Debunking Estrogen Myths With Dr. Debbie Rice of Precision Analytical - Episode 221

Has the fear of estrogen held you back from embracing hormone therapy?  This episode promises to redefine your understanding of estrogen's crucial role in our well-being, from preserving bone density to guarding cardiovascular health. Listen in as we dissect the Women's Health Initiative study and its revamped conclusions, which now show estrogen is your ally in reducing certain health risks.  We get into the entire discussion on whether or not estrogen causes cancer. 

We venture into the often-overlooked territory of estrogen detoxification and gut health, where substances like DIM and Sulforaphane are the unsung heroes. Our bodies are complex systems, and maintaining hormonal balance is an art form that requires understanding the interplay between the liver, gut, and everyday lifestyle choices. With Dr. Rice's expertise, we explore how to support your body's natural detox processes, the significance of genetic predispositions, and the impact of lifestyle on hormonal health. So, tune in, take notes, and let's navigate the journey to your best life, fueled by knowledge and shared wisdom.

Dr. Debbie Rice is the Director of Clinical Education for Precision Analytical https://dutchtest.com/meet_our_experts/ and practices part-time as a naturopathic doctor where she focuses care on pediatric, hormone, thyroid, and adrenal health. She has had experience working with communities in need, both in the United States and internationally. Her training is primarily in women's health, pediatric care, hormone therapy and hormone function, as well as complimentary adjunct care. Dr. Rice uses diet and lifestyle, botanical medicine, and conventional approaches to maximize care for her patients. 

My Essential Thyroid Guide is now available on all Amazon stores!
US:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW4X3WJD
Canada:  https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CW4X3WJD

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Hi everyone, it's me, sandy Cruz of Sandy K Nutrition, health and lifestyle queen. For years now, I've been bringing to you conversations about wellness from experts from all over the world. Whether it be suggestions in how you can age better, biohacking, alternative wellness, these are conversations to help you live your best life. I want to live a long, healthy and vibrant life, never mind all those stigmas that, as we reach midlife and beyond, we're just going to shrivel up and die with some horrible disease. Always remember balanced living works. I really look forward to this season. Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy Kay Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen.

Speaker 1 1:05

Today with me I have Dr Debbie Rice of Precision Analytical, the makers of the Dutch Test, and today the star of the show is going to be all about estrogen. You know estrogen is such an important hormone, which is why I'm pretty much pretty much dedicating this episode to estrogen. But I mean, you can't talk about estrogen without talking about the other hormones that are also important. However, estrogen is the one hormone that has been so demonized, and I'll never forget this. I had a post that I had created a while ago on Instagram saying estrogen doesn't cause cancer. You know how many people this post angered. I found it almost, you know. I was curious as to why, and so I obviously dug very, very deep into the history of estrogen and the whys. And people want to believe the old dogmatic practices, the antiquated studies, even though it has been proven otherwise. So I'm going to leave the rest of the conversation for you to listen to with Dr Debbie Rice. I am going to ask you to please share this episode with anyone who might benefit from it and definitely hit the follow wherever you are listening to this so you don't miss an episode.

Speaker 1 2:56

I release them every single Monday at 2 am Eastern Standard Time. I appreciate you guys supporting me. Send me an email. I love to hear from you, sandy, at sandyknutritionca. Tell me where you're from. Also, all of my podcasts now have the ability where you can send me a text. Tell me what you think. I would love to hear from you guys and hear where you're listening from. Also, follow me on all of my social media accounts. It's Sandy Kay Nutrition.

Speaker 1 3:32

Everywhere you can watch the entire interviews, raw and unedited, on YouTube and on Rumble. Don't you guys find that these overly polished edited videos are like too much? I probably get one or two emails daily of people wanting to polish my videos and do my reels for me. I still do everything myself. My podcast turned four end of February I think it was end of February and I still do it all myself.

Speaker 1 4:07

I don't want to look like everyone else. I want to remain unique and I want to keep bringing amazing guests to you guys each and every week. So please do your part and support my show by sharing it, by following me and by following me on all of my socials. I really really appreciate you. One more little announcement is that most of you who follow me regularly know that I released my essential thyroid guide. It is now available on Amazon everywhere. Thank you, guys, for your support. You guys know I am the thyroid queen. It is my jam and I love talking thyroid and I love educating on thyroid. So go grab it. Just search the essential thyroid guide by Sandy Cruz and you will find it on Amazon. Thank you, guys, and now let's cut on through to this amazing interview with Dr Debbie Rice.

Speaker 1 5:13

Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition, health and Lifestyle Queen. Today with me I have a return guest. Her name is Dr Debbie Rice and she's the director of clinical education at Precision Analytical, the developers of the Dutch test. Dr Rice is a naturopathic doctor who maintains practice where she focuses care on pediatric health, hormone health, thyroid health and adrenal health. She has had experience working with communities in need both in the United States and internationally. Her training has been primarily in women's health, pediatric care, hormone therapy and hormone function, as well as complementary adjunct care. Dr Rice utilizes multiple modalities, including diet and lifestyle, botanical medicine and conventional approaches that meet the patient where they are in their health journey, and Dr Rice's passions include activism for access to healthcare, yoga and exploring nature.

Speaker 1 6:28

Yoga and exploring nature and I invited Debbie I guess I can call you Debbie now I invited Debbie back today to talk about estrogen estrogen, the good hormone because I do feel it's important that we do more education around the benefits of estrogen, because what often happens is we read one article, just one, and it will completely sway everyone's opinion. It's just so amazing how that happens. And so, the more that we educate around this hormone and we are going to talk about the other hormones because nothing in our body works in silos right, that's right. So I'm so happy to welcome you back, debbie. Thank you so much for coming.

Speaker 2 7:18

I'm excited to be back. Thank you.

Speaker 1 7:21

So let's start with your background and why you do what you do.

Speaker 2 7:26

Yeah, so originally I knew I always wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to be a doctor that included lifestyle and diet, nutrition, exercise, having the body move and do what the body does, and using the body to its benefit versus just trying to silo it out, if that makes sense. You know, I feel like conventional medicine does a really great job of saying, okay, we're just going to focus on the eyeballs, we're just going to focus on the pancreas. You know very, and our, our body doesn't do that. We need it to all work to get. We need all of the cogs in the wheel to get a little or in the machine to get a a little bit of love.

Speaker 2 8:12

And so when I was looking at medicine, that's what I wanted to do, and to be able to do that, it was like, well, okay, so there's the medicine part, but then there's also the nutrition part of and there's also the physical activity part and there's all you know, like all of these other things that we want to do. And naturopathic medicine was like, hey, here I am, I can do all of that, um, and when I started into naturopathic medicine, I really just wanted to deliver babies. And in looking at that you realize like, wow, okay, what does it take to deliver babies, what does that mean for the health of the mom, what does that mean for the health of the baby? And then it's looking at, you know, women's health and hormones and all of that. So that's the like, the big snowball that brought me into effect here.

Hormones and Health

Speaker 1 8:56

Yeah, you know, I, I hear that a lot from naturopathic doctors, that okay you're. I just have to say this like, cause I just heard this the other day Um, because I understand there is absolutely a place for conventional Western medicine, absolutely there's a place for it. But typically, you know, going to a general physician typically is not a great idea for diet and lifestyle. Because I heard this the other day and I was like no, uh, somebody had told me that they went to their doctor. Their kids weren't getting enough calcium in their diet. Their doctor said have a Hershey bar every day. They told their kid, they told the mom to give their kid a Hershey bar every day to get their calcium. So I completely get where you're coming from, cause, as you know, I'm a nutritionist. So I'm like, oh my gosh, people listen, your doctor, have a, they have their function, but please see somebody that has been trained in nutrition.

Speaker 2 10:00

Absolutely, and conventional care is really great for acute care, it's really great to make sure that if there are any emergency situations, they can get you stable. But I feel like functional medicine is that gray area where we really live our lives right and that's where we're making those decisions, for what do we put in our mouth every day? What do we put on our skin every day? How do we support detoxification right, like that's? That's the gray area of medicine. That is the daily grind, I think.

Speaker 1 10:28

Yeah, yeah. I'm so glad to have you here to talk about estrogen, because I've done a number of shows on hormones and I think starting at the beginning is very important and with a doctor like yourself you get where does estrogen enter? You know we have it from when we're almost born, right, or do we have it when we're born?

Speaker 2 10:56

So we get a lot of estrogen from mom when we're in the womb and then we don't. There's not a lot of activity in those hex hormones until we start puberty, right. And that's when we start to get that communication from the brain to the ovaries and the ovaries start to wake up and kind of try to figure out what they're doing and how they're doing it. And when we think of female hormones in general, right, like estrogen is the big one, she's, she's the superstar, she's the, she's the, she's the queen. And progesterone also comes in to support that kingdom, right.

Speaker 2 11:34

So you can't have estrogen without progesterone, um, but estrogen's job is to help grow things, to help mature things, right. So estrogen is responsible for us getting body hair, pubic hair, you know, hair under our arms. It's also part of developing that ovarian communication with our uterus, creating that lining. That's our builder. So estrogen is definitely a builder. She's a, she's a maker, she's a supporter, and that's what estrogen does and we think about that. We also want to think about that in our bones and our blood vessels and our skin. You know, estrogen is also part of that construction as well.

Speaker 1 12:14

Please don't forget to subscribe and rate and review with a few kind words. This helps me to keep bringing fabulous guests to you each and every week. Thanks so much. Okay, you said estrogen is our builder, and you know I'm probably going to jump ahead here, but maybe that's why people jump immediately to estrogen causes cancer, because it's that builder. Right, okay, but estrogen is also what makes us more feminine as well. Like men have estrogen too, but obviously it's kind of like testosterone. We as women have testosterone as well, but if we have too much testosterone, it would give us more male characteristics. If men have too much testosterone, it would give us more male characteristics. If men have too much estrogen, more female characteristics. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 13:10

Yeah, yeah. And that's not to say like there's a place for each of those, right. Just as females have testosterone, we need a certain amount of testosterone to get the benefit. Same thing with males and estrogen. I feel like there's this when we talk about males and estrogen, it's like, ooh, we don't want any estrogen. But estrogen actually enhances how testosterone can do its job in males and we want to remember that for testosterone in females. Right, like we have a partnership in those hormones. It's just different in how it's expressed.

Speaker 1 13:43

Okay, and they're actually. They're both androgenic hormones.

Speaker 2 13:48

Testosterone.

Speaker 1 13:50

And estrogen.

Speaker 2 13:52

So I would say they're, they support each other, okay. It's what I would say with that yeah.

Speaker 1 13:59

Can you explain? Can you explain that, since I brought it up, you might as well Like androgenic versus estrogenic. Yes.

Speaker 2 14:08

So in my mind and so this will be my interpretation of that and I would love to have that discussion. When I think of androgenic, we think of more of the male properties, right. So we think of like muscle mass, facial hair growth, dry the libido. So that's kind of where I would put androgenic, where estrogenic I think is more feminine, as you were saying, right, like that's going to be more of the curvy, and even emotionally, like compassionate and thoughtful. That becomes more estrogenic to me.

Speaker 1 14:46

Okay, you said emotional, so maybe cause I do want to get into the building side, but maybe it's a little bit too early. Cause I want to ask you symptoms that women experience, because what can happen in their forties? They can actually have higher estrogens in their forties and then it kind of goes boom like as soon as you kind of hit menopause. What are the symptoms of high estrogen and I know you're going to talk about it in relation to progesterone too and then what are the symptoms of low estrogen?

Speaker 2 15:28

So I will say this, and I do agree, this is going to be a frustrating point and if I were in charge I probably would have made this different. But when we look at the swing of the pendulum right like too much estrogen to too low of estrogen you can have similar symptoms. So when we look at estrogen being too high and, as you said, this is also going to be relative to our progesterone, because there is the idea of estrogen dominance when we just look at blatantly high estrogen or estrogen dominance, that is high relative to your progesterone, estrogen is when we have too much estrogen it can feel irritable. It can feel and when we're cycling, this can be, you know, more intense cramps, heavier bleeding body periods, more intense PMS. So emotional mood swings, migraines, those kinds of things can happen with too much estrogen.

Speaker 2 16:24

We swing the pendulum to the other side. You can also have some of those symptoms, not all of them. You could still have some of the irritability that comes with low estrogen. Usually, what we see with low estrogen as a primary symptom are like hot flashes of night sweats, but you can still get that with too much estrogen too. Um, when we have too low of estrogen, we can also see like lower energy, um lower drive and motivation. We can start to feel like the body just isn't performing the same way that it used to as well. Like your body just feels different too as well.

Speaker 1 17:07

Like your body just feels different too. Yeah, and and you know you hear this a lot for menopausal women it's like they lose their joy for life, they lose their vibrancy there. They lose that. And it's not even necessarily about being happy or not being happy, because things that happen in our lives can make us unhappy or happy like throughout our whole life, but for no reason just losing that vibrancy for living.

Speaker 2 17:35

Yeah, where you're not necessarily changing anything. Your circumstances are the same, you're still doing the same routines, but you're not as fulfilled or you're not feeling as settled. And there's when we start to lose progesterone that can make a big difference with, like, maybe more increased anxiety and not being able to sleep as well. When we're not sleeping as well, we're not performing as well. So there's some of that that happens. But we also see that estrogen is really closely tied to serotonin and they rely on each other to be able to do their job. So when we lose estrogen, serotonin loses its partner and helping to give you that like oh, I'm here, I'm happy, I'm feeling good. So serotonin can also be affected by those drops in estrogen too.

Speaker 1 18:29

And then can't testosterone be part of that too?

Speaker 2 18:31

No, Absolutely yeah. So when I look at those androgen hormones like testosterone and DHEA, they can have a big impact on, like, your sense of wellbeing and your drive. And I don't mean that just in like libido and sex drive, I mean that like in brain drive, like brain motivation. Like when you wake up for the day, what does that drive look like for you? Testosterone and DHEA can also influence that pretty significantly.

Speaker 1 19:00

Oh, interesting Cause. Really well, I guess in even younger than perimenopause there's a lot of young women who experienced low progesterone. Oh, absolutely. And I joked with my daughter. I'm like, listen, you're going through puberty, I'm in perimenopause, so you know, we're kind of both going through it Absolutely, and there's different reasons for a young woman to have, you know, low progesterone. What are some of those reasons? I just want to cover that because I think it's important. A lot of people who listen to my podcast also have young like daughters.

Speaker 2 20:04

Yeah, and I think depending on the age, it can also just be kind of like the sputtering that happens with the ovaries, kind of getting into their swing and making sure that they're responding appropriately with progesterone.

Speaker 2 20:22

But they've also done some pretty interesting studies where they were looking at the stress response in older women and I'm talking about 70 and older, and then younger women in their twenties and thirties.

Speaker 2 20:30

And what they found was the stress response was more intense in those younger females and the older females, and so the older females actually had better hormone balance than the younger females.

Speaker 2 20:42

And it has to do with our stress, the increased stress that we have just in our world today, and stress right when our body is stressed. The whole purpose of cortisol and our stress response is to keep us safe. So your body prioritizes your safety over any kind of sex hormone health, right, like it's going to worry about keeping you safe before it's like, oh, let's ovulate so you can have a baby. Like it's not in that stage, right, it's. It's going to be like we're going to put one foot in front of the other before we even think about any kind of fertility support, sex hormone support. So it will prioritize that cortisol before it prioritizes the signaling of your sex hormones. And so when we are in that stress circle or in that stress bubble, you can find that maybe our girls aren't ovulating as regularly as they were because they're not getting that same safety signal. Um, and their body's ready to jump into that sympathetic nervous system.

Speaker 1 21:44

That makes sense. I used to always say and I know this isn't the physician way of saying things, but I used to always say like think of high stress all the time as like Pac-Man. For like, listen right, it's like Pac-Man, it's just like eating away that progesterone. So I guess that goes with any woman at any age.

Speaker 2 22:08

Yes.

Speaker 2 22:09

And this is where we also see so that that can. That can create a slower progression to having normal cycles in our younger females. But it can create a slower progression to having normal cycles in our younger females, but it can create a quicker progression to irregular cycles in our perimenopausal females. And so this is where you have those 35 year olds that are like my doctor said I'm in menopause. Aren't I too young to be a menopause? Yeah, your body is trying to prioritize safety over sex hormones, right? So that's where we start to see that also shifting too, I think.

Speaker 1 22:43

Yes, well, it's so interesting because I I I like to go back just as a learning, not because I can change anything, but before I, when I had a thyroid, I think about, okay, well, you know, I had all the symptoms of postpartum thyroiditis. I wasn't producing enough milk, I had a baby that wasn't sleeping. I wasn't sleeping, I was, you know. So you know, it's interesting when you go back and you can kind of look at it and go okay, you know what? I had some nervous system dysregulation going on.

Speaker 2 23:22

Right yeah.

Speaker 1 23:23

And it was never diagnosed. And then you know that was a 35 and then 41, I had thyroid cancer and those nodules didn't appear overnight. I had them there, you know, for years. But then that's another tie in with thyroid.

Speaker 2 23:39

Absolutely, and I mean I. We can also see when the thyroid is not happy. That can also influence your sex hormones and it it's very possible to see thyroid go a little wacky, as a technical term, and when that happens you can see it changes in your cycle, irregularities in your cycle and maybe that also complicates that journey into perimenopause, for some females too.

Understanding the Importance of Estrogen

Speaker 1 24:15

Yeah, yeah. So let's get into some of the details on estrogen and why it has been so. I purposely wanted to have a conversation surrounding the importance of estrogen and the fact that we've had it almost our whole life and why we have it.

Speaker 2 24:39

Because there's a reason we feel better when we're, you know, in our twenties, thirties, forties, when we have our biggest boost of estrogen. Yeah, Right.

Speaker 1 24:51

And so you know, how many women do you know, Like I know, I didn't even consider cancer from estrogen in my twenties. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that you know, I, as far as I can remember, I've always had estrogen.

Speaker 2 25:10

So yeah, and there I feel like and this is actually a great time to talk about this, because I feel like there's been a lot of discussion about oh, estrogen's bad, oh no, estrogen's good, estrogen's bad, oh no, no, estrogen's good there's this big discussion happening, you know, on social media, and the beautiful thing about social media is we have access to information.

Speaker 2 25:35

My concern about that is making sure that we're getting the right information out there, and I know that we want to make sure that people are well-educated and that they have the education to make educated like they have the resources to make those educated decisions. Unfortunately, I feel like the and we kind of talked about this just before we got on here was the WHI study, which really, I think, shaped how medicine and people in general look at hormone supplementation, especially estrogen, as a supplementation, and that it's bad and it causes breast cancer and it's dangerous. And that was actually when we look back at the original WHI, there was a republication of it saying like, actually, when we look at the data, we're able to go back through it. We got that wrong.

Speaker 1 26:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 26:30

And I want that to be stated Like. I feel like a lot of people don't know that that was restated, and I feel like a lot of people don't know what was restated in that. And even with the WHI, they were using conjugated equine estrogens, right, so that is a much more concentrated estrogen, but what they found was the women that were doing that estrogen actually have lower incidence of breast cancer, yeah, and so that is a huge statement that I think has not like. It's been kind of like the elephant in the room that people aren't talking about, but that was a huge outcome from the republication of the WHI. So I think that's important to acknowledge that. As much as research is important, we want to have a questioning eye to it of okay, what happened in this study, why did that happen and what were the results from that? Outside of just blatantly trusting when stuff like those are big statements, when those things come out like great, let's actually see what contributed to that research and information.

Speaker 1 27:45

I'm glad you mentioned that, because what I am going to do for anybody who's listening I've actually put a little note that I'm going to make sure that I put the updated study in the show notes so that you can take a look at it yourself. And I always say this Debbie, like we need studies, we obviously we have to do studies, but it doesn't mean that they can't be wrong sometimes or that they can't be slanted or biased. And actually one of the courses that I took when I went back to college for nutrition was to understand studies and to be able to decipher. And I understand that not everybody listening to this podcast is going to go and do that. I get it, but that's why we're not saying in anything definitively this is this and this is that. But what we can say is when a study has been retracted, there's a reason for that.

Speaker 2 28:53

And a big reason, especially in such an influential study like the Women's Health Initiative, was huge and it did. It shaped how medicine gave that interpretation of hormone therapy. Still, it actually shaped it and still.

Speaker 2 29:13

And even to this day, exactly shaped it and even to this day, exactly Like. I still talk to people that are like, well, you know, my mom had breast cancer, so she told me that I can't ever look at hormone therapy and based on information that they were given at that time understandably, but there you need to have a bigger conversation about it, and we also need to recognize when we're looking at estrogen and how estrogen works in the body. Estrogen has, you know, alpha. There's an alpha estrogen receptor and there's a beta estrogen receptor, and these can be influential in disease processes right. So when we're looking at alpha versus beta, that can also influence if the estrogen is going to be more aggressive versus protective, and so it's also taking that into consideration. There are nuances in hormone physiology that we want to keep to the front of our mind when we're listening to all of the discussions that are happening about estrogen.

Speaker 1 30:14

So perfect time to say why is estrogen protective? What does estrogen do for us as we age and as we go beyond menopause, even?

Speaker 2 30:26

Yeah. So what we have found is, for women that are postmenopausal, we enter a different mortality risk. Right, we have increased risk for cardiovascular health. The number one reason for female deaths is cardiovascular health. Right, and that changes once we become postmenopausal. So that would beg the question why would that be? What happens in that? What are the shifts that happen there?

Importance of Hormones in Health

Speaker 2 30:56

We do know that our quality of life changes significantly and now that women are living longer, we want to make sure that our quality of life perimenopausally, post-menopausally is good. We want to make sure, not just for ourselves, but even if you look at the medical system, right, like if we can reduce the cost of healthcare and having less bone fractures, right. So when we think about bone density and estrogen is a big key player in making sure that our bone density, our bone health, stays strong and healthy right, that's huge. We look at cardiovascular health and I would say that this is an area where I think we could still do some more research and looking at how estrogen does influence cardiovascular health. But if you think about estrogen just superficially, when we start to lose estrogen, we start to get wrinkles.

Speaker 1 31:47

Yes, we do, we start to get thinner skin, right?

Speaker 2 31:49

Yeah, that's not just on your skin. Think about that in your blood vessels. Think about that in all the the areas that um, elasticity is important, right? So our blood vessels need to be supple. They need to be able to pump all of that blood. When we don't have that same suppleness, it makes it more difficult for our blood vessels to pump. So that's where we look at, like, blood vessel health and cardiovascular health. With estrogen. We also know that it influences cognition and our brain health. Right, like the juicier our brain is, the better it works. Can estrogen influence that Absolutely? And so these are things that we look at. You know, post-menopausal, oh, like brain fog, you may not feel your bone density until it's much later. Right, like you might start, you aren't going to actively notice that until something could happen, right, you fall and a fracture can happen. That's where, in looking at, estrogen and support is really key and important.

Speaker 1 32:52

Yeah, well, you know. And the other thing, you just said it there it's like think of estrogen as the lubrication for everything right, like it's.

Speaker 2 33:05

It's, yes, our ears, our eyes, our nose and this is, you know, different than like if you have any of the um, like show brands or you know, dry disease. But this is where you start to see that shift. When you lose estrogen, where you're like, my eyes are all of a sudden dry, like I don't know what's happening, or I feel like I'm arched all the time. Or a big thing that happens is joints. You know, frozen shoulder is a big thing that can happen in perimenopause and menopausal females. Um or other hip pain, joint pain, knees, like just getting that lubrication, that changes a lot.

Speaker 1 33:42

Yeah, and of course there's the whole vaginal lubrication too and the inability to be able to have sex. You just it's too painful.

Speaker 1 33:52

You hear that all the time that all the time, and even with that also just like hey, it hurts to pee Right Like that is also huge too, and and you know it's I find it just so interesting how there's, you know, the generation when my mom was younger and very few women were doing any kind of hormone therapy at that age. Even so, this is before that WHI study came out, and you know, I see so many women that have dementia like now, that are older, you know, like in their seventies and eighties, and they're living a long time right.

Speaker 1 34:46

But with dementia. So you know. There's just so many factors there that I find a little bit more alarming than going on bioidentical hormone therapy. Personally, that's me, that's my choice.

Speaker 2 35:04

Right, yeah, and this is always going to be an individual discussion with you, your comfort level and the discussion with your provider. Right, because you have to do individual risk assessment. You have to look at you know what has happened in your life history as well as your family history, what your environment is right Like. If you are a stressed out mess, I would love to say that one pill could cure it all, or one patch could cure it all, but that's not the case, right? So I think there's definitely that individualized approach for sure. And you did also say something where you had mentioned bioidentical hormones, and that I think is also part of the discussion. We look at synthetic hormones versus bioidentical hormones, and that is also a big part of the conversation.

Speaker 1 35:51

Yeah, let's break that down, because I you know, I do know that. Honestly, debbie, I find it almost shocking how few women think what they're getting from their general physician progestin is progesterone and it's all the same. It's not all the same, so could you get into that?

Speaker 2 36:21

Yes, and I will say I feel like this is um. I see this in the conventional medicine world a lot, unfortunately, um, and even in research, where progestin is um I don't know if it's intentional or not, but progestin, so progestogens are an umbrella term that includes progesterone and progestin. So a progestogen just means some sort of progesterone. Now there's a big difference between a progestin and a progesterone. Now there's a big difference between a progestin and a progesterone.

Speaker 2 37:00

Progestin is a synthetic progesterone and when we look at a synthetic progesterone, it's mostly molecularly similar to progesterone. So it'll still hit that progesterone receptor. It'll still dock on there, but it has. We don't know what else it's signaling based on its molecular chemistry. When we look at progesterone, progesterone mimics our progesterone. It can sit on that receptor, but it only does what progesterone is supposed to do. It doesn't signal other things. It's not confusing to the body to do. It doesn't signal other things, it's not confusing to the body.

Speaker 2 37:39

So this is where we can see that big difference between a progesterone and how that is supposed to influence your body versus a progestin. We often see progestins um like. Even in the women's health initiative study, the progestin ended up having a little bit more of a thrombotic risk, so a little bit of thickening of the blood, even though there were some protective parts to it. But it acts a little bit differently than progesterone and even in a lot of the testing that I've seen through Dutch testing we can see that progestins can have a little bit more of like an estrogen effect, which is very interesting.

Speaker 1 38:22

That is interesting. Now, what about estrogen? Because this is where you kind of see a bunch of different things. You see oral estrogen, you see the gels, you see the patches, you see um creams like. Can you break that down for us?

Speaker 2 38:44

So estrogen, and I will say and so I'm in the U S, I know that you're in Canada, so there might be differences in in what is available Um, for there are certainly synthetic estrogens that are available for supplementation. I'm going to be more a fan of the bioidentical estrogen, so estradiol, and you can get estradiol in many different forms the patch form, as you said, creams, gels, they have sprays, they have vaginal inserts, they have oral tablets, they have trochies, like there. I mean there are all sorts of opportunities to supplement estrogen. Um, there, I think it's important to know how each of these works in the body, to know what might be a better fit for you.

Speaker 2 39:38

The other thing that we have seen just in a lot of research is that transdermal estrogen. So that's going to be your patches, your gels, your creams, um, some of the sprays. These are generally well, we'll categorize that as generally the safest form of estrogen or estradiol. The oral estrogen I know is also common and there's a caveat with this safety, meaning whenever you take anything orally, it does have to go through the liver and the gut to get metabolized. If you have any risks or blood clotting issues or anything like that, that's where you want to be careful with oral estrogen because once it hits the liver it activates those clotting factors and that's where it can be a little bit more risky Now.

Speaker 2 40:32

that said, you can still see great benefit with oral estrogen. It just comes with an additional risk to evaluate there.

Speaker 1 40:41

Okay, yeah, I've heard the exact same thing. And then so I'm on Biast, which is, I think it's generally 80% estriol and 20% estradiol. What's the difference between estriol and estradiol? I know I've heard some practitioners who say it's not effective. I haven't had any issues personally. I find it great, and I've heard some doctors say it's just a safer option to do it this way because estradiol is more potent, right? What are your thoughts on this?

Speaker 2 41:27

Yeah, estradiol is generally that potent hormone where estriol is a weaker hormone so you still get effect on the estrogen receptors but it's much weaker like 80% weaker than estradiol. So estriol is really great as a local, especially for vaginal dryness. Those vaginal cells love estriol and estriol can get in there and support that vaginal lubrication really well. But estriol is definitely weaker now there and it's interesting to talk about this because I feel like there, when we're looking at something like biased, depending on how much estriol is there versus how much estradiol is there, we know that the estriol can dock on those estrogen receptors and it's really looking at that uh, preference. And if you're doing like the standard dosing, it's kind of what you're on like the 80, 20, 80% estriol, 20% estradiol Um, we see that estriol kind of crowds those receptors so that you're getting more of the estriol effect but you're still getting some of that estradiol effect. So you're still getting this like, um, like softened effect of the estradiol when you're doing something like the biased.

Speaker 1 42:51

Yeah, I mean, you know, I know, for me personally it works because I started to do estrogen therapy, you know, before that whole one year. You know no periods, which I personally and this isn't any advice, by the way, like I'm not a doctor, I'm not but I'm just telling you that I think it's. It would be horrific for me to suffer with hot flashes for a year before any doctor would do anything. And I personally I'm so happy I found a doctor who supports the methodology of once the symptoms begin and the tests show that it's clearly my estrogen is low, right, you know. So for me it makes sense because you know I started when I was kind of like, you know I got a period last year, so I wasn't in what they would call over that one year mark.

Speaker 2 43:49

Like true menopause.

Speaker 1 43:50

Yeah, right, right. So it's a gentler form, is basically what you're saying.

Speaker 2 43:56

Yes, the, the estriol or the biased form. Yeah, it's not as blatant as estradiol, um, and some women do, like, if they I think this also depends on the person you have some people that are very, um, sensitive to that estradiol and that's where estriol might be like let's soften that and, you know, get you into that sweet spot. And there are other women that are like I need like the full thing, like I need the estradiol, like give me the estradiol. So, and that's where, again, like that individualized approach is going to make make all the difference. Um, where you're at in your cycle history, where are you in that? You know menstrual history right, like, are you still cycling? Are you perimenopausal and you're kind of cycling sometimes, or have you been postmenopausal? For that you know 360,. Did you get the crown?

Speaker 2 44:47

Yeah, the crown 365 days past the gate. Um so, and it's going to make a difference. And there are, um like, when we look at some of the guidelines, right, like the Canadian guidelines, the, the NAMS guidelines in the U S, of where and how to start people on hormone therapy. And if you're still cycling or for whatever reason you had a hysterectomy, your body will require different needs, right? So your dosing may be different from someone else who's been menopausal for seven years, right? So it's also looking at those different components of what's happening in your life.

Speaker 1 45:27

Isn't estriol the hormone, the estrogen that's highest when you're pregnant? It is Kate. You're going to love this Debbie. So, and again, please anybody who's listening understand that this is just for informational purposes only. Okay, this is nobody. Nobody's talking about medical advice here, but I actually use a little bit of estriol around my eyes and on my neck, and cause I? I did a lot of my own research and I was like, oh yeah, you know, everyone talks about the pregnancy glow, right, so it kind of made sense. And then I was reading that, um, estriol is difficult to actually capture in blood serum in terms of elevations. I was reading a bunch of research on this. Yeah, so, but urine's different though.

Speaker 2 46:27

Right, so the difference with that is when we do whether it's estriol or estradiol or even progesterone the way that our body like we, the way that our body like we if we were to do a blood draw every hour of a 24 hour period, we would be able to see how that those estrogen levels change. There is a significant up and down pattern that happens with our hormones. When we do like dried urine testing, it's a pool of those, so you get a better average of what that looks like versus a singular point in time which we don't know. If that singular point in time was when you were peaking or when you were dropping, or maybe you were in the in the middle, like we don't know that unless we do your blood draw every hour and we've done that for you and we can do that like on a more consistent basis, which is where something like dried urine testing, we'll be able to see that pool value. So, yes, Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 47:26

So let me, since we're on, that if I'm taking something like a biased, I am taking um, and what I'm biased just for anybody who's listening it's just a cream, um. And then I'm also taking progesterone compounded capsules orally. How would I go and test on the Dutch? What do I have to stop taking it?

Speaker 2 47:52

So if it's topical, you do not have to stop taking it, so you can still do your therapy. Um, for your bias, that would be fine. That will give us a good idea of what your levels are. On supplementation, the difference is when it's oral. So that would be both for progesterone and for estrogen, because what happens is again that same thing where it goes into the gut, we call that first pass metabolism ends up dropping a lot of metabolites into the urine. So that's what we can see with oral progesterone. We can also see that with oral estrogen. What we usually recommend is taking a break, like the day prior. So we get a little bit more of a like a true therapy response versus it being I don't want to say falsely high, because that's not true, but it makes it look higher than it is.

Speaker 1 48:46

Okay. So then if for anybody who's listening if you are on oral progesterone, you can stop 24 hours before you do the Dutch test.

Speaker 2 48:56

Like skip that night before. Um and then go ahead and do your testing like normal, and that should be fine.

Speaker 1 49:03

Okay, okay, that's good to know estrogen.

Speaker 2 49:05

So and it gets a little tricky with estrogen, because it really also depends on how well your body is detoxing things, how well you're absorbing it. Um, and we've had this discussion of like, do we have you stop the estrogen like the day before, or two days or three days? Because, depending on how well your body is detoxing things and absorbing things, we can see some people that we're able to see where that supplementation is after one day. For other people that are a little bit more sluggish in their metabolism, it can take up to three days to see that. So I would say about a two day average of being off of oral estrogen would still give us a decent idea of your metabolites and how your body is metabolizing your estrogen. It's not a great way to monitor like, is that the estradiol level that we want to be at with oral estrogen?

Speaker 1 49:53

Okay, that's good to know because, like I, I once did a blood test. It was a fasting blood test. It's a home test that I do now and again, but it's more about the biomarkers. But they just so happened to have added on the hormone panel and I had done my estrogen cream right before bed and my estrogen was through the roof in my fasting blood the next morning. I'm like, oh my God. And then I had to redo it because I forgot that I should have stopped it.

Speaker 2 50:33

Well, and there again, like, even if you're not supplementing right, like if this is just you as a cycling female, we still see like that up and down pattern with the estrogen and progesterone, so you can still get a good. I would say, if you were to do a serum draw, you still get. You know you're, you know you're somewhere in there. It's just looking at the average of those right. So if you do one cycle, you do another cycle, you do another cycle and you try to do it around the same time. So is it going to be in the morning and the evening? That's what we're looking at really. Is that pattern versus just that one singular point in time test?

Hormones and Cancer Risk Factors

Speaker 1 51:11

Yes, okay, and for anyone who's listening, if you want to know more about testing, I actually recorded with Debbie I think it was about a year and a half ago on testing, so I'm going to put that in the show notes as well, because it's you know, testing can get a little bit confusing. It definitely can, okay, so we covered off really the pros and the cons, the differences between bioidentical. I think it's very important to talk about the cancers that are, and I, you know, oh my gosh, debbie, I had a post and I, and on the post I actually just said estrogen doesn't cause cancer. Do you know how many people got angry?

Speaker 2 52:01

Oh, I can imagine.

Speaker 1 52:03

And listen, I wasn't trying to, you know, be controversial. I was just saying, okay, well, it's not the what, it's the how it's like, what's happening to it. Yes, estrogen is involved, but it's not. You know, we've had it our whole lives. So let's get into this conversation. I think it's important.

Speaker 2 52:26

Well, and there are certainly, like, if you have estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, like, yes, that is going to be an estrogen driven cancer and we want to be mindful of that, and I think it can be difficult to make blanket statements of estrogen causes cancer.

Speaker 2 52:45

We want to look at estrogen in all of the other components, right, like what's happening with their progesterone, what's happening with their oxidative stress, what's happening with their cortisol, what's happening with their environmental exposures? Like, is it just estrogen? Now, that's an easy thing to target in on, because there are things that we can do to reduce that estrogen effect in the body, right? Absolutely, we have the technology, we have the science to be able to stop that estrogen effect on those estrogen receptors. It's a I don't know if I want to say easy, but it is a well-researched way to block the estrogen effect and it is a singular way that we can do that. Now, does that address any of the other things that are happening? Was it because there wasn't enough progesterone? Was it because there were some other genetic things that were going on? Was it because there were some other environmental influences that contributed to these? Those are, those are the unknowns, right, that we don't know about.

Speaker 1 53:48

Yeah. So here's the thing. I think that you know people getting angry about me saying estrogen in and of itself, because you just said it, you just said it, you know, and I and I'm. This isn't about judgment at all. It's about like you can't say one thing. It's just like genetics and epigenetics. So my aunt died of uterine cancer and epigenetics. So my aunt died of uterine cancer. Okay, um, and while I know there were other things going on, she wasn't a drinker, she wasn't a smoker, she was like she was overweight. Um, I'm sure there's some genetics there. I know myself, in my forties I was always estrogen dominant, so I know that I have to be careful and cognizant of those things, right, so that's not. But what I'm saying is that if I was to go and drink a bottle of wine every night and cook dinner or eat takeout and do all those things, well, I know that that can put me at more risk.

Speaker 2 55:10

Right, absolutely. And it's understanding those risk profiles and understanding what causes inflammation in your body and understanding how your body's detoxing, looking at genes that help with detoxification. I mean, even the WHI study that we were talking about has shown that women that were on estrogens alone had less risk for breast cancer and better outcomes with breast cancer on estrogen alone. That's not even paired with progesterone, right, that's just estrogen. And those are conjugated equine estrogen, so more concentrated estrogens their breast health was better.

Speaker 1 55:53

Yeah, and that was the oh right, right, right With the progestin correct.

Speaker 2 55:59

That was even just estrogen alone. Oh Estrogen alone, and that's what I'm saying, not even with the progestin, not even with progesterone, just estrogen alone. They had less risk for cancer, better outcomes for breast cancer.

Speaker 1 56:13

Wow, you know. Do you know who Dr Rosenzweig is? Yes, sweet is. Yes, yeah. So I interviewed him and he was talking about the fact that what people don't really understand is that hormones in and of itself are actually what's the right way to say this? Um, cancer prohibitive. Is that the right way? Am I saying it wrong? You know, like he's saying that it is the, it is the absence of hormones that can actually put you at more risk for many different kinds of cancers.

Speaker 2 56:55

Well, and if you look at Rebecca Glasser's work, she's talking about injecting testosterone into breast tissue. That is, reducing tumors.

Speaker 1 57:05

Really.

Speaker 2 57:08

I mean. So there are studies, there's research that is coming out supporting this, because breast cancer is huge, Ovarian cancer, huge Uterine cancer, huge. Now breast tissue is different than uterine tissue, is different than ovarian cancer huge uterine cancer, huge. Now breast tissue is different than uterine tissue, is different than ovarian tissue. So we want to look at those individually as well. Um, but, yeah, there and this is where we look at again those nuances of hormones, right? Is it an estrogen alpha receptor? Is it an estrogen beta receptor? What is the difference there? How does that influence your inflammation or your estrogen response? Like that is also something to take into consideration.

Speaker 1 57:45

Okay, but regular blood tests won't tell us that information.

Speaker 2 57:51

No.

Speaker 1 57:52

So how do we know?

Speaker 2 57:55

Great question. I don't know how to test the alpha versus beta receptors.

Speaker 1 58:01

Can we do that? We can do that in the Dutch, or no no, no, we can see.

Speaker 2 58:08

Not for estrogen. Alpha and beta Um in the Dutch. You would be able to see how you're detoxing, what those levels are, how that compares to your testosterone, how that compares to your progesterone, but not the individual receptor variability. That, I think, is going to be more into, like genetic testing.

Speaker 2 58:42

Interesting. But do you go down the preferred pathway, which is that two hydroxy pathway, um, which can easily get those estrogens through detox, or do you go down the genotoxic pathway, that four OH or the four hydroxy pathway, that 4-OH or the 4-hydroxy pathway, that one has a lot more potential to become dangerous, make changes to your DNA? Or are you going down the 16-OH or the 16-hydroxy pathway? Now, the 16-hydroxy pathway is what we call a proliferative pathway. It grows things. Good for bone, not so great for breast health and ovarian health. So this lets us know like what is that proliferative capacity for you Are you able to like? When we're looking at detoxification, we want to make sure that we can grab your estrogens from the estrogen receptor and clean it off and then send it through the body. If you are holding onto those estrogens, it's harder to take them out and clean them off. They become more dangerous.

Speaker 1 59:44

So that's essentially what we're looking at in that metabolism pathway in the test and that's where you're. You know you're talking about detox and recircling the estrogens because really, you know there's many factors, like you know. Are you pooping every day? Are you right? Like there's so many different things that would affect whether or not those estrogens are recirculating within the body, right?

Speaker 2 1:00:08

Yeah, the more your body has to clear, the less opportunity it has to make it clean. Right, that makes sense, like the more it has to go through the same process, it has a chance to wiggle through and be dangerous okay, so can like is it possible for a woman to?

Speaker 1 1:00:30

because there are some protective like supplements, food as medicine options that are protective, Like I've been on. At one point I was on DIM and it was just a little too intense the dosage and then it's like it took too much of my estrogen away, Cause it can cause it's phase one, right. Dim is.

Speaker 2 1:00:56

DIM is mostly phase one, yep.

Speaker 1 1:01:10

DIM is mostly phase one, yep.

Estrogen Detoxification and Gut Health

Speaker 2 1:01:13

Yeah, so can you get into DIM versus sulforaphane, versus calcium deglucrate? Yeah, so DIM is very focused on phase one metabolism and it's that concentrated form. It's a constituent from broccoli. Um, we did try the experiment. We were trying to figure this out. Can you eat enough broccoli to equal the amount of dim? And way too much broccoli, um, but dim really helps to go down that to hydroxy pathway. But we can see this, even though research doesn't support this. This is really interesting. Research says that this doesn't happen, but anecdotally we see that it can lower estrogen levels. So it depends on what your goal is with the DIM. Now, a lot of times people will use DIM with other things like NAC or CoQ10 just to kind of help support that detoxification pathway. But DIM is very specific to phase one Sulforaphane, which is a little bit different than DIM. It does work on phase one, but it can also influence phase two, which is methylation, a little bit, just because of its overall detoxification. We don't see that sulforaphane lowers estrogen the same way that DIM does. And then calcium deglucorate is really an important factor in like that phase two to phase three clearance. I think of it really more as in the gut versus phase one and two are in the liver.

Speaker 2 1:02:41

Um calcium D glucurate works on an enzyme called beta glucuronidase and what happens is you get all of your estrogens. They get messy in phase one, which is what they're supposed to do. Phase two tries to clean them back up so it can send it into phase three in the stool. By the time you go from phase two to phase three, what's happened is your phase two metabolites, or that metabolism essentially gets your estrogen all packed up in a nice little package to send it out in the stool. And what beta-glucuronidase will do is it'll take that package and blow it up. I'm like, oh, I just released all the estrogen back in and that's what beta-gl glucuronidase enzymes do. So if you have a lot of beta glucuronidase, you end up having a lot more estrogen that gets recirculated back into the body. Now calcium deglucorate helps to reduce all of those enzymes so that they don't come in and destroy that nice little estrogen package that's supposed to go out in the stool.

Speaker 1 1:03:41

Okay, Can I ask you now to find out if you have that you would do stool testing right?

Speaker 2 1:03:47

Yeah, very specifically beta-glucuronidase.

Speaker 1 1:03:49

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 1:03:50

And you can do that as a singular test. Sometimes it will be part of a package, depending on what stool testing you're doing. But if you have high beta-gl glucuronidase, it likely means that you're not going through phase three clearance very well and it also likely means you're getting a lot more estrogen recirculate back into the system.

Speaker 1 1:04:11

But the Dutch test won't show that anywhere. Just one and two in the Dutch right. Just one and two.

Speaker 2 1:04:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:04:18

Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:04:19

Now calcium D-glucarate like that's where it really shines is in that phase three and that beta-glucuronidase activity. So that's where we can see beta-glucuronidase being really helpful.

Speaker 1 1:04:30

So what would be some signs that somebody should not just do the Dutch but also do gut testing? How would they even know?

Speaker 2 1:04:40

Oh yeah, I mean, when you're looking at hormone symptoms, right Um, if you want, or having not so great periods, so significant PMS, really intense breast tenderness or fibroids both in breast and ovaries, or uterine fibroids um, fibroids um clotty periods, heavy periods, acne like a lot of those kind of PMS symptoms that come and go.

Speaker 2 1:05:07

Um, that's what I would also look at and if you're, you know, also looking at gut health, right, like, if your gut is not happy, you have constipation, diarrhea, you're not absorbing things very well, you're not detoxing things very well, we look at gut health. I would also consider that.

Speaker 1 1:05:22

Okay Now just to kind of simplify it, and, and of course you have to see your own practitioner Again, I have to say this again that you know this is not because everybody's so unique. I know, for me, I have been taking sulforaphane for a long time. I feel like and this is definitely not making any kind of medical claims at all I just feel that, you know, whenever I do do my Dutch test, I do do my Dutch test. My pie chart looks much prettier, right, yeah, Like it, just like everything kind of seems to be more in place.

Speaker 2 1:06:07

And just to explain, maybe explain how the visual is on the Dutch yeah, when we're looking at especially the pie chart, that visual representation, what we're looking for is about 75% or three quarters of that pie to be green and that green represents that two hydroxy pathway, which is that preferred pathway for detoxification. You're going to get a little tiny wedge of red, which is the four OH pathway. That's the dangerous pathway. There's probably going to be some, just because it exists.

Speaker 2 1:06:39

And then there's the 16 OH pathway, which is going to be a just because it exists, um. And then there's the 16 OH pathway, which is going to be a little bit less too. So I would say like a 10th of that pie chart could be the red or the four hydroxy, and then the rest would be that blue um is really what we're looking for. So we really want the majority of that pie chart to be green. We want to know that your body is able to pop off those estrogens from those receptors so it can clear your estrogen as well.

Speaker 1 1:07:04

Yeah. So what you want to do is I've been taking the Dutch test since my forties and I I remember working with a Dutch test practitioner and I feel now like I can look back and go okay, that was a little bit of an intense treatment of of me as a patient, because initially that piece of the pie that's not supposed to be red was really big, and so that's that's how I knew I had some issues, and so the the the response was oh crap, we better, you know, we better do something fast. And so anybody who's listening, work with a Dutch test provider, because I'm going to tell you I've been doing one probably for the last 10 years at least, and I personally do it once a year because I do know my risks and things can change.

Speaker 2 1:08:11

Yeah, it would be great if our systems were static. That would make treating it so much easier. But we're not. We're dynamic beings and we want to be able to check in on that, see how we're doing with that. How can we best support our bodies in that dynamic process?

Speaker 1 1:08:25

I mean, that's what makes us really cool, yeah, and and and we're all unique, like so you know, dr Rice and I were talking about how you know like things change and even still, like I were talking about how you know like things change and even still, like I'm 54 and I still feel like sometimes I'm simulating a period and, you know, it almost feels like I'm going to get a period. Mind you, I had one in September. This is now February, so I think I'm still kind of in that kind of you know middle, not really on the other side yet. So this is just a really important conversation. But I can't end the conversation without discussing why are there still, like so many of these fear mongering articles that just come out?

Speaker 2 1:09:20

I don't get it, I know. I would like to say that I like to see the best in people and I understand that they're. My hope is that their intent is that they want you to be safe. Right, they want you to be safe and, as far as their scope of understanding, their scope of practice, they're going to tell you what it means to them to be safe. But I that's where I would encourage, like, yes, whenever you're looking at information, take it with a grain of salt. Do your own research behind it. If, if you see this article that says estrogen is bad, but then you see another article that says estrogen is good, there are two sides to every story, at least right. So make sure you have a well-rounded view of the information that you're getting.

Speaker 1 1:10:16

Yeah, that's good. I mean it's good advice, because we get a lot of advice thrown at us and it's important, like not everybody's going to go back to school to understand how to read a research paper.

Speaker 2 1:10:41

So we still want to be able to understand the information that people are giving us, and that's where I say don't just look at one source of information. You need to have well-rounded sources of information. I think.

Speaker 1 1:10:52

Yes, so cause, cause. I I've always said this, debbie. I've always said you know what, for every single article or study that says don't do this, I can find one that says do this.

Speaker 2 1:11:09

Do this Exactly Right. It's so true though I mean in the world, to be fair right world, we also want to be very cognizant of who's funding these studies and what their how, what their alliances are. So, and I hate to say that, but I think it's really important when we're looking at medical advice, your quality of life, what that can mean for you. So I just don't be singular.

Speaker 1 1:11:40

Yeah, actually, and I'm writing about that because I am writing a book and I have written. I believe we all must learn critical thinking skills. Do not believe everything that I'm posting on social media. I want you to go and do your own research and go. Okay, maybe this isn't for me and that's fine.

Speaker 2 1:12:07

Well, I think it's fair to have an educated conversation. If somebody comes to me and says hey, you said this, I have a question about it because I was reading this, let's talk about it. I'm not going to say no, everything I say is right. You know, things are consistently changing. Research is changing. Our understanding of things are changing. Remember when vitamin D used to be bad? Remember when eggs used to be bad? Right, like, things are always changing and so we can have an educated conversation. Please come to me with any of those questions and concerns. Like. I want to have that conversation. I want to learn, I want to be better, we want to do better.

Speaker 1 1:12:44

We do, and but we do have to learn that we cannot just get fed all the information and that we just take it all in. So even you just mentioned vitamin D like something came out not that long ago about how vitamin D can be bad for bones and I'm like but there was never any mention about taking K2 with it.

Speaker 2 1:13:07

Exactly Right. Any of the other minerals support bone. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:13:14

You see what I'm saying. So, so when you use critical thinking skills and you go okay, wait a second, you know this doesn't seem right. How could vitamin D be so important and now they're saying don't take it or be careful?

Speaker 2 1:13:29

Well, there was that one study too that came out in I think it was in Europe that was saying you shouldn't take progesterone, that progesterone is dangerous. I can't remember, I'm totally going to botch that, but when you actually read the article, it's talking about progestin, not progesterone. And so if you were to just, you know, read the headline, you'd be like, ooh, that's bad. But then you look at it and, oh, but if I, if I use my brain to read through what that's saying, yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1 1:14:03

Well, I think this has been an amazing conversation and a really important one, because you know, I think that we broke down all the information and then, of course, it's for you to have a discussion with and I always have to end with this with a qualified practitioner. Not, if you're, if your family doctor is not qualified in specifically customizing a hormone protocol, find one. That is yeah.

Speaker 2 1:14:35

And it's okay to advocate for that Absolutely. Yeah, and it's okay to advocate for that Absolutely.

Speaker 1 1:14:39

Yes, so please let us know, Debbie is there anything that maybe I we? Didn't touch on that. You want to touch on? I don't think so.

Speaker 2 1:14:53

We covered a lot of ground, I know, I know, I mean, we could probably talk for many more hours, but yes. I feel like that was a. That was a good, that was a good run.

Speaker 1 1:15:00

It was, it was. Where can we find you and more information?

Speaker 2 1:15:12

Yeah, so my Instagram is drricedebbie Um, and since I also am a fan of Dutch test, you can also go to dutchtestcom. Lots of information and educational resources there as well. Um, another person who I absolutely love and learn a lot from. I mean, there are so many great authors that are going out, um, uh, actually her most one of her recent books. This was um.

Speaker 2 1:15:31

Dr Lindsay Burson safe hormones, smart women oh good, Great book. Um, and she's actually. She does a lot of talks, so if you can find her information, she's super helpful. Felice Gersh is also talking about hormones and hormone therapy, so there are a couple of plugs for them. They're great.

Speaker 1 1:15:54

Yes, I've actually seen a couple of Dr Felice Gersh's talks, even on mammograms. It was very interesting.

Speaker 2 1:16:04

Yes, yes, yeah, she's got some great info.

Supporting Conversations for Best Life

Speaker 1 1:16:07

Very, very good. Thank you so much, Debbie. I really appreciate your time today.

Speaker 2 1:16:13

Of course, thanks for having me. I love it, love being with you.

Speaker 1 1:16:18

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit, and always remember when you rate, review, subscribe, you help to support my content and help me to keep going and bringing these conversations to you each and every week. Join me next week for a new topic, new guest, new exciting conversations to help you live your best life.