to stop eating when we’ve had enough nutrients. Key in what I just said is signals us to stop eating when we’ve had enough nutrients.

(15:32)
If you’ve read the body fuel system, you may remember I mentioned that we stop eating when we’ve had enough nutrients or when the volume in our stomach reaches capacity. This is why processed foods and empty calories from junk food and high sugar foods are so dangerous. You aren’t getting enough nutrient density from these foods to trigger your brain to release the fullness hormone leptin. So you literally eat until your stomach is so full it can’t take any more food. In. Add this to what happens when we flood the body with too much sugar and we’re setting ourselves up for an insulin spike that could lead to insulin resistance. Now, leptin is also a metabolic regulator. It tells your body how much energy to put out. So if you’re eating enough and leptin is working right, it tells your thyroid to make more thyroid hormone and ramp up your metabolism.

(16:23)
If you’re skipping too many meals or chronically hungry leptin will tell your thyroid to slow down the production of thyroid hormone and conserve energy. This can create some unwanted effects like fatigue, making it harder for you to think clearly, and your body’s gonna start storing your food energy as fat rather than burning it for fuel. Now, one thing that can really mess with leptin and ghrelin’s ability to do their job is lack of sleep. When we are sleep deprived, our hunger hormone ghrelin spikes and our fullness hormone leptin drops, which has the overall effect of just making us feel hungrier. Not to mention that less time in bed means there are more hours of you being awake, so there are more hours for you to eat. But lack of sleep also kicks off a process in the body that raises the blood levels of something called endocannabinoid, which acts in our brain in a similar way to marijuana making eating more enjoyable and increasing our hunger for actually comfort foods like cookies, candy, and chips, especially in the evening.

(17:29)
This is why people who don’t get enough sleep eat twice as much fat and more than 300 extra calories the next day compared with those who sleep the right amount for their needs. This whole sleep wake cycle is a crucial component for our health, and it’s why sleep is our number one pillar of health. Do you remember just last when I talked about cortisol’s natural cycle in the body being very affected by our circadian rhythm and the influence of light and dark on our body? Well, cortisol, which gives us a lot of energy to get up and go, should be at its lowest at night and start to rise in the morning so that we wake up with energy. But melatonin, the hormone that helps you get sleepy and get a good night’s rest is on pretty much the opposite cycle to cortisol. As the sun goes down, cortisol should be low, but melatonin naturally starts to rise, making us feel sleepy as we get towards the morning or daylight hours, cortisol starts to rise so we can wake up and of course melatonin will drop to its lowest.

(18:30)
However, if you’re constantly staying up late or if you’re on your computer screen watching TV or on your phone, the blue light emanating from these devices can really interfere with melatonin’s ability to rise. This is one of the reasons I wear the blue blocking glasses at night. I have dimmer switches on all my lights and I really work on keeping artificial light exposure to a minimum once the sun goes down. This is also why we wanna do things that are calming and restful in the evening. Think about that rest and digest state or our parasympathetic nervous system being active when we’re triggered by stress, that’s our sympathetic nervous system. Our fight or flight state cortisol rises to help us, you know, be ready to fight or flee. And if we want cortisol to be low at night, creating a calm and peaceful state around us, especially in the evening, is essential for a good night’s sleep.

(19:24)
So avoid eating too close to bedtime and eating sugar late at night. A common time. People who have not been paying attention to getting their nutrients in throughout the day will have bad sugar and carb cravings. If this is something you’re struggling with, take a look at your daily food choices first to see if you are making protein an important and intentional part of each meal. If you’re eating whole food sources of the carbohydrates that you’re eating and that you’re choosing healthy fat and not being all fat free or skipping important key nutrients. And if you’re really feeling full and satisfied after eating, because remember, your body knows when it’s full based on that nutrient density or the volume of your stomach being so stuffed, right? So we want to really trigger that nutrient density feeling so that we feel full and satisfied. So, you know, if you’re watching that late night TV show, it’s a lot easier to give in to mindless snacking on sugar heavy snacks and treats that will really sabotage your fitness goals and make it harder for you to get that good night’s sleep if you haven’t reached nutrient density from your eating throughout the day already.

(20:33)
So I really, I encourage you download my free sleep guide at the betty rocker dot com’s slash better sleep for my five census Tips to Getting a Better Night’s Rest Naturally. By the way, it’s an awesome resource. It’ll give you some really great things that you could start right away to get a better night’s sleep than naturally. And part of why I make such a big deal about sleep, especially for all of my active women listeners, is because of human growth hormone, not the supplement . You’re actual naturally produced growth hormone, which is an important part of growth and development when we’re young, but also crucial for cell and tissue repair at all ages. And human growth hormone is important for a healthy metabolism, uh, workout performance and strength building, lean body mass, also known as muscle and for losing fat. Now, low levels of HGH, which is human growth hormone for short, can increase your body fat and put you at an increased risk for disease.

(21:29)
So our brain releases growth hormone during exercise, but also during stage three sleep, the stage known as deep sleep. And we cycle through that stage several times during the night. And it’s one of the reasons that it’s so important not to delay your bedtime as it can limit the amount of deep sleep cycles you’ll get into. The deep sleep stage is the most restorative and possibly the most important stage of our sleep. And if you’ve ever wondered why, where the the aura ring that tracks my sleep and why I am always so intensely interested in how much deep sleep I’ve gotten, it’s because I wanna maximize my human growth hormone production along with quality sleep. Exercise at intensity is a great way to increase or optimize our human growth hormone levels. So all you Betty rockers out there, keep on Betty rocking anything from circuit training, high intensity interval training to resistance training can all help spike your HGH and improve body composition and maximize fat loss, especially when you follow the guidelines of nutrient-dense eating.

(22:31)
So really what I’m saying here is that living the Bed rocker four pillars of health, lifestyle, prioritizing your sleep, your nutrition, managing stress, and exercising consistently are all key components in optimizing your health and wellbeing, supporting your hormone symphony. And this will serve you in so many ways that go far beyond your appearance. And when and if you feel like your hormones are out of balance or something’s out of balance because you’re feeling a little off, like you’ve got that stubborn weight that won’t budge or you’re cons constantly feeling fatigue or lack of mental clarity. You know, check in with your practice of all four pillars of health, are you being consistent with them? But also don’t hesitate to talk to your doctor and get some tests done, some blood work done, see if everything is as it should be. I know we have covered a lot of different hormones in the last two episodes and you know, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface on what these hormones do and how they talk to each other.

(23:28)
But you now have a great foundation of the landscape and language of some important parts of your hormone symphony so that in the upcoming episodes with Smart Doctors, it will make a lot more sense to you as we’re having those conversations. I’m really excited to bring you next week’s guest, Dr. Sarah Gottfried. She’s a woman’s hormone health specialist and three times New York Times bestselling author of books like The Hormone Cure, A brilliant resource that you could go get today and get a headstart on some of what she’ll be talking about in next week’s show with me. And thank you so much for listening today, and feel free to leave me any comments on the show notesPage@thebettyrocker.com slash podcast where you can also find links to anything I mentioned in today’s show. I really love getting to spend this time with you and share the topics that I find fascinating and illuminating.

(24:18)
You know, we’re, we’re all in this together, so remember to share this episode with a friend or a family member who could benefit from knowing this too. And remember that you are the best expert of you. The more you know about how your body works, the better equipped you are to live a long, healthy life and a fit, strong body you love and get the resources and care that you need when you need it. As always, rockstar, I’m Betty Rocker and you are so awesome and amazing. Don’t you forget it. I’ll talk to you again real soon. Bye for now.

Speaker (24:56):
This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast including Bri Inger, Betty Rocker Inc. And the producers disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein before starting a new exercise, fitness, or health protocol. Or if you think you have a medical problem, always consult a licensed physician.