0:00

we have to quit counting on the medical system and our family doctors to be the

0:06

ones to save us from all of these problems they are not trained in getting to the root problem and so we go to them

0:12

in hopes that they're going to and thinking that they should but that's not what they're trained

0:19

[Music]

0:25

in hello there good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are in the world welcome welc to True Hope

0:31

cast the official true true hope Canada podcast my name is Simon I've got the honor of being your host today true hope

0:37

Canada is a mind and body based supplement company that is dedicated first and foremost to promoting brain

0:43

and body Health through non-invasive nutritional means and our current series of podcast episodes discusses how

0:49

different therapies practices and practitioners apply their profession to the huge topic that is mental health for

0:56

more information about true hope you can visit TR hope canada.com and we're on all of the usual social media sites we've got

1:03

another amazing guest with us today um transformational nutrition coach Karen

1:08

Martell Karen lives and practices in Cam's BC and has a very special focus on

1:13

women's weight loss resistance and Hormone Health and um that's going to be the focus of our chat today weight loss

1:19

hormones and how that all Blends into mental health so thank you Karen for joining me today joining us um how are

1:27

you I'm doing great thanks for having me Simon awesome well um big topic when it comes to

1:34

anything related to mental health but obviously so many practitioners have to take mental health

1:40

into consideration especially in the early days of 2021 um so why don't you

1:46

just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into um becoming this transformational nutritional coach

1:53

healer well my story actually began after I had my first child and I was 33

2:00

years old had my baby lost all the weight afterwards and then once I

2:05

stopped breastfeeding I started to gain weight and I've always been a healthy person Sim and I've always eaten really

2:10

well I've always exercised and so there I was going okay well what's going on here like okay well let's try this diet

2:17

so I started to explore different ways of eating I I really tried I think everything between like I was vegan I

2:25

started doing juicing uh what else detoxing I I did

2:30

Atkins diet I did the Zone diet I did the master Clans did it all and nothing worked and

2:39

I continued to gain weight and so I hired a personal trainer and I thought okay then it's the exercise oh I started

2:46

going to this boot camp here in C was six days a week I was I was going with the personal trainer I was working out

2:52

harder than I'd ever worked out in my life and all these women were with me in this exact same class and I was doing

2:58

the exact same workout and they're all looking shredded and there I was

3:04

continuing to gain weight and that wasn't the only thing going on at the same time I feel like within months I

3:12

suddenly couldn't sleep anymore so I had severe insomnia where I couldn't fall

3:17

asleep sometimes till 4:00 in the morning and this was happening every single night I started developing skin

3:23

rashes and so I would eat something and then my body would break out in these hives I started getting severe

3:31

PMS um which would go for weeks before getting my period I was getting severe

3:36

menstrual migraines which would last for sometimes 10 days straight I was tired

3:41

my stomach looked like there was a basketball inside of it all the time so it was super bloated and I was just

3:46

going what is happening to my body and you know I went to the doctor and of

3:52

course you know I was put on an anti-depressant uh for the PMS I was putting on put on uh a sleeping

3:59

medication for sleep I was giving given an acid blocker for the digestive system

4:05

and none of these things were working and it was terrible I I felt I just continually felt worse just just to jump

4:11

in there so from Child breastfeeding and then kind of starting this journey to going into

4:19

the doctor's office because that's kind of like you know you've literally tried everything in regards to doing dietary

4:27

nutrition things to exercising really hard it sounds like and you obviously come to a point where it's like okay I

4:33

got to go into a doctor's office so what was the kind of time period between you know the beginning of that that journey

4:38

to going into um going to a conventional medical practice for the insomnia it was

4:44

within a few months cuz I wasn't sleeping um for the digestive stuff it was probably about a year afterwards I

4:50

started also within months of the menst migraines that were happening I was on

4:55

like heavy duty tripin which are medication for migraines so I'd say all

5:01

within a year I kind of like I would try things and there was just those things I just felt like my hands were tied I just

5:07

felt like diet and exercise weren't going to work and I had to go and see if maybe the doctor could give me something

5:14

and so the the the insomnia medication it was a Band-Aid but it worked it got

5:20

me sleeping again right um the the anti-depressant didn't work I didn't feel any better so I stopped taking it

5:26

yeah and obviously there's there's a time and a place for for everything um it sounds like the medications for

5:32

insomnia worked worked wonders and that was obviously important for you because you're obviously not sleeping for such a long time and you're anxious and getting

5:40

more and more kind of deep in the depression of all these things that you're trying and not seeing those results and obviously so many people can

5:47

resonate with that yeah um so yeah I mean what happen next I it's at that

5:54

point had you done any like like deeper educational qualifications when it comes

5:59

to Health Nutrition hormones weight loss nope nothing I was always extremely

6:05

interested in it and since my early 20s I had wanted to become a nutritionist

6:12

and instead I went into the field of body work and it's funny because it's something that was always in the back of

6:17

my head that I was super keen on doing and I always was doing my own research on stuff probably because of my own

6:23

health problems and I would always try and fix myself and I've always been a research junkie so I would Dive In and

6:29

go down these rabbit holes and and that's basically what ended up happening is I had decided that I had to fix this

6:36

somehow and so I went on a mission to kind of figure out what could this be and Simon nobody at 33 years old is

6:43

going to tell me that I had hormone disfunction because people just don't think that it happens that early a doctor is not going to say well let's

6:50

test your hormones because sounds like it's hormonal and I ended up doing my

6:55

own research coming up with the fact that you know what cuz I also had endometrial is I had ovarian cyst I'd

7:01

been in the hospital I had a laparoscopy done I had a C-section with my daughter

7:06

so I kind of thought you know it's there is this to me I was like there's something hormonal here hormonal

7:12

migraines right so I was like okay let's let's see what I can do about that and I

7:18

went to a naturopath and I asked him could you test my hormones and he of course was like yes of course you should

7:24

be testing your hormones and I tested my hormones via a saliva hormone test and

7:29

we can talk about why that was an important way to test at the time um for

7:34

my age and it came up that I was very estrogen dominant which would explain

7:40

the endometriosis and the ovarian cysts and the menstral migraines I had very little progesterone in my body these two

7:48

very important hormones and my cortisol was shot my cortisol and my DHEA which

7:54

are both adrenal hormones were at the very bottom and I had never thought in a

7:59

million years like that I was even a stressed out person I was just doing what every other North American woman's

8:05

doing working you know five days a week I was running my own business I had a little girl that I was a single mother

8:11

of like just going you know working out doing everything what everybody else is doing and I never thought I was you know

8:19

considered stressed out and I was and my my my hormone results showed me that wow

8:26

and it sounds like you went through so much on a say going towards external

8:31

things whether that's a different diet or a different um nutrition plan or workout something like that and then it

8:38

took for you to maybe go a bit internally and really start thinking about what you're experiencing doing

8:43

your own research a little bit and then you know took the step to go to a naturop path and that obviously was the

8:50

the best step for you and you know immediately straighten with the hormone panel and I'm sure that when it comes to

8:56

certain ages of anybody that you know it's really important to check in on those because you just say you experienced so many different um

9:04

physiological conditions and all of them absolutely connected to to to hormones

9:11

um so that yeah that's that's fantastic that you took that step but it's interesting that you had to kind of sit

9:16

down with yourself realize what was kind of going on and have that kind of self Epiphany moment where you're able to

9:24

really kind of like okay this is me this is what I'm experiencing and kind of everything I've done before to try and

9:31

fix uh in quotations um what you going through and then you go to an naturopath

9:36

and you you know you actually see the actual results from doing an actual test

9:41

that you know most many people should be on and it's kind of frightening that you you doctors all over the world aren't

9:48

aren't more attuned to a really simple procedure yeah um so yes so you go to

9:53

the Natural path you get this panel done and then you know what happens from there well it took a long time to f it

9:59

wasn't an overnight fix by any means it took me a couple years but it was funny CU I did complete opposite of what I was

10:05

doing because of what my hormones showed me I decided to quit all that exercise and in order to help heal my

10:12

adrenal system and instead I started doing yoga every day and I found at that

10:17

time I found the p a Paleo based diet which was the exact right thing for my body at that time as far as food went I

10:24

needed something that was lower inflammatory that would stabilize my blood sugar cuz that was the other thing

10:29

my blood sugar was all over the place I couldn't leave my house without a snack in my bag because my blood sugar would drop so bad so I had to do all of these

10:37

little things that were very opposite of what I had been doing and you know I was eating like the the so-called healthy

10:45

diet at that time which was you know whole grains I was eating my brown rice and drinking my skim milk and thinking I

10:50

was doing this great job for myself and those were exactly the wrong foods for my body at that time and years later

10:59

even found out that I was also severely hypothyroid which the doctors missed

11:04

numerous times because they weren't testing me properly and found out that I was also had very very like off the off

11:11

the charts high levels of lead in my body some Mercury and some cadmium and

11:16

looking back I think it was pregnancy when you're pregnant your bones soften lead stores itself in the bones

11:24

and so I I personally think that that's what happened and Lead will actually occupy a hormone receptor site so that

11:32

people can become very hormonally imbalanced because of it so I feel like

11:37

that's was part of it was being pregnant basically opened the gates to a lot of

11:43

this stuff and now since then I've always just had to work on it

11:48

basically wow I didn't know that about the about the lead occupying recepto sites that's that's huge and obviously

11:53

if that goes on for a long period of time and your body is continuingly you know not getting that message that

11:59

hormone message through to cells it's going to completely flood and flood and flood and at some point it's you know

12:04

the body's got to give yes yeah um wow okay so I mean that's a that's quite the

12:10

journey yes it's quite the journey and so it took me still a very long time to stop what I was doing as far as uh the

12:17

body work went because I really wanted to become a nutritionist and go or do something in in this field and I always

12:24

just had that limiting belief like who would who would hire a nutritionist over a natural path and so I just kept

12:30

putting it off putting it off and we know what happens when you ignore what life's trying to tell you sometimes life

12:38

has to knock you upside the head sure and my body started to go downhill just

12:44

from the body from doing the body work and I was down to only being able to do maybe one or two sessions a day and so I

12:51

knew at that point I had to do something and so it kind of forced my hand into becoming a nutritionist so I became a

12:58

nutrition coach and and I decided there's got to be more women that are like me that are experiencing weight

13:05

loss resistance and hormone dysfunction and that they don't know it that they're still doing what everybody else is

13:11

telling them to do which is you should be calorie restricting and you should be working out harder yeah which obviously we know that

13:18

you know especially from your journey where you you went from going really hard a lot of excess and then you know

13:24

your your treatment after that was yoga very like parasympathetic thing anti-inflammatory diet actually giving

13:31

your body the ability to heal recover and replenish rather than you know

13:36

constantly go go go and that's obviously an interesting Paradigm we have when it comes to weight loss we think it's very

13:42

simple calories in calories out and burnt burning them Etc and obviously it's a lot more complicated than that

13:48

especially when you throw the complications of endocrine and endocrine

13:54

hormones so okay so now now now you're on this journey like has given you this

13:59

kick up the butt and now you you know now you're in this educational because in my experience and opinion of speaking

14:05

and working with a lot of different different practitioners the best ones go through something like that to become

14:13

this inspirational person because they you know they genuinely authentically connect with other individuals many many

14:19

other individuals who experience the same thing day in day out and yeah they think they're doing the right things by

14:24

following like you know certain government guidelines and maybe something to do with cultural

14:31

requirements as well but not seeing those results and then like if you throw

14:37

throw the mental health application into that type of experience of you know you're going going going you're trying to do all these things and you're not

14:42

seeing those those results how kind of you know devastating that ends up being and you know a lot of people may just

14:49

spiral into kind of an opposite effect or something like that and not Maybe not maybe find the path that you did but you

14:57

luckily enough you luckily enough did or the the path found you however you want to look at it and you're there now to be

15:02

able to you know go and educate yourself and be able to learn how to you know support other people through through

15:08

that Journey yeah it amazes me Simon how many people still think that it's

15:15

the diet that's the problem or it's the workout that's the problem and I mean this is 95% of people that come to me

15:23

tell me the same story which is and I attract very healthy people in the sense that they come to me they're like oh

15:29

I've been doing a ketogenic diet for two years with no carbs and this amount of calories and I work out and I still

15:35

can't lose weight or I'm gaining weight and you go into these you know keto like

15:40

the most popular diet in the world right now so I'm going to use that as an example I'm part of many Forums on

15:46

Facebook just to kind of see what people are talking about and without fail if I looked on a daily basis

15:53

there's always people on there going I can't lose weight or I stopped losing weight on keto

15:59

what what am I doing wrong here and that person will get 100 different responses

16:05

comments and they all say you're not doing it right you need to lower your carbohydrates you need to lower your

16:10

calories start fasting go carnivore those are the three things and I'm like oh you poor woman it's not that it's

16:17

your hormones and you go low carb when you have adrenal issues that is the

16:24

worst thing that you can do and women nowadays we're in an epidemic of adrenal

16:29

issues in this country between men and women women tend to not process cortisol as well as men do so here we are and

16:36

especially as we age so as we're aging we're getting into our late 30s early 40s cortisol becomes more of a problem

16:43

we're dropping in all of these other hormones and the everyone's being told to go on a ketogenic diet and to drop

16:49

their carbs which don't get me wrong keto can be the most phenomenal diet for some women but that's if those women

16:56

let's say have insulin resistance they don't have cortisol issu isues they don't have a thyroid problem they do

17:02

awesome and it'll correct that insulin resistance faster than any other diet but most women these days at least the

17:08

ones I'm working with have an adrenal problem whether it's too high cortisol or too low they also goes hand in hand

17:16

with a thyroid problem and the research shows and there's many

17:21

keto Advocates that will fight me on this and I'll fight I've done my research I've been in the ketogenic

17:27

world for years I've I've put thousands of women on a ketogenic diet and it does

17:33

slow down your thyroid I actually tested myself I tested my thyroid and I've like I said I have a thyroid issue I have a

17:40

conversion problem between T4 and T3 as well I've got this low cortisol dhaa that I have to be very careful with and

17:47

I tested before I did the keto diet and I did I tested again uh six weeks later

17:53

and my thyroid went down yeah wow without any other change besides the fact that I went keto yeah that's a big

17:59

um when it comes to keto paleo vegan whatever you want to call it there's a

18:04

lot of um I want to call it cultism around it and you're a lot of people are unable to see that you know not one

18:11

thing is going to work or benefit somebody else especially if you're unable to even look at their their blood

18:16

work yes or different panels I mean obviously they're super important and you know just just hearing about the

18:23

different groups whether that's on Facebook or where wherever and people are you know are Shar ing their personal

18:29

stories and looking for help that just shows me the um the struggle the

18:35

desperation that a lot of people are going through and um know some of those communities and groups can be really

18:41

really beneficial but you know as you say when you get 300 answers telling you that you know you're doing everything

18:47

wrong and you should be doing this that's when that's when those things aren't super helpful and that's when you

18:52

know obviously going to see somebody who's a professional and and really well trained and it's going to take

18:58

all of your circumstances until more like a holistic approach into consideration and obviously actually doing yeah tests personalized nutrition

19:07

that's where it has to go and don't get me wrong there's some diets that I've seen work better than others being in this industry and definitely the lower

19:15

inflammatory ones like keto paleo Autoimmune Paleo I've definitely seen those work better when it comes to

19:21

weight loss resistance digestion mental health especially um when the guts inflamed the brain's inflamed and

19:27

there's a huge connection between that so a lot of people have to use those types of diets to heal their system and

19:34

then they can start you know having more variation in it but everybody has to just be open-minded and I say you have

19:40

to find what I call is your weight loss code and that could be the same as you just need to find your health code which

19:46

is going to look different for every single one of us we're all dealing with different problems you know you might

19:51

have gut problems you might have insulin resistance well then you know maybe a keto diet might be better you might have an autoimmune condition you might have

19:58

to do auto immune maybe you don't do well with meat and you need to be vegan for a while like there's we just have to

20:03

stay open-minded absolutely yeah and that personalized nutritional approach is obviously very important because not

20:09

not only are our bodies different but our circumstances our work schedules our you know stress levels Etc we all have a

20:16

very very different Lifestyles so you know just throwing like one diet book at

20:21

everybody it's just we I mean if you have any experience in trying different diets you know that that's not it's not

20:27

going to work no um what percentage of your client how experience mental health

20:33

related conditions whether that's anxiety depression or or anything more extreme I have three things that I hear

20:41

almost from every single person I've worked with and I've worked with thousands of women top three weight

20:48

gain anxiety and depression and sex drive those are the three the top and

20:54

then underneath you know we got energy and had you know digestive problems but

20:59

those are always the top three in anxiety and depression I almost hear Simon across the board from people it's

21:05

really sad actually I feel bad and is that um in the last year we'll say 10

21:11

months I suppose is that increase even more is that oh I've heard a lot because of the co

21:17

yeah uh people not being able to handle their health anymore so these people

21:23

were maybe doing really really well with their diet and hormones and stuff like

21:28

that and then covid hit and I've got oh things are so bad right now I don't I'm not eating well everything's gone out

21:34

the door I'm not exercising so that tells me that yes that anxiety depression has gotten worse yeah and

21:40

people obviously not having the same access to their communities and their support groups which is obviously a Hu a

21:46

huge part yeah but obviously a lot of that journey is you know personal on their own and your different

21:51

circumstances that you know Co has affected people is obviously going to be taken into into consideration do you

21:58

feel so you feel there's like a direct correlation between you know the hormonal balance I think you said what 95% of people who come into you experien

22:06

some experiencing some some level of hormone hormone imbalance and mood disorders um but you see you see a

22:12

correlation between the two of them 100% yeah yeah we're not being told that our

22:18

hormones can affect mental health and I think it's a very sad thing I think that I say shame on you doctors for not

22:25

helping women more with their hormones especially in today's day and age we're seeing it younger and younger and

22:30

younger I mean you see it just in the rise of infertility it's Mass it's worse than it's ever been yeah that's hormonal

22:37

we're seeing way more things like polycystic ovarian syndrome endometriosis the list goes on and no

22:45

doctors saying oh well this might be you know you might have depression or anxiety because you don't have any

22:51

estrogen left in your system or you don't have any progesterone doctors don't say that it's here's your

22:57

anti-depressant and by no means is there anything wrong with that and people need to be open to

23:03

taking that route but just as long as everybody also knows you can also look to your hormones because I have seen

23:10

that be the missing link for mental health in a countless and countless

23:16

women and especially as we age because as we age we start to lose and when we

23:22

hit our late 30s early 40s we start to drop in a a hormone called

23:27

progesterone well progesterone is it reacts on What's called the Gaba receptors of the brain

23:33

I'm not sure if you guys have a product that has Gaba in it maybe or no um I don't believe you do no well it's a very

23:39

it's a very anti-anxiety Gaba you can buy you I'm sure everyone's probably seen it in the health food stores um

23:47

it's a neurotransmitter in your brain that helps to keep you calm well progesterone acts on those receptors so

23:53

it acts like a Gaba and so it calms the brain so what you'll see is is women

23:59

start to get more and more PMS for instance because it's second half of a

24:04

woman's cycle we produce progesterone and that progesterone if it's not there

24:09

you the anxiety goes up and for some women it really goes up and so here we

24:15

are in our 40s our progesterone's dropping by about 75% of our fertile 20s

24:22

and 30 years right in those times it's nice and high and then it just starts to plummet and we see this rise in anxiety

24:30

and insomnia that go with it and it can be and even with postpartum depression

24:35

often times it's because we produced so much progesterone in our pregnancy you have the baby and that those

24:42

progesterone levels plummet and crash and it's one of the causes of postpartum

24:47

depression women are not being told this yeah it's a it's a huge part and I think um education without question is is a is

24:56

a big part of that you know it's um it's easy to point the finger at doctors I suppose but I you know I don't I've not

25:01

been to medical school but I don't know how much they talk about that in in their practice most likely not much at

25:07

all um as you say there's a you know somebody comes in with a with a list of symptoms diagnosis pharmaceutical maybe

25:15

another intervention but yeah it definitely comes down to that and it takes um I think there's only maybe a

25:21

small amount of people that actually go on their own journey and start their own research and then actually take their

25:27

own health into their own hands and push for certain tests for example but yeah

25:32

it's that it's that lack of Education that's really kind of actually ticks me off because you know when I went to

25:38

school let's say I didn't get into studying nutrition till I was about 29 and before that if you said the word

25:44

hormone to me I might be able to reel off you could be like oh yeah I've got testosterone yeah yeah but nothing more

25:51

than that and you know I think that there's a I think there's a responsibility for um schools

25:56

governments to be you know EXP exping to men and women you know what happens in the body and then when I started going

26:02

to when I did my nutrition degree and we were talking about um we're talking about hormones and primarily um female

26:09

hormone health because it's viciously more complicated it gave me just looking at the the hormones that go up and down

26:16

and all around especially during like a cycle or a pregnancy how complicated

26:21

that whole process is and when you Chuck something in like birth control or a stressful event or loads of exercise or

26:28

the wrong diet you are really tinkering with a really really

26:33

complex set of cascade of events that yeah can cause literally any

26:40

type let's say any type of illness especially when we're talking about like autoimmunity or an endocrine problem but

26:47

yeah like it's that lack of knowing and that lack of Education that that really

26:53

stops a lot of people from feeling great especially during those you know 30s to

26:59

40s because you know I think what we like to do in our culture we kind of like we like to what we do in our 20s we

27:06

want to kind of keep the party going but obviously our bodies change circumstances change and you can't fight

27:12

that unfortunately you kind of have to adapt and learn and you know re-educate yourself but that's the thing that's

27:18

massively missing for me all over the park when it comes to you know what can

27:24

I do to improve my sleep to lower my anxiety levels and it's so much more

27:31

than just saying oh okay maybe stress mybe work's a little bit more stressful I've got this new child it's just so

27:36

much more complicated than that and we we look in our culture for very simple answers yeah and that's know an example

27:43

of going in and just getting an anti-depressant for for something rather than looking a little bit deeper um as I

27:48

say I don't blame medical system for that I think it's just a a really poor it's just not not set up as it

27:55

could be here's the thing and this is what I've realized in the last few years and I say it to everybody which is we have to quit counting on the medical

28:03

system and our family doctors to be the ones to save us from all of these

28:09

problems they are not trained in getting to the root problem and so we go to them in hopes that they're going to and

28:14

thinking that they should but that's not what they're trained in they're trained in medication and here's and life saving

28:21

this is I mean where would we be without it I'm not dissing them I'm saying that their part is over here for what they're

28:28

good for but we have to quit looking to them to get to the root of the problem they're trained to get give you the

28:35

Band-Aid and say Here's the drugs in most cases none of those drugs are going to cure the problem is going to get rid

28:40

of your symptoms and that can be great especially while you're trying to figure out maybe what the root cause is you may

28:46

need to be on those anti-depressants or anti- anxiety while you try and figure it out so they have their place but

28:52

don't count on them for that because they're not trained in bioidentical hormone therapy they're not trained in

28:58

supplements they're not trained in diet it's astonishing that half the time they could just be saying change your diet

29:03

and all of these people's ailments could go away but they don't so we just have to quit counting on it so that we could

29:10

then quit getting frustrated with them because it's just not their job absolutely and it's definitely some self- responsibility that comes with

29:16

that as well right because you can't as I say I mean a typical doctor's appointment I think in Canada is maybe

29:21

eight 12 minutes oh if you're lucky 12 yeah yeah like how can you possibly expect to

29:28

tell them tell somebody like the last 10 years of your life of something you've been experiencing in that period of time

29:33

to be able to you know get to a real root cause and obviously a drug or another intervention is as you say a

29:40

Band-Aid um but the place is definitely emergency medicine and for long-term

29:46

chronic illnesses that has you know come over years or even decades in some in some cases there's definitely a lot of

29:52

personal responsibility that a patient should should be taking I think so but

29:57

sometimes the access to that information can be either scarce or overwhelming I think going to I think

30:04

nowadays in most most cities and towns you can find nutritionists and naturopaths um hopefully you can find

30:10

one that can have a good conversation with you and you know start start putting a little bit of responsibility

30:16

on the client and holding them accountable and pointing them in the right direction in regards to like what

30:22

the what a true healing root process takes because you said you know you took a couple of years of I'm sure hard

30:28

habitual change and work it doesn't come easy like changing things no and I think

30:34

we need to get it out of our head that healthc care should be free for that stuff yeah but I think we

30:41

need to separate it and be like we need to be willing to spend the money to go see a functional medicine practitioner

30:46

and maybe do some testing and in the end it'll actually be cheaper I think about all the time and money I spent trying to

30:52

figure out what supplement to take what book I was reading what diet I was going to you know about what diet to do or

30:59

whatever it was like I did so much and spent so much money when I should have just gone to a functional medicine

31:04

practitioner and figured it out and did the testing but back then too this was you know a long time ago so over 10

31:12

years ago well 14 years ago now so it's it's different now and I think people are definitely more open to it it we

31:19

just still have a hard time spending the money on our health which is a shame yeah in my experience a lot of people

31:25

who will come and see me as a nutrition are people that are basically Fed Up and

31:31

they've actually experienced that the conventional system doesn't work for them so a lot of people in their 40s 50s

31:36

and 60s um who yeah they've they they've literally tried everything under the sun and they they've they've not had the

31:43

they've not had the experience that they expect they they basically just not healed they've been you know prevented

31:48

and they've been gone on and off different medications and try different things going back to the doctors but

31:54

then it just takes being you know that one appointment where it's like okay that it's just it's just isn't working

32:00

and then step out and maybe Google for someone else like a naturopath or a nutritionist or something and then

32:06

that's actually taking more that's taking that personal responsibility that I was talking about you become a little bit more assertive when it comes to your

32:12

healthare and yeah you're going to have to in some cases pay out of pocket for that and pay for you know secondary

32:18

Healthcare um but as you say like in the long term how beneficial that can be and

32:23

you know there's some really great practices out there now that you can get on certain benefit plans with acupun or

32:29

nutrition I think that um insurance companies are getting they're getting

32:34

better at that it's still really really slow but um yeah there's some really amazing people out there yeah who can

32:41

who who can offer some support and help and I think that's without question the the biggest thing is someone they can

32:47

sit across from a table and you can listen you listen to their story as a practitioner and then you have that connection and then it's you see this

32:54

weight lifted off somebody and it's okay this is where we're at we're going to start nice and easy we're going to do this this and this and then you know you

33:01

feel a bit taken care of and then you you feel like okay it's not super scary anymore and I'm sure you've had that

33:06

experience a million times and really having access to the worldwide web if

33:12

you have some very specific issue whether it's an autoimmune condition or for me hormonal you can see people all

33:19

over the world that that that's their special NE Niche right that that's what they specialize in is gut health is

33:25

autoimmune conditions my CL I have clients in Kuwait I have a number of them because they can't get the help

33:31

there for their hormones and these are women that are going what is happening to my body no one can help me over here

33:36

and they're my clients I have people in Australia I have people in the United States all over the world anybody has

33:42

access to these to people like that absolutely yeah there so much information about there available as me

33:48

say like there's practitioners all over the world we using traditional medicines

33:54

and conventional medicines and without question the best ones kind of lend the too um once you've reached a kind of

34:01

certain level of of success with with your clients do you see an overall overall Improvement in

34:07

mood yeah it definitely it depends I I tend to work Simon with a

34:12

lot of women that are going through the transition into menopause so I start seeing women usually when anywhere from

34:19

late 30s to uh late 50s that seems to be

34:24

who I attract the most and so with that said If a woman is still in her fertile

34:31

years and she's still cycling there's so much that we can do for mental health that's natural whether that's change of

34:37

diet sometimes it's just simply trying to figure out you know a woman's food sensitivity sensitivities getting rid of

34:44

those and suddenly the brain starts to work better but as they age what starts

34:49

to happen is the ovaries just simply quit making these hormones and I I really want to get this message across

34:56

because many women think well I just this is natural I'm supposed to be going into menopause so I just need to suffer

35:04

through this it's normal like it's normal but what's non normal is to suffer for 7 to 10 years which is the

35:10

average of per menopause so and it's different degrees for every woman but

35:15

usually about 80% of women will get symptoms if not more than that I think it's maybe

35:21

85% so here are these women that are going to their doctors saying I'm depressed I'm anxious I can't sleep I'm

35:28

having hot flashes and night sweats my libido is gone so my relationship isn't doing very well anymore also because of

35:35

the anxiety and depression I'm a snap show husbands will say what's happened to my wife and so women are given the

35:42

drugs to to to Band-Aid each of these symptoms and it's too bad because they

35:49

have we have access to bioidentical hormones and there's a lot of misconceptions around a lot of false

35:56

information around the safety of hormones and in the environment that we're in today with all the toxic load

36:03

and the stress we are not going through menopause in a very nice

36:09

way right right like I hit 42 and I started going into Perry menopause and like started missing a period I was

36:16

getting depressed I was my thyroid went for a went into the toilet all within a

36:22

year and I was I was like what you know this is me the hormone weight loss coach and I'm going okay I just packed on 10

36:29

pounds and I'm my hormone you know my thyroids in the toilet my estrogen and progesterone took a dive okay I guess

36:35

this is what I'm supposed to learn next right and I see so many women going

36:43

through that whether it's when they're 42 or they're 48 but suddenly all of the like their life as they know it is gone

36:52

and it's very depressing and you see these women that just some of them want to commit suicide side yeah divorce

36:59

happens like and it's all because their body doesn't have estrogen and progesterone and

37:06

estrogen there's a lot of research coming out right now on estrogen which everybody's very afraid of estrogen

37:11

because of breast cancer and it all goes back to a study if I may talk about this

37:17

like kind of yeah get rid of some of the myth back in 2002 there's a women's health initiative that was uh took place

37:24

and this was the largest study ever done on hormone replacement therapy in the

37:30

1950s estrogen therapy was the number one and for and up to that point it was

37:36

the number one prescribed drug in America was estrad was premin wow okay

37:42

yes so Premarin is horses pregnant horses urine and and

37:48

they get if that's where the estrogen comes from okay it's not like our own it's it's when you look at it it's this

37:55

we're not horses so it's not like our own but still is enough that it fits into the receptor which your receptor is

38:01

what there's estrogen there's hormone receptors all over the body those receptors are like a little satellite

38:06

dish looking for the hormone that it so it's looking for estrogen grabs onto the

38:12

estrogen right fit so the the horse's estrogen looks enough like our

38:18

own so do xenoestrogens so estrogens in our environment that your receptors will

38:24

prefer xenoestrogens over our own which is very depressing so we'll actually occupy the

38:30

receptor site and block it from your own natural yeah okay and we don't want the synthetic chemical version of an

38:37

estrogen right so this is where we see some negative effects of estrogen coming

38:43

in so the study was done it was like I said largest study ever done but this

38:48

the study was done on synthetic progestin and horses urine estrogen dial

38:58

okay okay within a few years many of these women started to

39:04

develop uterine cancer heart disease and breast cancer so they pulled the shoot

39:11

on this study sent out the worldwide message get every woman off of HRT it's

39:18

dangerous so every doctor still to this day most of them took their women off

39:25

HRT well the Studies have now been looked into a lot deeper now yeah and

39:32

the truth of the studies and any one of you can go online and look this up for yourself you don't have to believe me

39:37

yeah we'll add We'll add links to the studies in the show notes yes um the estrogen only arm of the study

39:46

where these women were using pre uh premin which was the horse's urine

39:52

estrogen if they were on that only not the progestin they actually showed a

39:58

decrease in breast cancer by 23% against against the other group

40:04

against the other group it was the group that was on the progestins and the estrogen that had the increase in heart

40:11

disease and uterine cancer wow so it's the progestin that is the what's was so

40:18

bad in that study and so I I don't recommend any woman to ever be on

40:24

it the premin is an oral form of estrogen anything taken orally is going

40:29

to have a uh you're going to increase your risk of heart attack and stroke that's why birth control also has that

40:36

because birth control is very high amounts of estrogen way higher than usually uh bioidentical hormone therapy

40:43

uses so even using the premine the results were better than women not using

40:48

it or using the progestin prestant in combination with it so now we have something called bio

40:57

identical hormone therapy which is comes from yams

41:03

and uh so soy and the two look I when

41:09

you look at it they are identical to our own your body doesn't know the

41:14

difference so bioidentical is extremely safe you use it transdermally or in

41:19

suppository form there's different ways you can do it it's not taken orally um you can do progesterone orally but

41:26

that's shown to be very safe and the results are amazing and so

41:32

you g you can give a woman a little bit of estrogen and a little bit of progesterone and boom her anxiety and

41:38

depression can go away estrogen has massive effects on your brain there's so much research coming out on the effects

41:45

of estrogen on Al no estrogen on Alzheimer's disease and dementia so it's

41:51

being shown to help prevent Alzheimer's disease dementia anxiety depression

41:58

um oxytocin follows estrogen around in the body which is our feel-good hormone so without it we don't feel as good like

42:04

the lth goes on estrogen has 400 different functions in the body that's crazy so it can just help a woman to

42:11

transition through this time and it actually all the research shows Simon that if a woman takes bioidentical

42:18

hormone therapy even for one year into menopause she reduces her risk of all

42:24

cause mortality by 20% that's wild y That's crazy yeah that's that's phenomenal and as to

42:29

say like we spoke about the how the how hormones throughout the whole body whether it's estrogen or progesterone if

42:36

any type of level's going to going to plummet significantly then so many different effects are going to happen

42:42

all across the body because yeah know we we have these receptors on all all the cells of our body and you say we know we

42:49

have xenoestrogens like foreign estrogens that live in our environment that are going to take up the place in

42:54

these receptor sites and that actually happens for like a lot of different hormones so it's it's just it's just

43:01

really I say it's really is really complicated and complex but the solution

43:06

in many many cases is really simple because of that complex complexity MH

43:12

yeah unfortunately we can't we still can't use them as this like Miracle band-aid and I tell women this because

43:17

they're like oh so if I take this like all my anxiety and depression is going to go away and I'm going to lose all this weight and well yeah you also have

43:25

to have a very healthy gut to take you know for hormones all hormones whether they're in your body or coming from the

43:31

outside you have to have a healthy gut you still have to eat well because you can't if you don't eat well you're going

43:37

to have inflammation of the brain and your body's not going to process those hormones as well because your liver is going to be clogged up so you got to get

43:43

rid of the toxins toxic load off your body you got to get rid of the xenoestrogens in your environment

43:49

because they're going to compete for that receptor site whether it's from your own or from bioidentical hormones

43:55

so you have to you have to to still do your due diligence and to clean up all this stuff around you in order for your

44:02

body to become optimized on hormone therapy yeah I'd love to jump in and talk about I think we actually do this

44:08

on another episode maybe you come back and talk about how the microbiome and the different microorganisms that live

44:13

within the gut have a significant um impact on your hormones in some many cases like serotonin for example the

44:19

majority of it made within your gut we could talk about that for hours yeah but I'd love to ask you about I I was going

44:26

through your website yesterday today and you've got this um hormone quiz mhm and let's like take this quick quiz and find

44:32

out which ones are stopping you from losing weight can you just tell us a little bit more about that yeah it's

44:38

actually a very comprehensive quiz so it takes a couple minutes to get through it but I go through five of the top hormone

44:45

dysfunctions that I see in women and so it's just a quiz but it's a really great starting point because you can take this

44:52

quiz and then I actually give you all of the ebooks depend doesn't matter even what your top one is because hormones

44:59

all work synergistically together so you may have a top one that comes out so let's say you've got you come out with estrogen dominance and then you'll start

45:07

to read through these little they're just little mini ebooks and you'll be like o but I also fall into the cortisol

45:12

category oh I also fall into the low progesterone category what or thyroid whatever it might be so it get it's kind

45:19

of a a great first start to trying to say okay maybe is hormones part of this

45:25

and especially if you if you're ticking for everything that's coming up you know okay I definitely have some hormone

45:31

stuff happening in my body and then I also give you a two week um what I call

45:36

the hormone and metabolic reboot meal plan that comes with your test results so you can kind of it's a way that I've

45:43

developed as far as eating goes when it comes to keeping your hormones safe um

45:49

and as well losing weight and balancing those hormones yeah and not allowing for

45:55

spikes drops yeah so it's low inflammatory it kind of goes between paleo keto so I got some fasting in

46:02

there but not chronic fasting cuz I want to I always think okay women have adrenal problems so I do this kind of

46:09

carb cycling calorie cycling because I mean I'll have to come back to talk about weight loss here but basically if

46:15

you go too low calorie for too long your body starts to slow down your metabolism your thyroid starts to have a problem

46:20

with it if you fast too much your cortisol is going to go up all of these things so I've kind of taken everything

46:27

that I got from working with so many women instead okay what how should a

46:32

woman be eating what's ideal and I still recommend okay you still have to tweak this kind of diet like to make it your

46:38

own because you might not agree with all the foods in here or you may be totally fine with adding some other stuff in

46:44

there so it's a template but it's a great template that's awesome yeah I love those online quizzes when they're

46:50

done well that it helps people reflect a little bit more personally on what they're going through and also you know

46:57

if it's something that's up there on your website so many people are going through it as well and you not feeling

47:02

alone and something like that can be very helpful um just on hormone testing

47:08

what types of hormone testing do you do and you know how how important is it to do you know those extensive tests I

47:14

think it's very important I'm actually become very into testing because

47:20

especially with hormones there are a lot of symptoms that can overlap each other and the protocols are very different so

47:27

let's say somebody has adrenal fatigue they could actually show up it looks like they have actually too much

47:34

cortisol because there's so many things that overlap so things like that you

47:40

wouldn't want to give somebody the same supplements for low cortisol as you

47:45

would the high cortisol or you could actually do further damage so to get an

47:51

exact like here's what you need to do um is very helpful so in order order to do

47:56

that you need to test so I personally offer saliva hormone testing for the sex

48:02

hormones so you know estrogen progesterone and uh testosterone and then the adrenal hormones do a 4o

48:09

cortisol test as well as a dhaa test um thyroid I do blood spot testing um so

48:15

these are all done in the Comforts of your own home saliva testing tests what's called available hormone levels

48:22

which means that they are available to your body to use when you go to the the doctor and you ask for hormone testing

48:29

they'll usually just say no if you can get them to do it that's why around that yeah if you can get them to do it you

48:37

can they'll would do they'll do blood and serum but they won't tell you what day to do it so they'll just be like

48:43

okay fine here's your requisition that my next question is like is obviously important time to do any type of test

48:48

yes because you need like I said progesterone's produced in the second half of the month so if you go get tested in the first half of the month

48:55

you're going to look like you have no progesterone yeah and then you'll start taking Progesterone when you don't even need it or vice versa with the estrogen

49:01

whatever it is right you you it is good to find out and serum so not only do they not tell you what day to test it on

49:08

but they'll also the serum only tests bound hormone levels so salivas

49:14

available these ones are bound they're bound to a protein called sex hormone binding globulin it just means that very

49:20

little of those bound hormones are actually being utilized by the body if you're a cyclan woman this is a problem

49:26

because you can the I've seen it on many Labs where people have done both I've seen it on my own Labs I've done both

49:33

and they're completely they can be completely opposite where it looks like you have these really really healthy

49:38

levels of let's say estrogen but then you do availables and there's none or

49:44

whatever it might be I've seen people with T I saw one woman recently who showed up on blood that she had no

49:50

testosterone so the doctor put her on testosterone I did saliva hormone testing and she was off the s and she

49:57

had been breaking out in acne growing hair like facial hair and there was the

50:02

exact wrong thing if you're in late per menopause stage or menopausal stage then

50:10

you can do serum and it can be accurate because there're just no hormones so it will show up in the serum at that point

50:16

great so it's not only you know it's important to test and not guess but it's also huge to do the right tests because

50:22

they are wrong ones as well and doing them at the right time s and obviously the person who's actually looking at the

50:29

results having to know all that information as well is very important as well wow y yeah um I think that's a

50:37

great place to finish up I'd love to have you back on to talk more about weight loss and talk about gut health

50:42

and hormones um I hope you be open to that but how can people get a hold of

50:48

you Karen karenm mel. comom nice and easy perfect M and you can also find me

50:53

on my own podcast if you're if you want more information about this I've had a podcast for a couple years it's called

50:59

the other side of weight loss talk Lots about all thing tons of mental health stuff tons on weight loss and hormones

51:06

and um so you could definitely find lots of information on there awesome and the podcast is on iTunes Spotify anywhere

51:13

anywhere anywhere and everywhere great and um yeah you can go to car.com and

51:19

yeah there's some really cool recipes and blog posts on there as well and if you want to connect with her you can go

51:25

straight to that but thank you so much for coming in yes thanks for having me this was great yes and I'm excited to we

51:31

can continue with this conversation another time yep jump on some more really interesting topics you bet but

51:37

thank you so much um that's it for this episode of True Hope cast I hope you enjoyed the show all show notes will be

51:43

included with everything we spoke about today studies contac and Karen Etc um

51:50

thank you again once again thanks Simon have a beautiful day everyone goodbye

51:56

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