A Quickstart Guide to Women’s Hormones (part 1)

Betty Rocker (00:15):
What’s up, rock stars. Welcome back. I am so glad you’re here today because one of the topics I get asked about so frequently is hormone balance. Now, I’m no hormone expert and as you know, I’m not a doctor, but I have had my share of real hormone imbalances throughout my life and I’ve done a ton of research so I could understand what was going on in my own body. I’ve worked with amazing practitioners and I wanted to put together this little introduction to some of the key hormone players so you can start to just be more familiar with their names, their functions and symptoms when they’re not in balance. Because, you know, knowing how stuff works just makes us so much more empowered to seek care when we need it and arms us with knowledge that can add years to our life and really life to our years, right?

(01:04)
Your hormones are like your own personal symphony orchestra that’s playing inside your body 24/7. It’s helping you totally rock at life. When your symphony is playing together in harmony, you feel amazing When it’s optimized at all the right levels at the right time, it’s kind of like this beautiful song being played to your cells and your organs that just keeps you feeling good and helps you have resilience to all the things life throws your way. And when you add in a healthy lifestyle practice, like all four pillars of health, you can really create a totally peak state in your body. And your cells and organs are always listening to that symphony of hormones. But when, say like your bass player decides to take an extended vacation or your lead guitarist gets really loud and overpowers the rest of the band, things start to go haywire.

(01:50)
Have you ever tried to work yourself? When there is a really loud disruptive noise happening in the background, it’s really hard to focus and it’s certainly hard to hear other people around you and to work in harmony with them as easily with lots of disruption. So you can kind of imagine how you know the hormones are actually making your body respond when they’re not able to play in harmony. And suddenly all four pillars of health don’t seem to be having the same effect as they were before when this symphony gets out of key. And if you don’t know about the symphony orchestra inside your body that runs the whole show, it’s easy to think you are the one doing something wrong or that you know your workout plan isn’t working or that you’re eating wrong. And you know, chances are you’re doing more things right than you realize.

(02:32)
If you have awareness of this stuff, if you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re following a lot of the things that I teach and what you may need is just someone like a doctor who can take a look inside and help make some adjustments to help rebalance your levels and bring everything back into harmony. I do know that feeling though, of just wondering why the heck my body isn’t responding. Just to give you some background on my hormone history, when I was 14, I got on birth control. I was just a couple years past puberty and I remember over the 14 years I was actually on the pill, there were so many times I felt totally outta control. I would have emotional highs and lows that would make me feel insane, almost like my emotions were heightened or just like really turned up and this like crept up over time.

(03:18)
I didn’t realize that that was what was going on. But you know, the pill works by altering our natural hormone cycles and it stops ovulation so that there’s no egg to be fertilized, which I mean really it has a true benefit by putting us in control of our reproductive decisions, but it’s also kind of a big deal and how much it alters your natural hormone cycle. And I wasn’t aware of how much this was affecting me. You know, while I was on the pill, I, I would struggle, I struggled a lot with my weight. I felt bloated a lot. I, you know, ended up dieting desperately just to try to mitigate some of this. And I would work out way too much. And this was all compounded by some unhealthy lifestyle behaviors as well, like drinking a lot of alcohol, abusing reparation drugs. I was even a smoker off and on for 10 years.

(04:02)
And by the time I was 28, I had really called it quits with all the extracurricular activities, including the smoking. But I was also really ready to call it quits with the pill as I had started to understand the connection between my uncontrollable mood swings and taking a hormone altering pill for really what accounted for half of my life at that point. So when I got off the pill, I started having strange bleeding and discovered that a polyp, which is like a, a cellular growth had developed in my uterus that had to be surgically removed. My incredible doctor at the time told me, you know, your hormones just kind of went crazy when you got off the pill. You were trying to reestablish normalcy in your system, but it was like ripping a bandaid off too fast. Things just went haywire. So irregular hormones can create abnormal conditions inside your body that you can’t see.

(04:51)
And symptoms of those irregularities aren’t always easy to pinpoint, which is part of why I wanted to have this conversation with you today. So in my journey a few years, well a few years later, in my early thirties, I suffered another kind of hormone imbalance, the extreme effects of unmitigated stress, which manifested as adrenal fatigue. I had no energy, no libido, and also I couldn’t sleep. And it was very fortunate that I was able to treat all of this by working with a naturopathic md, balancing my hormone levels with custom supplements and really taking personal responsibility for my mental health for the first time and my less than optimal, hard and fast lifestyle. And this was also the point in my life when I started to really call in the four pillars of health as my baseline, which as you may already know, are sleep, nutrition, stress management, and exercise.

(05:43)
And I, I started to really understand the integration between my actions and the impact that they had on my inner world of cells, hormones and my state of overall health, right? And you just, you never know when you’ll be so glad to be able to call on the reserves that these pillars of help will give you over time, just like your muscle memory helps you come back strong after an injury or just like a strong core will protect your spine, your baseline of healthy lifestyle habits can help you get back on track even if you go off the rails. Fast forward to a decade later, in my early forties, I was starting to notice some minor hair loss, fatigue, fat that wouldn’t go away. And I was insidiously losing muscle. I was following, you know, my proven four pillars of health. But my best efforts were somehow being undermined by the shifting hormone levels of perimenopause, which are those tricky years leading up to menopause where your hormones start to fluctuate as your body begins to slowly stop ovulating.

(06:44)
And sure enough, when I got blood tests done, my testosterone was low, my thyroid was fluctuating, my estrogen levels were high. It wasn’t just one thing, right? And my amazing functional medicine doctor really helped me get my hormone levels back in line with some customized supplementation and other medication. And I’ll continue to monitor myself now moving forward to stay on top of these changes. But so many women don’t even hear about perimenopause. So they don’t know how to deal with it when it, when it happens. I certainly had no idea it even existed until I was like right in the middle of it. You know, I thought menopause was so far away. How could, how could the symptoms I was experiencing having have anything to do with that, right? And, and part of why I wanted to share this with you is because knowing those symptoms you’re experiencing like constant fatigue, maybe it’s sagging skin, belly fat that won’t budge and just the lack of drive to push as hard in your workouts could be more about your hormones than it is about you know, what you’re doing or not doing with your workouts and your nutrition.

(07:45)
You always wanna take a look at that stuff first. But then you also wanna take a look inside and it can be a great wake up call to just get some help and not chalk it all up to just aging or falling into that trap that you need to eat less or work out more.

(08:08)
We talked about that symphony that the hormones are as a collective individually. Hormones are these chemical messengers that travel through the body coordinating all these complex processes like growth, metabolism, fertility, all these really important essential things that we just forget and take for granted every day. And they get secreted directly into your blood by the glands that produce them glands. For example, like ovaries, testes in men, the thyroid, it’s a very important gland. Um, the adrenals, the pancreas to name just a few. Those are some of what make up your endocrine system. And while all your cells are exposed to the hormones that circulate in your bloodstream, not all the cells react to all the hormones. Only a target cells, which are the cells that have receptors for that hormone will respond to that hormone signal. So that’s how the body sort of keeps everything running correctly.

(09:06)
Everybody has a receptor for specific hormones and when the specific hormone binds to its specific receptor, it causes a response inside the cell. For instance, insulin is the hormone that helps glucose get into cells to fuel them with energy and helps keep the blood sugar stable. Without insulin, glucose wouldn’t be able to travel into the cell. If a hormone is a key, the receptor is like the lock. The key only fits cell doors that have locks that match them, if that makes sense. So I know you’ve heard of estrogen, it’s actually made up of three hormones, Arad, estro, and estriol. And for simplicity, we’ll just talk about estrogen as a group. But it’s good to know this because they can actually show up differently throughout your life. And you may talk to your doctor about the differences between them at some point. Now estrogen is primarily made in our ovaries, but it’s also made in the body fat and other parts of our body as well.

(10:02)
There are over 300 different body tissues that have estrogen receptors. Meaning estrogen can affect a wide range of tissues and organs, including your brain, your bones, your skin, and your liver. It makes your cells grow. It works with its sister hormone progesterone to nourish and support the growth and regeneration of our female reproductive tissues, like the breasts, ovaries, and uterus, so that the body will create eggs. Now when it comes to our female hormone cycle, estrogen and progesterone are like our two most important hormones. And the balance between them is pretty crucial in maintaining our equilibrium. Without the balance between these two, we get mood swings, we can experience weight gain and there are other more serious symptoms as well. When estrogen is low, sometimes we crave carbs. Estrogen levels are naturally at their lowest just before our period. This is why cravings for chocolate are often associated with PMS.

(11:00)
And hey, lemme just say nothing wrong with some dark chocolate, great source of magnesium only great for your brain. Make sure it’s just low in sugar, right? So estrogen is one of the hormones responsible for serotonin production, which makes us feel good. But when we overly consume sweets or sugar, our blood sugar spikes elevating insulin, which we talked about a minute ago, creating this rollercoaster that triggers fat storage and crazy energy mood swings during menopause and leading up to it, estrogen levels may fluctuate becoming high or low, but it generally declines during and after menopause. And this low estrogen is what causes hot flashes and causes your body to reserve energy more, which means you won’t have as high an energy output or burn as much fat. And during menopause, we’re a lot more prone to store fat around our stomach. So menopause in the time leading to it too, which I mentioned before, perimenopause is, is just a great time to be working with your doctor to monitor and potentially treat these imbalances and help you go through this very important transition as a woman just feeling your best.

(12:12)
Now on the flip side of this, excess levels of estrogen can be super toxic to our bodies, leaving us susceptible to weight gain, water retention, bloating, heightened PMS, mood swings, fibroids, endometriosis, fibrocystic breasts, and breast cancer. So you get weight gain and body fat storage with high estrogen and with low estrogen. So it’s just like this double-edged sword. It needs to be balanced. Um, speaking of balance, when estrogen is high, progesterone is usually low throughout menstruation and throughout our lifecycle. These two do this choreographed, danced, and they’re deeply interconnected. And how you feel, think of how your bicep and tricep work on your shoulder and how they balance each other out with opposing actions. That’s kind of the way that estrogen and progesterone support each other in your body. And progesterone just really helps to regulate and protect our reproductive system and menstrual cycle with estrogen throughout our fertile years.

(13:05)
It’s primarily made in the ovaries, but small amounts of it are also made in the adrenals where it serves as a precursor to other hormones like cortisol. So everything is like really interconnected and it’s not simple, right? So when someone says, oh, your hormones may be out of balance, it could be any number of things interconnecting with each other and that symphony orchestra. So it’s really great to have someone to support you in this. Progesterone also plays a role in your blood sugar levels. It has calming benefits and it helps protect the health of our breasts, our brain, and our bones. It’s higher in the second half of our menstrual cycle. And this is important because progesterone is produced at ovulation. When the follicle ruptures to release an egg, progesterone is then released for the rest of the cycle. So when we don’t ovulate, our bodies don’t produce enough progesterone to keep estrogen balanced, which can set us up for estrogen dominance.

(13:58)
So unless you’re pregnant, of course progesterone is elevated during pregnancy and it’s really important for healthy pregnancy. And of course you’re not ovulating then because the egg has already been fertilized. We don’t ovulate for several other reasons too. One being the natural result of aging ovaries, meaning menopause. Once you stop ovulating, your progesterone levels are gonna drop significantly. Um, and during perimenopause, the time leading up to menopause, your drop in progesterone may cause heightened levels of estrogen. Um, there may be like this fluctuation happening and it can be hard to sort of know what’s going on. You may be experiencing a wide range of symptoms. You also won’t ovulate if you’re on the pill because of course ovulation is stopped to help you not get pregnant. The pill causes estrogen levels to drop from 40 to 60% and it also makes progesterone levels drop, causing a host of uncomfortable symptoms, many of which I described experiencing earlier, like painful PMS, horrible mood swings, um, water retention, weight gain, painful periods.

(14:58)
Um, there’s also impaired thyroid function and an increased risk for endometriosis, fibroids, fibrotic breasts as well as breast and uterine cancer. Very scary stuff. There’s also lifestyle factors that we may not be paying attention to that can negatively impact our hormone levels, like extreme stress or even chronic low grade stress, a lack of exercise or a tendency to over exercise a poor diet that doesn’t support your particular needs. And of course the cascading effects from lack of sleep that cause a lot of poor lifestyle habits because we feel so darn tired. Clearly our levels of estrogen and progesterone are extremely important to keep us regulated, but we also have some other key players which we’ll talk about right after this quick break.

(15:53)
Now let’s talk about testosterone, which is commonly associated with the development of male characteristics. It’s also present in women and it has many essential jobs that are just crucial for our health, including maintaining our libido and sexual function. It’s super important for the growth and renewal of our bones and other body tissues, including muscle mass. So it helps us get more from our workouts when it’s in balance. When mine was low, I could not put on muscle no matter how good my workouts were. And we women absolutely need certain levels of testosterone to function at our peak. So you know, one thing to watch out for actually is over consumption of sugar as it’s been shown to negatively affect our testosterone levels. Alcohol consumption also can affect your testosterone levels. So when we have low testosterone, we may feel more passive, less inclined to exercise and move, which can lead to more fat storage, lower our self-esteem.

(16:48)
We have less confidence. We can have increased varicose veins and cellulite and, and you know, too much estrogen can also be problematic. So sometimes this imbalance is caused by declining estrogen and progesterone production later in life. And because all three of these hormones, they impact each other greatly. They’re all part of the symphony orchestra. And I mentioned that testosterone is made in our ovaries, but it’s also made in our adrenal glands where D-H-E-A-A precursor hormone is turned into testosterone. And I wanna talk for a minute about DHEA because it’s actually the most plentiful hormone in our bodies. We produce it like crazy when we’re young and it peaks between ages 23 to 30 and then it begins to drop off. Stress rapidly accelerates its decline because it taxes our reserves. I mentioned earlier that my hard and fast lifestyle just burned out my adrenals and that was in large part attributed to my cortisol levels constantly spiking.

(17:41)
Of course my adrenal burnout taxed my testosterone production, which created compounding issues like unwanted body fat storage and lowered libido. So it’s all connected. DATA really helps support our mood, our sexual desires, our bone density, and a healthy body weight. It affects the brain, our immune system, our reproductive organs, our muscles and our other body tissues, including playing a role in helping to maintain the collagen levels in your skin. So both testosterone and DHEA decrease in women at menopause and of course during perimenopause as well. And when those levels of testosterone and DHEA are low, you could experience depression, have a decrease in bone density and lean muscle mass. It could cause a drop in your metabolism and a spike in your body fat again with the body fat, right? The biggest complaint I hear about. And it’s just so impacted by the symphony orchestra of our hormones and how that symphony is really playing together, how optimal it is.

(18:42)
Now, we talked a second ago about adrenaline, which is produced by your adrenal glands, is kind of like the conductor of the whole symphony of hormones and the glands that produce adrenaline, the adrenal glands. They also produce cortisol, which we’ll talk about in just a second. Now, the adrenal glands have a really high demand for B vitamins and these are commonly depleted during stressful times as a result of just being overworked, right? So it can be super beneficial to provide B vitamins in supplemental form during periods of acute or chronic stress just to facilitate replenishing your body, um, and make sure it has an adequate supply to draw from. One of the reasons I made B vitamins a key component of SenCom, which is my stress reducing supplement, was actually to help this process and help support the adrenals. A side note about B vitamins, they also can really help you in maintaining your healthy blood sugar levels.

(19:31)
Um, that irritability, emotionally charged state or feeling of panic that some of us experienced during stressful situations may actually be the result of unrecognized acute hypoglycemia, which is low blood sugar in some situations. Really interesting stuff. So adrenaline is like that high range of the RPMs on an engine. It pushes us forward in a perfect scenario. We call in it when we need it, push, and then we would return to our normal engine idling speed. But of course, life isn’t perfect and as stress levels rise and don’t go down, we’re often calling on our adrenals. So we can be in a high energy state. And we don’t always realize when we’re stressed either, ’cause we can have that chronic low grade stress. Maybe you’ve seen people who are just always on or constantly running around, or there’s a person who’s like an adrenaline junkie like I used to be.

(20:21)
Just taxing the adrenals over and over can just be super detrimental to your energy levels and your body can’t keep up at. And at some point, you know it’s heading for a crash. I mentioned before that cortisol is also made in the adrenal glands and this is the hormone that really manages our stress coping 24 hours a day. But that’s not all it does. It’s also what’s behind our dynamism. It has an impact on our mood control, our work capacity, our stress resistance, and the stimulation of our immune defenses, which is super important. It also has anti-pain action. It has this natural cycle in the body that’s very much influenced by our circadian rhythm. It should be at the highest in the morning when we need that get up and go energy. And it should steadily decrease to its lowest point at night when we need to sleep.

(21:07)
But again, the demands of our modern lifestyles and the way we’re so constantly exposed to light stimulation and stressful events can just completely disrupt this natural rhythm, making it harder to fall asleep, harder to stay asleep, and we end up waking up feeling groggy and and crappy and it, it just can really interfere with our ability to focus and handle our daily life. So when a stressor is present, you quickly release cortisol, which causes blood sugar to rise, to give you energy to deal with a stressful event. And when cortisol is elevated for a period of time, fat storage results and you can even be more susceptible to developing insulin resistance, which we’ll talk about more in our next episode about hormones. When your cortisol is elevated for too long, it can steal from progesterone reserves. So too much stress means too much cortisol, which can mean lowered levels of progesterone.

(21:58)
Low levels of progesterone takes us back to what we talked about at the beginning with the opposing actions of estrogen and progesterone, setting you up for maybe estrogen dominance. Stress raises your blood pressure and uses up your energy reserves without benefit to you. This is why stressing the small stuff is just a waste of your precious reserves and really interferes with your body’s ability to function optimally. And it’s why stress management is such an important pillar in our four pillars of health. So when cortisol is imbalanced, we tend to feel that sort of tired but wired feeling at the same time. That’s why you’re really tired, but you just can’t go to sleep. So we’re also more prone to getting sick. And if we get sick, it takes longer to get better. And if you’re a chronic over exerciser like I used to be, not being able to get deep restorative sleep on top of over training means you’re setting yourself up to be way more injury prone in your workouts and your immune system is compromised.

(22:52)
So you won’t see the same levels of results from your workouts or your healthy eating efforts and the stuff can really just undermine all of your hard work. So it’s really important to pay attention to and be mindful of your four pillars of health, right? And, and, and being mindful of your stress management pillar can really help mitigate some of those fluctuations of your cortisol. So really don’t give up on your four pillars of health. I do hear a lot of women at different stages of life feeling super discouraged by their weight gain and their low energy and feeling like maybe all their efforts with exercise and nutrition are just a waste. And I want you to know that they absolutely are not a waste. You may just need a little support to get your hormones back in line so all your good healthy lifestyle practices can really pay off.

(23:37)
Plus, it may be something other than your hormones too, and your doctor is really the best person to talk to. If you’re feeling off, if you’re in the middle of just sorting all this stuff out, don’t stop taking care of yourself. You know, your four pillars will provide you with a strong foundation that will make you way more acceptable to treatment, provide you with more resilience, and will help you come back stronger. Don’t fall into that trap of eating less and working out more. This is not the answer when you’re not seeing results. In fact, that can sometimes make things worse. Having the data from your blood work, your saliva tests and other types of testing can really help pull back the curtain on what’s going on and help you get the customized treatment you deserve so you can get yourself feeling your best again.

(24:20)
And if you suspect you may be dealing with hormone imbalances, you should reach out to your doctor. Personally I I like to work with a functional medicine doctor, an integrative medicine practitioner, a naturopathic MD woman’s hormone specialist when it comes to this kind of complex inner workings of the body. But you have a lot of options and data is really the key. So you wanna work with someone who knows your health history. That’s always the best way to go. There are places you can get affordable lab testing done independently, like your lab work. I like them. I’ve worked with them before. Um, I’ve even got a link for them. It’s your lab work.com, the Betty Rocker. So you can see some of the kits I’ve used and find helpful. But if you have a doctor to work with directly, that’s always the best option. And I know that this has really just barely scratched the surface of some of the key players of our symphony orchestra of hormones.

(25:07)
And in part two of this episode, I’ll be talking to you more about your thyroid, about insulin, about ghrelin and leptin, all key players in your metabolism, your blood sugar regulation and energy levels that have a lot to do with fat storage too. So be sure to tune in for that. As always, rockstar, I just wanna thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. I hope you got a lot of good ideas today. I hope that you got some questions answered that you may have had and that you follow up with me with any additional questions or thoughts about this on the show notes page for this episode, which you can always find over on the betty rocker.com/podcast. And thank you so much for your incredible reviews on iTunes and on all of your podcast players. It’s really meaningful to me and it really does help other people find the podcast.

(25:55)
So if you haven’t had a chance to leave a review yet for the podcast wanted, don’t you do that today, really make my day. And thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much for being someone who cares about their health and is looking for answers. I certainly don’t have all the answers as you know, um, but I am learning along with you and I look forward to our next episode in this series, as well as some of the upcoming episodes with women’s hormone experts who I will be interviewing and delving more deeply into these topics as we complete this really awesome hormone series to help support all of us as we go through life. As always, rockstar, I’m Betty Rocker, and you are so awesome and amazing. I look forward to talking to you again in our next episode. Have a great rest of your day, wherever this finds you. Bye for now.

Speaker (26:46):
This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast including Bri Argetsinger, 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.