Welcome everyone to another episode of a Cyster and Her Mister today, we have Candace Burch, a hormone health educator, and founder of your hormone balance. She helps women of all ages detect hormone imbalances that wreak havoc on their quality of life, longevity and sense of self. She teaches women how to get back in balance using natural hormone rebalancing techniques.
In this episode, we’re going to have an edge attainment style discussion around hormone health. That is fun and informative with humor and metaphors because too often, hormone education is delivered in a way that’s dry and overwhelming. So here we go. Welcome Candace. Thanks so much for coming on. Oh, thank you for having me. It’s always a pleasure to talk hormones and try to make sense of them.
Right, right. Yeah. Especially with PCRs. So tell us about your personal experience with naturally rebalancing, your hormones, your daughter’s hormones. Well, I had my girls late in life, so I had my eldest, Jess. Now people be able to figure out how old I am. He’s 35 at the moment. And I had her when I was 37.
And then Ryan is she’s 32. And I had her when I was 41. So when I hit men the day, I remember the day I turned 50 Jessie got her first period. So it was kind of like very symbolic and my poor husband, wall-to-wall hormones, you know, wall-to-wall women and two daughters and everybody’s having hormonal issues. And it was just that I had a,
kind of a high powered career. We were living in England and I was a journalist at which magazine, which is a lot like consumer reports. So I was living on deadlines. I used to pull all nighters and I, you know, to get my work done and I was just drinking a lot of coffee. And so here I was going into perimenopause that in between period,
you know, between when you’re having normal periods and the end of periods and that in between time perimenopause can last eight to 10 years. And that’s when women get rollercoaster symptoms, you know, they’ll get mood swings and migraines and hot flashes and night sweats. And I was having a hot flash every 20 minutes and a mood swing in between. And I was chest a terror.
You know, if people were cold in the house, I’d say we’ll put on a sweater. You know, I’d be opening the windows and burning up and everybody’s freezing. And I just was irritable and horrible. And I just remember one day looking at Ryan, I think she was about four then. And she just had tears in her eyes. You know,
she’s looking at me like mommy mean mommy, who, you know, who is this person? And I, and I hear this from women all the time that they have Jekyll and Hyde mood swings. And so my own experience was pretty close. So being a health educator, I thought, okay, I got to get a handle on the hormone thing.
I knew it was my hormones. I knew I was moving into menopause, but you know, depending on how much stress you have, that’s why managing my oh my late night deadlines and drinking too much coffee and having two little kids as an older mom that can really throw you into a very bad case of transitional, you know, the, the perimenopause nearing menopause time.
So I started reading and found out that there was such a thing as a hormone imbalance, which is something that not everybody realizes, you know, in fact, PCOM is one of the most common hormone imbalances, probably the most common in women under the age of 50 women over the age of 50 can also have PCOS because they may have had it for a long time and still have it.
But you know, the idea, the concept that hormones can be out of balance is not been really approached in medicine. Most doctors will say, oh, your hormones fluctuate all the time. Why bother testing them or looking into them? And so many women still say to me, my doctor never said to me that some of these symptoms could be a hormone imbalance,
never told me there was a test to detect the particular levels. So I found that out. I got tested. I had, you know, obviously the typical thing is, you know, you’re not obviating as routinely as you, when you get into these, you know, into your forties, your late thirties, forties, we see it happening earlier and earlier,
by the way, because of the abundance of stress we’re living with in today’s 21st century living. But I just got a handle on it. You know, I, I started using all kinds of natural remedies, natural progesterone, which is very key. And we can talk about that. And, and, you know, it was like night and day,
actually. And I remember when I would take a break from using the bio-identical hormone cream or not do things that I should be doing, my daughters were right there saying, mom, don’t you think you need to be? Because they were terrified that I would revert back to scary mommy because I found relief and I found it on my own. I, one of the things was there was a very important book that anyone moving into this phase should read by Dr.
John R. Lee. He put the whole, the whole idea of natural hormones and menopause on the map by writing a book called what your Dr. May not tell you about menopause. He also wrote one called what your Dr. May not tell you about premenopause. And I wrote to him, and I said, you know, I’m a woman in menopause. I’m a health educator. I’m going crazy.
I need help. Can I study with you? Can I learn from you? And he said, well, I’m retiring, but you can look up Dr. David Sava, who runs the hormone testing lab in Portland, Oregon. And that’s what I did. And I had a job within a day as the director of education at ZRT a hormone testing lab,
which is still there. And it’s one of the biggest labs in the country. We’ve actually taken it. SciTech is going to take the saliva test for men and I’ve taken for women. That’s a great, you know, lab. Yeah. Especially, it’s a great way to kind of find your levels, find where to improve on, and then had that being done every several months to see where your progress is going.
Yeah. To monitor. Yeah. And I mean, doctors, doctors, Dava who’s who founded ZRT and we do carry ZRT test kits. He, he actually was the first person he studied as a breast cancer researcher and a biochemist. And he was the first person to introduce saliva testing to the mass market to make it available to women, because usually it was used by scientists and studies of DNA.
And it’s, it’s the gold standard for looking at adrenal function, right? Because you can’t be, you know, you have to measure your hormones, your adrenal hormones, at least four times over the course of one day, you can’t be sticking yourself with needles, which causes stress, which is then going to skew the results anyway, that he made these results available.
If the testing available. And in the early days, I was with him from the beginning really. And in the early days, most of our clients were women who would write funny emails like I’m suspect. And I have a hormone imbalance and, you know, they would go on about all their symptoms. And that was most of our clients. And then over the years we trained providers and other,
you know, the functional medicine world was opening up and exploding. And so it was all like a perfect storm to get this knowledge out there. They’re used so often. And I’ve actually, when I first started my private practice, I started having ZRT lab kits. Like I had a pile of them in my office. Yeah. It’s a really powerful tool as well,
because before, like you were saying, a lot of women didn’t know what was happening because they would, they would feel like their hormones are out of balance, but they don’t know where to start or what’s exactly happening. But when you have these really powerful tools, like the ZRT labs that gives you functional ranges, functional, which is really important. Yeah.
You don’t want conventional, you want functional, specific ranges, which is going to really help you understand what’s happening and really improve along the way. Yeah. I always say blame it on your hormones because once you, I think most women that I test and I do test men as well, we do test male levels and that’s another, you know, it’s really interesting thing with men and too much estrogen that that’s can be quite an issue,
but well, see doc really wants to do yes. I’ve been dying To take it. I just, you know, the hard thing is like, I want to like wake up on a perfect day and I don’t want to, cause there, there are nights where like, I w I didn’t, I get bad sleep or maybe I woke up and like something happened in the morning that was a little stressful.
Or maybe I just forgot to do it sitting there for weeks waiting for the perfect day to do it. You know, actually you should do it on a typical day. You’re right. You’re absolutely do it on a typical days today. Yeah. So that you can see, you know, what’s, you know, what, what is your average day?
What are your hormones look like on an average day? And in fact, when you’re looking at adrenal function, you know, the cortisol stress hormones have a pattern. And even if you’re, you know, if you have some stress going on that day and there’s good and bad stress, right? I mean, great career success is, is stressful, birthdays,
Christmas, whatever, you know, having a successful podcast and getting the technology working, that’s all stressful. But nevertheless, you know, your adrenals should recover within that range. And so whatever’s going on. Even if you didn’t sleep, let’s see what your levels look like. Well, and we’re going to talk about Tomorrow’s event. We’re doing it tomorrow.
Well, Tomorrow’s the day. Well, I want to tell you that your listeners, we want to offer them a $50 discount on any of the tests that we do. And there’s a major, there’s a ma we’re changing up our tests on our website, but basically, you know, we provide the test results and a rebel, an interpretation, and a rebalancing guide.
And when I was talking about Dr. Sava, he created a whole comment field. It’s like his brain on the page, all the research, everything correlates what these levels mean and how they relate to the symptoms you’re experiencing. And I would tell you, most people are so thrilled that there’s something wrong. If that’s an imbalance, it’s like, oh,
thank God. There’s a reason. You know, they’re worried that there’s not going to be anything wrong. And it’s like, you know, so, so usually there is an imbalance of imbalances earlier. You had mentioned progesterone levels, and this is really something women with PCOS struggle with low progesterone levels and so on. So when you see those results on a lab test,
what is the next step? Because a lot of things affect progesterone levels. So you must be looking at other lab labs that coordinate with progesterone. And then what type of health education would you provide that patient? Because so many women out there listening right now are like struggling with ovulation. Yes. And that is really what it comes down to. We have to,
if we see low progesterone levels, the typical test, we do measures the master female hormones, estrogen, and progesterone testosterone, and then the four cortisols. And it also measures a ratio between progesterone and estrogen tests for PCLs can include LH and FSH, the, the pituitary hormones that promote oblation and, and stimulation of the ovaries. But the basic tests that we do can tell you a lot.
And so if we see a low progesterone, we’re usually seeing an estrogen in excess progesterone. So already we’re getting into estrogen dominance, and that can have all kinds of problems with weight gain and mood swings and PMs and migraines, all kinds of problems. But when I see a low progesterone in a younger person, first of all, are they on birth control?
Obviously birth control shuts down oscillation. And for many women, there’s a good, I think it’s almost over 50% of women who are using birth control are not even using it for contraceptive purposes. So they’re shutting down oblation. And the main thing here is that oblation is when progesterone happens, the body does not. It makes progesterone upon oscillation. The adrenals also make some progesterone,
but the adrenals actually have to have progesterone to even make cortisol. So if you’re not obsoleting, we got to look at why are you not obsoleting? And if progesterone being low is our first clue. So is it birth control? Is it years of birth control? I’ve talked to women who are 52 years old, and they’re still on birth control because they’re afraid they’re going to get acne,
or they’re afraid they’re still going to get pregnant. There’s so much misunderstanding around. Am I in menopause? Am I in peri-menopause then when you, when you have a lack of progesterone it, and it allows hormones like testosterone to prevail because progesterone is very balancing. It’s a very balancing hormone. So if it’s low, we’re letting these other hormones get into,
you know, relatively speaking excessive levels. It’s kind of like picture a Seesaw. If you have one hormone that’s low, the other hormone goes up, you know, all these farms, they used all these different metaphors like that. The symphony, all the orchestra, all the instruments have to be in tune. If one is playing out of tune, the whole is out of whack,
right? If or it or the Seesaw thing, when hormone goes up, it creates a deficiency of another hormone. So they’re all very, I think of synchronized swimmers, you know, the perfect pedal formation. If one swimmers swam up to the other side of the pool or dove down to the bottom and splashing around what happens to all that synchrony. So we’re,
we’re never going to be in perfect synchrony, but we need to be in some sort of balance. And if a test result shows that you’re terribly low in progesterone, which many people are, and if the ratio is low, meaning the proportion of progesterone to estrogen is low. Even if your estrogen is within range, you’re still what we call estrogen dominant and out of whack.
And that’s what I usually see high testosterone levels or high DHA levels, both of which we refer to as androgens. And you know, this, these are the hormones that are the culprits behind PCO S yeah. Yeah. And having low progesterone levels, I’m sure you can touch on this affects, you know, more than oblation, a lot of women with PCOS feel,
you know, aren’t aware that obsoleting is important, whether or not you will have a period. I mean, whether or not you want to get pregnant. Yeah. So having enough progesterone is good for your brain health, your bone health. It helps with a high priority and we suppress it and we ignore it because of birth control and so on for years and years and years and other parts of our health deteriorate.
And we don’t realize it. Did you hear about that sister who took over acetone and finally got her period after a year of not having Incredible. I see those kinds of messages on Instagram a lot. How does that even happen? Subtle helps with healing, insulin resistance, a common root issue that most Pecos sisters have. And by targeting insulin resistance, we’re seeing sisters kick those crazy cravings.
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Sure. Hey, sisters CBD can help with acne inflammation, anxiety, sleep, and so many other PCs symptoms. I personally take it throughout the day to help keep my stress hormones nice and low. Not to mention I sleep like a baby every night and I don’t wake up fatigued at all. Now open your mouth, please. So I can give you a serving.
Now, hold it for 60 seconds. Head over to pure spectrum cbd.com and use the code, the sisterhood one word for 10% of, Can I stop now? Nope. You Got 30 more seconds. I should mention. And I was starting to talk about that birth controls, numero UNO, bad guy, but although birth control is necessary for many women,
but I, I find that if you’re not using it for contraception and you’re using it because you have acne or excess facial hair or abdominal obesity or mood swings, many of those symptoms being connected to S that’s not a good reason to use it. The other thing is we have great tracking apps now that we can track our population. And when fertility is at its peak.
So we don’t really have to be using synthetic hormones that are creating hormonal havoc. But the other things about ovulation that I find are typical with women that have low progesterone and high androgens is generally over-exercising. So a lot of people are into extreme exercise where it’s all high-intensity. And I know that I think you subtract you don’t you specialize in exercise for women.
Yeah. So there’s a whole problem with that because women get desperate about this gaining weight and not being able to lose, and they’re spinning, and they’re doing high intensity every day of the week. And the body is holding onto fat. It’s a stress response. The stress response goes up. The body needs more energy to the energy that is required to create,
you know, to keep up a very high intensity exercise program means what you’ve got to have more blood sugar to fuel yourself. That increases insulin and insulin has a huge association with the development of TCOs, which we can go into. So there’s that the overexercise there’s people who are unrestricted diets. And I got into a lot of trouble with the vegan population.
One day, when I was saying vegans, who don’t get enough protein, I should have said, vegans comma, who don’t get enough protein. So those who are really strictly vegan, but are not necessarily getting high nutrient high density protein or good fats in their diet. And many people on plant-based diets will admit that their go-to is carbs because it’s so easy to just,
you know, it’s hard to create balanced protein, balanced meals, everything has carbs. It’s so hard. And yeah, and so, you know, and often the go-to carb is not the good complex carbs. It’s the fast food, the fast carbs. So there’s that. So there’s the restricted, the restricted diets that are lacking in protein and good fats.
There’s the, overexercise, there’s the exposure to chemicals in our environment. Now, a lot of people are hip to this now, but it’s, it’s still an issue. If I ask people that, that eat meat and dairy, are you aware that you need to eat hormone free? They are not always aware of that, that you need to look for the label that says these animals were raised without four mountains,
because you know, the factory farms shoot their cattle up with synthetic estrogens and to make them grow fat faster, to put more protein, you know, to put more pounds on the, on the beef and more milk, You also give them hormones to keep them lactating all year round. Exactly. Yeah. Tricking Your body into thinking that the cows actually pregnant all year long,
so would produce milk. Absolutely. Right. It’s turned into our cheese and our yogurt and it goes into our lattes. Next thing we know we’re drinking up hormones. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that, which would the point you just made, just the fact that they keep these animals pregnant nine months of the year, not to mention what happens to the calves that are born.
That’s kind of a scandal they’re kind of left to wander off in the world without a mother to take care of them. Cause she’s back on the hormone machine. But yeah, that cow is going to have X higher levels of hormones anyway. And you know, it’s interesting. I remember testing a guy who was really high in estrogen and we were trying to figure out why his estrogen levels were so high.
You know, this is of course a risk for prostate cancer and other things in men. And he turned out to be a milk aholic. He, his wife said he drinks milk all day. He drinks tons and two glasses, one glass of milk after the other. Well, they weren’t aware of that. How loaded with synthetic hormones milk can be.
So, and in that case, actually, it’s interesting because the more, the more estrogen that comes in through these synthetic forms can actually lower testosterone levels in a man through the action of aromatase in fat cells, fat cells will actually, they have an enzyme called aromatase that will actually steal testosterone and turn it into estrogen. That’s why that cells are really good.
Churner out shorter routers of estrogen and lower testosterone levels. But anyway, yeah, I mean, it’s just, there’s, there’s a lot to think about with chemicals. So it’s not only in the food it’s in our makeup, you know, the campaign of the cosmetic safety act has not been updated in 80 years. It’s terrible. Yeah. I use the,
what’s a website EWG website to make sure all of our soaps and all of our, Well, the thing is, it’s like impossible to get rid of everything. You can try it slowly at a time, but there’s always something, I feel like, like the couch that’s scotch guard. Yes breastmilk oh yeah. Ben you’re right. Absolutely. We unwittingly are exposed to all this stuff,
but we have to make an effort. So it starts with just, it’s a work in progress. I feel like it definitely starts with what’s touching your body makeup. So the plastic loofa in the shower, that’s, you know, on the steaming hot water, rubbing against your skin thing, Unpopular opinion, but maybe your nails, my Nails. It’s the one thing,
just let me have my one thing, except there’s nontoxic nail Polish. Now I know, and there’s not, there’s more non-toxic there’s nail Polish remover is actually a bigger culprit than, than the nail Polish hair dye. You know, I, I get my, I, I have to give up and let myself go gray, but I still get my hair colored.
And I, but I use plant-based dyes. I go to Aveda or whoever has plant-based dyes 50, it’s always a trade off, you know, you’re not going to be perfect. So you’re doing all these other things, right. And you’re having a little nail Polish. So, you know, you’ve got to follow follow the 80, the 80 20 rule.
I really want to like, I mean, I haven’t really thought this through, but wouldn’t it be nice to build a house from scratch and make sure everything is hormone friendly, paint floor couch as well. Metals there used to be led and heavy in paint. Now there’s lead in our lipstick there’s lab in lipstick, there’s carbon in our eye shadow. You know,
all these things, the cosmetic companies at this point, don’t have to reveal what’s in their product. That’s why, when you had mentioned the ewg.org environmental working group, they actually have a program called skin deep. You can look up a product and see how many toxins, how toxic it is. And we are lucky that there are choices. Beauty counter is a company that’s up on Capitol hill lobbying for safer camp,
cosmetic safety. But you know, at this point in time, the FDA does not approve cosmetics. So using European cosmetics don’t allow as many corn by the way, European cheeses also, and, and dairy products don’t have as many horns. They don’t allow that in the EU. So that’s one way to go. The FDA Doesn’t actually like allow like makeups in America,
like, or is there not, it’s not like officially like regulated by the FDA to make Up. Exactly. It’s not officially regulated. So there are, there are substances. Like we know, I, I often see in test results, I’ll see elevated levels of hormones in women who are in menopause. And I’m thinking, how could you possibly, you’re not ovulating.
You’re, you’re done. You’re you’re not making ovarian hormones. I mean, women, when they get to that point in life, it’s all down to the adrenals. So where are you getting all this hormone? It turns out they’re using a lot of anti-aging moisturizers and creams, and guess what’s in them. Placental tissue, placental, placental tissue is loaded with hormones,
but you know, they don’t have to disclose that. And there are other things they don’t have to disclose, like the fact that they have the heavy metals and lipstick. Although I wrote an article about is your lipstick, you sick, but you know, heavy metals disrupt hormone function. So was huge. Anti-aging creams like under-eye cream. Everyone tells you to wear antaging under eye cream.
Is that packed with hormones? Should we avoid this? We don’t know because they don’t have to disclose. I was talking to a woman who had been using a certain product for 15 years and her levels were really off the charts. They weren’t normal. And she just been using this product forever. But you know, at least we have what you can do is,
you know, check out EWG their skin D program go for products like thrive. Marketplace has has healthy toxin-free makeups and skin creams. And you just have to do your research because otherwise you’re not going to know. Well, you know, it is. And that, you know, that is really an issue with women who have TCOs too. There are many theories about the causes of PCs,
but one of them is that in utero, do you know the, the, the female embryo we’re talking about how many, four to 800,000 follicles are being developed in utero. And if the mother is being exposed to Xeno, hormone, Xeno, meaning foreign to our bodies chemicals, like we’re talking about unwittingly often, you know, as you said, we can’t avoid all these things that can damage a young,
you know, the fetus, the follicle in utero and lead to problems in a young woman that maybe don’t develop for many years until she finds that she doesn’t, she’s not having periods or she’s not ovulating, or she can’t get pregnant. It affects the mother, the baby, and then the baby’s egg eggs that will eventually ovulate when that baby is a teen.
Right. Right. So when I talk, you know, women with low progesterone, you know, there’s, there’s everything from, did you know that there are apps you can use to track your fertility? Did you know, you know, there are all these changes you can make to improve ovulation B vitamin B6 is hugely important to, you know, to promote oscillation,
good fats. And the proteins I mentioned are building blocks of hormones and oscillation. You can’t be low in those things and expect to ovulate. So that’s the first step to getting back. Your progesterone Bitex is a really important herb that has been shown to jog the pituitary, into creating a more LH, which then creates a surge of progesterone. And then there’s a bio-identical hormone cream that,
you know, for younger women can be used in a, on a temporary basis because we, we don’t, you know, younger women should be making their own progesterone. They should be obviating. But if there’s been a period where, you know, they’re not, I’ll also stress is another one I meant to, you know, a heightened period of prolonged heightened stress that is unresolved,
that will certainly stop oblation. So all of those things, you know, we can take steps to turn that around. And then sometimes people who aren’t sleeping well or have extreme chronic stress and just aren’t, you know, aren’t making the right hormones. They can start with a little bit of progesterone crane, which is made from plants and made to be identical in structure and function to the hormones.
Our own bodies make. So nothing like the synthetic stuff. And so that’s very helpful. Yeah. And speaking of stress, I’m so glad you brought up earlier about overexercising as well as restrictive dieting, because we feel, especially within our experience, working with PCOS women is once you’re diagnosed with PCs, it feels like you’re immediately thrown into the stressful requirement.
Like, like doctors will tell you, oh, you need to just work out hard as possible to burn more calories and you need to restrict your eating. So you’re basically given this like a regime of like, oh, eat less workout harder, which is just gonna create more stress, stress on the body, you know? Yeah. We’re really told to do the wrong thing the second year diagnosed.
Yeah. In a lot of cases. Yeah. Yeah. And, and how do you help people in that way? Do you have a particular regimen that goes cycles syncs in with their cycles? Yeah. In some ways, and especially talking about the over-exercising like we like to, instead of focusing on, you know, the short term cutting calories, I’m trying to lose weight with your,
at the gym and say, we’d like to focus on losing weight after the gym, you know, with your workouts, do you want to focus on improving insulin sensitivity, which can be done. Yeah. Which can be done through lightweight training that doesn’t have to be at a fast pace. You know, this, when you have more lean muscle, it improves glycogen storage.
So you have more, basically your body’s improving its insulin sensitivity. Second, when you’re doing, you’re doing these workouts with the low impact method, you’re reducing the overall stress that’s created on the body, the cortisol surges third, you’re also helping to improve metabolism over time because studies have shown us that when you have more lean muscle, this also improves the metabolism in the body as well.
So that’s basically how we like to go at it in terms of like, trying to recommend workouts for our PCs sisters, you know, we like to call them slow weighted workouts. Yeah. And they also help with adrenal issues because often women with PCUSA have adrenal issue. So no, yeah. And resistance, but the slow weighted workout. So it’s weighted for insulin resistance.
It’s slow to keep your stress hormones low while you’re doing the workout. You’re not running around exhausting yourself and then feeling fatigue afterwards. So I, sorry, go ahead. I hit her. I was going to pass it to you. If you wanted to talk about adrenals. I was just, I was just thinking the whole insulin resistance thing is a huge connection to PCRs since you two are that’s your,
so we should, you know, mention every aspect of that. But you know, apart from these parts in these different causes of why women have, PCLs like what I was mentioning with, you know, where they exposed in utero, have they had a junk food, you know, have they grown up in a house where they’ve been eating carbs? You know,
a lot of women that grew up in Italian families are, have been eating nothing but a carb diet for years. And, and, and then people who are under constant chronic stress. And I remember before COVID the by word was, oh, I’m just crazy busy. Everything is, we’re all just crazy busy as though that was an admirable thing to be,
you know? And so there’s so many connections. The thing about S is that it is characterized as a, as a problem where oblation is not dependable and is often irregular. You’ve got low progesterone because of that. And you have high insulin, high insulin from diets that are too high in simple carbs and sugars. And that have been that way for years.
And then people who are, you’re talking about adrenal stress, if the adrenals, which are responsible for regulating cortisol and insulin, you know, they make cortisol on a 24, 7 basis. Not the adrenaline is for running from a forest fire, but cortisol’s job is to regulate blood sugar and insulin. It’s also regulating our sleep wake cycle and our immunities against illness.
It has a huge, these little adrenal glands have the huge job to do. They have to have progesterone to make enough cortisol to do, to regulate this. So women who are low in progesterone have estrogen dominance, have all these different lifestyle behaviors we’re talking about often have low adrenals. So they’ll say to me, oh, I’m so amazed that you know,
that my adrenal levels are, my cortisol levels are, are low. I thought they’d be really high because I’m so stressed. But over time, the adrenals can’t keep up the pace, the high demand for extreme exercise, the high demand that is put on the body when you’re eating carbs and too many sugars all the time that the high demand with the lack of protein and it all ends up being an inflammatory situation that increases insulin.
If the adrenals are underperforming, because they’re already taxed and over in overdrive, then we’re not going to get the proper insulin regulation. We’re going to end up with an elevated insulin. And as it turns out elevated insulin, which has aided and abetted by the giant food diet is what causes these, this elevation of androgens. It’s the insulin that actually causes the ovaries.
It overstimulates the ovaries to produce more testosterone and DHT. So when you put that together with we’ve got this overstimulation because the adrenals are underperforming and can’t keep up the pace and you’ve got low progesterone so that you have no balance balancing hormone there. Then you’ve got this system that is really high in, in androgens and insulin. So you’ve got insulin resistance at the same time that you’ve got high androgens and it’s just the perfect storm.
And that’s where you get. And I, you know, most people need to be aware of the symptoms. They’re there, they’re on birth control because they have acne and oily skin. That’s a sign of peace, cos if they have excess facial hair and I know you had this problem to leave, so I don’t know which symptoms you had, but a lot of women don’t realize they’re edgy,
aggressive, bad moods all the time. You know, this bad mood epidemic can be a PCOM thing. And the insulin resistance causes weight gain around the waist and central obesity. So there are many symptoms that women need to be aware of that, you know, often are go untreated and undiagnosed because women are, you know, they go to the doctor and they’re saying,
I have acne and I have facial hair. Well, these are cosmetic problems. We’ll just put you on spironalactone or we’ll just, you know, spend a bunch of money on laser, on, you know, what are those like fat loss machine, like CoolSculpting, things like that, you know, instead of addressing why it’s, why you have midsection weight in the first place.
Why your hair? Yeah. The hyperandrogenism That’s causing facial hair or hair loss or the acne, it’s just getting down to the root issue. Long-term it feels like it’s harder or it takes a bit longer too, but it’s, long-term, it’s the best solution you have To put in a lot of effort with investigating your own health these days. And there’s so many quick fixes out there that aren’t the actual solution,
but there’s so like shiny. And like, you want to spend your money and just like big sit without, you know, one laser treatment to fix all of the hair growth on your face. But then it’s a lot harder to sit down and think about all the things that are promoting hyperandrogenism. And yes I have, but the one positive and the one thing that I think everyone should take away from it is that it’s not your fault.
There is a hormonal imbalance happening. Like it’s not your fault that you’re gaining weight or that you’re having facial hair or hair loss. Like of course it’s totally understandable, like to feel down on yourself, but we’re all here to help pick yourself up and feel like you can reverse those symptoms because you can, it’s just about getting down to the root causes,
Right? Yeah, exactly. Getting to the root cause and knowing, you know, how do people who have grown up in a family where this is, you know, I remember watching the Sopranos and every single meal they’re eating pasta, always, you know, this is tradition, it’s cultural norms. It’s, it’s stressed, it’s eating on the run and not,
you know, not getting it’s, it’s all the different diet trends that say, you know, we should do restrictive dieting of any, all kinds of sorts. And you know, people not understanding the connection with insulin and, and PCs are people not getting ch I think most PCLs is undiagnosed, even though it’s this huge, huge problem. So it isn’t,
you’re right. It’s not your fault. It’s a hormonal issue that is hidden. These things think of it as sabotage their hormone imbalance that is undetected and unaddressed is absolutely sabotaging your best efforts to lose weight, to get fit, to manage your moods, to stop the migraines, to improve your memory, to increase your lean muscle mass. You know, people will say to me,
I’m working out all the time and I’m not getting any lean muscle here, you know? And in fact, my belly is getting bigger. I’m not sleeping. You know, there’s the connection between sleep and all of these inflammatory results of these, you know, even sleeping, sleeping is, is not necessarily, it’s not your fault that you’re not sleeping.
It’s like, what is the perfect storm that has created this, this hyper-vigilance this sense of, you know, being over alert and not able to fall asleep or to stay asleep, that’s all down to the adrenals again. But if they’re being taxed by, you know, extremes of exercise of lack of food, of, you know, stress then, so that’s when people,
what’s great about testing is you get to see these numbers in black and white. You get to look at the graphs you get to see, oh, okay, well, that’s the story of my life. My levels in the morning are really low with cortisol. That’s why I can’t get out of bed. And now they’re really high at night, which is why I can’t fall asleep.
And in between, they’re all wobbly, you know, and that’s why I can’t take stress and stride during the day. And the guy that cut me off in traffic caused me to have a meltdown. Sounds like my life, too, this test. Wow. We can do it tomorrow. Tomorrow. We’re like hanging out with friends and all relaxed needs to be on like a Monday Workday.
Well, you tell them, you have to test on days 19, 20 or 21 of your cycle. Yeah. First of all, because we’d have to capture that point in the re in your menstrual cycle, where were the hormones are surging? So we’re trying to get right there, close to the luteal phase. So you can tell the males can test any day of the,
that, you know, you do have to test in the morning. And also if you’re using any kind of testosterone, boosters, or muscle boosters, all of that, you either want to test while you’re using them to see if they’re creating levels that you don’t want or stop and get a baseline. Yeah. I’m good on that end. I’m natural right now.
So I’m not taking any like or steroids or anything like that. Yeah. Okay, good. I don’t think you need to, not at your, I wouldn’t think that’s really, that’s more like my husband, who’s now in 72, I have to figure out what to do with them. Yeah, absolutely. Well, awesome. This was such an amazing podcast.
We love all the topics we covered recovered, you know, birth control, hormone imbalances, sleep so much more. So thank you so much for joining us, but before we go, could you let us know and to our listeners where they can reach you, if they need more help, as well as re mentioning the discount code you’re offering for the lab Kit.
Yes. We’d love to offer $50 off using the code. Should we just use sister C Y S T E R or sure if that works for you, sister 50 as the code go to our website and great idea is to take our symptom quiz. So that’s a good way to become, you know, that’s the first step in knowing if you have a hormone imbalance,
if the hormone imbalance you have may be linked to a possible PCO, S I think we’re doing a great service here. Alerting people to this very mysterious PCs can be considered mysterious there. Cause there’s so many people walking around with it and not realizing that their symptoms are that, or maybe they don’t have the same and everybody has different symptoms. So testing,
do the, do the symptom quiz, and then you can order a kit through us using that code. And we will get a test kit to you in the mail. This is a home collection kit, because especially with cortisol and adrenal function, you want to measure at the appropriate times of day with all of these hormones, you want to measure first thing in the morning at noon at,
in the evening and at bedtime. So it needs, it’s much easier to have a home test. You pick the right day of your cycle. If you’re a woman, and then we get the results to you within it’s usually seven days a business week. And then we have a rebalancing guide that goes through each of the, each of the imbalances that were identified in the testing.
And the test result itself is full of information. And then we send, we send you a sort of, this is what showed up in your test results. These are the things that are helpful. Here are some articles to read. If someone has indications of PCOM, there’s a comment there. That’s going to say these symptoms and these levels correlate with PCLs.
If you haven’t been aware of this, get a trans vaginal ultrasound, here are the natural ways to deal with it because there are so many things like, you know, and acetol cystine and make a threes and alpha lipoic acid. And that are just so helpful in bringing down insulin levels and helping to create a better, you know, the exercise you’re talking about trying to get you into a place where your insulin sensitivity is improved and where you can stop this hypersecretion of the androgens to cause PCs,
there are a million natural ways to go. One does not have to be put back on birth or Metformin. That is not absolutely. I mean, you yourself telling cured yourself. Right? Right. So, you know, better than anyone. And it took me some time, but I figured it out, but there’s so many things out there that we can do.
There’s so many You were throwing birth control. Yes. Yes. That’s always the default. Yeah. And I forgot to give you our website is it’s your hormone balance.com. So go to the website and we also have great information on Instagram, which is at your hormone balance, but on the website is where the symptom quizzes and that’s the first step and then use the code and get tested and shed light on.
What’s been going on. I think most people don’t even know how much better they could be feeling. Don’t don’t become your symptoms, blame it on your hormones and get tested and then blame it on your hormones. I hope to have you on my podcast too. We will. So we can carry on the conversation, but thanks for having me. Absolutely,
Absolutely. And thank you so much for detailing all the way, you, all the details within your program. And for anyone interested, we’re going to put all that information, the link in the description of the podcast. So you can go there to find the website as well as the lab kits. So again, thank you so much, Candace for joining us and we can’t wait till we go on your podcast.
All right. Super. If You enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to come check out the sisterhood. It’s my monthly membership site, where sisters just like you are learning how to move through the stages of DCOS from Sage one cold and alone at the doctor’s office to stage five, nailing the PCs lifestyle, gluten and dairy free, get ready to finally feel in control of your body.
