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PMS: Hormonal and Nutritional Imbalances in Premenstrual Syndrome
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Transcript
Introduction and Author Background
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, Christian Jordonov here. I'm a functional health practitioner and this is my latest book here on the screen, how to actually live longer volume one. If you haven't gotten yourself a copy, please check it out. It's really awesome. If I do say so myself in terms of helping you increase your longevity and health.
Critique of Conventional PMS Treatments
00:00:21
Speaker
Today's topic of discussion will be PMS, premenstrual syndrome and some of the hormonal and nutritional influences on PMS. I figure this is a good topic to discuss because although a lot of the stuff I'll discuss today is
00:00:43
Speaker
To me, it seems very simple and basic. When I talk to women, they're largely unaware of most of what I'll discuss today. Many women are, unfortunately. And we need to teach more women how to figure these things out for themselves instead of relying on very sub-optimal
00:01:03
Speaker
I don't even want to call them therapies or whatever. They're just really symptom masking, not strategies, but tactics that are foisted on them by very, I suppose, ignorant
Understanding PMS Symptoms in Women
00:01:20
Speaker
allopathic practitioners in terms of painkillers, for the pain side of things, antidepressants, if you want to call SSRIs, antidepressants for the psychological side of things. These are horrendous strategies because, as you understand, when you exhibit a symptom, be it psychological or physiological, like in the body, the
00:01:48
Speaker
The symptom itself is not the problem, though that is what we feel as the problematic thing. The problem or the cause or the root of the symptom is deeper than the symptom most often, right? Unless it's like someone punched you in the stomach and the stomach hurts, well, okay, that's a different story.
Health Consulting and PMS Statistics
00:02:08
Speaker
But when it's something that bubbles up from us like anxiety, agitation,
00:02:14
Speaker
headache, right, when there wasn't actual trauma causing the headache, it just arises in your body, then we have to look deeper in the body. So we, as different people, as unique individuals, we express symptoms uniquely. So some women, for example, they
00:02:34
Speaker
they might, symptoms of PMS for them may include, you know, bloating, sort of water retention. So more physical side of physiological side of the symptoms, right? Whereas other women, they'll feel anxiety, irritability, mood swings, that kind of stuff, or brain fog that's also that can occur insomnia, sleep issues. So
00:03:00
Speaker
who you are, your genetics, your nutritional status, all that good stuff, all the other influences will dictate how you express an imbalance. But at the end of the day, relatively few imbalances create disease or discomfort or dysfunction in the body.
00:03:19
Speaker
So I'm going to discuss some factors that are known in PMS specifically. Before I continue, just to let you know, I do also offer health consulting for clients. So if you are looking for personalized help,
00:03:36
Speaker
You know, check out my website.
Diet, Lifestyle, and Health Impacts
00:03:38
Speaker
I offer a free call so we can get to know each other. I can see what, you know, you can tell me about your health issues, whatever, and I can explain how I can help you. So if you need personalized help, I am there to help you if we are a good fit to work together. All right, so.
00:03:56
Speaker
So where do we start? So this kind of segues from what I just discussed. So some women will have more psychological symptoms. Other women will have more physiological symptoms. But at the end of the day, the same or similar imbalances are causing these issues. So when you look at the stats, so PMS is estimated to affect between 30% and 40% of men's trading women.
00:04:22
Speaker
Right. So the peak occurrence is among women in their thirties and forties. What does that tell us? That tells us that about a third or more.
00:04:32
Speaker
of women have some fairly serious, let's just say imbalances going on with hormones, maybe nutritional deficiencies or inadequacies that are contributing to this problem, which tells us that at least a third of women are, at least a women, a third of women's health is suboptimal, right? So there's, just to put it kind of, not to sugar coat it too much, a lot of people out there
00:05:01
Speaker
are just plain, pretty gosh darn unhealthy. And we need to remedy that by teaching people how to become healthier, right?
Hormonal Education: Estrogen and Menstrual Cycles
00:05:10
Speaker
It's just really that simple. A lot of these issues are due to suboptimal diet and lifestyle for multiple years or multiple decades. That's kind of the crux of it, right? So it will help
00:05:24
Speaker
If you go to the, there's a, there'll be a link like the previous two. Also, sorry, let me just actually start, start here. So last week I published two episodes on estrogen, what you need to know. I would actually recommend that you listen to those either before you continue this one or after it kind of, it's helpful to know some of the stuff I covered there, but similar to the estrogen episodes, I'm going to have a webpage that you can click down below.
00:05:54
Speaker
and you can open it and then you will see the hormonal changes diagram during the normal menstrual cycle. So it will be helpful for you to have a look at that or you can just type in menstrual cycle hormone changes. Type into Google as you listen and you can see how the
00:06:14
Speaker
basically the estrogen and the progesterone hormone levels rise and fall relative to each other over the course of a 28 day, quote unquote normal cycle, right? So you have the two phases of the cycle. The first half or the first 14 days is the follicular phase. And then the second two weeks is the luteal phase. And basically, if you look at the diagram,
00:06:43
Speaker
So progesterone is low for the most part during the follicular phase. It starts to rise coming up to the ovulation, which is kind of in the middle around day 14. And then estrogen, that will rise basically around halfway through the first phase, the follicular phase, it starts to rise. It rises quite high. And then near the end of that first two-week period,
00:07:10
Speaker
progesterone gradually starts rising and then estrogen starts to fall in the second week. Progesterone starts to rapidly increase.
Bioidentical Progesterone vs. Synthetic Options
00:07:20
Speaker
Okay. And then around midway through the second phase, the luteal phase progesterone is high.
00:07:28
Speaker
right and both of these start to drop near the end of the cycle coming up to the period and what can happen is the estrogen starts to fall the progesterone starts to fall and there's quite a
00:07:45
Speaker
precipitous drop in progesterone if there's no fertilization that occurs. And then this basically stimulates the disintegration and shedding of the endometrium. And for a lot of women, this could be one part here already.
00:08:08
Speaker
that there's an opportunity to improve things, right? So a lot of women already know that supplementing bioidentical progesterone in those two weeks of the cycle, so days 15 to 28 or thereabouts, a lot of women feel good doing that.
Nutritional Support for Progesterone Production
00:08:30
Speaker
Just to mention, it's important to use bioidentical progesterone, not the synthetic pharma made progestogens, progestins that can actually have estrogenic effects as well as progestergenic effects. And they have
00:08:47
Speaker
a longer time to break down so they can hang around. They can cause other imbalances relative to estrogen when they're in the system. So I'd be very careful with those. So yeah, so this precipitous fall of progesterone relative to estrogen could be one major way a lot of women experience discomfort. So generally, too much estrogen is not good.
00:09:17
Speaker
But you can have a lot of estrogen. If you have a lot of progesterone to balance the ratio, it's not so bad. But what can happen is the estrogen falls a little bit and then the progesterone falls a lot more because there could be nutrient deficiencies or other stressors contributing to that. So that's something we're going to discuss in a little bit more detail. But what's interesting to
00:09:45
Speaker
to already sort of plant a couple of seeds here, right, is the progesterone that is produced and secreted by the corpus luteum at mid-cycle around day 14 is dependent on a number of nutritional factors, including magnesium and vitamin E. And already, if you've read my book or once you will see in my book, if you get it, I talk about vitamin E in there and
00:10:16
Speaker
how, first of all, the RDA for vitamin E is preposterously low. In the last 60 or so years, we have as a society, especially in the US, people's blood levels of polyunsaturated fats have increased up to two and a half fold or more.
00:10:36
Speaker
which depletes or that can deplete vitamin E levels and basically almost all of the research I saw indicates that most people's dietary intake is super low and
Magnesium's Role in Health
00:10:53
Speaker
studies that have been done on actual levels of people's in people's blood that's generally been shown. Those have been shown as low. So most basically, to put it simply, I'd say in the USA, which is where most people, most of my listeners are.
00:11:09
Speaker
most people have suboptimal vitamin E levels. So in my book, I discuss all of those things, why it's so important because of our high polyunsaturated fat intake. And in the appendix of the book, I have examples of vitamin E products that I have used or use with clients and myself and so on. And then magnesium, I mean,
00:11:34
Speaker
Again, almost all people's diets are fairly low in magnesium and stress can deplete magnesium. So these are already a couple of low hanging fruit for most women that I would posit that the majority of women are suboptimal in. And we'll discuss magnesium a bit more later, but magnesium bisglycinate or glycinate would be my favorite.
00:12:02
Speaker
go to if I'm supplementing magnesium only. And you can also use magnesium malate is another good form of bioavailable magnesium. So these would be my favorite ones to use. Some people use magnesium citrate. I don't a lot, but that one can be used. That one can also help if you tend for constipation. That one can kind of loosen the bowels a little bit. So that's another option.
00:12:32
Speaker
and it can be cheaper, just be careful what products you buy because if it has like magnesium oxide and stuff, I would tend to not buy
Dietary Insufficiencies vs. Supplementation
00:12:46
Speaker
those products. They generally tend to be lower quality. So don't buy anything. Sometimes the manufacturer will have two or three types of magnesium and then they will list them in the order of ingredient
00:12:59
Speaker
quantity. So if magnesium oxide is on that list or it's, especially if it's first on that list, just buy something else. Okay. And so magnesium and vitamin E could be one of those nutritional factors contributing to low progesterone production. So here's the thing we can supplement progesterone if we choose to, but again, that is, that is a symptom
00:13:30
Speaker
masking, symptom treating type thing which is allopathic in nature. We want to, sure, yes, use progesterone while you're addressing the imbalances, but we want to address any potential dietary insufficiencies that can lead to nutrient status insufficiencies or deficiencies, right?
The Role of Hormone Testing
00:13:52
Speaker
So the vitamin E, the magnesium, good starting points. And then another
00:14:00
Speaker
Other factors that can cause deficient progesterone production that corpus luteum could be liver, heart or kidney function issues. So I'll discuss liver congestion and liver issues because if you were listening to the estrogen episodes, you understand I'm a big fan of the liver flushes and I have courses on it and I provide my clients with a big detox course with 13 hours of information.
00:14:27
Speaker
to our module on the liver flush. It's a big part of helping women reclaim their health because unless you get that liver decongested, a lot of toxins, including estrogen, will not be detoxified and excreted optimally. And then another issue could be high prolactin levels. So prolactin
00:14:53
Speaker
I discussed that about three weeks ago where I published an episode called avoiding osteoporosis. And we know that hyperlactin can cause osteoporosis. Now this is a neurotransmitter slash hormone that as the name suggests, prolactin. It's when women give birth, it basically elevates to help with milk production. And one way it does that is to.
00:15:21
Speaker
break bone down so that calcium can then be used by the body to make milk. But men have it as well. Women that are not lactating, it can be high in them. Generally, if your estrogen is high, that can cause high prolactin. And this, in turn, can suppress other things, including progesterone production. So just as a point of interest, I want to tell you, so we can run some
00:15:51
Speaker
some hormone testing with my clients. So my favorite hormone test is a Dutch cycle, the Dutch complete, which tests for stress hormones made in their adrenals, so cortisol and so on, and then estrogens and androgens and a few other organic acids.
00:16:09
Speaker
We
Estrogen's Impact and Risks
00:16:10
Speaker
can actually check dopamine. That's also useful to catch that there. B12 and a few other things. So that is a very good hormone test to look at how we're metabolizing estrogens, as I discussed in the estrogen, what you need to know, two episode series. But there's another hormone test from that same company, Precision Analytical, called the Dutch Cycle Mapping. That one is not cheap. I think it's something like $700.
00:16:39
Speaker
But what that allows you to do is to actually map over the course of one cycle how your estrogen and progesterone are rising and falling. And I've not really run this with my clients because there's a lot better ways we can invest those $700 in food supplements and other lab tests. But I have run it on my wife after she had her daughter.
00:17:06
Speaker
And definitely we saw, I saw some insights there. So what that can, basically you can see, is there a relative estrogen or progesterone deficiency or imbalance? And you can see if there's very low production in the second phase, the luteal phase, right? And then you can start, that will allow you to start thinking, okay, what could be causing this anomaly?
00:17:35
Speaker
or are the co-factors necessary for that production is prolactin is that we can check prolactin is, um, estrogen super high. So there's a lot of other things you can start doing, but the way I prefer to do it is save money on these super specialized tests. And then just do the things that we would do anyway, if, if we identified, let's say the worst case scenario, right? So again, we're going back to just supplying the body with the necessary co-factors, vitamins, minerals,
00:18:05
Speaker
an amino acids protein. This is not a big part of it as you'll see later.
00:18:13
Speaker
Now, what is important to understand is that estrogen, it's a growth stimulating hormone, right? So it stimulates the growth of tissue and progesterone reduces those proliferative actions of estrogen on the endometrium.
00:18:39
Speaker
It converts it from the proliferatory phase of tissue growth, so cell division, to secretory. So it starts secreting progesterone.
00:18:55
Speaker
Basically, progesterone keeps estrogen in check. And if left unchecked, estrogen will stimulate the growth of tissue, which best case scenario will increase fat, fatty tissue, but worst case scenario will stimulate cancer growth. So this is why we have to make sure we catch these things early because the worst case scenario is cancer, unfortunately, in such a scenario.
00:19:29
Speaker
Just to bring this discussion back to the topic of PMS, so there's several
00:19:38
Speaker
pathways that estrogen may cause or exacerbate PMS, right? So the first pathway is just the frank overproduction of estrogen in the body. Now, as I discussed in the estrogen, what to know two-parter, having a lot of fat on the body is one way
00:19:58
Speaker
for more estrogen to be made, right? Because fat cells have the enzyme aromatase that can convert testosterone, for example, and other androgens to estrone, right? Which can then be turned to estradiol as well. So those are the two estrogens, E1 and E2, right?
00:20:19
Speaker
Then you can have a relative increase of estrogen due to low progesterone secretion by the corpus luteum. So we discussed some of the factors like prolactin, low magnesium, low vitamin E that can contribute to that. Then you can have a decreased estrogen clearance rate, which I did discuss in quite a bit of depth in the estrogen part, part one and part two, I think part one more.
00:20:42
Speaker
But I will discuss it a bit more here just for the sake of completeness of this episode in case you don't want to listen to that one. So you have more context here. So a decreased estrogen clearance rate. And then you can have an increased target tissue sensitivity to steroid sex hormones. So tissue sensitivity that has to do with how many receptors to estrogen are in the cells and so on. And this is mediated by certain molecules called prostaglandins.
00:21:12
Speaker
We don't have to worry about the details of that right now. I will touch on this slightly near the end of this episode. So in terms of the actions of estrogen, so if you have a hypersensitivity to estrogen or a frank estrogen excess, it's well known in the scientific literature that this can lead to bloating,
00:21:42
Speaker
water retention because of the retention of sodium, right? Weight gain is another one. It can excess estrogen can cause irritability and anxiety through the stimulation of the central nervous system. So in many ways you can think of estrogen as a stress hormone, right? And when one stress hormone goes up,
00:22:07
Speaker
Generally others tend to go up with it. So like cortisol will bring up adrenaline For example estrogen can increase cortisol. I think it can also increase serotonin, which is Kind of technically a stress hormone, but we I won't discuss that here in depth Estrogen can also increase histamine histamine release now histamine is a stress hormone as well you may you may know we have heard about it and this can
00:22:37
Speaker
exacerbate or promote skin and allergy problems. So a lot of skin issues, allergic type stuff, generally that's mediated by histamine or it's a factor involved in it. And estrogen can exacerbate that, right? And then the increase in the pro-inflammatory prostaglandins, these are basically, they're basically
00:23:06
Speaker
signaling molecules that are made from
00:23:12
Speaker
omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, right? And there's a bunch of different, I think there's hundreds of these various types of ecosonoids, they're cold, and they can cause redness swelling, they can sensitize tissues that can increase pain, some of them are vasoconstrictatory, so they can increase blood pressure and so on and so forth, right?
00:23:37
Speaker
estrogen excess can increase these pro-inflammatory molecules, the prostaglandins. And then it can also increase prolactin. So again, prolactin is something of a stress hormone as well, right? And prolactin is well known to cause breast tenderness and pain in terms of the physiological side of things, but it can also produce
00:24:07
Speaker
basically literally depression and what is known as dysphoria in the scientific literature, which is basically the opposite of euphoria. So dysphoria will be just unease, dissatisfaction, just feeling like crap. Prolactin can cause that. And it just so happens that often when my female clients at the start of our relationship together,
00:24:35
Speaker
If they check their bloods, prolactin is generally higher than we want it to be, almost always, when we've checked at least. We don't always check because not everyone wants to do the blood work, not everyone wants to do a bunch of lab testing, and we don't have to do a bunch of lab testing. It's good if we get the data, sure. I love to get the data.
00:24:55
Speaker
But we are going to do similar things in both situations, except when we have the data, we know exactly what areas to focus on and there's a little bit less trial and error. In fact, a lot less trial and error sometimes. Okay. So, so those are some things. Another thing actually that excess estrogen can cause is increased contraction and cramping of the uterine smooth muscle. So generally.
00:25:24
Speaker
As you can see, estrogen excess is associated with a lot of not nice things, from causing other stress hormones to increase, to the physical stuff like bloating, weight gain, to the central nervous system excitation. So that generally means that adrenaline is increased and noradrenaline.
00:25:50
Speaker
And that can cause or contribute to agitation and irritability, right? So the most important thing I think here is to figure out how can we improve estrogen metabolism, which means
00:26:07
Speaker
the detoxification and excretion of estrogen.
Detoxification and Hormone Balance
00:26:11
Speaker
And I discussed that in the previous episodes, but I have to discuss it again because this is so, so important. I've had some clients where it's taken me eight months to convince them to start doing the liver flushes. And they start doing the liver flushes, then two, three, four flushes in, they're like, oh my God.
00:26:35
Speaker
Why didn't I start this like a year ago? So I'm going to discuss the topic of liver flushes again, but here's what you need to understand. So we have something known as enterohepatic circulation, which is basically when you have a liver cell, hepatocyte, it takes a compound that could be a toxin.
00:26:59
Speaker
It could be estrogen and as discussed in previous episodes the estrogen is the three pathways to detoxification so we have methylation.
00:27:09
Speaker
Glucuronidation and, God, I cannot remember the last one. Salfation, yes. So that involves attaching various things. So it could be glycine, taurine, glucuronic acid, right? So already when I say glycine and taurine, that is a clue. These are amino acids.
00:27:32
Speaker
We can make them in the body, but we don't get enough of them generally in the diet and we don't make enough to go around because we have such a high toxic burden in today's world. Glycine is somewhat hard to find in food. Generally, the best sources of it is, as I've discussed before, gelatin, collagen, these kinds of foods that most of us don't really eat a lot of.
00:28:01
Speaker
So we have, we attach one of these molecules or amino acids or taurine, whatever else, glucuronic acid methyl group.
00:28:12
Speaker
We attach it to the estrogen and then that goes into the bile. The bile travels down our tiny little bile ducts and then eventually goes down the bigger bile ducts and then makes it into the small intestine. Now here is already a point of a sort of a bottleneck because so many of us have these gallstones and actually women tend to have more gallstones than men for reasons I'll explain shortly.
00:28:36
Speaker
But the idea is the bile to go into the small intestine and then to eventually become part of the poop and then we can poop out the toxin along with the bile. So enterohepatic circulation is where that bile gets reabsorbed through the intestine and then it returns to the liver through what is known as portal circulation.
00:29:07
Speaker
So other than estrogen, other various compounds actually have enterohepatic circulation. So they get recycled. That includes vitamins B9, folic acid or folate, vitamin B12, cholesterol, various metabolites, vitamin D and bio acids, and actually a lot of toxins, right? Because they're hard to excrete. Some of them are fat soluble.
00:29:37
Speaker
So they just tend to hang around in our fatty sort of tissues and basically compounds and that makes their half-life in the months or years in some cases, right? So this is kind of, this is where we need to interrupt this enterohepatic recirculation of estrogens, right?
00:30:04
Speaker
It's a whole topic in its own right. The liver flushes, they just help to dump a lot of bile, right? But what can happen is you need to have a strategy. This is your first liver flush and you haven't done this ever, let's say in your 40s or 50s or whatever. There could be a lot of toxins. So if you just dump a lot of bile on day one,
00:30:34
Speaker
you may feel a bit crappy. I've had clients where they feel they get a headache the day after or so, and they just feel general malaise for two, three days. That is because they released a lot of stuff that their body wasn't really fully capable of handling. And what to do in these cases, right? So let's say we're gonna do some liver flushes to get the stuff out of you. You probably want to get into
00:31:03
Speaker
Just get into the figure out how to do water animals and coffee animals, right? Because if you let's say do your first liver flush, if you like crap, the coffee animal
00:31:17
Speaker
or even just the water animal health, but the coffee animal actually stimulates further sort of bile flow and bile duct dilation. So you can actually help to excrete stuff, right? So that is a really good strategy. I have one client that has a lot of toxicity issues with her, very severe stuff. And anytime she feels like this
00:31:39
Speaker
reaction, the detox reaction that can happen just by increasing certain amino acids that help with detoxification. And then the body upregulates the detoxification and then the person feels crap. So she uses the coffee enemas to arrest that detox reaction. It really works wonders. You have to really try it to understand it. So getting
00:32:03
Speaker
into the coffee enemas is probably a good idea if you feel like you have a lot of toxins over the years and a lot of liver congestion and so on. So I'm not saying you need to use them a lot, but if you do it once or twice, so you understand the process and because the first once or twice, you could make a bit of a mess and while you're figuring stuff out, have that as a tool in your toolbox. If you feel like crap,
00:32:32
Speaker
after let's say a liver flash or whatever, you can quickly get the coffee animal going or at least get an animal going just to kind of purge whatever's in your colon. Because when you have these symptoms, it's generally because toxins are getting absorbed from the intestine, right? So it could be because of intestinal permeability. It could be just because there's an overwhelming amount of them.
00:32:59
Speaker
And you want to basically either do what I just described, or you can also take activated charcoal and you can probably do both in more severe cases and deactivated charcoal.
00:33:13
Speaker
that will go down the tube and it will absorb a lot of these toxins, including bacterial toxins and so on, right? So that's something to keep in mind. But what we want to do is once we do a few of these liver flushes and bind up a bunch of this old bile and excrete a bunch of the toxins along with the bile and the stones and so on, then the body will start to create new bile. Now here's another area where some clients
00:33:44
Speaker
meet with issues. If you dump a lot of bile and then let's say the day or two after, the liver flush, you have clay-ish colored stools or they're very light in color, that generally means not enough bile is available. Now, in a normal day,
00:34:11
Speaker
It's some say you make as much as a liter or close to a quart of bile in a normal day. So in those cases we want to.
00:34:24
Speaker
Here's what can happen. So you do the liver flush and then the day after the flush, you're eating a lot of just juices and fruits and very light food. You might not get enough protein and you need protein to make bio and obviously you need fats. And so you might be eating low fat, low protein the first couple of days to get yourself going again. And because if you eat a lot of big meals with lots of protein, in fact, you can get backed up and you don't want to get backed up.
00:34:52
Speaker
after doing a liver flush. So in those cases, we would add at least taurine and glycine. Those help when glycine can help with detoxifying toxins, obviously. But the taurine can help with bioacid production. So that's another thing that is important to kind of keep on the back of your mind if that happens. It doesn't always happen. It happened to me once, but I did four liver flushes in the space of four weeks. And you definitely don't want to
00:35:22
Speaker
do you want to do one per month never you don't want to do that i just did as an experiment my wife and my daughter were on holiday so i did the mother of all detoxes that was last year and i just wanted to see what it would be like and what's interesting i've discussed it before is on the third or the second or the third flush of that four part series in that four weeks
00:35:47
Speaker
I had some black stones that were super hard come out of me. And prior to that, I've done probably around 20 flushes easily. So what's interesting is how long it took for those stones to actually eventually become dislodged. They could have been really adhered to my gallbladder. And it took so long to soften them enough
00:36:15
Speaker
so that it can finally be expelled. So very, very interesting. You know, you hear these stories of people expending something with a length of almost two inches. My mother actually, she did one liver flush, she was here a couple of years ago, and she said that something hit the bottom of the toilet bowl, which was about four centimeters long from what she described. So that's, think about it this way.
00:36:45
Speaker
And she had a lot of digestive issues before that. So the two are always linked together. But think about if your gallbladder is full of these kind of almost rock-like formation stones of various toxins and bio and cholesterol sort of congealed together, that means it can hold less bio. And then when you eat foods, especially fatty foods, you will have
00:37:11
Speaker
less bio that can be dumped in to help digest them. And that can not only lead to fat malabsorption and just poorer digestion, it can lead to bacteria when fungal overgrowth in the small intestine because bio is also antifungal, antibacterial. And then that can lead to fat soluble vitamin deficiencies over time. And then all the health problems associated with those. So
00:37:39
Speaker
Did I mention I really think women need to do more liver flushes? I think I mentioned it somewhere. I will be getting back to that a lot. But yeah, so this is something free. You don't have to get my courses. You don't have to work with me to learn how to do liver flushes. Just type in liver flush, how to do on Google. If you're on a budget, the instructions are out there, but this is so, so important, right?
00:38:09
Speaker
Another pathway of excreting estrogen, as I mentioned before, because at the end of the day, to improve PMS, we need to improve hormonal balance, which means we need to improve estrogen progesterone ratios, which means that more estrogen generally tends to be excreted.
00:38:28
Speaker
than is currently if it is a problem and usually or often more progesterone needs to be synthesized. And the way we do that is by getting healthier and decagesting the liver and eating right and addressing nutritional status issues. So it's always to solve one problem, whether that's PMS or headaches or skin issues, we have to solve the entire problem, which the problem is
00:38:58
Speaker
There's a lot of suboptimal health. There's a lot of people with suboptimal health and that is due to suboptimal diet and lifestyle compounded over years and decades. So we really have to, I don't want to give band-aids. Oh yeah, just take magnesium when you have PMS and vitamin B6 and it will go away. It can go away, maybe it can improve, but I don't want to give band-aids to my clients.
00:39:27
Speaker
I want to give solutions, so we have to do it. Just before I recorded this, I asked my wife, or I didn't even ask, I said, you don't seem to have much or any PMS lately. Because I remember years ago, she would be, for a day or two before her period, she would be in a
00:39:48
Speaker
She would be telling me she has pain, right? Not that she's super happy and happy-go-lucky before her period. I don't think any woman really is. It is still uncomfortable, but she's not in debilitating pain. I've had friends that are like in debilitating pain clients.
00:40:06
Speaker
in debilitating pain, which is not just horrible for them, but everybody else around them, because then they're not as happy and easy to converse with and so on. So now, over the years, I have noticed my wife's
00:40:22
Speaker
She doesn't really have any of these issues, right? And it's because we're doing a lot of things, a lot of basics and fundamentals, right? For multiple years. And that is the key. That is the key to longevity, a long life and really good health for a long time is doing the boring things on a daily basis for a very long time. It really, really, really, really works. Okay. So glucuronidation,
00:40:50
Speaker
is involved in the conjugation of estrogens as well as other toxins. And that requires vitamin B3, vitamin B6 and magnesium. So we discuss magnesium. Now, some of the B vitamins are really important for the detoxification of estrogens and other toxins, right? So niacin and vitamin B6. And then you also need, but the thing is you can't just,
00:41:20
Speaker
supplement B6, right?
B Vitamins and Historical Insights
00:41:23
Speaker
If you're going to supplement, I'd recommend getting a B complex, a decent B complex with methylcobalamin for the B12, methyl folate for the folate, not folic acid. And then you want to give them together because they're used to recycle each other. So even a deficiency of one B vitamin can cause relative deficiencies in others because of the, you know, their needed
00:41:50
Speaker
That's why they're a family of B vitamins. They're needed for the recycling and so on of others so be complex super important if you don't get enough B vitamins from the diet like In the form of eggs egg yolks liver and Meat these are the best sources of B vitamins milk and dairy products also have some B vitamins and
00:42:14
Speaker
if you're doing vegetarian or mostly vegetarian, you really need to supplement a decent quality B complex, right? So liver health I discussed, but what's interesting is Dr. Biskind from the 1940s, him and his group
00:42:37
Speaker
They already back then in the 1940s postulated that a deficiency of B vitamins could cause a cyclical excess level of circulating estrogens because of that decreased clearance in the liver, thus producing PMS. And then his patients in the 40s improved PMS patients, improved with just by using B vitamins. And what's interesting is that in depression, B
00:43:08
Speaker
vitamin deficiencies are actually have been found to be fairly common. So again, if you if you want to fix quote unquote, fix something that you don't like about, let's say, your mood or your anxiety or your sleep, you need to address your overall health. And then these things will automatically resolve themselves when
00:43:36
Speaker
the body decides to do so. It doesn't always do it in the order we want to do like someone with a skin issue. We have to do the gut stuff, all that good stuff, right? But they might start sleeping better, have better hormone balance and a number of other things could improve.
00:43:56
Speaker
and then the skin stuff starts to improve. So the body will fix and address whatever imbalance is the most glaring, the most high priority, not what we think is the most important for it to resolve first. Again, this is not symptom treatment. This is creating health in an individual, right? That's why we need to cover all of the bases. The way I kind of be thinking about it is imagine you have a car,
00:44:23
Speaker
Obviously, if one of the tires is missing, it won't run. But think about the body as a vehicle with 50 tires, let's say. And then even having one tire broken is going to cause other tires to have issues in the whole machine. The whole vehicle will start having problems over time. So the 50 things could be minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and so on, all the essential nutrients.
00:44:53
Speaker
And then all the other essential factors like sleep and sunlight and stuff like that, right? So if you just have a calcium deficiency, that's gonna cause problems. If you just have a zinc deficiency, it's gonna cause problems. If you just have a B6 deficiency, it's gonna have problems. And then over time, as the body's less able to adapt and sort of compensate for that deficiency or inadequacy, more and more health issues are going to.
00:45:22
Speaker
occur. And then to resolve that at that point, once it's been developing for a decade, let's say, or years and years,
00:45:32
Speaker
You don't just start with what was the initial issue, which could be in a B6 deficiency or something. You want to give everything to the body in terms of nutrients and rest and sunlight and so on. And then it will do with it what it deems is right to unravel all of those layers of dysfunction that have developed over the past years.
00:45:56
Speaker
I won't really belabor the liver discussion too much, but what I will say is choline, which is also the best source is egg yolks and liver. Choline is another, what is known as a lipotropic factor, which can help to prevent the accumulation of fatty deposits in the liver.
00:46:23
Speaker
that can basically help just keep the liver functioning well. And we know that I think in the States, it's like 30% of people have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, right? So this is another way the liver can become congested and dysfunctional, not just having gallstones, but having like a fatty liver and these fatty deposited liver. So it's well known that
00:46:50
Speaker
Most people don't get enough choline from the diet. Most people don't eat two, three, four eggs a day and or liver once, twice a week. That's one of the best sources of choline. So if you're not getting enough of these foods, you really need to start either eating more of them or supplementing with choline-based supplements. What else?
00:47:15
Speaker
just because we're 48 minutes, I want to keep it to an hour. So as I explained in the estrogen, what you need to know series, estrogen excess is also known to produce cholestasis, which means the diminished bioflow or stasis of bile. As I discussed in a little bit more depth in that episode, it's also known as a sluggish liver. And it just means that the bile is obstructed. And again, women,
00:47:44
Speaker
are at a higher risk of gallstones and cholestasis because of higher estrogen levels. So cholestasis may be a predisposing factor in PMS because again it contributes to reduced estrogen detoxification and clearance and that produces a positive feedback scenario. So that
Nutrient Deficiencies and Neurotransmitters
00:48:11
Speaker
can make the whole problem worse and it will become worse and worse over time unless something is done and hey presto the liver flushes are free it's not the only solution but it has to be a part of the solution if you want to achieve optimal health and stay as healthy as possible for a long time the other thing is estrogen impairs vitamin b6 so
00:48:38
Speaker
Not only is the low B6 level going to impair estrogen detoxification, but just excess estrogen can impair B6 levels, right? So what's also interesting is that B6 is needed for various other neurotransmitters to produce them, including dopamine. And the low dopamine level can actually increase prolactin. So they seem to be antagonistic, right?
00:49:06
Speaker
Vitamin B6 levels are typically quite low in depressed patients, especially women taking birth control pills, which are generally estrogens, sometimes with progestrogens now. And then, so I mentioned vitamin B6 supplementation has been shown in studies to have positive effects on all PMS symptoms, particularly depression.
00:49:31
Speaker
Another actually another thing that excess estrogen can do is it can suppress the action of dopamine, right? So lower dopamine, you just feel crap, first of all, and then dopamine inhibits prolactin secretion, as I mentioned.
00:49:50
Speaker
And it can actually prevent sodium retention, which means it will reduce or prevent water retention. So that puffiness, swelling, this water retention caused by estrogen, it also is because of the effect on lowering dopamine, right? So in keeping dopamine high is super important.
Serotonin Myths and Future Discussions
00:50:16
Speaker
You need B6 for that I mentioned. Magnesium, vitamin C is needed. I believe also copper is needed for dopamine production. And tyrosine, the amino acid tyrosine. So eating enough protein is one way to do it. But with some of my clients, we just supplement L-tyrosine, the amino acid first thing in the morning, because not only is dopamine
00:50:46
Speaker
inhibitory towards prolactin, it can also keep serotonin in check, which can actually cause issues when it's elevated. So serotonin and dopamine are somewhat antagonistic to each other. And I did have an episode on why serotonin is not the happy chemical. It's just TLDR. Serotonin is not the happy chemical. You do not want to increase it, despite what you may have heard or read elsewhere.
00:51:13
Speaker
I'm going to do a proper, I deleted that one before because I wasn't happy with how I recorded. I'm going to record a new episode on why serotonin is not the happy chemical in the future. And I will explain in a little bit more depth why. For now, just keep in mind, it was a marketing campaign by companies that want to sell you serotonin increasing chemicals for billions and billions of profit, right?
00:51:40
Speaker
Now, just to give you a little... Okay, so let me see. Hold on a second. I have so many notes here. Just to give you a little bit of background around the SSRIs. So...
00:51:56
Speaker
what can happen when a person, sometimes doctors, they basically are doling them out like hotcakes, but they can give them to women when there's PMS involved, right? So they're just not just used for depression, but for anything, right? Oh, you had one negative thought four years ago. Here, let me slap you on a SSRI, right? So, but what these drugs, so the
00:52:24
Speaker
The most common ones being Prozac fluoxetine, sertraline and paroxetine. So these are some of the most common ones and a few others. They actually in the short term, they can increase.
00:52:42
Speaker
a metabolite called allopregnanolone, right? In the short term, it's a neurosteroid that is very helpful. It has antidepressant type action, calming, feel-good type of neurohormone or steroid, right? But then of course, the long-term negatives of raising serotonin far outweigh these early benefits. But the reason some people feel better
Progesterone, Stress Hormones, and Risks of Pharmacology
00:53:11
Speaker
initially on an SSRI is because of this increase in allopregnanolone. Now some studies in terms of PMS and PMDD, which is pre-menopausal dysphoric disorder, which is much worse than PMS,
00:53:30
Speaker
they have implicated some of these neurotransmitter systems in these conditions. And what they found was that a certain inhibitor molecule called dutasteride, which blocks the conversion of progesterone to allopregnanolone, was found to
00:53:55
Speaker
reduce the core symptoms in women with the more severe PMDD, premenopausal dysphoric disorder. So what that means, at least to me, is so progesterone can become this
00:54:18
Speaker
allopregnanolone, which is a good molecule to have high in the body, you know, in good levels. But what this dutasteride drug does is it inhibits the enzyme that converts progesterone to allopregnanolone, right? And what that means is that there was more progesterone to balance the estrogen.
00:54:41
Speaker
There was more relative progesterone because it wasn't getting shunted to become allopregnant alone. So that probably the reason why that helped those women and it reduced irritability, sadness, anxiety, food cravings, bloating and so on is because there was more progesterone, right? However, as I mentioned already, this allopregnant alone is actually beneficial and what happens is
00:55:05
Speaker
or what I think could be happening here is these women with PMDD, the severe premenopausal dysphoric disorder, when their estrogen is so high, it's also raising other stress hormones, including things like cortisol, adrenaline, prolactin, possibly even histamine. And then the reason
00:55:28
Speaker
Allopregnanolone is increased as it helps, and I discussed this in my book, How to Actually Live Longer. Allopregnanolone and other neurosteroids are increased as a response to stress to basically help us deal with the stress. But in those particular women, what that does is during that time of the month where estrogen relative to progesterone is so high, is shunting a lot of progesterone towards allopregnanolone to deal with the stress hormones of
Critique of Symptom-Focused Treatments
00:55:55
Speaker
just the other stress hormones, is leaving them even more progesterone deficient, quote unquote, as a, you know, relative to estrogen. So this is another very short sighted way to use pharmacology. So they're using one thing to block
00:56:20
Speaker
progesterone to allopregnanolone conversion. They're using this dutasteroid 5-alpha reductase inhibitor. So that leaves more progesterone to deal with the excess estrogen to balance it. But long-term, what is it doing to have less allopregnanolone? And I'll tell you what it's going to do. It's going to cause even more problems. That's why these short-sighted, one sort of trick pony type approaches are extremely dangerous long-term. I'll tell you why. I'll probably do a whole episode on this.
00:56:50
Speaker
Allopregnanolone was a few years ago, FDA approved as a treatment for postpartum depression. And one treatment was enough to have really good results, like four weeks later, right? So very, very effective. And so if restoring allopregnanolone levels in severe postpartum depression helps,
00:57:21
Speaker
Should we be using things like this where we're inhibiting the creation of allopregnant alone? No, this is really, of course, farmers sponsoring this, they can get the women's PMDD symptoms to alleviate for a month. And then they don't care what happens three, six months down the line or a year later, because they have something else to give them then when they come back to the doctor from, oh yeah, my PMS and PMDD are all better.
00:57:48
Speaker
But I'm not feeling like I'm depressed. So, okay, no problem. We're going to give you a necessary right now. So it's disgusting. It's really disgusting. But keep it. So keep this in mind. Right. So what I think what what's the takeaway here? Definitely. If it was me or my wife.
00:58:11
Speaker
And if we're in the situation, I would be adding extra progesterone bioidentical in a supplementary form that you can get over the counter in the USA. I would probably go with the progesterone because that will first offset the, or it will help balance the estrogen excess. It will have anti-cortisol action in various ways.
00:58:39
Speaker
And if you add plenty of progesterone, you will have substrate for that alpha reductase, five alpha reductase enzyme to create allopregnanolone, which can then in the nervous system be used to promote the basically to activate the GABA, the relaxing inhibitory nervous system, as you may know it, GABA, gamma aminobutyric acid.
00:59:07
Speaker
So adding extra progesterone is probably, in my opinion, what I would do. It would do a lot more to provide more substrate to create these beneficial neuro steroids and their metabolites. Right. So I've just wanted to give you this example of why just trying to deal with one symptom quickly with a pharmacological
00:59:32
Speaker
But we sometimes can do the same thing with a supplement as well or a painkiller or whatever. So I just want to explain why, if we just chase symptoms, I want to get this symptom gotten rid of today, tomorrow, done. It's not the optimal long-term strategy. You are better off. I know it sucks to have to deal with it. You're better off.
Supplement Recommendations for PMS
00:59:55
Speaker
powering through for a month or two while you optimize the diet, the other supplements, the nutrition, the rest, the stress reduction stuff. You're better off doing the work upfront, front loading the work and then reaping the benefits of better balanced biochemistry.
01:00:14
Speaker
Rather than, oh, I'll take a painkiller for this. I'll take whatever for that. And just playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms. And then what will happen? Six, 12, 18 months down the line, three years down the line, God knows. And generally, if you don't figure out what are the underlying contributors and address those, the things that will happen are going to be negative and generally lead to more pain, debilitation and dysfunction. So we really have to
01:00:46
Speaker
start learning, teaching people that we need to basically do the functional approach, not the allopathic symptom masking approach. So what I'll leave you with is things I would probably do in the immediate term in terms of supplementation because people always want
01:01:07
Speaker
appeal for a nail, and generally these supplements, they can help at least begin addressing some of the imbalances. So vitamin B6, like I said, has been studied quite a lot for a long time, for decades now. So vitamin B6.
01:01:25
Speaker
I would definitely use, but I would probably do the B complex, high quality B complex. Don't skimp on supplements because you probably... If you're going to invest in yourself, invest as if you're a Ferrari, not as if you are three decade old Toyota or something like that.
01:01:50
Speaker
What else? So B complex, magnesium, actually calcium, as I discussed in previous episodes, calcium is super important, especially for women, because actually calcium deficiency can mimic some PMS symptoms. And if your diet is deficient in calcium, you're gonna be rubbing your bones.
01:02:18
Speaker
Again, it's a strategy that is going to cause suffering. So calcium and magnesium need to be balanced. So two to one, calcium to magnesium, or one to one. Personally, my wife, she's so sick of me telling her this, but
01:02:38
Speaker
Now she takes at least 600 to 800 milligrams of calcium and magnesium a day And I just keep kept telling her it's so important bone health blah blah blah blah this that hair hair loss Can be prevented as well. It's one of the factors implicate any hair loss low calcium in the diet and so on and now she just does it herself I have I have the supplement nearby the kitchen table and she
01:03:03
Speaker
She remembers it after my I know it's it sucks to to have to harangue people and kind of whatever but at least Now she has built that habit and she's taking her calcium daily So calcium super important zinc is another super important one. So you need zinc for hormonal health for immune function, but um, I
01:03:26
Speaker
When your zinc levels are low prolactin will increase and take high zinc levels inhibit prolactin So if you don't eat meat or if you don't eat a lot of meat, that's gonna be a problem for you. I would certainly be supplementing
01:03:46
Speaker
at least 15 to 30 milligrams, myself and my wife for years, maybe up to five years, we're taking up to 30 milligrams per day, some days up to 60 milligrams, especially when she was pregnant and so on and recovering from the pregnancy. And she was eating plenty of meat. So if you don't eat enough meat, and when I say enough meat, I'm talking two meals a day having meat, right? That's,
01:04:13
Speaker
that's approaching territory of enough meat and not a tiny amount of meat you know i'm talking at least 100 150 grams you know a few six ounces or so per meal this this is for a woman probably the bare minimum right because six ounces of beef that will be about 30 grams of protein roughly so in a meal that's a good that's a good
01:04:40
Speaker
baseline. So if you do that three times a day, that's 90 grams of protein, but most women need more than that. So that should be like a bare minimum. I recommend to my clients getting at least 100 grams of protein a day, animal protein, high quality, bioavailable,
01:05:00
Speaker
organic pastured animal protein, you will not get the same quality from plants. And if you are doing the vegetarian thing mostly or vegan, you really need to supplement a lot of things. And this is not a, I'm sorry to tell you, but I strongly believe this is not a good diet long term for your optimal health. So I actually do not work with vegetarians that do not want to
01:05:29
Speaker
that want to remain vegan or mostly plant-based. If a person is ready to incorporate animal products, absolutely, I'll work with them if we're a good fit to work together. Otherwise, I just don't want to be a part of that because it's not going to end well.
Cautions Against Certain Supplements
01:05:47
Speaker
And then vitamin E. Actually, there's been some studies on PMS and they have had decent results.
01:05:55
Speaker
So nervous tension, headache, fatigue, depression and insomnia were all significantly reduced. Also in one study, breast tenderness improved. So vitamin E is important. I already explained why. Like I said, my book appendix of how to actually live longer has the ones I use and vitamin D is also
01:06:22
Speaker
Now becoming or emerging as a potential contributor to symptoms of PMS, right? So that's another thing so vitamin D So you basically to to to sum up you really just have to do the basics, right? Get the fundamentals in place if you don't have the fundamentals in place like eating enough protein not eating polyunsaturated fats and getting your calcium and magnesium and your zinc from your meat and all that stuff if you know if you don't have those basics and
01:06:49
Speaker
you really have a lot of low hanging fruit to cover, which is also great because that stuff is easy. And after a few months, it becomes second nature and you don't have to worry about it again. What I would not personally recommend doing is I wouldn't recommend these various evening primrose, borage oils, blackcurrant oils. I wouldn't recommend those. Way too high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. Most herbs I wouldn't recommend. I know Vitex,
01:07:19
Speaker
or Chase Tree, Chase Tree Berry, that one a lot of women are having good results with. So I don't really, I still don't recommend it. Personally, I haven't had much experience with it. If it works for you, great. What I wouldn't recommend is anything that raises serotonin. So L-Tryptophan and 5-HTP, these are serotonin precursors. I would not recommend them in a future episode. I'll explain in more depth why you don't want to raise serotonin.
01:07:50
Speaker
But yeah, this is what I would do as basics and what I would not
Conclusion and Consulting Services
01:07:55
Speaker
do. And then of course, bioidentical progesterone, it's probably worth experimenting with it under the guidance of your practitioner. Of course, this is not medical advice. Nothing I do or say is medical advice. And finally, just to remind you, I do help women
01:08:11
Speaker
restore their health. If you need personalized help, you can follow the link in the episode description here, go to my website, book a free intro call, let's get to know each other, see how I can help, if I can help, if we're a good fit to work together. And that is about it. Thank you for, thank you for watching or listening to this and please share it with other women that you think may benefit from. I really think a lot of the stuff is basic, but
01:08:40
Speaker
it's like common knowledge it's not that common and so this basic fundamental stuff is not common knowledge and we really need to educate more women because too many of them are still just going to to a doctor and then they're getting just a bunch of different prescriptions or painkillers and stuff like that and these things are not addressing the roots of the issue and the roots of the issues or rather the solution is
01:09:04
Speaker
Let's just get much, much healthier than we already are. And a lot of these things, they disappear. Simple as. Okay. Thank you so much for listening or watching. See you on the next one.