 Okay. Hello, everybody. We are live again. Welcome to another episode of Dr. Jill Live. I'm here with my friend, Dr. Carrie Jones. So I'll introduce in just a moment. We're going to be talking everything hormones today, one of my favorite topics, and I know Dr. Jones as well. If you've missed any previous episodes, you can find all of them on my YouTube channel or on iTunes or Stitcher or anywhere that you listen to podcast. Please do stop in, leave a review, rate us so that we can reach more people. Now I want to introduce my guest. Dr. Carrie Jones is an internationally recognized speaker, consultant, and educator on the topic of women's health and hormones over 20 years in the industry. Dr. Jones graduated from the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon, where she also completed a tier residency in women's health, hormones, and endocrinology. Later she graduated with a master of public health program. Dr. Jones is one of the first to become board certified through the American board of naturopathic endocrinology and currently serves on the board. She was a medical director of Dutch for several years, one of my favorite tests for hormones. We'll talk a little bit about that today and is a clinical expert for the Lifestyle Matrix Resource Center and Under Armour. Currently she's the head of medical education at Roopa Health and the host of Roop Cause Medicine podcast. So welcome, Dr. Carrie. I'm so glad to have you here. Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for having me on. I always love talking with you. I know we have so much fun. I love to start story and so I'd love to know like how did you get interested in medicine? Was it something you always knew you wanted to do? What was your path to becoming a naturopathic doctor? It is something I've always known I wanted to do since I was a little girl and you wanted to be a doctor. I thought I would become an OBGYN or maybe a pediatrician and I really sort of got into that sort of women's health love and hormones love because I don't know about you but I got health education, sex education from my football coach. So I grew up in the south and because they were short teachers, a lot of teachers did cross-study on what they taught and we learned all about health from a southern football coach and it was not great. We did not learn a lot as you can probably imagine and moving forward into college I decided is I was getting ready and prepping and taking all the classes and volunteering to go to medical school. I was working with the hospital that did a lot of community outreach and I thought man I really love the outreach aspect, the education aspect as opposed to the very you know stark harsh clinical surgery which is very important, very needed. I'm not against it at all. It just wasn't lighting me up. I moved to the west coast from the Midwest and I found naturopathic medicine and I just kept going in the direction of women's health hormones in particular because I find that a lot of my friends and family and colleagues and now in patients were like gosh I didn't care I didn't know that like I didn't know that's what happened with my menstrual cycle you know I didn't know that's what happened when you move into perimenopause I didn't know that's what happens in menopause and because there are so many I didn't know I didn't know nobody taught me I just kept going and in that direction to really shine a light on that area to educate for people. You know it's sad isn't it because even in this decade like we should know about hormones we should know about sexual health we should know about women's health as we age and through our different phases of life and still and even I'm like you went to medical school trained in all this stuff and even there some of the really practical kind of stuff I mean yeah we know metabolic pathways we know biochemistry right but some of the practical things like what do you do menopause vaginal dryness or what do you do unless it's a pharmaceutical sponsored kind of thing we are not taught the ins and outs and the details that we as women need to know and we as doctors need to pass on now again you and I now have become hormone experts so don't talk about for sure we'll go deep today but I love that you're talking about this because I bet even here what from our listeners and if you're listening right in questions because we want to go deep and we want to talk about the things you care about you probably have questions you either haven't got a good answer from your doctor or maybe you're wondering you're afraid to ask and this is so common right and if we look at like the historical studies it was all men and it was all like so much was predominantly male and we are very different hormonally and and that so so so important um one of the little tidbit is at 25 I went through breast cancer so I learned again a lot about hormones maybe let's start there um that frames the detox pathway so well because if I look back at my history why would a 25 year old get cancer and hormone related cancer two things I'd love to start with is what are endocrine disruptors because I feel like that's a piece of puzzle right and then we'll go on to like why would someone maybe have trouble with detox at a young age or so endocrine disruptors let's just start there endocrine disruptors are chemicals um that look like and act like our endocrine system so our endocrine system our is our hormone system think of like our estrogens our progesterone thyroid etc so when we talk about endocrine disruptors that chemicals that literally come in look like a hormone and just hormones and disrupt that system now that system is uh delicate that system does not want to be disrupted and that system has a fine um pattern that it follows or rhythm that it follows most of the time and so if you are exposed to endocrine disruptors you're going to literally disrupt that rhythm you're going to disrupt the production of those hormones uh and you're just going to cause a lot of the symptoms that you're likely having and so interesting to me having worked for a lab company for a long time we would see people with completely normal levels of estrogen and estradiol let's say on on lab work and they would say but I have all the symptoms I'm so estrogenic come to find out they were really exposed to all these chemicals and these chemicals don't show up on traditional laboratory testing but they look similar to estrogen but not enough to show up positively on a lab test or to to skew or to to elevate a lab test and so then it can be really disheartening because maybe you go see your obgyn or your practitioner who's not hormonally skilled and they go no everything's fine you look fine and you're like no but I'm horrible heavy periods and I have terrible pms or I'm growing fibroids or polyps and or breast cancer and um like where did this come from and in knowing that these chemicals can play a major role is a huge one yeah so thanks for framing that and because like you said it can be very confusing let's talk what what is estrogen dominance because what you're describing estrogenic estrogen dominance how might a young woman uh you know middle-aged woman or different women different ages know tell us a little bit about what does that look like for people with estrogen dominance so we estrogen dominance or estrogen excess we shortened a big long phrase down to two words estrogen excess estrogen dominance what we mean is usually in a cycling woman so if you get your period after ovulation in that second half of your cycle called the luteal phase you have not enough progesterone or too much estrogen compared to where you should so that's a very long sentence and what we've done is shrunk it way down to go well your estrogen dominant you're unless you have zero progesterone you're not actually dominant in estrogen in that phase of your cycle you really should be making boat loads of progesterone milligrams worth of progesterone but what can happen is it it's kept in a careful ratio with estrogen with estradiol and if you don't make those boat loads of progesterone or you're you've got an excessive amount of estradiol for whatever reason there are a few then you get your ratio is tipped in the direction of estrogen and you feel it and that's when you feel those again pms heavy periods bloating maybe acne fibroids polyps etc etc in this cycling woman woman now as we move as we get older and as we hit our perimenopausal age what happens is we lose the ability to ovulate or release that egg either regularly or with a lot of um behind it and when we can't do that then we don't make a lot of progesterone so by default us perimenopausal women now become we feel just more estrogenic in our everyday life and the other interesting thing about perimenopause that is not a great design flaw is that our estrogens levels kind of instead of being on a nice healthy rhythm or what i call like a controlled roller coaster it's like an off the wall roller coaster like estrogens high estrogens low estrogens high again estrogens over there estrogens over there and people feel that you know we women in our 40s to come in or the early 50s and they're like what happened to me i have gone off the rails i'm like you literally your estrogen has gone off the rails it is all over the place but regardless because your estrogen is all over the place and progesterone is generally on the low end you again get that estrogen dominant estrogen excess type symptom well thank you for explaining and for those of you who are listening to audio only we're doing this hand side with our roller coaster because we know and we've been there and all of that um like i said thanks for explaining just as a side note cary one of my favorite things about you is your sense of humor and it comes across so good like on instagram and stuff i love i'm like i just love her and did i hear you gemini heck yeah i'm a gemini yeah high five this is like this quirky like i saw that i'm like i i love that sense of humor so by the way if you haven't followed cary instagram please do this miracle love love love your humor because it's a lot about hormones and about this yeah yeah and if you're women listening or men and you have a woman in your life uh you know this you know so you mentioned like cystic breasts and fibroids and endometriosis and then heavy painful periods and pms and what women at some point their life hasn't had those things and it is and the sad thing is kind of what you alluded to earlier is because our world is becoming more toxic this is the norm instead of the exception right yeah right so unfortunately so what do people do like say they you know maybe don't have a doc like you or i or they do or where would we start with like first of all just we talked about symptoms a little bit is there anything else symptom wise and then testing what do we do to figure out what's going on well first of all but i know what i tell people is to read your book read your books that are now educated on these chemicals and the idea behind this and then what the body is really capable of and what you can do because you outline that so well um but this second thing too is if you what i don't like and i'm trying to combat again so when you go to your doctor let's say your general practitioner your primary care your objyn and they go well that's that's normal it's normal for you to have super heavy periods like that's normal for your for your breast to be tender like well common and normal are not the same thing common is accepted but not acceptable right normal is different so no it is not and then the second the third thing i say is that it's doesn't your primary care your gp or what have you and you alluded this in your book too may not have a lot of a hormone background and so it may be time for you to branch out and find somebody who actually really understands hormones at a deep level instead of just blowing you off and saying no no no you're you know that's that's totally common or that's totally normal if somebody quote your age when really you need a practitioner who's going to really work you up and figure out your hormones now if you're listening to this you're like i don't even know where to start i i have my appointment let's say it's a two week wait or a two month wait or what can i do in the meantime like the biggest things you can do there's twofold one is um get your body eliminating so detoxification but eliminate what you can that's filling up your bucket so like in your book you talk about the bucket analogy where you've got this bucket and it gets filled up with life in toxins and chemicals and stress and etc etc and if it gets too full and you aren't able to empty it fast enough it overflows when it overflows you feel that in your body and so if you can work really hard if you can look around and think all right kary and jill talked about these toxins chemicals like what am i putting in my skincare what am i put it using for my makeup what am i putting um what am i washing my sheets with and my most my laundry detergent what am i using to clean my house with is my house because of course we're recording this at the holidays is my house covered in scented candles and you know spice this and um you do a fur that and you know how to cherry this and all the holiday scents that are out right now and we know unfortunately fragrance can be a real environmental or an endocrine uh disruptor for a lot of us and so it's taking stock of what's in your home it's taking stock of the water that you drink can you can you look in your budget to maybe even just start with a basic water filter or maybe even a better water filter you talk about air filters you know the air that you breathe um i was uh listening to um uh somebody earlier talking about mold and they were like even just opening the window like even just periodically opening the window and letting that air flow in and out um for the house can make a world of difference if maybe an air filter doesn't fit in your budget and so these things i have been working on just like you i've been working on this journey for decades and so i remember a couple years ago i bought a brand i bought a new mattress but i bought a you know organic all the thing i you know i bought one of those mattresses that is healthy whatever you want to call that like an organic healthy all the things mattress and i had many people in my comments say Carrie i can't afford a mattress i said oh no no no i'm in like chapter 24 am i right you're in chapter one you know like when you run out of mascara change your mascara when you run out of deodorant just switch to a you know a clean look it up clean deodorant when you run out of detergent like let's start a value like go for one that's fragrance free to start and then you know these baby steps don't feel like you need to jump in and spend however much a mattress is if that doesn't fit in your budget you're not there yet it's it these little tiny steps i've learned from you over time make a huge difference in our hormones so that's like where you start today is we'll read your book but second start reading labels and as you run out of things replace them with better options that aren't going to fill up your toxic water in your bucket yeah Carrie i love that and i love that you say because i'll tell you i had breast cancer 25 26 27 i was like why did i get this what happened that was the start of my journey to clean health and living and this is 20 years later and i remember the overwhelm i'm a medic i was a medical student at the time and like i knew stuff i knew how to find research and just like you're saying if you're listening and you're like oh this is overwhelming please know we understand like this is like that's what i love that you say that because i remember being completely overwhelmed when i realized everything i put on my body was toxic yeah i know the cost of your play i mean make a pair of safara they they get a portion of my money right i didn't even say that because there's better places there's obviously like a local i like to get local and step two but um all that to say we hear you we know that it's a struggle and i it's 20 years in the making both Carrie and i at least for me i'll hit my age and and it's been a long time and so um what you're saying though is and what i say in the book clean air clean water clean food we can start really simple and choosing and even like dirty dozen on environmental working yes use those foods that are most likely sprayed with pesticides by those organic and then by the other ones like a banana you can peel them on organic so you can save money in different places cleaning like you said the very basic open your window open your window clean your filters in your furnace that's not too expensive change those every three months and there's different things you can do like just buy a higher filter rating and granted those standalone air filters that we both love are great but they're expensive so start with those little things and clean water making sure you're not drinking out of plastic water bottles and i love the image and fragrance because that's listed as a thing and it doesn't have to be named where it's from but if it's not from a natural source which it usually is not it's a phthalate and it's a definite endocrine disruptor so this is a big deal years ago i sprayed perfume on my skin right and i love review oh my gosh i don't know i still have a few films that but you know what now if i do wear it it's on my clothing it is not on my skin because that's an absurd disservice so just want to encourage those listening because it is everywhere and this is literally like why i get so passionate about this topic is because those breast cancer 25 that was my rude awakening to life and chemicals and i go into the farm chemicals some of those were such massively toxic things that were probably in my well water growing up and then if i look back i actually think that probably in utero my mother probably had of course and then of course being born i probably was born with some toxic load so it's interesting um even now speaking of um you know farm chemicals yeah for those who are like why didn't grow up on a farm right but you're eating the food that comes off of it and if you live by it and the wind blows yeah you're right you're getting all that and if you've ever walked into your local big box home shop in the spring the amount of roundup like they had i don't know how much roundup pays for that the display case here where i live but i thought oh we're still doing this we're still doing this right me there was so it was like and the smell is remember me like oh it's like it blows me away i'm like i can't believe this is still here it's like yeah you're both in vegas last year and i walked into the lobby the casinos of course are still smoking i'm like people are still smoking don't i think too all the time i know we went there and every time i know this but i'm like oh really oh that's right i know and i i heard so many practitioners who said gosh i'm reacting i'm reacting that for i forgot you can still smoke in the casinos now obviously of course there's various you know various levels of casinos in where our conferences the generally attracts people who don't smoke but it doesn't mean nobody smokes i mean there's people smoking cigars and cigarettes so as you walk through you you might really get hit which then actually brings me to alcohol i didn't even mention alcohol being a toxic for a lot of people and i i make this joke all the time that alcohol is a bully like she will push her front herself to the front of the line to get processed by your liver and then the act of detoxifying alcohol um you know creates a little toxin there and ruins estrogen so now estrogen is pissed and she's going to go back and recirculate through your body and we hear this now we're i'm assuming probably predominantly a lot of your listeners are female so it applies to men applies to everybody um you know but a lot of women are like well but i love my glass of wine i have my glass of wine at night i relax you know i have a couple on the weekend i relax like right but then how do you feel how do you feel the next day how are your hormones how is your how's your pms or the number of women who said to me when i was when i was younger i'm 45 so when i was younger i had all these women hit their 40s and they would go you just wait you just wait when you hit your 40s you can't drink alcohol anymore i was like what that's crazy then i learned it's true your enzymes in your liver yeah because of the changes in your hormones and menopause like perimenopause you know really do slow down the way that you process alcohol and so now i have so many perimenopausal people on social media and friends and colleagues and what have you that are like it's so not worth it i can't even do one glass and in people will argue like well i only drink tequila carry because tequila doesn't affect my blood sugar i'm like that's great still alcohol you know i only drink the you know organic biodynamic no added sugar wine i'm like that's fantastic wonderful still alcohol so if you're having issues if you're like gosh i am a hormonal sort of train wreck when i'm listening to this then maybe evaluate alcohol if that's a thing for you i love that you mentioned that because there's no we're not condoning or you know saying there's anything wrong but yet it's a choice i've chosen over the years since my breast cancer basically i don't drink alcohol like one sip is my tolerance and then literally like just to have the taste like oh that was really good wine and that's it and it's not there's no judgment but i have learned that i value my health so much in that detox and let's talk a little bit about for people who don't understand give us the very basic description of detox and this recirculation yeah so detoxification but so is basically your your exit plan it's the way anything you eat or breathe or drink or swallow for the large part like that's maybe not natural to your body or a chemical or fragrance or even a hormone that you make internally you at one point have to get rid of it they're not indefinite well that's not true some chemicals unfortunately are but like let's say your hormones your hormones are not indefinite so when you're done with an estrogen is an example your body made it it used it oh it's like okay thanks for your time it's time to retire go away you process it and when you process it that's the active detoxification so it is a two if not three step process the majority of the process happens in your liver we love our liver thank you for our liver and then we excrete it out of the bottom our body and so we go out the kidneys or we go out through the intestines when it comes to hormones now we have other excretion ways the way we breathe right the way we sweat but hormones particularly go out the kidneys or they go out the intestines so if your liver is not doing well if your liver if you have fatty liver if you are missing nutrients maybe you have a lot of gut issues you're not absorbing the liver requires a lot of B vitamins a lot of minerals and stuff to help it do its job then you're going to be a little slow a little sluggish on the uptake genetically maybe you were born genetically with some not so great detoxification pathways and so you're more prone to feeling bad in the fragrance aisle right or worse case scenario developing going on develop cancer at a young age or again gut issues gut you or kidney issues right we're trying to excrete so if you have constipation if you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth if you're dealing with gas and bloating and also GI issues this all messes up the way estrogen gets out and if it can't get out you can't eliminate it then the body recirculates it it just pulls it right back in and goes you know what and let's let's go back on that ride like let's pull you back on the side of efficiency right so that yes same with mold but I love that you're saying that because people don't realize oh if I'm not eliminating I'm reabsorbing yes and which is and then and then you think to yourself gosh why is my period so heavy why why am I breast so tender why am I having all these symptoms with my cycle if you're still cycling not realizing like oh my gosh my constipation's been really bad this month or oh my gosh I have hardly drank any water and my stress has been super high and I have been you know around a lot of chemicals are not eating that great and this makes sense because the estrogen that I had is not able to get out the body essentially in the route that it needs to go so it's just hanging out playing with its other estrogen friends like a miracle round around yes here we go yeah love that so talk real quickly about testing you know again what's available for people what can they ask for from anything from routine labs to especially labs with you which you and I prefer what can we do with testing for women who are curious so if you've never had any lab testing before ever you've never had your hormones checked please be aware that when when Dr. Jill and I talk about testing your hormones we are we are a little more advanced or a lot more advanced a lot more functional so when you if you oftentimes you'll go to your doctor and say I'd like my hormones checked please and they will go great let's do a red blood cell and a white blood cell call the complete blood blood count cbc let's do a metabolic panel maybe throw your cholesterol in there it's been a while and maybe maybe for lucky they'll run a tsh a thyroid stimulating hormone and that's it that's all their test and yet here we are talking about estrogen and progesterone and testosterone and there's other even other hormones we haven't talked about dha and cortisol and insulin and all these hormones so when you when you go to get blood work done if you've never had it you need to start somewhere that's where you get your pen out and you start making the list of all the things that you would like to have run now it is really important when you are running the estrogen estradiol progesterone you do want it at a specific part of your cycle don't just run it you know on tuesday at two o'clock because that's convenient you want to make sure you catch it and what's called the second half your cycle that luteal phase roughly we say around day 1920 or 21 if you have a 28-ish day cycle menopausal women if you're listening to this you do not have to collect it a certain time the same hormones still apply to you even being menopausal i don't care but you can collect it anytime because you don't have a cycle now let's say you've done that or you are ready to go into the deeper next step more functional that's where dr jill and i prefer or use other tests now we've been talking about estrogen detoxification and if budget is a big issue what i prefer to start with actually when it comes to hormones is again elimination so i often will start with gut testing gi testing which is a very fancy word for poop testing you will have to poop in a cup for science which mortifies a lot of people but i want to see what's going on because it's just like in your home if the bathtub is overflowing and clogged i want to know is it because the actual water won't turn off is it because the drain is clogged is it because the sewer line is clogged so we got to check your sewer line which is obviously doing a little stool test and then we get into more that functional hormone look i used to work for the company called the dutch test which is the one that jill mentioned earlier in the reason i like that one so much even though i don't work for them anymore um but they give us a better insight into your where does estrogen go so it looks at all the pathways a lot of the pathways and that's really helpful male or female doesn't matter you know men make hormones too especially estrogen and so it helps us look at those pathways amazing and thanks for that great overview because that's what do i do how do i test and leave in the time and everything's so important so that's a great place to start if you're curious you're out there and many docs will run blood work which is our first um and i would say estradiol progesterone dheas testosterone free and total cortisol in the morning um those are the very very basics anything else that you would recommend on a routine lab that they're looking for metabolic well i would definitely add in that thyroid i would thank you right include right so i would do the full which i know you've talked about before another podcast but um that's a tsh psh yep free before and uh with thyroid antibodies as well yes yes yep definitely and one of the you said metabolic health one of the big ones that i find a lot of women um don't they they'll get glucose but they won't get an insulin added and as we get older as we head into perimenopause and our hormone shift we become more insulin resistant which is not a good thing we don't want to become um more insulin resistant and so really ask your practitioner if you're getting blood work like hey i'm getting a fasting glucose can you go ahead and add a fasting insulin on there because ideally you want a fasting insulin between two and five right now when you get that range back you're gonna see it's gonna say two to twenty five right twenty five is an absolute no no we want it two dash five like it's a very narrow range and the research and the literature supports that two to five the reason it's up to twenty five is that the old old old range has not adjusted and caught up with the current literature out there so this is a good place to say a lot of the ideals and functionalism we want optimal not just disease so it's like it's not like two z wake up and you're not diabetic and then wednesday next day you're diabetic there's no like crossover or line it's a spectrum this trajectory that we're all walking on so what you and i like to do is okay this might be the range of normal thyroid but we're like what's best what's optimal right and there's a much more narrow function range that we often use for maybe tsh i like it below three three point three to three is kind of my ideal and if i'm treating sometimes below two so i want to optimize their thyroid their tsh insulin totally love that below five it's ideal fasting blood sugar i'd say below 90 would you agree i agree yep yep really what about hormones like uh so say someone is cycling in their eludio phase they do it day in a 20 other cycle what kind of ratio between estrogen progesterone would you like to see there so in a blood in blood work now again these are american numbers so if i'm sure if you i apologize for those international who are listening you'll do the conversion but progesterone we generally like it in the double digits and so we want it 10 or higher now we if you are like a three or a four or five that means you did ovulate and you were eakin out some progesterone it's just not strong enough so ideally we're looking at you know 10 or higher and then again that estradiol that estradiol we tend to look for it to be some people say above 100 some people say above 150 depending on you know your history your age with what's going on with that and so and in the ratio um i i generally don't while i talk about a ratio is how it's important i don't generally do a ratio calculation only because um when you get your blood drawn there's two types of machines that will run a blood blood work immuno assay and a mass spec and i know like this is you're like what i do not care about this like i know i get that mass spec though is more sensitive and so but it that makes it a little more expensive so ideally you don't want mismatch like you don't want your progesterone and an immuno assay and your estradiol on a mass spec or vice versa you hopefully when we get into the like the weeds of testing i'm hoping it's i want the same machine the same type of machine and i want it to be mass spec because i it's the most sensitive i want the most sensitive for you um because you don't feel good right most people are like i'm i feel hormonal something's wrong i'm like right let's let's figure it out here i love that you're saying this because what we're talking about is nanograms an incredibly tiny amount and this is actually why the interfingers ruptures are so fascinating because they act at this hormetic effect and so just take a minute go off i know slight tangent i promise do it but with um things that are endocrine disruptors this is biphasic curve and what that means is that to classical toxicology says okay at this level 50 percent of people are toxic and so we say okay above that level i'm just randomly saying numbers is that above that level it's toxic to most people but what they miss is sometimes there's this hormetic effect at incredibly tiny levels in synergy when you add hormones together or not hormones chemicals when you add chemicals together so at these incredibly low levels that are not considered toxic it has an hormone like or hormetic effect on the body at an extremely low level that again is not in the toxicology text and then when you synergistically add those they can have profound disruptive effects because it's in messes with that hormetic and i say that because what we're measuring is incredibly tiny amounts in fact i think for decades you couldn't measure now we can but has the um in the machinery wasn't accurate enough right today right these low levels so they're very small amounts which why the machinery matters i love it it does and you know it's so interesting too is and i'm sure it was very frustrating for you given your history is that they will say um what's a good example bleach in tampons as an example dioxin in tampons and they'll say well you you need jill you would need this much dioxin to be toxic so one tampon with a tiny amount of dioxin in it to bleach it white is not a problem right but you probably started your period right in in in your early teens and then you get your period every single month barring you know those listening who were who were pregnant so that's a lot of teeny tiny exposure over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and i've had so many women say to me you know when i switched from maybe a conventional tampon to more an organic non-bleach tampon um or then my symptoms got better well my cramps went down you know i my endo i mean it doesn't uh cure it but like oh my gosh my endo actually improved a little bit like the cramps were more bearable and because they've been using the same tampon since they were 12 10 9 14 whatever it is and we don't think about that our yes a large dioxin dose is toxic what about when we have these teeny tiny little micro exposures all the time i love that you're saying that or um you mentioned just a little alluded illusion to these forever chemicals so the way it's right on the block right is these pieces with our teflon and gortex materials and they're in any sort of rain resistant or liquid resistant like your mattress cover might have these or your furniture if it's stain resistant or your carpets might have them we can absorb these to the skin and we know now here where i'm at in colorado every water supply has contamination levels and now with the new threshold they're all considered and they're forever so the scientists when they try to find the half-life they can't even calculate the half-life of these paos and that's just one thing i know it's like oh these are things forever in the environment so these things do matter and on a little existential tangent our environment matters i'm becoming much more environmentally conscious because the wildfires are affecting our air quality and the paos are affecting our water supply and so there's really really lots of things that we have to start to take action i'm like a non-political kind of person but i've realized i have to start to be more action oriented and encouraging others because these things are getting in our environment and affecting our hormones and our future generations are set up for yeah disaster if we're not careful right i totally agree i totally agree and i know when you see big things like fire because like like colorado or again in washington had a lot historically you're having a lot of fires and um you might watch the news or think to yourself or listening right now oh it's a fire there's nothing i can do when in fact in your home in your hvex system or your air filters there's actually or or supplements to support lung or you know antioxidant and there's a lot you can actually do to help not progress feeling unhealthy when you get these exposures yeah and just a quick tidbit on wildfires almost a year ago today we had a massive wildfire in my community lost a thousand homes all that happened it was literally in the middle of winter um and i did not realize until that how massively that toxic air quality it was worse than mold for many people and i literally started seeing some lab values like tgf beta and random things that would typically signify other toxicity just from the wildfires so even if you're like oh it's not affecting me but you know that your air quality is down because there's a fire you know 100 miles away or 50 miles away it really is affecting all of us so sadly and and i i don't know why i didn't think of this as a grown educated woman but somebody said to me well kary you think wildfire and you often think forest land so woods trees what a soil whatever but they're like wildfires burn everything cars homes buildings and nowadays that's what you're thinking about everything and nowadays back you know porches or your benches in your yard they're made of plastic a lot of times or you have chemicals in your garage like gasoline or roundup or whatever all these things like you said they burn and then they make a huge right up to the air oh gosh you live in a bubble i know i know but a fun bubble i want a fun bubble because like um it can be pretty depressing so we'll end on some positive notes so okay say a woman gets hormones they're kind of um let's talk about two two things first of all the say 32 year old woman maybe has had a couple kids may or may not want to have more children but is really struggling with the classical and estrogen dominance let's talk about her what should she do and then let's talk about the menopausal woman i'm going there too like what do we do and the hormones do the rollercoaster so first of all this you know 2030 something woman who's cycling maybe struggling with infertility maybe struggling breast bitterness what do we do with this woman how do they start besides elimination which is what you mentioned first and the really nice thing is um it's kind of the same suggestions for everything and everybody you know right like all the things in your book your people if you and i had a magic pill and we save this all the time we would die we would not get keep we would give it to people i would airdrop it across the world if we had a magic pill yes but it goes back to especially that 32 year old if you're you're cycling and you identify with what dr jill just said you know as as women our brain is the big hub for do we or do we not make hormones and our brain is constantly like scanning our environment do we have enough food do we you know do we is it too toxic is it too stressful have you not had enough sleep have you skipped time zones you know have you have you have you if if and and and then what can happen if you check yes to all those boxes it says you know what this is not a good month to ovulate i'm not going to release an egg this month and therefore your progesterone is going to be low and you're going to feel very estrogenic so what we have found although it's sometimes hard to hear is taking evaluation of what's been going on the last couple months and course correcting have you been getting enough sleep how has your stress been are you feeling happy safe and joyful what does your nutrition look like have you had movement exercise um are you know do you have joy in your life um what do you experience nature do is it pitch black where you are because it's the winter do you get any sunlight at all or do you sit at your desk all day and completely miss out on the outside and so as you're evaluating this these basics i kid you not can be really helpful at getting you back on track if you were on track and you got off track these can help you get back on track of course there are other um instances such as maybe we need to look at your thyroid maybe nobody's ever diagnosed you were figured out that you have PCOS right there's definitely other stuff that could be going on metabolically or hormonally that we need to look at as you're listening to this or if you lit every candle in your house and maybe you should evaluate that you know maybe maybe as you've got the lavender detergent going in your dishwasher or in your uh in your watching machine and you've got the whatever scent lemon scent all over your dishes and you've got your perfume on and your candles lit maybe we should reevaluate that to to really help and then alcohol you know so as you're listening to this baby steps one thing at a time to really help get you back on track now for the menopausal woman it's the same absolute things apply i don't i'm sure you might agree but i tend to find the women that go through menopause easier have done an audit of those things they're focusing on their sleep they're focusing on their joy their happiness their safety they are focusing on their nutrition their movement their exercise their community their blood sugar etc and menopause tends to be easier for them now could they still have thyroid issues yes could they still need to go on hormone replacement therapy absolutely yes but hormone replacement therapy is not going to solve the fact that you choose to stay up late at night you're always on your phone or tablet you you know live on potato chips and bagels and coffee and energy drinks you haven't seen outside in months because it's dark and cold outside that hormone replacement therapy is just not going to save that so you do have to get back to the basics and then we add in and support the other stuff for the menopausal woman as well love that because it's so hard to go back to the yeah we forget we can and honestly i always say hormones are like sledgehammers they're very powerful and they're appropriate for sometimes but you don't want to start with a sledgehammer you start with like a little tool that's like precise like the sleep and the air and the water and all this thing so love that we didn't talk a lot but before we you know and i want to talk a little bit about cortisol and stress because that plays into this massively too right yeah what happens when we are either under massive stress and have really high cortisol or when that starts to deplete and we're like i have been the last year much more flat lying cortisol um tell us all those two scenarios and how that affects the hormones or just the body in general as well the cortisol curves yeah so actually what i will say is that cortisol gets villainized just like estrogen gets villainized now we've talked to i we should i should have said this in the beginning i apologize estrogen she's not bad like we need her for our heart and our brain and our skin and our joints our vagina likes estrogen like we need our estrogen it's just out of balance out of ratio where she becomes dramatic and says this isn't working for me i'm gonna cause symptoms so i do hear that a lot of like i wish i don't have any estrogen i'm like no trust me that's not true because your poor brain your poor heart your poor joints etc cortisol is the same way we have cortisol for a reason people villainize it oh i hate cortisol because it makes me put on weight around the middle it makes me puffy i'm like well it's elevated for a reason so cortisol is one of our stress hormones that helps us it goes up to protect us it goes up to change systems in our body so that we can fight or flight or freeze if there is a threat around us a tiger a lion a bear the problem is of course a lot of our threats are over text or a lot of our threats are that we live with or we work with or in front of our computer and they're not actually a tiger a lion or a bear and they happen every day and they're small threats and they're big threats so it's a lot of stress little stresses that happen all day long so you ask your partner how was your day and they go oh my gosh it's never ending my day was never ending at this meeting that meeting this fight that fight that i got this email and everything's little but it all adds up or maybe you had one big stress you know you know god forbid you had a car accident or going through a divorce or even good good stresses i'm putting air quotes for those who can't see me babies new babies right new babies are very stressful but you probably wanted it so it's like a good stress weddings you probably hopefully wanted to get married weddings are stressful so cortisol affects our blood sugar cortisol affects our immune system cortisol affects our inflammation and a hundred percent cortisol talks to you communicates and plays with our hormones all of them in fact your whole body talks as a unit that there's nobody a siloed nobody's individual or independent everybody's extroverted and everybody talks to each other so when it comes to cortisol we want it elevated in the morning with and reason there is a range and it drops down at night so cortisol is like your son comes out in the day and then at night you want melatonin to come out melatonin is like your moon if you have a flipped curve you tend to be tired in the morning and wired at night you get that second wind and you can't fall asleep or maybe you crash in the afternoon you do okay in the morning but then you crash in the afternoon or maybe your cortisol is way too high in the morning so you go right into stress anxiety panic and you can't come down what happens over time is that we have what's called a negative feedback loop so you had high cortisol high cortisol high cortisol and the brain goes yeah this is annoying i don't like this i'm going to slow down production of cortisol and then you drop drop drop drop drop down until you get low cortisol production and now you generally feel kind of wiped out burned out tired all the time so when i see low cortisol in people i usually ask them hey what's been going on the last three months to a year or more because i bet you had high cortisol and this is the end result it's sort of burning out if you will yeah like case in point when you um some people try to do a documentary in a book all in one year some people wonder who that could be so yes i i do and then get mold exposure anyway right oh here right here it's so fun to talk to you so full of great analogies and great even just listening to the sun and moon and you're so good at making this just very applicable to the listener it's always such a pleasure um let's leave with one takeaway what would you give the listener who's maybe struggling with hormones we've talked about a lot what's your takeaway i'll be honest it's not it's you're gonna everyone's gonna laugh i actually have it written on the board behind me it says healing happens at joy that is not my quote i honestly forget i feel terrible i can't remember who's who's uh quote it is um but she was talking about different levels of emotion whereas like anger and fear um are at the bottom of an emotional you know list and then as you move up joy is where true healing starts to happen and when we talk about stress we talk about stress i tell people to find joy to find your joy when you find a little joy whether it's the funny memes your friend sends you or the cute little thing your cat just did or that funny tv show you watch for 30 minutes to check out it doesn't have to be big joy all day long but it's the little joys that's where we start to lower our cortisol that's where we start to feel safe when we can find our joy that basic that base can really be helpful for our hormones for our sleep right for our cortisol and so that's the that's the sort of easy takeaway that i like to tell people is do you have joy in your life and if you don't let's start finding it in the little ways every single day so that i can add up to a big way i love that amazing um thank you again and i know you're with rupa now do you want to just say a little plug for rupa and tell us where else we can find you yeah so rupa health for those practitioners who are listening is the one-stop shopping lab portal so if you are listening to us today and we're talking about um you know blood work labs or urine labs or saliva labs or mold labs or stool labs and instead of having to go in and out of multiple portals to order it you can create one portal on rupa and then order all of those labs for your patients so it's very very easy to organize and then as far as we are really quick we i love i love rupa we are pa who came and worked with me was like oh we use rupa and i just like what's rupa change our life at the office so thank you then you tell me about you kary yes um i am on instagram quite a bit so i am at dr dot kary jones and my website is www dot dr kary jones and i'm dipping my baby toe into tiktok which is very scary trying to get more videos out there to although everybody's on tiktok now it used to be quote the younger generation i know just to for hormone education and um to have a lot more fun around hormones and you know female health so but again at dr kary jones and if anyone's fun it's you like i love your sense of humor so kary thank you so much it's been so fun to talk to you today oh dr jell i appreciate it thank you you're welcome