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Why Does Everybody Suddenly Have a Hormone Problem? · Health, Life & What’s Next

• 0:00
  Welcome to Health, Life and What's Next.
• 0:03
  with Dr.
• 0:03
  Jennifer Ginty.
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  This is the podcast where we explore what it really means to live well through honest conversations about health, life, business, and everything in between.
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  Because remember, healing is about more than medicine.
• 0:21
  I'm so glad you are here.
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  Let's get into today's conversation I think something strange is happening in women's health.
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  Women are walking into appointments already convinced they know what's wrong with them.
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  Not because somebody examined them, not because testing proved it, not because somebody sat down and looked at the whole story.
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  Because they watch enough videos online, and somewhere between Instagram, TikTok, podcast, Google, YouTube, they got diagnosed with high cortisol, low progesterone, estrogen dominance, hormone imbalance, and sometimes they already bought the treatment too.
• 1:03
  'Cause, hey, if you're watching a video online and somebody's gonna recommend a supplement, and you know you have the symptoms, you know that's your diagnosis, you're gonna buy it.
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  So I so often find people already purchasing supplements for the hormone imbalance, tea powders, hormone cream, all before anybody has established that the hormone they are trying to fix is actual the problem.
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  And that is what bothers me because hormones are real.
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  Don't get me wrong.
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  As a female, unless you die, you are gonna have, hormonal issues.
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  Perimenopause is definitely real.
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  Menopause is real.
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  Thyroid disorders are real.
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  Women absolutely deserve to have hormonal symptoms taken seriously.
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  But I have symptoms and I have a hormone imbalance they are not the same thing.
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  And somewhere along the way, we started treating them like they are.
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  That can send anybody, specifically a woman, down a very expensive rabbit hole.
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  A woman comes into my clinic and says,"Well, Dr.
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  Jay, I know it's my hormones." And then I ask,"How do you know?" And she would tell me,"Because I'm tired,'cause I'm gaining weight, because I'm not sleeping, my mood is different, my period changed, my hair's thinning, I can't think clearly." All real symptoms.
• 2:21
  I'm not dismissing any of that, but here's the problem.
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  Symptoms tell me something deserves attention.
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  They do not automatically tell me the cause.
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  Let me repeat myself.
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  Symptoms tell me something deserves attention.
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  They do not automatically tell me the cause, and that is the difference I wanna talk about today on this podcast episode Midlife makes this even harder because, yes, hormones really are changing.
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  Perimenopause can change your cycle, your sleep, your temperature, your mood, your bleeding pattern.
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  Your body can feel very different.
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  So hormones absolutely belong in the conversation, but here's where I think women gear should change.
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  A woman will say,"Well, I'm 46, it must be hormones." And the investigation stops.
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  Why?
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  You can be 46 and going through menopause and have a thyroid problem.
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  You can be in menopause, you have terrible sleep.
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  You can have hormonal changes, and be taking a medication that affects how you feel.
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  You can have hot flashes and still have another reason you are exhausted.
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  You can have more than one thing happening.
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  Your body does not promise to give you one problem at a time, and that is why I don't want everything thrown into one bucket labeled hormones.
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  Because once we do that, we can stop asking better questions.
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  So let's say you are tired.
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  Before I decided your hormones are the answers, I want to know how are you sleeping?
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  How many hours are you sleeping?
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  How are you waking up?
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  Do you snore?
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  When did the fatigue start?
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  What changed around that time?
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  What medications are you currently taking?
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  How is your thyroid?
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  How is your menstrual pattern?
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  How is your iron level?
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  What is happening with your nutrition?
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  How are you managing stress?
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  What else is going on in your body?
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  That's medicine, my friend.
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  This isn't as catchy as five signs your hormones are broken, okay?
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  But it is a lot more useful.
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  And then we have cortisol.
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  Can we talk about cortisol, please?
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  We need to talk about cortisol because cortisol has somehow become the villain of the internet Everybody has high cortisol.
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  Everybody has adrenal fatigue.
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  You are stressed, high cortisol.
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  You are tired, it's cortisol.
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  Belly weight, oh my God, let's blame it on the cortisol.
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  You wake up in the middle of the night, yes, cortisol, cortisol, cortisol.
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  And now people are scared of a hormone that they actually need to stay alive.
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  Cortisol is not a bad hormone.
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  Your body's supposed to make cortisol.
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  It helps you respond to stress.
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  It helps with blood pressure, your blood sugar, the inflammation, the energy, your normal daily rhythm.
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  You need it.
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  We all need it.
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  The problem is not that cortisol exists, and feeling stressed does not automatically mean you have a cortisol disorder.
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  Those are two very different conversations.
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  Can chronic stress affect your health?
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  Of course.
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  Can poor sleep affect your health?
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  Absolutely.
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  Can living in a constant state of pressure affect how you feel?
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  Oh my God, that's a yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
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  But that still does not mean I'm stressed, therefore I have abnormal cortisol.
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  That's where social media turns biology into a slogan.
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  And once the slogan becomes popular, everybody starts tweeting the slogan, and that's what worries me because now you are not asking what is actually happening.
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  You are asking,"What can I take to lower my cortisol?" But what if the cortisol was never the problem?
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  Do we ever think about that?
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  Unless you do a cortisol check, you do a 24-hour urine test or you do a saliva, you can pinpoint the levels of cortisol according to the, the time of the day and then the high and the lows.
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  I really don't want us to blame cortisol Here's the question I wish more women would ask before buying anything: what evidence do I have that this is actually the problem I'm treating?
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  Let me repeat.
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  What evidence do I have that this is actually the problem I am treating?
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  That's it.
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  Not is this supplement popular, not that 500 women in the comments says it helped them, not does this influencer have a, flat belly?
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  'Cause I'm telling you, it's crazy what I see online.
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  What evidence do I have that this is is happening in my body?
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  That question can save you money, time, energy, and a lot of frustration, and sometimes will save you months of chasing the wrong thing, which brings me to hormone testing.
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  Because another thing I hear is,"I just want all my hormones tested." Okay, but why?
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  What are we trying to answer?
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  Because testing should also answer a question.
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  It shouldn't just create a giant report.
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  Sometimes hormones testing is useful, absolutely, if something doesn't fit the normal pattern, if we are concerned about the specific endocrine problem, if period stops early than expected, if we are evaluating thyroid disease.
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  If there's something in your history that needs investigation, testing matters.
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  But more testing is not automatically better care.
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  I had to talk to a patient about this,'cause she wanted to do all the testing.
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  Spend$5,000 on all the testing, but what are we treating?
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  What is the question?
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  What is the problem?
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  So perimenopause is a great example.
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  Hormone levels can move around during this transition, so one result on one day may not tell you the whole story.
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  Sometimes your age, your symptoms, and what has happened to your menstrual cycle tell us more than one hormone number.
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  That is why I ask women about their periods.
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  When did they start changing?
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  Are they getting close, closer together?
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  How many pads they are saturated?
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  I know TMI, too much information, but that's important.
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  Is it heavy?
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  Do we pass clots?
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  you see what I'm saying?
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  are you skipping months?
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  How's your eating habits?
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  What else changed around that time?
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  The story matters.
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  Your story's not just conversation.
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  Your story is information.
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  We have become so obsessed with laboratory data that sometimes women think it's nobody's...
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  If nobody ordered 40 tests, nobody did a thorough evaluation.
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  That is not always true And let's talk about these large commercial hormone panels, shall we?
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  A giant report feels impressive.
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  Lots of numbers, graphs, colors, ranges, 20 different things marked high or low.
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  You look at it and think,"Hmm, finally somebody found everything that's wrong with me." Maybe, but here's what I want you to know.
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  Why was this test ordered in the first place?
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  What questions are we trying to answer?
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  What does this result actually mean?
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  Does it change what we will do?
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  Is this result reliable for the questions we are asking?
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  Because testing without interpretation can create more anxiety than clarity, and I see this a lot with my patients.
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  More information is not the same thing as more understanding.
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  You can have a folder full of test result and still have no idea what to do, no idea what this result means.
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  And again, this is the things I'm seeing right now in my practice, and this leads me to the part I probably care about most.
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  Are we treating women, or are we chasing hormone numbers?
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  Because sometimes a hormone result becomes the entire story.
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  The number is low, let's raise it.
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  That number is high, let's lower it.
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  This won't change, add something.
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  But where is the woman in this whole thing?
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  How does she feel?
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  What is happening with her sleep, her energy, her medical history, her risk?
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  What does she actually want to improve?
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  Because I do not treat laboratory papers, I treat people, the human, okay?
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  And I want to make something very clear.
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  This is not an anti-hormone episode.
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  I'm not saying,"Oh my God, don't test your hormones." This is not what I'm saying.
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  There are women who may benefit from hormone therapy.
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  There are women with thyroid disease who need medication.
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  There are women with rare endocrine disorders who need appropriate medical treatment.
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  There are women whose symptoms improve when we address lifestyle factors, and there are women who need both.
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  Medicine and lifestyle do not have to fight each other I don't understand why we keep making women choose between the two.
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  If nutrition matters, let's address nutrition.
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  If a medication may be contributing to symptoms, AKA side effects, let's review the medication.
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  Let's see what else we can do that can help with the symptoms you didn't have, that the medication's causing.
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  If hormone therapy is appropriate after discussing benefits and risk, have that conversation.
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  The goal is not to prove that one camp is right or one thing is right, the goal is to help the woman feel better safely.
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  That is the goal.
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  What are we gonna do to make her feel better?
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  I think this is especially important because women in midlife are hungry for answers.
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  You lived in your body for decades, then suddenly things started to change.
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  You wake up and think,"What is happening to me?" Maybe your cycle is different, your weight distribution changes, you are not sleeping like you used to, you carrying weight in your midsection, AKA love handles.
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  And when someone shows up online and says,"I know exactly what is wrong with you," yeah, I know that feels good, right?
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  Of course it does.
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  Certainty feels good when you are confused, but certainty and accuracy are not the same thing.
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  Someone sounds sure does not make them correct, and that's what I want women to remember.
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  And please don't go to the extreme after listening to me.
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  Don't say,"Well, Dr.
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  Jente says hormone don't matter." No, no, no, no, no, I did not say that.
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  Absolutely not.
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  Okay, everything matters, and women deserve to have those symptoms taken seriously, and I do in my practice.
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  But what I'm saying is, almost every symptoms in a woman is not proof of hormonal imbalance.
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  I saw a patient the other day, she is 59 And she thought it was her hormones.
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  I'm telling you, she was like,"Dr.
• 13:00
  G, it is my hormones.
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  It is my hormones." And then we did the hormone test, guess what?
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  Her estrogen was so elevated to the point, like, I'm now,"Okay, this is scary." She had xenoestrogen, estrogen dominance.
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  So again, we cannot look at the woman and be like,"Yes, this is what you are faced with.
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  It must be hormone.
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  Let's just put you on a hormone product." And that is the problem.
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  We have gone from women being told,"It is all in your head," to sometimes being told,"It is all your hormones," e- specifically now.
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  If you're 40, you can't lose the weight, hormones.
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  But what about insulin?
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  That is a hormone.
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  What about thyroid issues?
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  That is a hormone.
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  What about toxicity level?
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  That's a a factor that can keep you in, in overweight.
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  gaining weight.
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  I want us to ask better questions.
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  Not what should I take to balance my hormone?
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  Why don't we start with what exactly changed, okay?
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  What hasn't?
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  Could more than one thing be happening?
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  And what kind of testing are we doing to help answer the question that we have?
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  Those are the questions that lead somewhere.
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  So here's the question I want to leave you with, and be honest with yourself.
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  How many things have you bought to balance your hormones without anyone first establishing that your hormones were actually abnormal?
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  Maybe you bought one thing.
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  Maybe you have a cabinet full of, hormone products, right?
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  No judgment.
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  But before we buy the next thing, I want you to stop, ask,"What exactly am I treating?" Because your symptoms deserve attention.
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  They deserve investigation.
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  They deserve to be taken seriously.
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  But they also deserve something better than a trendy explanation.
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  Hormones may be part of your story.
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  They may even be a very important part.
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  They just don't automatically get to be the whole story, and that's the difference I want women to understand.
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  If you are listening to this thinking,"Okay, I know something has changed in my body.
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  I feel off, but I honestly do not know if it, if hormones are the problem or if something else is being missed," that is exactly where a root cause intensive consultation can help.
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  This is where we step back and look at the whole picture.
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  We assess your symptoms, your timeline, your cycles, your sleep, your medication, your health histories, what has already been tested, what has not been looked at, and whether hormones really deserve to be part of the conversation or whether something else may be contributing.
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  Because the goal is not to assume it's hormone, the goal is to understand what is actually driving what you are feeling.
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  So if you are ready to stop guessing, and literally stop guessing, you wanna get clear about what deserves attention and investigation, I really want you to click the links below and to schedule your root cause intensive consultation.
• 15:57
  Because before we try to balance anything, we should first understand what actually needs attention, what are we balancing.
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  We should also look at the levels of your hormones.
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  We should also look to see what we are optimizing.
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  'Cause I see so many times patients will come to my clinic, they already are on a hormone replacement therapies, and they don't feel well.
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  So the root cause intensive will give you so much clarity.
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  Again, will save you time, money, and energy, and we can actually look at those markers that's gonna guide us, towards the treatment that you need for your own situation.
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  So click the link below, and I can't wait to serve you That is fantastic.
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  You completed another episode.
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  So thank you for spending this time with me.
• 16:47
  If today's conversation gave you a new perspective, I hope you carry it with you into the rest of your week.
• 16:53
  If someone you love needs to hear this today, share this episode with them.
• 16:59
  Until next time, take good care of yourself.
• 17:02
  I'll meet you back here for our next conversation.