Hormones
This topic contains so much information that I couldn’t even attempt to put it all into one short blog. So what I am going to do is write about the hormones that will make the biggest impact in your health and the ones that you will hear about most often. Some of the names you will recognize and others you may be hearing for the first time. Either way, what I want you to get out of this blog is what effects our hormone levels the most and what can we do about it.
First, what are hormones? Well, they are literally chemical messages that are sent through your blood stream to different receptors and organs in your body. They are extremely POTENT and POWERFUL. Think of them like a poison, even the tiniest change in them can influence the whole body in major ways. That is why it is such a big deal to keep them in balance. Some of the main things they regulate are our growth/development, metabolism, reproduction, sleep cycle, body temperature, heart rate, libido and MOOD. And now you see why these are essential for our survival. They are also made by our endocrine system organs, which consist of the hypothalamus, pituitary, pineal, thyroid, thymus, adrenals, pancreas and testes/ovaries. Most people have heard about the thyroid, pancreas and reproductive organs but many people have never heard of the others, which are equally important. And one fact that even less people know is that the heart is actually an endocrine gland as well because it secretes it’s own hormones. If you have ever been treated by me, then you are very familiar with the heart because it is the most important organ in the whole body to balance structurally, chemically and emotionally. It governs the whole body and I want to make sure that each and every person I get to treat has a balanced heart.
What are the most common symptoms in a hormone imbalance? They are the following but are not limited to low energy/fatigue, inability to lose weight, accumulation of belly fat and really any fat deposits around the body (different areas of fat will tell you what hormone is causing it), difficulty sleeping, anxiety, depression, headaches (especially ones that are on top of the head and around your cycle), bloating, breast tenderness, low sex drive, thinning brittle hair, PMS, hot flashes/sweating episodes and appetite changes. Now besides these symptoms, there are a few things that I learned when studying Chinese fingernail and tongue diagnosis that tell me if the patient has a hormonal imbalance. Because remember, hormones are slow acting so your symptoms might not appear for months or years so it’s a good thing to have a method to identify these imbalances before any of those symptoms appear. First and foremost, the two biggest signs of a hormonal imbalance are if you have any white dots on your fingernails and if you have any cherry angiomas on your body (they can be located anywhere but on your chest, belly and head are the most common with the ones on the head the most serious). These two indictors tell us that you have too much toxic estrogen in the body which your liver is having a hard time detoxing. We will talk about estrogen in the next sections. The other two signs that I check for on my patients is if their tongue has teeth marks along the side which is a sign of insulin/blood sugar handling issues. Yes insulin is a hormone! So diabetes is really a hormonally issue when you think about it that way. And the last sign I look for is also on the tongue and that is raised red dots on the lateral portion that often times pop through a white coating. I will attach some photos at the end of this blog.
What are the hormones we need to know about? The main hormones I want to cover in this blog are cortisol, insulin, testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. Yes there are many others but these are some of the main players if you will. And in my opinion, the most important hormone of them all is cortisol. This is known as the stress hormone and if this is out of balance every other hormone in the body is in some way shape or form out of balance. Especially the ones I listed above. When cortisol is overly secreted and elevated, our immune system decreases in function leaving us vulnerable to infection and disease. One very important process that elevated cortisol also inhibits is the conversion of thyroid hormone from T4 to T3. How many people do you know who has been diagnosed with a thyroid condition? I am going to go out and say that I bet 50% of them really had a cortisol issue and not a true thyroid issue. Now after cortisol is elevated for so long, often times our body gets tired and then we secrete not enough cortisol leading to chronic fatigue and something known as adrenal fatigue which western medicine dismisses as a myth. Welp, I have built a waiting list practice off of that myth and have seen people lives and health completely change when we get them out of adrenal fatigue. Handling the adrenal glands/cortisol health is probably top 3 most important things I can do for my patients and their wellness.
The next hormone is insulin, which you all know about because of how prevalent diabetes is in our world and how it’s a major cause of death in our country. When this hormone is off, nothing can work properly. This is because it regulates how our body uses the sugar called glucose. Every cell in our body uses glucose for energy and to function, so if the hormone that regulates this glucose isn’t working then your cells will begin to malfunction and die over time. Now you know why diabetes is so deadly. I will cover how to take care of your insulin later in this blog
Testosterone is a hormone that is associated with being male but females have it too, just a much smaller amount of it. This is because not only does testosterone promote sex drive and sperm production, but it also plays a key role in bone/muscle mass and in the production of red blood cells, which is equally as important in females. Testosterone is on the rapid decline in males in today’s society for reasons we will soon get to.
And the last two hormones are estrogen and progesterone. The balance of these is crucial for so many processes in the body. And BY FAR the most common pattern in society is ESTROGEN DOMINANCE (which means there is too much in the body) and progesterone deficiency. This is the main reason it is so hard for people to get pregnant and maintain pregnancy. Good progesterone levels allow the uterus to thicken so that a fertilized egg can implant properly and it also allows the baby to be held in the uterus full term. Other patterns you will see with this estrogen dominance are painful periods/PMS/PCOS, fibroids, breast tenderness, mood swings, endometriosis, heavy flow cycle, hot flashes and weight gain. And in males you will see belly fat weight gain, low libido, growing breasts/feminine characteristics, insulin resistance, low testosterone, fatigue and brain fog among others.
So what is affecting our hormone levels to make them so out of balance? In a nutshell, it all comes down to the diet we eat, the way we handle our mental/emotional stress and environmental toxins POINT BLANK PERIOD.
Let’s start with the foods that we eat. Please refer back to my blog on food sensitivities because it is the inflammation that we cause in the body that interrupts our hormone balance. Since I don’t want to repeat myself, I will re-mention the foods that affect our hormones the most. These consist of SOY, EGGS, DAIRY, PEANUT and often times CHICKEN (especially if not raised responsibly). Soy is basically estrogen and acts as such in the body. Eggs are what they make vaccines on in the laboratory so if it’s possible to culture viruses and pathogens on egg in the lab, imagine what it does in your gut and body. Dairy is literally cow pus. And the cows are pumped full of antibiotics, steroids and hormones to keep them producing milk so consuming that product is destroying your hormones. Even if it’s grass fed cows, its still cow pus and we shouldn’t drink another animal’s milk (camel milk is a new one might be an exception for some people). Peanut also acts like estrogen in the body and chickens in this country are fed/injected with steroids and hormones. Also, most of the time you’re eating chicken breast, which is hormone tissue if you think about it. I think soy, eggs, dairy and peanut are more important to cut out than chicken is for your hormones if you are eating free range chicken dark meat but if you want to do all the steps you can to help your hormones, chicken has to go as well.
Next, the way we handle mental/emotional stress is huge for hormones. The main reason for this is because with increased stress comes increased stress hormone aka cortisol. See estrogen, progesterone and testosterone come from the same precursor as cortisol. This means that if the precursor is being pushed to make stress hormone than there isn’t much left over to make the estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. So what happens is we create a bunch of cortisol which depletes our progesterone levels because cortisol comes from progesterone. And since we become progesterone deficient due to using it all up to produce more cortisol, our bodies grab onto toxic estrogen in our foods and environment creating estrogen dominance or overload (this phenomenon is known as the pregnenolone steal). So in properly practiced medicine, we need to get to the source of your stress and make you more adaptable to it so that your stress levels and ultimately stress hormone normalizes and your body can produce efficient progesterone and sex hormones. This is one of the biggest ways we can combat this world crises of estrogen dominance in our populations.
And lastly, the most significant is environmental factors. And by far the most hormone shifting environmental factors are all the chemicals in our environment that destroy hormone pathways in the body and act as synthetic hormones like Where do all these come from? Well, the Red Cross reports that the average umbilical cord in the US contains 287 different chemicals with 180 known to cause cancer, 217 toxic to the nervous system and 208 known to cause birth defects and abnormal development in animals. So we are brought into this world already being exposed to these toxic chemicals. And what do I mean by a xenoestrogen? Well these are chemicals that are structurally similar to estrogen so they bind on hormonal estrogen receptors in the body which creates chaos in the body and our good estrogen just sits in our bodies with no where to go and increases are chances of autoimmune disease like cancer etc. So what are the most common sources of these xenoestrogens? The most common are plastics, pesticides, personal care products, household cleaning products, non-organic food and foods mentioned above, unfiltered water and CONTRACEPTIVES.
Plastics are not only destroying our environment but destroying our health and hormones as well. We drink water in plastic bottles that leaches estrogen into the drinking water. We store our food in plastic containers that we then microwave them in which cooks a xenoestrogen known as phthalates into the food. Even storing them in these plastic containers allows phthalates to get into our food. Some people even cook in tin foil and plastic bags, a big no no for hormone health. So many of our childhood toys are made from toxic estrogenic plastics and chemicals, especially your typical pacifiers, which babies suck on all the time.
Pesticides are sprayed all over the place from our non-organic food sources to the local parks in our neighborhoods. These pesticides not only act as xenoestrogens but they clog our detox pathways so it’s harder for us to deal with any toxins. This leads to health issues beyond just our hormones. This is the reason why farmers have such a high rate of Alzheimer’s, because they are around these toxic chemicals all their lives. So when our children or we are at these parks and fields, these pesticides lead to issues like allergies and headaches on top of hormone imbalances.
Personal care items are absolutely loaded with chemicals and toxins. From the make up you use to the PERFUME, deodorant, hair products, lotions, soaps, toothpaste and shampoo. They are loaded with xenoestrogens like parabens. If you look at the ingredient label and you can’t pronounce a word, chances are it ain’t good for you. The kicker here is that anything you put onto your skin gets absorbed and bypasses detoxification in the liver, which means that it’s 100% absorbed. This is more potent than ingesting xenoestrogens.
Similar to personal care items, household cleaning products are loaded with toxins that disrupt your hormones. They have so many cleaning agents and chemicals for scent, such as perfumes and fragrance. This means that we spray our living spaces with these toxins which we inhale and they get through our skin constantly. And you know those like fabreeze air fresheners that you plug into your wall and it releases scent….AWFUL.
Non-organic food is sprayed with pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. These are harsh chemicals that do so much harm to our body. Hormonal disruption is just one way that they affect us. They clog our detox pathways that lead to things like allergies, fatigue and weight gain, which in the long run can turn into cancer since they are carcinogens. Eating organic isn’t just the fad thing to do, it’s the right thing to do for your body. It can be more expensive but ask yourself two questions, one is how valuable is it for you to be healthy and two is why is the other food so cheap? Anything that is cheap can in no way shape or form be healthy for us to consume.
Tap water can be detrimental to our health. It has so many toxins in it from chlorine to pharmaceutical drugs. The water is often times recycled through and filters don’t catch some of the stuff we pee out. This consists of pharmaceuticals like antibiotics, antidepressants and birth control. Do you think it’s a good idea to consume these at minuscule doses? Or our children to be getting those? Also, there are many petroleum derivatives in our tap water, which is a big source of xenoestrogens.
And last but not least are contraceptives like birth control. Birth control pumps your body full of estrogen which destroys your digestive tract lining, clots your blood and depletes crucial vitamins and minerals from your body. This is especially true for vitamin B6. Estrogen not only depletes B6, which is the nutrient responsible for detoxing estrogen, but fungus and yeast also feed on estrogen. This means that it gives people chronic yeast infections in the body like Candida. So the estrogen attracts yeast in the body whenever we eat yeasty things like bread, pasta and beer or breathe in mold. And yeast attracts heavy metals from the environment so you start generating a toxin storm in the body from this chronic estrogen exposure. See why I am not a fan of birth control?
So what can we do about it? Lets go in chronological order from what I listed above. First, avoid the food listed above that manipulate our hormones. Make sure your foods are organic and fresh. Get away from the processed garbage that has all the additives and chemicals in them. Start cooking your own food. Even if you’re not eating at a McDonalds or Wendys, you don’t know what types of oils your food is cooked in and if they are microwaving your food etc. Just because your dinner places are expensive doesn’t mean its “eating good”. Your great marbled steaks that are at your fine dining steak houses are fed grains and corn etc. This creates toxic meat. So just because you eat “good” doesn’t mean you eat “well”.
For emotional stress, learn to meditate or take time to yourself away from your electronics and news sources. Listen to a guided meditation or pray, whatever you subscribe to. Learn breathing exercises because our emotions live in breath so often times we don’t breathe enough and don’t breathe properly. Learn to belly breathe. There are many videos on YouTube for you to learn this. And to take it a step further, find a practitioner like myself who does the technique called NET which muscle tests what is affecting you and do a procedure to release the physiology of the emotion from your body. People have said it’s like 6 months of therapy in a minute. That’s because when you have a tool that releases the physiological charge, your nervous system changes to adapt to your stressors of life and your stress glands relax. For many people, that’s a miracle. Reach out to me if you want to find someone in your area etc. Another great tool is using essential oils because your sense of smell goes directly to the brain and can change your emotional center of your brain. The best oil for this to cover all your stress is Vervita Elite Harmony. It is designed to balance the whole body and to use it I recommend doing footbaths or full body baths with at least 20 drops of oil and a cup of Epsom salt. You can also diffuse it or put it on your body topically on different reflex points. I have my patients mostly do footbaths or baths though. And lastly from a supplement standpoint, make sure you get in a good B vitamin like Vervita Inspiracell. B vitamins help you adapt to stress and helps regulate your blood sugar. From an herbal perspective I recommend trying ashwaghanda, reishi mushroom, tulsi and schisandra. These can all be found in the supreme nutrition store on this website. My personal favorites are schisandra and ashwaghanda to help stabilize the stress hormone cortisol in your body. Another great one if you experience any anxiety or depression is Albizia Supreme. I have seen it really help a lot of people emotionally.
Now for all the environmental stuff. First, stop drinking out of plastic bottles and try to use foods that are not out of cans or toxic plastic. Start using glass and cooking pans that are toxin free like stainless steel and cast iron. Never use something with Teflon in it (watch the movie Dark Waters about Teflon and it might wake you to the importance of cooking with safe cookware). Another big exposure is children toys and pacifiers. There is a great website called the tot which has all safe things for children. My wife has a great blog on all the stuff we use for our child at www.curiouslypresent.com. I’d rather you just look it up so I don’t have to type more than I have to haha.
Remember, as I said in my EMF blog, you need to CONTROL THE CONTROLLABLES. Stop using your toxic make up and perfumes/cologne. There are natural make up brands (I don’t use them so can’t recommend anything for that). For perfume I recommend essential oils and just taking care of your body so you don’t smell lol. For something like deodorant it might take a while before you find a natural one you like. For me, I like North Coast Organics Revolver. It works great for me. For soaps and shampoos, there are many natural ones in stores. Just know that the more words you can pronounce on the ingredient label, the more likely it’s less toxic. You want everything to be BPA, paraben and phthalate free etc. The stuff is out there, you just need to pay attention and look. It really isn’t that hard. I personally use a tea tree oil based shampoo and the soap is Dr. Bronners. The last thing I want to mention is that it also matters what laundry detergent and dryer sheets etc. you use. We use Young Living detergent and put Vervita essential oils in a wool dryer ball. We wear our clothes all day long so it matters what chemicals are used on them. Dry cleaners are TOXIC. Some areas have organic dry cleaners but that is harder to find.
As for pesticides, if you are doing your own garden than find organic stuff to use. I am not a gardener so I don’t have any specific brands etc. When we planted some herbs in our backyard I found an organic soil. As for breathing in all the toxins from nearby parks, golf courses and outdoor areas, its nice to take a binder like Takesumi Supreme, which is a carbonized bamboo. This absorbs toxins in your body that you have inhaled or eaten and helps you eliminate them. It’s a great medicine cabinet product to always have on hand for not only pesticide exposure but for something like food poisoning. I also have people take Vervita Klenz often times to help the liver, kidneys and bowel deal with the toxin exposure.
I already talked about eating organic food etc so I will talk about tap water next. The two best companies that I use are Aquasana and Berkey. I recommend getting a drinking water filter and a showerhead filter because the steam from the toxic tap water shower can be worse for you than your drinking water. Refrigerator filters are trash and don’t filter out the smaller toxins. Reverse Osmosis seems to muscle test well when people bring in samples to muscle test on them. So I recommend looking up the brands above and getting whatever fits your house or apartment etc.
As for contraceptives like birth control. GET OFF OF THEM. If your worried about getting pregnant, track your cycle and be more responsible and in tune with your body. Pumping you full of hormones is not a good idea and will increase your risk for stroke and cancer. ITS NOT WORTH IT. If your using it for cystic acne or something like PCOS, find yourself a new doctor that will find the cause and not put that band aid on your issues. This is the perfect example of how suppressing acute issues turns into chronic disease down the road. Remember, emergency medicine does not build health. You’re calling the fire department to put out your candle. If you want a better doctor, contact me and I will help you or find you someone who can. So if you have been on birth control and are getting off of it and you want to balance your hormones, here’s what you can do. This also applies to anyone who is living in estrogen dominance, which is almost everybody. First, make sure you are getting enough B6 in your body. For this I again recommend Vervita Inspiracell. This product has B6 in it and also help your detox pathways stay open in general (a process called methylation which will be another blog in the future).
You also want to get rid of as much yeast and fungus in the body as you can because yeast attracts estrogen to feed on as I have mentioned. For that, I recommend Vervita Klenz and Black cumin oil. Black cumin oil also builds healthy blood so you can carry hormones through out the body. So not only is it anti-estrogenic and anti-fungal but it nourishes the blood so it can deliver you hormones throughout your body. For a more intense protocol, I often times use Morinda Supreme and Goldenthread Supreme. The Goldenthread is high in berberine which helps balance insulin/blood sugar which is ESSENTIAL for balanced hormones. I go through a ton of black cumin oil and goldenthread in my practice for these exact reasons.
And then the herbs that are more specific for balancing estrogen and progesterone levels that I use are Rosemary Supreme and Chaste Tree supreme. Rosemary is great for getting rid of xenoestrogens in the body and Chaste Tree increases progesterone levels. One herb that I have been experimenting with as of late is artichoke extract that helps the flow of the gallbladder bile, which is technically how our body excretes the estrogen. Eating artichokes can help with this bile flow that gets rid of xenoestrogens.
CLINICAL PEARLS:
By far the biggest clinical pearl is that all hormones are made from cholesterol. So in a society that has been lied to about fat being bad for you and to fear cholesterol, you can see why our hormones are so messed up. The study that was done to show that fat raised cholesterol wasn’t going as planned so they added corn oil into the lab rats and that increased their cholesterol. That is because sugar increases your cholesterol, not good fats. The sugar industry pulled a fast one on you and they still do till this day. Our brain and heart need cholesterol to function so all these anti-cholesterol/statin meds are really doing more harm than good. Try to eat as many good fats as possible like avocado and olive oil etc. to give your body the building blocks to build healthy hormones. Don’t fall for the fat free food BS. To get these healthy fats in a more efficient way, take a good cod liver oil. A store brand that tests well is Nordic Naturals. Try to get in 3 grams of that fish oil daily. Besides good fats, you need animal protein for healthy hormone and blood sugar levels. Vegans are the sickest patients I see. They fall apart over time and get riddled with anxiety, depression and gut issues. Just my experience, don’t hate me for it
If you have PCOS or cysts in the body that are a result of estrogen dominance, supplement with Iodine and B6 but also spleen and thymus tissue. The products for this is Vervita Immune Rmor. This product, like black cumin oil, builds health blood as well for your hormones to be transported.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the liver regulates reproductive organs and menstrual cycle. The liver is the main detox organ so keeping our liver pathways open is a necessity. Anyone who gets PMS or cramps with their cycle have a congested liver to some extent and need to open those pathways. Supplements that will help with this I have mentioned above are Vervita Klenz and Inspiracell along with Schisandra Supreme. Eating green leafy vegetables help open these pathways from a food standpoint.
Balance your hormones to help prevent a nasty menopause transition. The people who have the biggest stress hormone issues have the worst transitions. This is because menopause is the process of the ovaries stopping production of estrogen and allowing the adrenal glands to take over. And the adrenal glands are the stress glands that produce cortisol so they are mostly stressed our whole lives and when they get the extra responsibility your body can’t handle it leading to a bad menopause transition.
In conclusion, I know this was a long blog but it’s an important topic. By now you realize how important it is to do our best to live toxin free in a toxin filled world. We are like gold fish in a dirty take. The problem is we can’t clean our tanks, so we have to become more adaptable to them. Hopefully this blog will help you with that.
This is the way,
Dr. Charlie
This photo shows the teeth marks on the tongue that represent the start of insulin resistance and blood sugar regulation issues.
This photo shows the red cherry angiomas on the belly, which tell your there is too much estrogen in the body and the liver is having a hard time getting rid of it. The tongue shows the same thing with the red dots on both sides of the tongue you can see through the coating,
Another example of the cherry angiomas.
This picture shows the white dots on the finger nails. This is normal is growing children but after your teens this tells you there is a hormonal imbalance in the body with too much estrogen. It can also tell you that you are zinc and or calcium deficient. In my experience it is a zinc deficiency with a hormonal imbalance.