52: Unmasking the Hidden Culprit: Exploring Hormonal Imbalance and Weight Management for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs, it's time to dig deep into the root causes of hormonal imbalance and its profound impact on weight management. We're traversing the often uncharted territory of our body's intricate balance, discovering the unseen factors contributing to unwanted weight gain, and uncovering the natural strategies to restore equilibrium. I, Jeffrey Mort, will share my personal experience of battling hormonal imbalances triggered by long COVID and how I rejuvenated my testosterone levels naturally. It's not just about those with low testosterone, we'll also touch base on symptoms of low and high estrogen levels.

Prepare to be enlightened as we take a detour from conventional health guides and explore the natural and safest ways to regain your body's innate potential. It's all about understanding the give and take in our bodies, acknowledging the importance of hormonal balance, and empowering you with practical strategies. Join us on this empowering journey to break boundaries and transform your health, mind, and business. And remember, this isn't medical advice but a guide to help you comprehend your body better. So, wellness seekers, are you ready to transcend boundaries and achieve optimum wellness? Let's dive in!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, entrepreneurs and seekers of wellness, welcome to another riveting episode of Breaking Boundaries for Entrepreneurs. Today, we embark on a transformative journey, navigating the intricate landscape of our body's hormonal symphony and its profound impact on weight management. Today, we delve into the mystery of identifying those elusive variables that tip the scales towards hormonal imbalances, often steering us towards unwanted weight gain. As we strive for peak performance in our professional pursuits, it's crucial to decipher the messages our bodies send on, covering the delicate equilibrium required for optimal well-being. In this episode, we navigate this uncharted territory, providing insights and strategies to regain balance, all while emphasizing the absence of a reliable integrative health guide specializing in the safest and most natural approaches. Prepare to transcend conventional boundaries and discover the keys to unlocking your body's innate potential. On this groundbreaking episode. Hello, I'm Jeffrey Mort. If you're like most entrepreneurs, you're busy taking care of business, yet who's taking care of you? If you're ready to take your energy and performance to the next level in your life and your business, then this podcast is for you, because today you're going to start breaking boundaries of your mind, body and business with integrative health, and when you do that, your possibilities are limitless. I'm grateful you're here. Yes, always grateful Thank you for joining me here today. Welcome to another Healthy Thursday episode of the Breaking Boundaries podcast. For purpose-driven entrepreneurs like yourself, this is episode number 52. And of course, you'll want to stay to the end when we bring it all together and help you to avoid failure and lead you to success with integrative health. And for all those show notes and those links, visit JeffreyMortcom and click on the podcast button. Shout out to our newest listeners today in North Hollywood, california. Do I really need to say California? After saying Hollywood, I mean the town speaks for itself. Also in Dalton, illinois and in Columbus, ohio. I appreciate you listening. So today you're going to discover the root causes of hormonal imbalance and how that causes things like unwanted weight gain, specifically, and how to rebalance the body in the healthiest way possible, especially stepping into a new year all those new year resolutions Wouldn't you want to know the underlying root cause of the weight gain and not trying to dive in and force the calorie restriction and over-exercising? That may not get you the results that you're looking for. So I do want to give my disclaimer here. This podcast is not medical advice and I do not claim to diagnose, treat or cure any disease. But what I do is I get to the root cause of the problem and I let you know how I know that. Now I have my own hormonal imbalance story that I can share with you today.

Speaker 1: 3:26

I mentioned this before, but when I went through having COVID and then long COVID for about 18 months, that absolutely destroyed my testosterone levels. So I was able to. Well, first of all, some of the challenges that I had with having extremely low testosterone levels was energy issues, low mood, just low brain function as well, and it was absolutely debilitating. But I was able to do natural health protocols and a testosterone replenishing regimen that I have in my arsenal here that was completely all-natural and was able to restore my testosterone. It took a little while because of having the long COVID. It took a little while to do that because I had those other issues going on the mitochondrial damage, the inflammation. So I had to overcome that. But as I was able to implement these protocols, my testosterone slowly came up, gradually, and through testing I was able to see where those levels were and that I was trending in the right direction, and not just with testosterone.

Speaker 1: 4:39

But I have many women clients that we have in our private wellness practice over at Leavening G Wellness that struggle with low estrogen symptoms and even high estrogen symptoms. Now you can have a normal level with your woman. You can have a normal level of estrogen, yet the progesterone is super low and what that does is creates symptoms of estrogen dominance. So even though the estrogen is at an optimal level, you still get estrogen dominant symptoms because of the low progesterone. So everything in the body is a give and take. It all has a synergy and there are synergistic components that have to do with one another, especially when it comes to hormone balance, and that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about unraveling the link between hormone imbalances and weight gain and in the quest for optimal health and well-being, and that's really what we're optimizing for in today's episode. There are some episodes where we talk about optimizing for body transformation or optimizing for longevity, but at first, before we do those things, we want to be able to optimize for our general health and our well-being and the connection between hormones and weight gains. It's a very popular question, so that's why we're addressing that in today's episode. So, understanding this intricate relationship, we need to dive into the world of integrative health and take a holistic approach to wellness that goes beyond what you'll find in conventional medicine, unfortunately. So the impact of hormonal imbalances on weight gain is something we're going to explore and give you an integrative health plan today.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Very important, so hormones in simple terms, hormones are chemical messengers produced by various glands in the endocrine system. These messengers, they regulate crucial bodily functions such as metabolism, such as growth, mood, especially reproductive processes and for women, as we alluded to earlier, estrogen and progesterone. They take center stage, while men rely on testosterone. Now it's important to note that both genders produce a mix of all three of those hormones. That in different proportions. So hormonal imbalances they play a huge role in weight gain and when the delicate balance of hormones are disrupted, it can manifest in a variety of ways, one of which is weight gain.

Speaker 1: 7:20

So high cortisol levels, often associated with chronic stress. They play a pivotal role in this scenario and you can go back to most people think of stress as career, finances, family relationships, children, things like that. And if you go back to episode 16 of the Breaking Boundaries podcast, we redefine stress in there and we're going to talk a little bit about that very soon here in today's episode. So cortisol is the stress hormone and it prompts the body to store that, particularly in the abdominal area. Now, additionally, imbalances in things like insulin, which is also regulated by the amount of cortisol the body is producing, and it also affects thyroid hormones and sex hormones, and this can all contribute to weight related issues. So you're beginning to see how this is all tied together.

Speaker 1: 8:17

So to give you a plan and, as always, a holistic approach to hormone balance, step one is thatsLIZE. It begins with a comprehensive understanding of your body's unique biochemistry and we do this through the advanced functional lab testing, and often these labs use the functional medicine. Lab tests for hormones often use saliva instead of blood. Now, if you go to see a primary care physician or your medical doctor to understand what you know, where your hormone levels are at, they're gonna be looking at blood, and blood is not the best way to look at most hormones. When we're talking about stress hormones cortisol. When we're talking about sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, dhea saliva is better than blood because this provides a more accurate reflection of the active percentage of sex and adrenal hormones. Now this personalized insight sets the foundation for targeted, for a targeted approach.

Speaker 1: 9:21

So next step, after doing the functional lab testing and seeing where our hormone levels are at. We want to work on the liver, because so goes your liver, so goes your health. Now, liver detoxification you've heard me talk about it before. It's very important to open up these liver detox pathways. This is crucial for eliminating excess hormones and toxins. Now, functional medicine detox protocol is a great way to do that, and what this does is it supports the liver's natural processes, promoting optimal detoxification and ensuring a clean slate for hormone production. Now, next step three we want to be replacing vitamin and mineral deficiencies. You see, a body deficient in essential vitamins and minerals will struggle to produce hormones efficiently, and by replenishing these vital nutrients, we provide the body with the raw materials needed for hormone synthesis, promoting balance and overall wellbeing.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Now the next step, step four, is eliminating toxins that are revealed by the lab results. The functional medicine lab results will unveil a spectrum of potential toxicities, things like Xenoestrogens, and we did an episode on Xenoestrogens as well. Let me see if I can find what episode that was Going back a few weeks here. Anyways, if I can find Xenoestrogens episode 42, in the Breaking Boundaries podcast, you can listen to that to know what Xenoestrogens are.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Other toxicities are parasites, yeast and fungal infections, bacteria, molds and heavy metals, all of these things inside the body are stressors, and this is what I was talking about when I referred back to episode 16 about redefining stress. It's not just the external stressors, it's the internal stressors, these things that are inside of a body that don't belong there parasites, yeast, fungal. Of course yeast and bacteria belong in the body, but only at certain levels, when they become overgrown. That's when we have a problem. Now. Mold has no business being in the body, parasites no business being in the body, heavy metals no business being in the body and they cause stress and that can contribute to chronic stress and the constant release of high levels of cortisol when the body does not need it. Of course your body needs cortisol, especially in the morning. You want your waking cortisol levels to be high and then, as the day progresses, those cortisol levels need to drop in order to be optimized for hormone balance, and this is what we look at in the stress-mood metabolism lab in particular we do a saliva sample four times during the day, so that is, upon waking, before lunch, before dinner and right before bed, so that we can get an accurate picture of what the cortisol levels look like over the course of the day Now, addressing and removing these toxic burdens.

Speaker 1: 12:18

This is what supports the body's natural ability to restore hormonal equilibrium. And then, of course, step five, as always, lifestyle adjustments. You know, small changes. It doesn't have to be a major overhaul in your lifestyle, but small changes can have a profound impact on hormonal imbalances. So incorporating stress-reducing practices, things like meditation, using binaural beats or just simply going for a walk, is a stress-reducing practice. Regular exercise can reduce stress. Although exercise is a stressor on the body, it also helps to balance, regulate metabolism, balance hormones and things like that.

Speaker 1: 12:59

And then, of course, adequate sleep. I mean, raise your hand if you could optimize your sleep and make your sleep a little bit better. Getting the right amount of deep sleep, the right amount of REM sleep each and every night, is crucial for hormonal regulation and this can further support the body in maintaining harmony. So it all comes together with the de-stress protocol. The diet, the exercise, the stress reduction, the toxin removal, the rest, the emotional balance, the science-backed supplements and the success mindset can all help to rebalance the body and the hormones, to help with regulation of those hormones. And then, of course, the weight loss. So bringing it all together here for you guided wellness with integrative health coaching, embarking on a journey to rebalance your hormones and achieve optimal wellbeing.

Speaker 1: 13:53

It may seem complex, it may seem difficult and you can always go back and you can listen to this episode, you can listen to other episodes to get a better understanding, because repetition is the mother of all learning. So maybe you're not gonna pick everything up in the first 20 minutes that you listen to this episode, but if you go back and you play it again and if that's still too overwhelming or you still need some guidance, of course having a health coach, having a certified integrative health coach that can help you with running these labs Now you can run these functional medicine labs with your local naturopathic doctor, but you might not get a personalized wellness plan like you would with a level two certified integrative health practitioner. That makes the process so much more manageable and gives you support, gives you education and, most of all, gives you the motivation right. That one-on-one support can help to motivate you to keep on going, to know where you're at and to have that guide to where you wanna be and what you wanna optimize for. So you're probably already thinking that in the realm of integrative health and the interplay of hormones and weight gain is the first step to a healthier and more balanced life. So you call the action on all of this plan today in today's episode.

Speaker 1: 15:11

Number one test, test with your naturopathic doctor, integrative health practitioner, to get the answers. And what this does is it helps you to avoid failure. It helps you to avoid the guessing Guessing leads to failure most of the time. Next, it gives you a personalized wellness plan, and that is your map to success. You wouldn't embark on a cross-country journey without having a GPS or a map or some sort of a navigation tool. So your personalized wellness plan is your map to success.

Speaker 1: 15:41

And then, of course, number three make a commitment. Make a commitment to your health and to this proven process that can help you to rebalance your hormones and lose that weight that just may not be coming off in the pace that you wanted to. So your key takeaway today there's always a reason. There's always a reason why that weight won't come off. It could be imbalanced hormones, and we just gave you the plan on how to find out. So stay tuned for the next episode of the Breaking Boundaries podcast, and I am grateful for you being here today. Please share this episode and, if you could go, just take a minute at your favorite podcast platform, wherever you're listening today, and just leave us a review, and a good one at that, so that we can help more people, and we'll see you next time on Breaking Boundaries. Bye-bye, everybody.