How to Balance your Hormones on a Plant-based Diet with Dr. Neal Barnard [Episode #445]
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This week’s topic is: How to Balance your Hormones on a Plant-based Diet with Neal Barnard
I am so excited to have my very special guest, Dr. Neal Barnard, who is an American author, clinical researcher, and founding president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). He’s authored over 19 books and his new book is out called Your Body in Balance: The New Science of Food, Hormones, and Health. This book is super useful and applies to the modern world and a lot of issues that a lot of us have are directly addressed in the book. Listen in to hear his perspective on hormones, the foods we eat and our health.
- What the motivation was behind Neal’s new book, “Your Body in Balance: The New Science of Food, Hormones, and Health“…
- An overview of how hormones affect us every day and what aspects of our wellbeing play a part…
- Neal and I discuss eating plant-based and how it affects fertility and beyond…
- How eating plant-based affects your hormones and menstrual cycle…
- Fertility treatments and why they’re on the rise…
- Fats that disrupt hormonal function and why…
- Plant-based sources with absorbable calcium and how to supplement…
- The truth about doctors and nutrition knowledge…
- Losing weight on the Keto Diet and at what cost to your health…
- Foods that are problematic to your hormones and your health…
- Eggs, dairy and butter and if they should be a part of your diet…
About Dr. Neal Barnard
Neal Barnard, M.D., F.A.C.C., is the founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. He has authored more than 70 scientific publications as well as 19 books, including the bestsellers Power Foods for the Brain, 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart, and Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes.
Dr. Barnard is a frequent lecturer appearing throughout the world and an adjunct professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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Neal’s Interview
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Transcript:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Kimberly: Hi Beauties and welcome back to our Monday interview podcast. I am super excited for our guest today who is someone that I admire and love very much. His work is incredible. His name is Dr. Neal Barnard and he is a clinical researcher and the founding president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. He’s authored over 19 books, beauties and his new book is out called Your Body in Balance: The New Science of Food, Hormones, and Health. So I rvead this book cover to cover and not only is it interesting and fascinating, but it’s super useful, especially for all of us women right here, right now. It applies to the modern world and a lot of issues that a lot of us have are directly addressed in the book. So I’m super excited to get into all of it.
Kimberly: I also want to point out in Dr. Bernard’s bio, I love this one. He is the editor in chief of The Nutrition Guide for Clinicians, which is a nutrition textbook that’s given to all second year medical students in the United States. So here’s someone who really knows what they’re talking about and thankfully he is helping to influence nutrition on a mass scale.
Fan Of The Week
Before we dive in with Dr. Bernard, I just want to give a quick shout out to our fan of the week. His or her name is Born to Create and he or she writes, “This podcast has helped me so much to make changes in all aspects of my life. Kimberly Snyder is someone I look up to and aspire to get knowledge from. Thank you for blessing us.” Born to Create, thank you so much for being part of our community, for writing us a review, sending you a big warm hug wherever you happen to be virtually and again, lots of love. Thank you so much beauty.
Share The Podcast and Leave a Review on Itunes
Kimberly: And for your chance to also be shouted out as the fan of the week and for me to read your beautiful words. Please just take a moment or two out of your day and leave us a review on iTunes. It helps other beauties like yourself find the show. It helps to spread information and knowledge that can really help others and it’s just a really wonderful thing to do. So I thank you so much in advance and another, my last quick reminder is to please make sure you subscribe to our show. That way you don’t miss any fantastic life changing interviews like the one we’re about to have and any of our Q&A podcasts on Thursday. It’s just a great way to get constant inspiration and motivation coming into your life.
Interview with Dr. Barnard
Kimberly: All right. All that being said, we have the fabulous Dr. Bernard waiting patiently on the line from, is it Washington DC doctor?
Neal: Yes, that’s right. It’s great to be with you today.
Kimberly: We had you on a couple of months ago and there was so much that I learned and then between time and this time I actually read your new book and I said, “Oh my gosh, we have to have you back doctor.” So thank you, thank you for coming back on.
Neal: Well it’s a great pleasure. Thank you for including me in this issue.
What the motivation was behind Neal’s new book, “Your Body in Balance”
Kimberly: So first question is, you’ve authored over 19 books. This book I have in my hand right now, Your Body in Balance focuses on hormones pretty much throughout the entire book. And I wondered why wow you’re focusing on this topic. Why right now, why hormones?
Neal: Because it’s something that people know nothing about and yet it affects every aspect of their lives. And people are often really suffering as a result of hormones that need to be dialed up or dial down. I got to tell you, I was sitting right at my desk here years and years ago and a young woman called me up and she had such terrible menstrual cramps. She was unable to get to work and she called me and she wanted me to give her some painkillers, which I said I’d be happy to do. But I started to realize that this could have a huge nutritional component that could allow her to really feel good. And yet it’s something that people don’t know and really much of anything about. So I thought, all right, it’s time. Let’s put this owner’s manual in people’s hands and let them give them an opportunity to take their health in their hands. So that they don’t have to have pain and don’t have to be struggling with so many of these issues.
An overview of how hormones affect us every day and what aspects of our wellbeing play a part
Kimberly: So I think you brought up a big one for us women as PMS and not feeling good around our periods. And it’s very common for us to say, “Oh, I’m just feeling hormonal right now.” And sometimes when there’s that type of issue, it’s the only time we think about our hormones. But can you give us an overview of how hormones affect us every day? What aspects of our wellbeing, what part do they play? Which is obviously enormous, but I want you to answer that one doctor.
Neal: Well, if we don’t get past the reproductive part, we still covered a huge amount, on how you feel month to month PMS and menstrual pain, but then also fertility and all the goofy things that go along with it, like endometriosis or fibroids as women get older or then when menopause arrives, hot flashes and so forth. And men have issues too with regard to their sexual functioning and so forth. So that’s a huge one. But that’s really just the beginning. Our hormones affect our weight and thyroid hormone at the base of your neck affects your energy level. It can either be too little or it could be too much and even our mood can be affected. So all of these things are affected. But up until now, most people think, “Well, I don’t need to change my diet unless it’s for my weight or my cholesterol or something like that.” And I guess the message of your body and balance is there’s much more to it than that. And that your hormones can be dialed up and down based on what you eat and let’s learn how and you’re going to feel so much better.
Neal and I discuss eating plant-based and how it affects fertility and beyond
Kimberly: So let’s tackle a big one right off the bat, doctor. And I want to share personally, I have also already shared this with our audience that I happen to be pregnant right now myself. And this is my second son. And I have also been plant-based now for over 12 years. And in both cases I was able to get pregnant pretty much on the first try. I’m very grateful. I’m very lucky. I know there’s other factors that we can’t necessarily control, but what’s ironic is a lot of people still say, “Oh my gosh, is it safe to be plant-based when you’re trying to get pregnant?” For me, I felt like my body was in such good shape that that was a huge reason why it was easy for me to get pregnant. What do you say about all this fertility stuff?
Neal: First of all, congratulations.
Kimberly: Thank you.
Neal: Your growing baby is lucky to have you for a mum.
Kimberly: Oh, thank you doctor.
Neal: Because what you’re doing is really great. A healthy plant-based diet is certainly good for mom, but it’s also good for the baby. And the researchers have looked at complications during pregnancy when they’d looked at growing children. What they find is that those kids who are exposed even in utero to an environment that reflects the healthy nutrition of fruits and vegetables and beans and whole grains and they are spared all the bad stuff. That’s just a great way to start out life. And when researchers have even looked at birth complications, they’re much less, they’re much less common in women who follow healthy vegan diets.
Neal: Now, of course all of your extended family is going to worry. They’re going to think are you getting enough protein and calcium and all these kinds of things? And you have to patiently remind them that, “Yes, I’m eating for two but one of us is really, really small.” And so as a result, it’s not like you’re having an elephant that you’re growing. They’re tiny. And so the added nutrition is modest, but it does have to be thoughtfully put together. You want to give your child the best nutrition and what you’re doing is really, really great.
Kimberly: Thank you doctor. And I’ve always hypothesized that we talk about complications and there is research, there is evidence about the bioaccumulation of toxins as we go higher up the food chain. So do you also concur that may be part of it. I mean obviously if you’re giving up fish, there’s less mercury and if you’re eating less beef, you’re potentially getting much less things like dioxin.
Neal: Right. Yes, that’s right. There are chemicals in the environment they might settle on things that cows and pigs and chickens will eat and they tend to be stored in fat tissue, in body fat. And so the fat that’s in meat will conduct these into your body. But you mentioned a huge source, which is fish because fish live in what is frankly kind of become the human sewer.
Kimberly: No, I know. It’s so gross.
Neal: And so the little fish that’s eating on the ocean bottom is consumed by the bigger fish and these contaminants go right up the food chain. And also similarly a lactating cow, dairy products, milk products will get the chemicals that the cow has been exposed to. And then what’s really frightening is these things will pack into your body. Starting from when a person is a little girl and they’re eating, say animal products, they’re collecting the chemicals that were in those animal products. They get in their body fat. Then when they get older and then they start to raise children, their first baby gets a lot from breast milk, gets a huge amount of the chemicals that the mother has accumulated. And when researchers have tested breast milk, they find that those women who are on plant based diets have a lot fewer of these contaminants in their body and a lot fewer in their breast milk. And the longer they’ve been vegan, the cleaner their milk is.
Kimberly: Now I want to talk about something positive, very positive that I read in your book Dr. Bernard and I actually presented to Vogue, I happen to be doing an interview and I said, “Look at this.” And they were all excited too. And I want women everywhere to hear this. For all our sisters out there who hear so much doom and gloom about fertility and for all our amazing women in the community that may be struggling with getting pregnant. And of course we want to help as many women as possible have this beautiful experience. And I just feel like there’s so many people in my circles, in my groups of friends, just acquaintances saying they’re struggling, so I want to read this study or just paraphrase it rather. It’s on page 12 and this is the foods for fertility chapter.
Kimberly: And basically there was we always hear, “Oh my gosh, if you’re getting older, your fertility is going to go down and down and down.” But they found that, this is a study in Thailand where milk was not a traditional part of the diet. Fertility only declined by about 25% as women pass from their late 20s to their late 30s. In Finland, however, where dairy products were a major part of the diet. Women had a much greater decline in fertility, about 80%. So I say this is helpful because it means, oh my gosh, what we’re eating, if you’re struggling with fertility. If you’re struggling with all that frustration and trying all these fertility treatments, what you eat can have an enormous impact on your ability to conceive.
How eating plant-based affects your menstrual cycle
Neal: It can have an amazing impact. Let me tell you a true story. And in fact, what actually got me going in this direction was it started with menstrual pain, but then it branched into fertility quickly as you’ll see. A young woman called me up, she had terrible cramps as I was mentioning earlier. And I suggested that she try a plant-based diet because we learned a long time ago that that will reduce the amount of estrogen in the blood, the female sex hormone, and you’ll have enough, but you won’t have this excess. And the problem was if you have too much estrogen, it thickens the lining of the uterus too much
Neal: And so then when the lining of the uterus then disintegrates in menstrual flow, it releases too much of what are called prostoglandins that cause cramps and cause PMS. So with a plant based diet, all of those things settle down. There’s not that much thickening of the uterine lining. There’s the right amount, not too much. So you have less cramps, less PMS. And anyway, so we then did a research study where we put this to the test and it worked wonderfully. But in the course of the study we asked all of the women participating if they were sexually active, to not use the pill, to use some other kind of contraceptive method because the pill is a hormone, it’s hormones and it would goof up our result. So one of the women in the study said, “Well, don’t worry about me. My husband and I haven’t been using any kind of contraception because we’re infertile.”
Neal: She said, “We’ve been tested and it’s not him, it’s me and I just don’t ovulate normally and where it totally in fertile so we don’t use the pill.” I got to tell you the second month that she went on the completely plant-based diet, she came in and she said, “Well, I’ve got good news and I got bad news. The bad news is I’ve got to drop out of your study, but the good news is I didn’t expect this to happen but I am pregnant.”
Kimberly: Wow.
Neal: What happened was if your hormones are an unpredictable coaster, the ovaries cannot release an egg on a normal schedule and the likelihood of pregnancy is much worse. And many people have no idea that what gets your hormones in better balance is having adequate fiber in the diet from vegetables and beans, grains because that modulates the amount of estrogens getting away from excess fats, getting away from the animal product because cheese has estrogens in it. You take these things out of the equation and a lot of women who have been struggling suddenly find that it’s so much easier than they had thought and we found the same thing with it. I had a woman who I described in the book and by the way, these are all real people, there’s a woman named Alison who had PCOS polycystic ovary syndrome.
Neal: And really wanted to get pregnant, couldn’t do it. She was a registered dietician who was treating cancer patients with healthy diets working in a medical setting. And she finally thought, “Well, what about my own diet?” And she went on a totally plant based diet and PCOs by the way, is largely genetic to a degree, but it’s influenced by the food choices you make. And suddenly she found she could do dramatically better. And so the first patient, the first person that I mentioned in our pain study, I ran into her several years later, she now had three children and Alison who I mentioned, she’s got this beautiful little baby. And she last year, she came to our medical conference that we have here in Washington every year because she wanted to share the experience that she had. Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments and so forth. I mean, you may need that, but let’s first get the body in balance and see what we can do.
Fertility treatments and why they’re on the rise
Kimberly: Yes. It just feels like so many people are jumping to IVF and all these treatments, which they may need, but it just seems like my husband said to me, it wasn’t like this before. Why is everybody doing fertility treatments? What do you think is going on doctor?
Neal: Well, if you look at the big picture, let’s take cheese for example. Cheese is something most people love and they put it all over the pizza and so forth. Cheese came from milk, milk came from a cow, and cows are actually impregnated through artificial insemination every year. I know it sounds creepy and frankly it is very much so. A lot of people object to this because at the end of her nine month pregnancy, she gives birth and of course the calves are taken away. And if they’re male, they’re killed for veal. So it is a creepy system, but what it also means biologically is that if dairy cows are impregnated every year and they’re pregnant, nine months out of 12, a pregnant cow is making a lot of hormone that gets into the milk. And when the milk is turned to cheese, the hormones are concentrated, the estrogens are concentrated.
Neal: Now it’s not much, it’s still just a trace. But the average person wasn’t eating cheese like we are now say 100 years ago when the US DA started tracking American cheese intake, your average person couldn’t get through four pounds of cheese in a year. Today it’s not four pounds. Your average person is consuming probably 35 or 40 pounds of cheese every year.
Kimberly: 40 pounds?
Neal: Oh yes, absolutely. I mean you go into any school in America and there are girls of 10, 12, 14 and what’s in the lunch line? Cheese, pizza, cheese, this cheese that, much of it is given to the schools or it’s a part of the subsidy programs and every single bite has estrogens in it. Not much, but there are traces.
Kimberly:
Neal: Here’s the thing, your body has the estrogen already that nature wanted you to have. So if I could put it that way. So dribbling a little extra in on a pizza slice is giving mother nature a challenge. So anyway, the amount has gone up dramatically. But at the same time, things like bacon and sausage are kind of fats nowadays and people eat them not thinking that there’s a lot of fat in them and there isn’t any fiber at all. And those things also disrupt hormonal function. Let me just lay this out real quick-
Fats that disrupt hormonal function and why
Kimberly: Why? Why do they disrupt hormonal function?
Neal: Okay. Your liver cares about you, your liver is-
Kimberly: I hope so. Even though we abuse it.
Neal: Yeah. So many people mistreat their liver a little bit, but the liver filters estrogens out of the blood and you’ll still have plenty of estrogen but your liver will remove some of the excess and it sends those estrogens through a little tube called the bile duct and they end up in the intestinal tract. And so the liver takes the estrogens out. They go through the bile duct into the intestinal tract and you literally flush them away. They go out with the waste. But the system only works if you have fiber in your intestinal tract for the estrogens to attach to and to be carried away. So let’s say you ate chicken breast or fish or a steak or cheese for lunch or for dinner. Those foods are not from plants, so they don’t have any fiber at all.
Neal: And so your digestive track doesn’t have much fiber in it and you end up reabsorbing those estrogens because there’s no fiber to keep them in your intestinal tract. You reabsorb them back into your blood. And so once a person follows what you’re doing, a healthy plant-based diet with vegetables and beans and grains and fruits, the fiber then grabs a hold of those excess estrogens, carries them away. So you’re left with the right amount of estrogen that will allow you the best chance of pregnancy or the best chance of feeling good at the end of the month.
Kimberly: It’s just so frustrating, Dr. Bernard, because when we try to tell people this
