How to Empower Your Body Through Menopause and Other Hormonal Shifts with Dr. Taz [Episode #825]

This week’s topic is: How to Empower Your Body Through Menopause and Other Hormonal Shifts with Dr. Taz

I am so excited to have my very special guest, Dr. Taz, who is a board-certified Integrative Medicine physician and author of the brand new book THE HORMONE SHIFT. She is on a mission to prepare and empower women for the twists and turns of their unique hormone journey. Listen in as Dr. Taz shares how to embrace the different phases of hormonal shifts, the 5 major phases of every woman’s life, environmental influences and your hormone balance, and so much more!

[BULLETS]

• Rebalancing your hormones…
• Embracing the different phases of hormonal shifts…
• 5 major phases of every woman’s life…
• Environmental influences and your hormone balance…
• Testosterone shifts and menopause…
• Preparing and educating for perimenopause…

[FEATURED GUESTS]

About Dr. Taz Bhatia

Dr. Taz Bhatia, M.D., (aka Dr. Taz) is a board-certified integrative medicine physician, wellness expert and founder of CentreSpring MD, an award-winning medical and wellness practice in Atlanta, GA focused on health transformation, with integration of Eastern medical wisdom with modern science. She is also the host of the Super Woman Wellness podcast, and the health and wellness contributor for FOX Good Day Atlanta. Dubbed “a superwoman in her own right”, Dr. Taz is dedicated to empowering women to radically transform their lives through personalized lifestyle, diet, exercise, self-care and relationship strategies to help them rediscover their own “superpowers.”

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[♥️FAN OF THE WEEK]

Dr. Taz Bhatia ’s Interview

• Taz’s Website
• Taz’s Book

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• How to Balance your Hormones on a Plant-based Diet with Dr. Neal Barnard
• 5 Tips to Balance Hormones Naturally!
• Hormone Balancing Tips for Managing Symptoms of PMS, and Supporting Women’s Health
• The Ayurvedic Perspective of Regulating our Menstrual Cycles and Fibroids with Dr. Jay

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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: 00:00 Namaste loves and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have Dr. Taz back on our show. She is a repeat guest. She’s a board certified integrative medicine physician, and she’s an author of the brand new book, the Hormone Shift. This is such an empowering guide for women of all ages, but specifically focusing on menopause and to guide us through our unique hormone journey. I cannot wait to get into our conversation with Dr. Tess today, who’s so real, so knowledgeable, and so supportive.

Fan of the Week

But before we do, I wanted to give a shout out to our amazing fan of the week, and his or her name is BGCZT, and he or she writes, grateful for this podcast. I found Kimberly Snyder back in 2013. Since then, she has been a constant inspiration. Her teachings have helped me through the ups and downs of life. I find her messages powerful, insightful, and full of wisdom. I’m so grateful for finding you, Kim. I can honestly say you are my guru, my friend, and a treasure for humanity with much love. Bianca. Bianca, wow, this was the first time I read that as I’m reading it here live, and if you can see me, my hands are on my heart full of gratitude for you and our connection. Thank you so much for you for being in our community. I send you so much love and truly the fact that we are so profoundly connected is amazing because everything that I’m sharing that is helping you with your life has helped me so much with mine. So wow, I give you such a huge virtual hug, and I very much hope that we can meet in person one day at an event or somewhere.

Subscribe and Leave a Review on iTunes

Thank you and sending you so much love, and for you also, my dear one, listening to this, for your chance to be shouted out as our fan of the week and simply to support our show, please leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you happen to listen, which is a wonderful way to support and it’s super easy. It could take about one minute of your time. Please also be sure to subscribe to our show so you stay in the flow of our interviews, which are on Mondays and our q and a shows, which are always on Thursdays. Please also remember that on our website, my sauna.com, you can submit questions for the show, anything that you’re wondering, anything you want me to cover in more depth, there’s a whole podcast section over there for you to take advantage of.

Kimberly: 02:59 And while you’re on our site, please do check out our Four Cornerstones page on getting started with our lifestyle. So I really believe that a holistic lifestyle is how we feel our best, how we have our most natural energy and vitality and natural beauty. And it’s really about these cornerstones, which are food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. We have offerings for all of them, recipes and meditations articles, and more amazing digestion focused supplements. So please check it all out on our website. All right, all of that being said, let’s get into our show today with the amazing Dr. Taz.

Interview with Dr. Taz

Kimberly: 00:14 Dr. Taz, it is so amazing to be back with you. You and I have a very special connection. We’ve done podcasts together, we’ve spoken at some conferences together, and I always feel like I’m really talking to a trusted friend when we speak. So thank you so much for coming back on our show today.

Dr Taz: 00:35 Oh, it’s an honor, and I feel the same way about you and just always look forward to connecting with you.

Kimberly: 00:41 So congrats on the new book, the Hormone Shift, balance Your Body and Thrive through Midlife and Menopause. So this book is so timely, Dr. Taz, I’ve been getting so many questions around this very topic, how to deal with shifting hormones in our middle years, menopause. There’s a lot of confusion around it and we all want to keep filling our best. So this is a very practical manual, very readable manual I will say as well that you put together for us.

Dr Taz: 01:15 Yeah, I mean, I think my intention with the book was, first of all, there’s just a lot of noise in the space and you’ve got a lot of experts saying a lot of different things. And for the consumer or the reader or the patient, they are sort of left really confused, do I do this or do I do this? And so just like we’ve talked about before with so many other things, I really come at things with a very integrative approach. This is the best of western medicine, this is the best of eastern medicine. If we just blended it, then we have a really great toolbox to understanding many different things, especially women’s health and hormones. So I really wanted to put that out there. And I also wanted just to change the narrative around women’s health. I feel like women just continue to get dismissed. I had my health journey back in my twenties and now I’m 51, and it’s the same story. It really hasn’t changed. And I think as women hit perimenopause and menopause, that almost amplifies to a certain extent. So I really wanted to kind of set the record straight, so to speak.

Kimberly: 02:57 Amazing. So I have a lot of questions for you, Dr. Taz, while we have this amazing time together. But the first thing I want to launch in with a note of hope. Let’s say we have an inkling that our hormones are imbalanced, which we’ll get into in just a moment. Let’s say we feel, whoa, there’s imbalance here. There’s something that’s very often my body. We can do things to get ourselves back on track. Of course, it’s multifactorial. There’s many different aspects of this, but on a hopeful note, we can come back into this beautiful place of balance within our bodies and within our hormones.

A hopeful note from Dr Taz on rebalancing your hormones

Dr Taz: 03:40 Yeah, I mean, I think that is the message, right? That this is not a negative. And one of the things I love about Eastern medicine is that they honor the hormone shifts and the journeys and the changes that we experience, especially as women. And each shift is actually an opportunity. And if we reframe it that way and think of it as like, oh my gosh, what am I going to learn in this sort of next shift? Then the world just opens up instead of what I see a lot of is a lot of retreating, which I actually did in my twenties too. A lot of retreating, a lot of, I’m getting old or I’m not good enough. A lot of this negative dialogue, bottom line, you have so much power over your body, and there’s so many things we can do at so many different levels of the body, all the different planes to bring it back into balance. And so I think for anybody out there who’s listening and they’re like, my time is up. I’m old.

04:39 What’s the point of X, Y, or Z? I really hope I’m speaking to you to say, we’re just getting started for many of us as we enter this space of our lives. So yes, it’s very much a message of hope, and it’s very much about really wanting women to shift their mindset around this and instead of being fearful of it or scared of it, to really just jump in, let’s dive in and let’s find the right formula for you, and then let’s see what happens. And that’s the really exciting part about working with clients and patients over the last 15 years or so. It’s been incredible to see their journey and what they are able to accomplish once they take ownership of what’s happening.

Kimberly: 05:21 Wow, I love that. Instead of what better, worse, this time’s better western approach of, oh, being 20 is the ultimate youth. It’s seeing that these chemical messengers, these hormones have different parts to play a different balance, almost like a different symphony happening at these different stages. And so it’s understanding how do we balance for this stage versus this stage. I like at the beginning of the book where you divide up when we’re getting our period and we’re 13 years old, and there’s these junctures, these moments of time, which we need to understand in our body to feel empowered, to feel in our highest vitality and energy. And like you said, not to run away, not be afraid, not to say, oh, I’m moving into this different phase. That’s bad. But it’s a different phase to be embraced and to be understood. And then there’s this different energy, this amazing energy that can flow in all the different stages.

Embracing the different phases of hormonal shifts and 5 major phases of every woman’s life

Dr Taz: 06:22 Definitely. And I think that if we think of it as a very natural journey rather than this thing we need to box in or fit into some sort of norm that society has set for us and really follow the flow of the energy that each group brings about. And so I talk about the five major shifts or five major phases of every woman’s life. Now they’re not absolute, right? Everybody has their own individual journey, but this story of our hormones and how we feel and how we perceive ourselves really honestly begins in puberty. And so it starts there. It starts with how you’re taking care of yourself in those years, what your hormones are doing at that time. So many young girls, I have a 15 year old daughter now, so many young girls very instantly are told, go on the birth control pill, go on Accutane, go on all this big drug, big pharma type stuff to get rid of their symptoms.

07:21 But what instead, if we really help them understand that this is their body chemistry, this is the way they need to care for themselves, the reason it’s relevant to a story on perimenopause and menopause, those pubertal patterns are actually amplified when you get to puberty. I mean, when you get to perimenopause and menopause, we actually call it a second puberty in some ways. So I had women telling me 13, 14, 15, they experienced anxiety or depression or maybe issues with eating all of these different issues that were teen issues. But now they get to their forties and fifties and everything is coming right back up again. They’re having issues with anxiety and depression and eating disorders, flaring and all this other stuff. So when I was writing this, I was like, I can’t tell a hormone story without really telling the whole story. And so we really want everyone to understand that step into the phase that you’re in, own it.

08:22 Understand what your needs are, what your chemistry needs are, maybe really take the time to balance all that out. And yes, you can balance it. And on the other side of that work is a really incredible sense of purpose and energy and alignment. I mean, I know big into talking about energy and alignment and all of that stuff. Not having your hormones balance is a block. It’s a block to perception. It’s a block to the emotional body. It’s a block to the physical, to the mental body, definitely a block to the energetic body. So if we have everyone entering perimenopause and menopause with this attitude of, I’m getting old, my time’s up, there’s nothing, they’re not really a lot of options. The options seem dangerous. They’re blocking themselves. They’re walking themselves from this next phase of life where actually women step into some of their highest capacity and their ability and into their abilities because they finally are able to merge their different bodies together, the physical, mental, emotional, all of the stuff.

09:29 But if you’re hormones are off, you can’t. And so you can see clearly, you can’t think clearly. The decisions you make are very different, and a lot of that is reflected in your physical health, but a lot of it’s also reflected in your life, who you choose to be with, whether you stay married or don’t, whether you find a partner or you don’t. Whether all of these things are tied into this very fundamental concept. So yeah, I think it’s important for all women to understand the five major shifts. I think I broke it down. You had the rock stars, which were 13 to 19 ish. Then you had the hustlers, which were the women in their twenties, and they were busting it just like we did at that timeframe, burning the candle on both ends. But that’s a very natural journey for that age. And then you go into the next phase, which I call them the superstars, starting families usually starting to really have that juggle issue going on and trying to balance all this newness really in their lives.

10:28 And then you move on to the Superwomen, and I talked about that a lot in Superwoman’s syndrome where those women in their late thirties kind of going into their forties, they’ve got families. So they have children, they have parents, they have careers which are now starting to peak a lot of times or at least starting to climb upwards. And it’s a lot on them. So they’re having their own hormone story and their own nutritional story. And then you have women entering perimenopause, I mean entering menopause. And we’re calling them the commanders because they have now transitioned through these different phases, learn lessons along the way, and they’re ready to lead. They’re very, I love it, to lead young women to lead a project, to lead their communities. And they very much should be stepping into, I think our call is to step into that leadership capacity for our communities. This is how the journey, this was my journey. These are some of the things I do differently, and with this wisdom and with this knowledge, here’s how I want to really impact my community, whatever. That community is amazing. So that’s kind of the journey I want women to go through and really understand the pros and cons of each of those phases and what they need to be thinking about.

Kimberly: 11:43 And when you talked about, well said, Dr. Well said, and when you talked about not blocking ourselves also creatively, this creative power that we have, the sacral, which is so connected to these reproductive organs and hormones and things. At a certain point it was about having babies for some of us, and it was about getting started with the beginnings of our career. But now that creative power, like you said, we’re in this phase of leadership and expansion and maybe going in a different direction. So it’s not that the creative power is diminished, it’s that it’s taking form in a different way. As long as we really balance and have that mindset that it’s like you said, it’s not that we missed the boat or our time is over, but it’s a different time, and it could be a time of great excitement, dynamicism power. So I love all of this, doctor. And so first I want to get into some practical information that can really help people that you really coach us through in the book. And one of it, back to the confusion, we’re told a lot of different things as we get into late thirties, forties, we may lose muscle mass. Here’s the so-called normal signs of aging. How do we know if, oh, this is kind of what goes along so-called with being in our fifties or sixties, versus, Hey, there’s something, an imbalance in my hormones that needs to be corrected. How can we differentiate?

Differentiating the stages of aging versus an imbalance of hormones

Dr Taz: 13:09 Well, one of the things I did in the book, which I’m hoping will be a tool that everybody can keep using over and over again, there is a hormone checklist. And in that I list out some of the common symptoms that women have come to me with over the last 15 years that I’ve been doing more of the integrative approach to medicine. And that may be a great way to start that conversation with yourself, because literally you can go through and then we tie how those symptoms are related to different hormone patterns that we’ll see on lab work or that we’ll see when we dive a little bit deeper, that might be a helpful place to begin. A general rule of thumb for everybody, if you are changing, energy is a big one. If your energy is changing, your ability to focus and concentrate is changing sleep and having a lot of sleep disturbances, having big fluctuations in weight, which you’re not used to.

14:01 It’s a change. Any of these things that are a change or a significant change in mood, I think those are my top five, that when those are changing and shifting, you’re probably having a hormone shift. And I think it’s very important for women as they go into their late forties and fifties and then even into their sixties, to understand that they’re experiencing those things instead of saying, I’m old, understand and maybe rephrase it as my chemistry is shifting, so what do I need to do? And there answers to almost every single one of those things. If you’re tired, we always start with, it’s a very eastern concept. If you’re tired, you suddenly more tired. It starts with really looking at food like what needs to change with your food? Maybe a diet that was working for you in your twenties and thirties and forties doesn’t serve you well when you go into your fifties.

14:49 So that’s a conversation. Have what’s happening with your nutrient loads? There are genetics to nutrition, and as time goes by, even the healthiest person, those genetics start to express themselves. So for example, if you have the gene where you’re going to be low in B vitamins or magnesium or vitamin D, or you chronically have a fatty acid deficiency that’s going to now exaggerate as you hit your forties and fifties. So sometimes that energy equation is solved with a food solution and a nutrient solution before we even get to hormones. But hormones are dependent on food and nutrients. So it’s all very much interconnected. It’s a web, it’s all sort of related to each other, but that’s a great place to begin. And then we move on from there. And so this is again like, okay, I’ve made these changes. Am I feeling better? Every change you want to give at least some time, at least a week or two to see if it’s really making an impact for you.

15:46 And if it’s not, then we dig deeper and it’s really thinking then to say, alright, are we at the point? And with all these questions and all of this walking through these different elements of our health, where is it that you may or may not need an actual hormone? So a lot of times you can have a hormone shift, but it doesn’t always mean, especially in the Eastern model, that you have to be on a hormone. And that’s something that’s really important for everybody to understand. There are a lot of hormone shifts that can be managed with food and nutrients and gut work and really looking at toxicity and improving liver. And then we talk hormones, right? Because then if you give someone a hormone, like let’s say you’re low progesterone or low estrogen, that hormone is actually going to behave. And you don’t need a heavy handed dose of hormone, which has more side effects and has more health consequences. So I think for everyone, if there’s a change, don’t accept it. Let’s find what is the cause of that change. You don’t have to feel that way. I have met the most vibrant people in their eighties, and they don’t use their number, their numerical number as a block. It is like, yeah, I’m going to start a business or Yeah, I’m going back to school because they have the cognitive energy and the physical energy and the emotional energy to really do whatevers next for them. And that’s really what I want for everybody.

Kimberly: 17:16 Dr. Taaz, let me ask you a question. There is a section in the book as you mentioned, where you talk about environment and how toxicity can impact our hormones, our balance. So we hear about girls today having their periods much younger because of what’s in the hormones in the food supply and all sorts of things. With a woman’s age for menopause or going into perimenopause, can that be influenced by the environment or is it sort of set for each woman, but it’s more her challenges or easefulness going into that transition?

If the environment influences your hormone balance

Dr Taz: 17:52 That’s such a great question. So eastern medicine says that we have some control over the rate at which we will go into menopause, that we will go into menopause. It’s very, and I’m going to speak in eastern language and then we’ll flip, but we’ll go into menopause depending on the amount of QI or energy that we have. And that energy is determined by things like our nutrient status, our stress loads, the nature of our relationships, the nature of the work we do if we’re doing fulfilling work, our toxic load and so many other things. Now, there is of course a genetic piece to everything. So the genetics are going to influence if your mom or grandmother always went into menopause at 45, well, maybe that’s going to influence a little bit of what’s happening with you. But what we’re really understanding, and this is where western medicine and research is actually catching up and actually showing this, is that there’s a lot of self-determination when it comes to how quickly we’ll go into perimenopause and menopause.

18:54 And it is multifactorial. So that’s why it’s hard to give a straight one shot answer. But the environment plays a major role because hormones are metabolized in the liver. And the more the liver is bogged down with filtering environmental toxins, hormone metabolites, all these different things that we get exposed to today, the faster you’re going to go into menopause. So we’re seeing early menopause. We’re seeing early puberty. Black women, for example, they go into menopause, perimenopause and menopause almost a decade before Caucasian and Asian women. Why is that? It’s not because it’s genetically predetermined, it’s because they actually have a higher toxic load than their other female counterparts, the products they’re using and things like that. So we see a

Kimberly: 19:45 Decade, DR

Dr Taz: 19:46 Test decade, that’s a research article that came out to a decade earlier than the rest of us. And so we know when we’re starting to look at these patterns that our environment very much determines the rate at which we’re going to enter this. And we know it from a emotional energetic level too. Someone who’s been through a lot of trauma, a lot of grief, a lot of injuries, a lot of surgeries, those women go into menopause sometimes in their thirties. So we knew that there is again, the multilayered body, right? The physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, all of these different layers interact and communicate with each other and determine what’s happening in our daily rhythms. And so the short answer to your question is yes, unfortunately, and it’s a problem. And when it comes to our children and what their hormonal environment is looking like, which is why I included them in this book, people like me are worried. You

Kimberly: 20:51 Have a daughter who’s 15,

Dr Taz: 20:52 I have a daughter, what’s your fertility going to look like? You know what I mean? We’re worried about these things because seeing firsthand in the medical exam room, the toll of the environment on the hormone system, I

Kimberly: 21:05 Love how integrated your approach is. I know that in traditional Chinese medicine, the liver is also where anger is held. And so energetically we know, wow, there’s blockage in these organs on all these different levels. It creates imbalance that can be manifested and seen in this, in hormones, in weight, in so many different aspects. So it isn’t just the one thing, is it Dr. Taz? It really is seeing all these different parts of our lifestyle. Maybe you eat perfectly, but all your household cleaning products in your water, everything is so toxic. You’re just flooding your system day in and day out.

Environmental awareness rather than feeling overwhelmed

Dr Taz: 21:43 And I don’t want to make it overwhelming for anyone out there. No, sometimes when we start talking toxins, I see the deer end headlight and everyone’s like, wait, I’m already doing all this stuff for wellness. You want me to do more? And no, it’s not that. I think it’s more just being super aware of kind of the big categories, the quality of the food you’re eating, the quality of your environment, looking at things like water. Are you drinking clean, healthy water? And then slowly diving. It doesn’t have to be a fast dive, but slowly diving into this concept of liver health, because I think one of the concepts that comes out of the book is this idea of dirty livers, right? Yes. Dirty livers are what we just talked about where there’s just too much. There are too many chemicals, there are too many preservatives, there’s too much anger, there’s too much stress, there’s too much cortisol.

22:36 All of these have left the liver incapable of doing its job really well. It results in high insulin levels, high blood sugar. We see the belly fat, we see the estrogen metabolites, at least all kinds of stuff. So one of the goals with hormone shifting is to kind of detox, kind of clean out the liver periodically too. So if you think of yourself as a fluid shifting creature, maybe once a year you do an inventory to look at what you’re using and try to really lower that toxic load. And we talk about that in the book as well. I think doing detoxes of some kind once or twice a year is a great idea. Cleans the lip out really helps give it a break. So these are all very, again, they’re very eastern ideas, right? In Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine detoxing was natural. It was a part of it.

23:29 In many religious traditions, you would fast. It’s a form of detoxing. So these are things that from the beginning of humanity, we knew were important to incorporate. And I think we’ve gotten away from, and while there’s a lot of language and a lot of discussion on detoxing and fasting and all these other things, it’s not so much in relationship to women’s hormones. A lot of it is around weight in particular, but not really around women’s hormones. And it’s such an important concept that I think western medicine actually misses because you’ve got these big clinics, right? You’ve got a pellet clinic or an H R T clinic, and they’re just loading people up with hormones, but not paying a lot of attention to the gut liver connection to what those hormones are going to do in the body. And that’s why the sort of east west approach really needs to be adopted universally so that we can help people and really make good decisions when it comes to hormone replacement.

Kimberly: 24:27 Wow. So thank you for bringing that up. And actually, doctor, that’s how I started my wellness journey, was healing my gut, starting to cleanse my body. I was chronically constipated for so many years, and that’s why it’s sauna. We really put such a focus on digestive health, and we have our SS p o probiotics and our other digestive supplements because that was where I got to a place where I could actually think clearly. And you have a whole chapter in the book on the gut hormone connection, and I love that you talk about fiber, you talk about gut health. Another concern I have these days is these trends. There’s people doing the carnivore diet, for instance, which is getting so much direction where suddenly they’ve said vegetables are the enemy, right? Which I wasn’t sure we’d get to this place in society where people are having fiberless diets. I know there’s this part of our gut, the stroum, I’m not sure I’m saying that correctly.

Dr Taz: 25:22 Yes. Good job connected

Kimberly: 25:24 To our hormones. So please educate us a little bit further, doctor, about why our gut health is so important when we’re working to balance through menopause and other hormonal shifts.

We discuss trending diets and your gut health

Dr Taz: 25:36 Definitely. So the gut’s your foundation, I mean, think, and I’ve said this over and over again to patients, but when their gut is healthy and their liver is relatively clean, you literally sail through the hormone shifts. Those women don’t have hot flashes and night sweats and crazy weight gain and all this other stuff that some women do. The gut is kind of like the manufacturing house, so to speak. It’s like where things are processed, packaged, moved on throughout the body. And so when the gut’s not working well, then you can’t take estrogen. Even the estrogen that you’re making or an estrogen that somebody gives you, you can’t take it, chop it up, package it nicely, and then deliver it to where it needs to go. Instead, you have sort of the wrong metabolites of estrogen, things like estro buildup in the body and actually do more harm than good.

26:24 So to do that, the gut has to function well. It has to empty completely. So having good regular bowel movements, you have to be able to digest things like fat and protein because those are fundamental things needed for not only gut function, but for hormone balance. And then you need the right balance of gut bacteria because when the bacteria aren’t there, then you can’t do that manufacturing. You can’t metabolize the estrogen or progesterone or thyroid or insulin or testosterone. You can’t manufacture any of them effectively. They actually kind of work against you. So we see over and over again someone that has a lot of estrogen in their system, that estrogen is not metabolize well. It’s a lack of fiber, and that fiber is really due to their diets, but that lack of fiber creates a bacterial imbalance that then creates all these inflammatory symptoms. So then next thing you know, you’re having weird rashes or you’re having joint pain, or you’re getting depressed, or you’re just foggy. All of those are symptoms of inflammation. So the gut bacteria, digestive enzymes, a gut that empties well and moves well, these are all very, very important foundational pieces of hormone health, not just of general health. And so I think it’s really important to understand that as well.

Kimberly: 27:44 Wow. Thank you so much, doctor, for also bringing up testosterone in that moment. And in the book, you mentioned this as well, because we often equate women’s hormones with estrogen and we hear progesterone, but there is such a thing as women having too low of testosterone. We hear this in men. So many men are taking testosterone today, which is a whole other conversation. Yeah,

Dr Taz: 28:06 It’s probably the next book. Poor Men.

Kimberly: 28:11 Tell us about women’s, what shifts with testosterone specifically in menopause, and maybe a little bit more about hormone replacement therapy, because again, there’s so much confusion. I know it’s a multifactorial issue, it’s a complex issue, but if you could talk about that, because I think there’s a lot of fear on either side. It’s like, oh, taking things are scary, and then if I don’t take it, this is going to happen.

Testosterone shifts and menopause

Dr Taz: 28:35 I think that’s such a great question. First of all, let’s get rid of the fear. So I think it was in the eighties, the Women’s Health Initiative came out and blasted hormones. They put women over 70 on synthetic estrogen. Estrogen. It was called Premarin, and it was actually from horse urine. And that’s a higher rate of cancer in those women compared to their control group. Now, let’s unwind that. First of all, these are women over 70. Secondly, it’s synthetic estrogen. It’s Premarin, it’s not bioidentical. It didn’t look or feel or smell or do anything like the estrogen that we naturally have. And because of that study, doctors like me were trained. So my entire generation, the generation above me, the generation below me, we’ve been all trained to be fearful of hormones and hormone replacement. So you’ve got a lot of people coming in not feeling good.

29:29 You’ll do the hormone checklist and realize a lot of your symptoms are hormonal, but then absolutely terrified of any type of hormone replacement. That’s the first thing we’ve got to get rid of that is currently being blasted in the literature. We’re finding study after study talking about the benefits of estrogen and progesterone replacement across the board for women, even women that have had breast cancer and showing how when we take everything away from these women, how much they suffer from a quality of life standpoint. So let’s get rid of the fear. The study was not good. There are new studies coming out suggesting that women actually do need hormones. Now, having said that, when it comes to hormone replacement therapy, it does need to be individualized. I have a lot of problems with, okay, here’s a one size fits all for everybody. Each of us have a little bit of a different makeup.

30:19 Going back to what we were talking about, some of us naturally from puberty and all throughout are converters of estrogen and testosterone into something called androgens. And those are kind of the male derivatives of hormones. And so they trigger acne to trigger hair loss. They’ll trigger some weight gain because the androgens will block insulin as well. So you’ll have some insulin resistance in belly fat with that. And that’s a whole pattern. So if you give somebody like that testosterone or you do a testosterone pellet or a cream or whatever else, they’re going to convert it and it’s going to go the wrong way. So again, you have to understand who that person is. And the same vein, they’re genetics for estrogen metabolism. And so some of those folks have always had fibroids or they’ve always had ovarian cyst, or they’ve just had hormone related migraines.

31:13 Now, fast forward, they’re in perimenopause and menopause, their estrogen levels are going down. So everyone thinks, okay, I need estrogen. That must be the answer. But if you give that person estrogen without also giving them the ability to metabolize that estrogen, they’re back to migraines and weight gain and all the bad estrogen symptoms. So hormone replacement therapy is safe, is okay, but it has to be individualized. And I think it’s not. And you hear everyone needs to go on the patch and the pill or everyone needs to go on a pellet. That’s where we get into trouble, and that’s where conventional medicine or western medicine has not caught up yet. There’s a lot of energy being spent on bioidentical hormones are bad, this is good, this is bad. There’s just too much energy. And really at the end of the day, it’s like what is going to work for you?

32:07 If you are sensitive? Don’t tolerate heavy doses of things, whether it’s medications or alcohol or caffeine or any of these things. You need baby doses of hormones. You don’t need a lot of hormones. On the other hand, if you’re someone who has a little bit more tolerance for whatever reason, you might need a bigger dose. So I see a lot of inconsistencies with dosing, a lot of not thinking about the whole picture, and a lot of just the mill approach to hormone replacement. Everyone comes in and gets this and everyone goes right back out. And as attractive as that might be, from a convenience and a business scaling standpoint, it is not good for the patient. And we have to be willing to take the time to pull back and understand our chemistry. Like I told you, I’m 51 right now and still not ready for full out hormone replacement.

33:00 In fact, I actually tried because based on my numbers, some of my hormone levels are starting to get a little bit lower. So I can’t tolerate big doses of hormones. So I can do ridiculous amounts like five milligrams of progesterone or a quarter milligram of estrogen once a week. That’s all I need. Any more than that is too much for me. So that’s where you’ve got to really work with somebody to understand where they are. And I think for people listening, it’s like, okay, well, what do I do? I think the book will give you that guidance of understanding what your hormone symptoms are, what your dominant hormone pattern is, and a place to begin. Yes, sort of equipped and armed to have these conversations with your medical team, whoever that might be.

Kimberly: 33:47 That’s exactly what I was going to say, Dr. Taz, is there’s so much nuance. You want to make sure that you’re working with the right healthcare provider, but sometimes you don’t know you’re working with the wrong one. So what I love too, in your book, the Hormone Shift, there’s this section where you talk about medical gas lighting and US women making to think, oh, there’s nothing wrong, or just do it this way. But it is important. We are more empowered when we have more knowledge. It allows us to lean into our own intuition saying, well, no, this doesn’t seem quite right. So maybe you aren’t going to the right healthcare provider. Maybe you need to find someone who is taking this more holistic approach. But by having information that you know yourself, it does give you that ability to better discern when maybe this person isn’t the right person for you. And you’re

Empowerment through knowledge of personal needs

Dr Taz: 34:39 Right, and I feel for everyone, and it’s a part of my motivation to be a hundred percent honest with wanting to grow my centers. Because everywhere I go, everywhere I go around the world, this is not a US issue. This is a global issue. Everywhere we go, the hormone issue is not addressed fully. It’s not addressed from this holistic perspective. And so I think that leaves the person who’s the patient really lost. And sometimes when you’re too lost, you do nothing. And I know that because I went through that in my twenties, like, okay, fine. I’m just not going to do anything. Maybe this will work itself out. And that’s not really the right approach either. So what I’m hoping the book will do for everyone is at least organize your brain a little bit, like, okay, this is what’s happening with me. This is what I need resolution on, who’s going to help me get that resolution? And to a certain extent, you’ll be able to take care of it on your own, but you may to a point even doing everything, I’m suggesting that you need hormone replacement therapy. And that has to be with somebody who’s thinking this way, who understands your whole body, not just your hormone body.

Kimberly: 35:50 And I would also say, Dr. Tess, that for our listeners listening to this that are nowhere near menopause, but let’s say thirties, early thirties, late twenties, who are in their career, delaying having children a little bit, do not want to go into early perimenopause, want to understand more about their bodies in general and all these different factors. It’s important to have this information as well.

Preparing and educating for perimenopause

Dr Taz: 36:18 Absolutely. And I still light up when I see my 20 year old patients because I know that with the information we’re giving them, they’re going to have such a smoother ride throughout their lives. I mean, I’m telling you, I get so excited because I think that’s when I had my own issues too. And if I had known then what I know now, I would’ve not had the hardships that I kind of went through back then, right? Of course, it led to a lot of beautiful things, but I just wouldn’t have had that whole period of not feeling good about myself, not engaging in life the way I should have been, and not feeling as capable as like I feel I am now. And I just don’t want young women to go through that. And I also see a lot of useless and unnecessary I V F and I U I fertility journey happening. What is

Kimberly: 37:09 Going on with that

Dr Taz: 37:11 Insanity? And it’s again, this sort of cultural thing like freeze your eggs, freeze your eggs, blah, blah, blah. And while that’s not a bad decision, I’m not trying to knock that decision at all. I’m also saying, please understand your body, understand your chemistry, because some of that chemistry, whether you freeze your eggs or you don’t freeze your eggs, or you go through I V F, it’s important to correct and fix. It makes I V F easier. But more importantly, I think probably 50% of the I V F that I see probably didn’t need to happen. They needed hormone balancing. They needed gut liver work, and that would’ve led them down the journey to fertility. And it’s not. And I say that, but at the same time, I don’t want anyone walking away thinking the hormone journey is just about fertility or it’s just about perimenopause and menopause.

38:01 It’s really about how we feel when we’re balanced, when everything is lined out, we feel amazing and feel like we have so much more bandwidth for things than we would feel like otherwise. So for young women in your twenties, the hustlers, you guys are burning the candles at both ends. You’re accomplishing a lot. No one should take that away from you. We all went through that phase. It’s an important phase of life, and it really sets the tone for what you may do down the road, but take care of yourself during that phase. Understand how to eat, what nutrients your body may need, the impact of not sleeping or drinking too much, and how you can maybe compensate a little bit for that. And then as you enter your thirties, same thing. Be aware of what your hormones are doing because many women go for years without checking anything and then get this massive surprise when they get a diagnosis of some kind. So I think the early, I would say our 12 and 13 and 14 year olds need to be in on this conversation too. They need to understand this. Otherwise, TikTok makes you feel like Accutane is the next best thing. So they need to be a part of this as well. So every woman’s story, every girl story, every woman’s story, you can open up this book and turn to literally your section and know what to think and what to do, and then use all the other resources in there as well.

Kimberly: 39:24 And I think it works both ways. We started the conversation, it’s great to have this information early, but if you miss the boat, and I know when I was 20, 21, Dr. Taz and I was partying, drinking so much, abusing my body, having french fries and up all night. I did rebalance and get my gut back in order and was able to easily very grateful to easily have my children. Fertility was there, but it did take a correction. I didn’t know this information back then. And so I’m right

It’s never too late to correct your hormones

Dr Taz: 39:58 There with you. Mine was in my, and once I figured things out, it took a couple years to correct, right? But it did correct. And I had my children later in life naturally and have been able to do everything since. So I think the earlier you get the information, the better. But it’s never too late. And at any age, whether I keep saying this, whether you’re 13 or 60, it doesn’t matter. There’s these fundamental principles when we merge together eastern and western medicine and think about hormones still apply. You still want a healthy gut, you still want to clean liver. You still want optimized nutrition. We still want to understand if you need additional hormone support or not. So all of that still applies.

Kimberly: 40:40 Wow, there’s so much amazing information in here. Is there anything we didn’t cover, Dr. Tes, that you want to share with us?

Your energetic body,  the chakra ladder and hormone shift

Dr Taz: 40:48 I think the only thing, and I think you alluded to it, but I would think you would be all over this. So I actually think that there is an energetic body, right? Yes. The system is a way it’s been explained historically. I feel like these hormone shifts are about literally climbing up the chakra ladder, each one, and we start in the sacral plexus or the root area, and we’re trying to create this foundation for our lives. And then as we move up into our thirties, we’re sort of going to that heart space. And then as we move further up into our forties, we’re moving more into the throat and being able to express herself a little bit better. And then we move up again, and we’re finally a little bit more spiritually connected, and we’re working on that the whole time. But each of those chakras correspond to hormone shifts as well.

41:35 And so when you’re blocked, you’re also energetically blocked. And what that means, the reason it’s relevant is that when we are blocked, our relationships and our choices kind of become a part of that. So that’s why many relationships, for example, go through the seven year itch. Then there’s this 11 year period of time that’s tense, and there’s a hormone story to that as well, which is linked to the energetic and the spiritual story too. So I think when we’re thinking holistically, I understand that so much of what’s going on in your life is connected, right? And so this is a story about hormones, but ultimately it plays into every other aspect of your life.

Kimberly: 42:17 I love that. And also I would say Dr. Taza hormones come, and it’s helping you be more grounded in this temple because we are spiritual beings, but here we are in this physical realm. It’s helping us go up, but it’s also helping the subtle energy come down and we stay on earth, and then we stay here in our heart center chakra anhata, and really live in this fullness, be embodied in our physical, creative endeavors, all that we can give, all that we can share, all that we can serve. The leadership that you talk about, which is so incredible. I’m getting goosebumps to think about in these years instead of going down, it’s this fullness. I have to tell you, Dr. Te, I met this woman this summer in Hawaii who became my best friend there. She was 77, her vitality, and she’s like, I’m just getting started. She’s still writing books and doing all this stuff.

Dr Taz: 43:11 Love that. Yeah. I have

Kimberly: 43:12 So much to learn from her. And I loved being with her energy. And there wasn’t this sense of, oh, I’m kind of the elder on the outskirts. It was, I have a lot to share, and here I am.

Dr Taz: 43:23 Yeah. I mean, I’m telling you commanders. So that is sort of the space. Let me share, let me lead, let me learn from my journey so that every woman’s journey is a little bit easier moving forward.

Kimberly: 43:39 Incredible. I love this book. Thank you so much again, Dr. Taz, for sharing it with us. The hormone shift. Tell us where we can get the book, where we can find more about your work, your centers.

Dr Taz: 43:51 Oh my goodness, yes. Well, the book is available everywhere books are sold. It’s on Amazon, of course, and you can come onto my website, dr taz.com. It’s D O C T O r.com. And you’ll see there kind of everything we’re up to. There’s a link to the centers, and of course a link to be in my community. I have the super women’s circle where we meet monthly, and it’s an opportunity to ask questions, learn from the other women in the group. I usually do a monthly webinar and coaching session, and then we invite on guests. But it’s again, this idea of collaborative community, helping everybody really find their gifts and their purpose and able to move forward.

Kimberly: 44:28 Beautiful. And we will link to all of that directly in our show notes. Once again, thank you so much, Dr.

Taz for sharing all your wisdom.

Dr Taz: 44:36 Thank you, Kimberly. Good to see you as always.

03:53 Alright, I hope you enjoyed our conversation today with Dr. Taaz so full of information, so empowering. Please be sure to check out Dr. TA’s new book, the Hormone Shift. Please check out our show notes at my sauna, s o l l u N a.com, where we will have direct links to Dr. TA’s book, her work in general, as well as other podcasts that I think you would enjoy, amazing recipes, articles, and more to support you in your unique, amazing glory in your true self. I’ll be back here Thursday for our next q and a show. Until then, please find me on social. My handle is at Kimberly Snyder. I so look forward to hearing from you. We are here to support each other, and I am always here to support you. Sending you much love. Have a beautiful day and see you back here soon. Namaste.