How Alcohol Wrecks Your Hormones (and What to Do About It) with Silene Brown, FNP

Ever wonder how alcohol is really impacting your hormones, weight gain, energy, and mood? We’re breaking it all down. From how alcohol raises cortisol and wrecks your sleep to why it makes your face puffy, your periods heavier, and your energy crash.

Silene Brown, FNP, shares why alcohol is so hard on your liver and hormones, especially during perimenopause and menopause. We’re talking estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and why alcohol keeps you stuck feeling tired, inflamed, and moody, even if you’re working out and eating clean.

We also dig into how alcohol messes with your sex hormones and your libido, what’s really happening with your stress hormones, and why quitting (or even cutting back) can change your life, your face, your body, and your brain.

Plus, we chat about parasites, detoxing, and what it really means when you’re wide awake at 3 am.

This conversation is fall of the stuff no one’s talking about when it comes to alcohol and hormones.

Connect with Silene on Instagram @refresh.beauty.and.wellness

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Transcript

 Alcohol pretty much disrupts every hormone in our body, including the sex hormones and the other hormones. It's water soluble and fat soluble. So it can go in our brain, so , alcohol can transport across our blood brain barrier because  it's lipid or fat soluble.

they used to think that if we lost brain cells, that they wouldn't grow back. But guess what? It can.

Alcohol, is really hard on our liver. You guys all know that, right? Cause that's probably one of the most known organs that it affects is the liver. But our liver is so big in detoxification and our hormones have to be detoxified.

 If we are drinking alcohol, often our body has to take a break from detoxifying our hormones  and then  our hormones build up in our body and estrogen is the big one. So it makes our estrogen higher. So we can have more mood swings when we're drinking, we have heavier periods, more PMS, all of that type of thing. 

 ​

 Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast I feel like this is Like an asked for episode it was like most demanded episode and I Conned my friend Silene  and you're actually my nurse practitioner, but I conned you into coming on this podcast I held you down at the gym and I was like you have to do it with me. 

Yeah, i'm super excited  i'm not the most knowledgeable in the alcohol part, but I can definitely help with the hormone. So i'm super excited I learned a lot and i'm looking forward to it. Yeah, so I wanted to come on because Essentially you're my hormone specialist. I don't know. Is that what I would call it?

Like I see you for my hormones and things. Yeah. Yeah. And I've had a ton of people ask me questions about like alcohol and hormones and they're actually like super, super related. So I thought like, I would love to bring you on. I would love to dive into this topic. And so let's do it. So welcome to the show or welcome back.

Thank you.  Thank you. I'm excited to be here today. I know your last episode is one of my top fives.  Is it  top five most exciting episodes?  Because guess what you guys hormones is huge. So hormones by themselves or hormones and alcohol and that's what we're gonna get into today Yeah, it really is, you know a big deal and the thing that i've noticed the most is when I cut alcohol how much? 

Like it completely changed my life. And I know not everyone needs to like cut it completely, but I think you definitely have to look at your alcohol use, especially if you're struggling with the things that I was struggling with, like weight gain, you know, just a lot of those like hormone symptoms, fatigue.

I was so inflamed. I look back and like, my face is a different shape.  I know, you know what? It's crazy. You look so thin in your face and it's just those stress hormones that we're going to talk about from the alcohol, partly, partially. so I like one of my big things with as being an artist practitioner is not giving people something that's too difficult that you can't manage it in our already stressful lives.

So like Samantha was saying, it may not be, we cut alcohol out all the way, but just. Reflecting on what you've got going on with your alcohol intake. If it could be affecting your hormones and we'll get into it, we'll get into it more and how it affects your hormones. Yeah. I know for me, the reason why I had to cut alcohol completely was because, if you look up alcoholic, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's all me.

But like, there's no way you could tell, like, if you told me you're like, Hey, You could have  one drink on the weekend or two or three drinks on the weekend even I would that would be that was insanity to me like I would completely lose my mind.  You just feel like you couldn't do that. It would be what not one drink.

Okay. Okay, Samantha, I can relate to you with as far as that because I am a sugar addict. Like I can't have sugar.  So like when I do, I've done something like 75 hard, I'm sure you guys out there have heard of it. I do so much better when I don't have any because when I add sugar back in, I don't just have one brownie, I have five brownies.

Or, and then I don't just have it one day, I have it every day after that.  I, I can kind of relate. A little different, but. Yeah, no, I think we all have our vices. Yeah. Yep. Okay. So let's dive into your hormones here. So many women don't realize how alcohol impacts their hormones. So you have a really cool story about running a half marathon.

I got to hear about this.  Okay. So I don't know if this completely relates to alcohol, but this is like, what relates to my, why I'm interested in health and wellness. All of you guys that listen to Samantha's podcast know that she runs. I used to run. It's been a long time. But,  I was in my 20s and I don't know if you guys, I don't know how many are from Utah, but, in Northern Utah, there's a half marathon called Hobble Creek.

It's one of the big ones. And I had a life changing moment when I was at that half marathon. So I was  I did it for fun, ran for fun. I wasn't like a competitive runner, 10, 10, 11 minute mile. And at the end of the marathon, there was a gentleman, he was a 74 year old. He was like one of the fittest humans you've ever seen.

And,  he just stood out in my mind. He w he had one and a half half in his age group. So 74 looks like he's 34 if you didn't see his gray hair. And I just thought in that moment, it burned into my mind that. I want to be that when I'm older. That's what I want to be when I grow up.  Because at the time I was into health, but I just thought, I don't want, I mean, I'd done nursing.

We're taking care of, I've done hospice and a home health where we're taking care of really sick people. We're taking care of people. I worked that, so. Did you? Yeah, I was a CNA for 10 years and I did that private home health and hospice. That was crazy. Okay, so who do we take care of in that?  Well, dying people. 

Dying people, so that's different. But we'll say like in home health.  We're not taking care of like the fit of the fit, right? No, absolutely not. We are ta I mean, all I would see is just these sick people, and it makes you scared to get old when you see that all the time. And so I just thought,  this is what I want to be like when I'm older.

I want to be like this gentleman who's running, what, an  hour and, I don't know, he's running a Seven minute mile is 74 years old. So  this is what started my health journey down the health road.  And I just want you guys to think about  you listeners. What is your goal for when you're older? And that's how alcohol and hormones and everything that Samantha talks about, she talks about a lot of wellness things and how to take care of ourselves is what do you want and what resonates with you?

What's something that you need to work on, but get that vision in your mind. I mean, I, I can still see that gentleman's. Face burned into my mind. I wish I knew what his name was. No, he's still alive. You've inspired me my entire life. You would have betted a speed roll. Yeah, I know. No, he's probably still alive.

He's probably running marathons up there. Probably, probably, probably like one of those like old weightlifters. Like I'd see those all the time.  Okay. So this is one thing that I've been reflecting on a lot lately. Cause I just turned 40 like a couple of days ago and I think I'm happy 40.  I've been really excited to turn 40 and then like today I've been having one of these moments where I'm like, what have I done with my entire life? 

Like,  and people are like, you're only 40. And I'm like, no, no, my entire life, what have I been doing? But I really do think about like all the impacts that my heavy, heavy drinking had on me up until 40.  Do you know,  does it reverse, are we screwed? What are your thoughts?  Oh, I think you can reverse it.

I mean, and you're only 40. So if you were 70 years old reversing it, you'd still see benefits if you quit drinking at age 70, but not near the benefits that you'd see stopping drinking at age 40. So yes, I, our bodies are amazing. And the younger that you are, when you. So if you want to take health into your own hands, you can, you can reverse a lot of those changes.

Yeah. So I'm in perimenopause. Cause you've proved that we have the labs. I have, yeah, going on. , but do you think that it impacts women more in perimenopause and what's the difference between perimenopause and menopausal?  Okay. So perimenopause is just when your hormones are changing. Usually the first thing that happens in perimenopause  is your progesterone gets lower and also your testosterone.

And you just start having the symptoms. You can start having the mild, mild hot flashes, and you're not sleeping as well. You're a little bit moodier. That's pretty normal. But menopause, you actually, alcohol affects you a lot more in menopause. Menopause is,  technical definition is, you have not had a cycle for 12 months.

But  please do not wait to get help till you have not had your period for 12 months because once you've had your haven't had your period for 12 months, I mean, your estrogen is pretty much fallen off of the map at that point.   Yeah, so I guess like what advice do you give to people when they come to you and they're like, I'm not feeling good.

My hormones aren't working. Well, how about we do this?  Okay, let's go down to basics because sometimes I get confused podcasts  and I'm like, what is a hormone?  Okay. You guys, all hormone is. And let's differentiate really quick too. So there's our, our body has thousands, maybe, maybe more than thousands of hormones.

 So we've got sex hormones, which are like the estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, there's more than just that, but they give us our sexual characteristics. So that's more what we think of when we're talking about hormones in the, in the female space, but other hormones that we think about our thyroid hormone, insulin.

So hormones are just little messengers. They just tell our body what to do. So it's a, it's Pretty simple, but they tell, like, um, insulin tells glucose what to do. Our estrogen tells our ovaries what to do along with  other organs in our body. So hormones are just a little messenger.  Okay, so what are some of like the key hormones?

Because I know that alcohol disrupts key hormones, correct?  Alcohol pretty much disrupts every hormone in our body, including the sex hormones and the other hormones. Did you know that alcohol is fat soluble and water soluble?  No, that's kind of a weird. Okay. So when in our body, our cells have a fat layer in them. 

And so a lot of water soluble substances can't get across the cell membrane because there's fat around the outside, but alcohol can penetrate.  It's water soluble and fat soluble. So it can go in our brain, so like, alcohol can transport across our blood brain barrier because it's, um, it's lipid or fat soluble.

So isn't that crazy? Isn't that a crazy thing to think about? Yeah, it actually freaks me out when I, Well, so I got like this weird wave of clarity one day and like, I just like give it up to God. I was like, I don't know what that was. So I started like diving into the internet. Um, and what actually happened is your brain starts to grow back.

So like your neurons and stuff, and especially your prefrontal cortex, they start to grow back. And so all of a sudden you have all this clarity. And you can remember things. And I was like, Oh my God, it was wild. Like, I just didn't realize though, that I was walking around  like hazy.  Okay. So what Samantha is talking about is that front part of our brain and alcohol affects that probably the most part in our brain.

And isn't that cool in the last, I don't know, 10 years, they figured out, they used to think that if we lost brain  cells, that they wouldn't grow back. But guess what? It can. Yeah. It grows back. It's wild. It starts to regrow within like 30 days.  30 days. Okay. I didn't know that. That's amazing. Yeah.

Well, according to the internet, because I did like, I was like, what just happened to me? Because it felt like really freaky. And I just kept telling people, I was like, okay, this sounds crazy, but I feel like the hand of God, like wiped away my brain and suddenly I can make decisions faster.  Yay. Okay. So doesn't that give you guys hope?

 Even if it's something you're struggling with, if you're struggling with alcohol or something else that if you change your lifestyle right now, you can fix that. It gives me hope.  Yeah, because alcohol really is poison. So, okay, you mentioned sex hormones though. So let me ask you this. So, well, I know my husband has came, comes and sees you too.

So I know you've been but that has been like actually one of the hardest things for me to move past. And I think it's more of a psychological thing is like, you know, as you use alcohol, it's a kind of like I don't want to turn you on, but I almost feel like alcohol is doing the opposite because it's not good for our sex hormones.

Correct? Correct. Okay.  Let's talk about that a little bit. So we're going to just talk about, start with mostly female hormones. Men and women have the same hormones. It's just a different ratios, but I'm assuming most of your viewers are women.  Yeah. I think I have a good mix. Oh, okay. Okay. So we'll just talk about talk about it all.

So estrogen is our biggest hormone that we have,  everybody knows that it's what gives us our curvy hips. It's what gives us  kind of our energy. It's what gives us our breasts and helps us with our menstrual cycles, all of that. But estrogen in too high of quantities that can make us really moody.

It can make us our periods really heavy, our cycles. So how does alcohol affect that? Yeah.  Alcohol, is really hard on our liver. You guys all know that, right? Cause that's probably one of the most known organs that it affects is the liver. But our liver is so big in detoxification and our hormones have to be detoxified.

So we can't, if we are drinking alcohol, often our body has to take a break from detoxifying our hormones  and it. Then it, our hormones build up in our body and estrogen is the big one. So it makes our estrogen higher. So we can have more mood swings when we're drinking, we have heavier periods, more PMS,  all of that type of thing. 

And you've got, so anyway, so that's our first one.  Our second hormone is progesterone and progesterone  is our calming hormone and our sleeping hormone and alcohol, gives our body stress and which lowers progesterone. And then same with testosterone. It lowers our testosterone due to stress because if our body is trying to take care of this out, so with testosterone and progesterone Because we have the stress from alcohol that those hormones are lowered So what does that mean if we don't have testosterone our libido is going to suffer Our muscle mass is going to suffer Some of our energy some of our ability to build muscle and then with progesterone Our sleep is going to be worse and our cycles are going to be heavier because that's the balancer. 

So that's kind of  That kind of sums it up for the sex hormones and what it does to us. Yeah. That's kind of interesting to think about really. What are your thoughts on like, okay, so I feel like detoxing right now is like almost like trendy. I'm going to air quote it. Yeah. I know. Wait, hold on.

You just did a big one, didn't you? Oh, I just, okay. I just did. Have you guys, people in you, in  any of the United States, you can look this up, but look up sanctuary. I think it's sanctuary. It's sanctuary  wellness. Yeah. Sanctuary Wellness. Okay, you guys, this place has the most crazy detox. So it's a parasite and heavy metal detox.

It is  10 days, really 16 days, but 10 days of straight, you're eating a fruit diet, organic fruit diet. You're drinking these certain drinks. And yeah, I just got done doing that, about a week and a half ago. It was the, one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life was the food. The rest of it was, yes, I was starving. 

You know what's funny? I was like, I didn't see you at the gym. And I think I texted you. I was like, I haven't seen you at the gym. And you're like, Oh, I'm on this detox.  Not that stocker I was like, I haven't seen you.  You know what? I did not work out for three weeks. And two of it was because I, was doing that detox.

And then I had a hormone conference, but the detox, they tell you to do really light, like yoga walking, but you cannot go to the gym and lift heavy because your body is trying to get rid of. Parasites and the heavy metals and all the chemicals that we have in our environment. So yeah, I did a podcast with Trish and Laci.

Well, Trish works at Sanctuary Wellness.  But we called it booty worms. Okay. So did you pass any booty worms? Did you pass any?  Yes. Yes. Okay. Not as many as I was hoping,  but I went in with Trish. I actually went to the sanctuary and did an enema on their new enema beds. And she kind of helped me see, but you guys, I don't know if you don't want to listen, mute it for a second or fast forward, but,  I went in a bucket so I could see because I want to, I'm like, if I'm going to do this for 10 days, I want to see what's going on.

I didn't find anything crazy. I mean, a lot of,   I wouldn't, I don't know, a lot of casings, I guess, is what she called it. Trish called it maybe K housings for the parasite. Yeah, they're like long, right? Like long and kind of green. Yeah, so a lot of the housings and then she did help me see some worms and then some of the liver stones and gallbladder stones, a couple of those, but nothing, nothing too crazy.

So, I won't get into too much detail, but if you guys need to find out, look into this. it's insane. Well, the other day she's like, hey, I know you are into this stuff. She's all, you want to see a really gross photo? And I was like, I do. And it was like actually a worm that had come out of this girl's eye.

Like, out of her tear duct. What? What?  Wow. Yeah. During, during the cleanse? Uh huh. Yeah.  Okay. I think I would freak out though if I pulled, because I mean, it's like, it's not like microscopic. It's like significant, you know?  Wow. Okay. You got to send me that picture. Yeah.  We like all those weird things. I know, I'm like, you gotta ask her for it.

So, I recently, actually was over, well, I, I did a live blood analysis with Trish. I'm like, you guys, we need to connect to everyone with Trish apparently. But Trish actually connected me with you, so. Yeah, yeah. So tell everybody who Trish is. Tell, tell people who Trish is. Maybe you've done, maybe she's been on your podcast.

Yeah, she has. So we did a podcast and we called it Booty Worms. Oh. Where she talks like in depth about it, if you guys want to go back and listen to it. It's pretty interesting. Okay. She's a really good friend of mine. I just ran the rock and roll 10 K in Vegas. And did you see her and her partner? Lacey were there with signs.

Like they were waving. It was so cute. They were like, run, Sam, run. I was like, Oh my gosh, it was so cute. So they're also good friends of mine, but I just went and did this live blood analysis and in the live blood analysis, you could see like little tiny, I was like, it almost looked like a couple of little butterflies, you know, in between my blood cells and I was like, Oh, what are those?

And they're like, Oh, there's just like parasites, but that's like a total healthy, like thing to have, you know, but they were just like little tiny, like microscopic little, like,  like little, they almost look like squigglies, huh? Going through the blood. Yeah. Yeah, it was really crazy. But the one thing I found out on that as well is she goes, Oh, you have a lot of like liver, like damage, liver and kidney damage.

And you could see it was just like scratches in my blood. It was really interesting.  I want to see that. Yeah, I have it on my Instagram, but I was like, Oh, I'm nine months sober, you know? And she's like, Oh, well this will probably eventually, this will all go away and it'll just be clear. Like it's supposed to be. 

Wow. It'll be so fun to see it in another year. I know it would be really fun to see it like a year ago, you know? I'm like, I wonder what this looked like a year ago. Oh, a lot worse.  Yeah. Right? Yes. Okay. So anyways, I was like, detox, I was like, I know they're like a fad right now, but it's probably a good fad.

Do you feel like, how do you feel coming out of it?  Okay. I felt so amazing. In it most days, a couple of days I forgot to take aminos and I was tired, but I slept so deep and good while I was doing a cleanse. And now my sleep is struggling a little bit. So I got to figure that out. I'm like, am I eating too close to bedtime?

Anyway, lots of things for our hormones, but detoxification. So let's talk a little bit about it. Can you, do you feel like you can detox and you can reverse, like what is detox good for us? Like, does it help our hormones? Does it help our liver? All those things.  I believe it does. I mean, our body's always detoxifying 24, 7,  365 days a year.

Our liver is detoxifying. Our skin is a detoxifier. That's, you know, sweating through our skin. We urinate every day, so our kidneys are detoxifying, but these little bit deeper detoxification can just help lighten the burden on our liver later during the cleanse. It's helping with our body, but okay.

So something that I want to talk about really quick is our liver is involved in, there's three phases of detoxification.  The first one is.  Where our body just has to take these toxins, kind of help package them up, and, and then in phase two, we, or it breaks down the toxins, and then in phase two, we need to neutralize them, so it's not toxic for our body, and then phase three is elimination.

So alcohol really affects phase one and phase two of our detoxification, big time,  because it's hard on the liver. So. When we're drinking, we are, we're, our body's not able to get rid of those toxins like it could just kind of like the estrogen. It's not able to detox the bad metabolites of the estrogen.

It's also not able to detoxify  like the chemicals that we're taking in our body products, our foods, all of that. And so  detoxification is important. I mean, I think a great spring detox, like a liver cleanse or a.  Kidney cleanse. It's always beneficial, but our body's always detox. What do you recommend for like a liver and a kidney cleanse? 

For a liver cleanse, I think  like a milk thistle. You can do milk thistle teas, like dandelion teas, tinctures. . Yeah. So if you wanna just do mild, you can find supplements that support the liver and you can just take it for three months. Or if you wanna be really,  a little,  I don't know, more aggressive, you can do, there's something called like , a lemonade, like a,  it's lemons. 

Ginger,  you make it into like a drink and you don't have fats before breakfast and you drink this tea, you can do it in the springtime for a week and it can help people with allergies because allergens are processed through our liver too.  You can do the detox in the spring or you can just support your liver all the time. 

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I used to take this thistle I don't remember. It was like during 2020 and I was like, this will help me.  This will help with that a little extra alcohol, right? Yeah. Okay. So what do you feel like, this is a question I've asked a couple people, especially like in the medical space. What do you consider to be a healthy drinking level? 

You know, some people can get away with one, one drink a week. I mean a night, sorry, a night every day of the week. Is it going to affect your hormones somewhat? Yes, probably. Especially when you're menopausal. Perimenopause, you could probably handle that. Your body's still functioning. You're still young enough that your body's functioning, but it definitely will affect your hormones.

But if you start drinking like where you're thinking about it all the time, you just can't wait for that. It might be time to consider.  And then definitely pass two drinks at a time. Your body's gonna struggle.  See, and that's crazy to even think like only two drinks, you know? So like imagine if you go out with friends or something like that.

I can only speak for myself, but like two drinks would be highly regulated and like really hard for me to achieve.  Really? Yeah. And that's where I was like, this is a big problem. You know, there was no, like, if I did achieve that, like I was thinking about it obsessively and I was like, one drink, one drink, two drinks, two drinks.

And a lot of times I'd be like three drinks, but three drinks could slip me into like four. And then I was gone, you know?  And did you think about it during the day? Were you like, I can't wait till tonight? Oh, always, always was thinking about it. And then always was like planning my day around if I could drink or not.

And a lot of times I wouldn't go to activities because like it didn't involve drinking. And I don't think sometimes we realize we're quite in as far as we're in until we pull out and we're like, Oh my God, that was my entire life. I actually saw a really good video the other day. Where the guy said,  you probably don't have a drinking problem if you had a really long day at work and you come home and you have a drink, right?

Or you're out with friends and you have a drink, but he's like, the problem is, is can you have like, let's say you had a really bad day and you came home. Can you not have that drink? Can you do something else to cope?  And he's like, if you cannot have that drink, you probably have a drinking problem. And I was like, Oh, both hands up.

You know,  I like that. I like that. That's a. That's a good thing to think about. Yeah, because there's no way I could have been like, Oh, let's go for a walk instead. I would have been like, Let's go for a walk and I'll put wine in this water bottle. I would have been way down for that.   Wow. And then just, um, go out.

Would you just go out with, with your water bottle? Go do whatever you wanted type of thing. I did do that a lot. Yes.  Okay. Yeah. But I mean, it's just part of your life. Like instead of having a water bottle, you've got your alcohol with you. Oh, totally. I always had like a roadie, you know? Yeah. Always. Well, I'm so proud of you because you know what?

It's hard. That's hard to, to change your lifestyle because when it's so ingrained in your lifestyle. It is, but you know, I was just in Vegas this weekend and we went out to dinner and some really fun places and I was sitting at dinner the first night and I was like, Oh, like I didn't even, sometimes I call it, I get itchy where I'm like, I feel really uncomfortable.

Like I'm like, Oh, it's going to be okay. You're just not going to order a drink. And I'm just like, you know. uncomfortable for a bit. And I was sitting there and I was like, Oh, I didn't even think about it. And I didn't even give a fuck. Like they even said,  I heard it's your 40th birthday. We're going to bring you Prosecco.

And I said, Oh, I don't drink. And like, I didn't even care. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I've turned a new page. You've definitely turned a new page. Yeah, because free drink, I mean free alcohol, like that's, how do you turn that down? And I was like, it's expensive. It's so expensive.

Especially in Vegas. Yeah. And I was like, I don't want that. It was fun though. Cause they brought me like a, they did like a passion fruit spritz. And she was like, Oh, yeah, it was good. She was like, we made this for you instead. I was like, Oh, that was like really cool.  That was so thoughtful. Yeah, it was.

Okay. Let's talk about cortisol too.  Cortisol is another one that I feel like made like a little trendy appearance on the Instagram  for a little while, but like, does alcohol affect your cortisol? But I would really love to know, like, could you actually like tell me what cortisol is? Because it's just a, to me it feels like a buzzword.

Okay, so cortisol is a hormone produced. Okay, let's let's go back to a little bit because I like to simplify things. So let's go back to the brain for a minute. And we're going to do like our fifth grade lesson of the brain. So deep in our brain is something called the hypothalamus. And it is huge talking to other glands in our body.

So then,  our hypothalamus produces a bunch of hormones that get other hormones working. , and then we have something called our pituitary, which is where most of our sex hormones are released.  So when we drink alcohol,   in our brain, it definitely affects all of those hormones. It affects the hypothalamus, which is Mike.

The main conductor of the hormones in our body.  So then, our hypothalamus and pituitary also talk to other things. So cortisol is a hormone that helps us  function in life. Like we hear the worst things about cortisol, but we have to have cortisol. It is what gets us up in the morning. It's produced by our adrenal glands, which sit on our kidneys.

They're little, they're about the size of. Walnuts that sit on top of our kidneys and our pituitary and hypothalamus have to talk to our adrenals  to produce the cortisol. And if we drink, it increases our cortisol. Even though you feel calmer, it actually produces, it raises the stress hormone. And that's okay temporarily,  like if you were, let's say  you were robbed at gunpoint.

You need that cortisol to get, put you in the fight or flight, but if your body's always in fight or flight, which it can be with way more than just alcohol to stress in our lives, it eventually will burn out those adrenals. So, and then cortisol also affects our blood sugar. So even if you eat perfectly, you de stress.

All of that.  If you have high cortisol in your life, your blood sugars are going to be elevated. So even drinking the alcohol increases our cortisol, which can make you puffy because it's a steroid. We have to have it or we won't get out of bed in the morning. But if we have too much, some of that puffiness can come from there.

And some of it can come from the toxins in our body. So yeah, cortisol is something it's what gets us out of bed in the morning. It's what. keeps us running through the day but it declines as the day goes on and it needs to be low so we can go to sleep. So if we're drinking alcohol in the evenings, which a lot of us do, spikes our cortisol and makes it harder to go to sleep. 

Yeah, which is funny because a lot of people, especially on TikTok, they'll be like, what do you drink at night? Because it was like their, nightcap. And I'm like, Oh, that was never me though. I was like, I wasn't having a drink to go to sleep, but a lot of people do. But it's funny because it's actually doing the opposite is all you're saying. 

It is. I mean, it does make a lot of people feel like they sleep better, but you don't get into the deep sleep like you do without alcohol. Yeah. You don't enter your REM sleep. And then essentially it's shutting down your prefrontal cortex. So if you're like, Oh, I feel relaxed. It's because you're literally like.

Your brain does this going  and if you really pull back and look at that, like what the hell?  Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? It is. It's really interesting when you really think of your body too and all the jobs it has, you know, like it's its own organism inside of an organism. And it's like it, a lot of things have to go right.

And if you're throwing poison in there, it's kind of wild. It's a little wild. Yeah. And it literally is poison. So do you, does anybody listen to Andrew Huberman? Have you, sometimes he can get too medically, but his, his alcohol podcast is pretty amazing. Wait, I do know who he is. Did you send him to me?  No, no, but I'm sure somebody did.

Cause  he's amazing. One of the top podcasts on, on, and they're usually pretty long, right? They're really long. So I only listened to the ones that I want to, but he talks about. There is no way to store alcohol, like with,,  as far as cal, caloric intake and whatever, there's no, our body does not store alcohol versus like, if we get too much sugar or too much fat, our body will store as fat, or we've got the insulin.

We can store glucose in our muscles, but you cannot store alcohol  in your body. And so it has to get, it has to get rid of it. So it's just this toxin floating around and there's really, it, they say like,  Alcohol is really empty calories, because sugar is empty calories too, but alcohol, there's nothing that can be done with that.

It's not efficient, it's not used for anything, except it's kind of a little bit toxic, the toxins.  That's crazy. So your body's like, okay, it came in, I have to get rid of it. And so it like kind of pauses everything else to focus on that. Not that, I mean, it's still going to go through those processes.

They're just not going to be as efficient, but it's just not used for anything. It's, it can't be stored. It's not used for anything beneficial in our body. Like not one beneficial thing in our body.  I know it is kind of interesting how, like just the more research I've done on it and like what it does to us, not to mention, like if you go into the mental aspects and you know, it can really make people crazy, but  yeah, it's kind of interesting that it's so widely accepted.

You know?   It is interesting. Yeah. What do you think about that? What do you think about that? Have you heard of the controversy between alcohol and drugs?  No. At all?  Just some people are like, alcohol is just as dangerous as drugs and it's illegal, you know? Oh no, absolutely. It really is. And there's more people addicted to alcohol than some of these like, major drugs that are like absolutely no nos, you know?

Yeah. It's like, go ahead and get blackout drunk. Totally cool. Yep. Should have had more to eat the night before.  Yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty interesting. Okay. So we're talking about hormones and you are my hormone lady. I go see you. So if you live in, you can help people in Utah, right?  Yes. I can help anybody in Utah.

We can do zoom. If you're not local to St. George. Yes. I was like, but you can't go to other States. Is that right? No, I can't go to other States. Okay. But I'm telling you guys, if you're in Utah, reach out to Silene , we will have her linked up in the show notes. She's amazing. I come over to your house. I can see your chart in the background.

You draw my blood.  Yeah, I'm like, I've been there before.  But you've really, really helped me a ton with my hormones. I know you've helped my husband a ton as well.  Which I was like, thank you, by the way, that was really awesome of you. Oh, yeah, you're welcome. Sometimes I don't know because the guys are a little quieter.

So sometimes I don't tell you what they're thinking and I'm like, hopefully it helps them, right? Hopefully. Yeah,  not to spill his medical information, but I know he won't care. Maybe  testosterone was quite low. And so I had just noticed with him, it was weird. Like he used to like to go and do things and it was really like, kind of almost like a fight, like, let's go, you know?

And he's like, I'm just tired. I'm just tired. And I am noticing that change significantly. Yay. I'm so glad to hear that. And maybe just like a little too much. I was like, I don't know if I like this.  Okay, ladies.  Testosterone.  Let's talk about it real super quick on, on men. I see men in their twenties and their testosterone is in the two hundreds.

You guys are not going to feel good.  It's a little hard because I don't replace it if anybody wants to get pregnant, if they want to have kids in the future in their 20s. So don't send me those people. I can still help them, but I'm not going to give them testosterone. But,  if you're a man and even a female,  and you feel like the lack of motivation and you're just not feeling as good, sometimes it's that testosterone, just, you just need a little bit, a little bit more, but it can make the libido go a little off the charts.

And the wives are like, it was already fine. That part was fine. It was just the rest of it.  I was like, you're not a three times a day couple. I mean, sometimes,  sometimes, but like, I, that cannot, I don't have time for this. I'm like, Samantha, you're a good wife. If it's three times a day, way to go.  I have to only find you like it.

I'm like, yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. But I was like, Oh shit. Next time. Actually the next time I saw you at the gym, I was going to be like, Hey, what'd you do? I can't believe what did you do to him? What'd you do? What'd you do, Silene ?  Okay. But. Even though I think you've helped me a ton during my labs, found out I had like no progesterone.

That is right. Am I using the right words? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you are. Am I, am I just making things up?  No, you're spot on. Yeah. So I take, I take that every day and it is, honestly, it has helped so much and I tell people, you know, and they're like, wow, you look like you've done a lot of work, or  and I'm like, well, it was the perfect storm.

I'm like, I fixed my hormones. I dish alcohol. I took up running and I don't know what happened, but I feel like a new person, you know, you know what you guys, Samantha is, she's like a new person. And I was just like a little snippet in that it's changed. She changed her lifestyle before I met you. You were already like totally exercising, eating healthy, working out, running.

You were already doing it. But I haven't been running for like a month and I was still, I was drinking like a fish. So  just nobody. Okay. Do you think out of everything that you've changed, do you think alcohol has been the most beneficial for your everything overall? Oh, hands down. Like I don't even have anything to compare it to.

It completely changed my life.  Okay. So if you guys are thinking about quitting, but you guys there's a space for it. If you want to drink on the weekends, a couple of drinks each night on the weekends for drinks on the weekends, that's not going to affect your health too much. As long as you're pretty, as long as you're, you're healthy.

For the most part. Yeah, no, for sure. I think there's a lot of people too, who are just coming on board with like even being sober curious. Or they're like, Oh, what is that? That's interesting. Like, I do want to have,  better healthy drinking habits. But I tried, I tried that. I tried the healthy drinking.

And it's like, this is why I go to AA. You know?  So how often do you go to AA? I actually only go, like, once a week. Sometimes I'll go, like, an extra time or two. Um, it was just what I knew would work for me, you know, and so I know a lot of times well, people were pushing me, you know, go to a meeting every day for 30 days or like go every day for 90 days.

And I was like, I would rather put a bullet in my head, you know,  but yeah, there was just no way I could like make it over. It would stress me out. I really enjoy AA. I love it when I go and it is great. Some people need to go every day. Some people will go multiple times a day, you know, when they're really struggling hardcore and active addiction.

But my whole thing is like, you have to do what's best for you. And everyone needs to hear that. What was best for me was not best for someone else, you know? Oh, I love that. I want to clap, do what's best for you because I don't love all or nothing. I'm an all or nothing thinker. And I've had to change that because it's like, if you, let's say.

Somebody told you that you had to go to AA, like they were telling you in the beginning, and then you felt like you had to do that or you couldn't be sober, you would give up, right? Yeah. For people like that. That would not have worked well for me at all. So I go to Monday night women's group. I love it. I like love it so much. 

Yeah. Amazing. There's a lot. I've heard the best things about AA and, and what's the other one?  What's the other one? , Al a non, Al a non Al a non? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the drug one, what's the drug? You know, I heard the best name. NA. NA that's right. NA I've heard amazing. Those are the principles of AA.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. It's pretty cool. Okay, so best hormone practices, any like best advice you have for people? Okay, best hormone practices. You guys just choose one thing.  That you're struggling with, whether it's sleep, whether it's, you don't exercise, whether it's, you don't eat enough, enough healthy foods, choose one and start on it and then move to the next. 

Sleep though, I would say sleep is probably number one.  I'm always surprised when people aren't sleeping. I, I will admit I love my sleep. I do enjoy it. But think if you didn't sleep, how crappy you'd feel. Well, yeah, cause I have this cold and like when I lay down at night, like, you know, it starts dripping and I'm sitting up at night coughing.

The other night I was awake like every 30 minutes and I just kept being like, God, I just wish it was morning so I could just get this over with. And so, yeah, I feel like I feel tired. I feel sluggish and I couldn't imagine that like on a long term basis.  Yeah. And so many people don't sleep because of our, cause of our bad lifestyle habits.

We look at our phones before bed. And, and for some people they can't sleep because, because of that or other reasons. So get your sleep in, get your sleep in number one.  I would say if you're a big drinker, alcohol is probably number two. Yeah. Well, you know, when I was drinking a lot, I would be awake all the time at like 3am.

Yeah. Because your blood sugar was probably going, it was high and then it was going. Yeah. So I would just be like awake and partially hungover and yeah, it was not very awesome. So well, you've done amazing. You've done amazing. And now I'm sure you're sleeping through and doing amazing. Oh yeah. Okay. So thank you so much for your time today.

I know  you're a busy lady. You help a ton of people. if you're here locally in St. George, you can reach out, do your visit right in person. If you're in Utah, I would reach out. Because you're licensed in Utah. If you're not in Utah, find someone who can help you. And you can always reach out and I'm happy to put you in the right direction or at least point you to some, who you want to look for, questions you want to ask them.

Yes. So thank you so much for being on the Samantha Parker show today. Thank you, Samantha. It was so fun to see you and especially right after your 40th. Oh, thank you.