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If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only 1 place to go. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

You just found the most downloaded fitness health entertainment podcast in history. This is mind pump, right? Today's episode, we had Dr. Jolene Brighton, author of the new book. Is this normal?

So she's obviously a doctor and expert on women's health. And in today's episode, we talk about women's health hormones. Uh, what is normal? What isn't normal symptoms of things like PMS skin issues, energy issues, how to balance out your hormones, what's causing some of the problems that are so common that we think are normal but they're not normal. She breaks all of this down and more in today's episode.

Uh, by the way, uh, if you're looking for some hormone tests for yourself, just to see if you're within range and, and, and essentially healthy, you can go to mphormones.com and also Dr. Jolene Brighton can be found on Instagram at Dr. So Dr. Jolene, J0LENE. And then Brighton is BRIGHTEN.

Uh, now this episode was brought to you by 1 of our sponsors, NCI. This is a certification course for trainers and coaches that teaches them how to build their business. And right now they're giving away, okay, they're giving it away. Their rapid cash masterclass. Literally this course is designed to teach someone how to make 6 figures as an online coach and they're very successful otherwise we wouldn't be working with them.

Anyway, go check it out and get yourself free access. Go to ncimindpump.com forward slash rcm. Now we're also running a sale right now on some workout programs. MAPS Starter, this is a beginner strength training program, is 50% off. And then we have a bundle that includes MAPS Anabolic and MAPS Prime.

That's called the Starter Bundle. That's also 50% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code July50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. Dr.

Jolene Brighton, welcome back to the show. 1 of our favorite guests.

Always a pleasure.

Oh my God, well this is 1 of my favorite podcasts And like I was saying, I'm super sad that we're not in person. Look at your studio. I'm just still like, look at your studio.

Has it been that long since you were here? Were you here in the big blue chairs? Were you here? Is that when we were here last?

I believe so. They were the type of chairs that gobbled up someone my size. Like I think I'm really big. And then I end up in like this like oversized chair and then I realize I'm child size.

Yeah. So you're still to this day, 1 of our most talked about interviews. Lots of people love your information. The last book that you wrote was incredible. I have family members reading it and my wife loved it.

And we're having you back on because you have a new book that I think is equally, if not more interesting, and it's called, Is This Normal? Let's talk about this for a second. What motivated you to write this book? What was it that spurred you to create this?

Are you guys Star Wars fans?

No. Are you kidding? Duh.

Okay, no, you don't know how many podcasts I do. And then I talk about Star Wars and the hosts, their eyes just glaze over and they're like, I guess you're a super nerd. And I was like, are you not following me? You didn't know. So, you know, I think about how like Star Wars, like We got the core Star Wars and it was so good and who didn't love it.

And if you don't love it, that's okay. We'll still be friends. And then they came out with the prequel of now you really understand in depth what's going on. That's a lot of how I think about beyond the pill. I handed people like, you don't always have to do the pill.

There's a root cause solution. If you want to do the pill, let's support you so you don't have side effects. But I wanted people to understand their body and what they could do to take charge of their health other than just getting the same old, same old from doctors, which is like, you got hormone problems, just take the pill. Then what came were all of these questions that made me realize we needed the prequel. Like, is this normal is what everybody needed to know before going into Beyond the Pill.

And this book is really born out of all of the questions I get from patients, all of the questions that I get from people online. And in the time of the pandemic, I actually pursued my training in sex counseling. So I'm a certified sex counselor as well to help answer these questions even more. So this is really born out of what everybody was asking for. And I'm like, let's just make the book that we all should have gotten before we ever got our periods.

Wow. Why do you think that some, cause I think this is necessary. I think this is definitely necessary, especially for women. I have 2 girls, 1 of them a teenager, and I'm shocked that in today's modern world, that this is a question that women have to ask. Like, they don't know what normal is.

Why do you think that is? Why is it that this is a book that's got such high demand?

Medical gaslighting is a big 1. I see so many providers that take to social media and They're like, oh, you know, we hate these social media influencers. We hate people sharing their story. We hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. And I'm like, I don't think you understand that you are the problem.

You created the problem that brought people to the internet to seek solutions and you're not being part of the solution whatsoever. So we are told that our period cramps are normal. This is a big reason why women with endometriosis fail to get the diagnosis that they need. They can go decades without getting the diagnosis. We are told things that having acne or irregular periods is just normal.

And now women with PCOS are having to see 2 to 3 providers before they get the diagnosis. We are told so many things are normal. And then gaslit, when we tell a provider, this is not normal for me. Like I'm telling you, I live in this body. And then that's when their provider's like, well, don't mistake your Google search for like all of my years of expertise.

I hate that because I'm like, look, studies are great, but studies are not all encompassing. They have issues. They have selection bias. They have funding issues. Who funded it?

That'll tell you everything about what the outcomes of that study will say. And at the same time, there are just problems with a lot of the way that we haven't even tested drugs on women. I mean, I could go on and on about the problems in medicine that make it to where the provider doesn't believe a woman's story about living in her body. So that's a big issue. The other thing is our sex education sucks in the United States.

What do you guys remember from your sex education?

Oh, God. The banana? Yeah, I remember. The banana!

The question box at the end

with inappropriate questions.

All I remember is putting

a condom on a banana. That's the only thing I remember from our sex ed. Seriously. That's the only thing that stuck out to me.

Yeah, I remember asking my older cousins. That was how I got my education.

Yeah. I mean, and this is like, you know, talking to 3 men, like this is a big problem as well of like men asking men about women's bodies to like learn about women's bodies, to learn about women's pleasure. And it's why, you know, in the orgasm chapter of my book, I talk about how people are always like, oh, you know, making jokes about how men can't find the clitoris, men are so body illiterate when it comes to evolving, and female pleasure. And I'm like, they don't want to be, but sex ed doesn't teach about female pleasure. Sex ed barely teaches about female reproductive health.

They're like, here's your baby making container and it'll bleed monthly and that's going to suck. And hey, this canal here, babies come out, penises go in and there's a banana and a condom. And that's about it. We don't get the education about like, well, why are your hormones cycling? And what are they doing?

And what are they telling you about your body? We just don't get all of that data that we need about our own body. And we're in it not understanding what's going on. And so that's another big reason. We've got the medical problems and we've got the societal problems.

And to anyone who's like, well, people have to take responsibility and go educate themselves or their parents should have taught them, sure, but who taught their parents? And also, who do you trust on the internet? Because writing this book, I can tell you, there's some seedy, scandalous, scary stuff on the internet that is not trustworthy.

How often do you see somebody's hormone imbalances and their health affecting their sex life?

Oh, absolutely. All the time. So there's a lot of experts in the field of sexual health, and there are many who are brilliant psychologists, they are there or sex educators, and they'll say. Your hormones don't have anything to do with your libido. And it's barely ever your hormones.

And I'm like, how is that possible? Like, how is that possible when you just think about that? So, you know, there's the cyclical hormones, right? So estrogen, progesterone, and even testosterone cycles in women. For anybody who's listening, we think about women being like the moon, right?

We know the moon has phases, the moon cycles, there's a full moon, there's a new moon. And we think about men being like the sun. It's up and it's down, and it's the Same thing day in and day out. So with those cyclical hormones, you're like, we know, we know, we cohabitate with women. We're aware of this.

So with those cyclical hormones, there are natural, normal changes that happen in your desire. So what people think of as libido, your ability to self-lubricate, your ability to become aroused, how much you think about sex, how much you are running fantasies in your mind. These are affected by natural cycling hormones. And I detail this in the book. There's even a 28 day program in the book to help you understand your own normal, but also fine tune and problem solve those hormone imbalances that may be causing havoc on your mood, your metabolism, your skin, or your sex life.

So they absolutely play a role and something that is completely overlooked. And I think this is an audience who will get it is metabolic health and metabolic hormones impacting our sex life.

Yeah. So I love the way, how you said it plays a role because I think 1 of the challenges with this conversation is that lots of other things affect libido as well, like confidence, the relationship with your partner, maybe something happened today at work or you were stuck in traffic. And so this, sometimes people use this to discredit the hormone conversation. We're like, Oh, I know my libido is supposed to go up during this time, but last month I was really in the mood here, but there's lots of things that affect this and hormones simply play a role and saying that they don't, I think is, uh, is totally silly. In fact, it's extremely well studied.

And in fact, if, if a woman changes a hormone, she'll notice a change in her mood, just like men will. 1 thing I want to go back to that you had said that I think is important, that you kind of glazed over that people don't realize, is you mentioned drug testing and women. A lot of people don't know this, but oftentimes when they run trials on drugs, they're done on a particular demographic, a particular age group, and all drugs don't affect men and women the same. Is that accurate? Absolutely.

Oh, absolutely. We absolutely know that to be true. And in addition to that, what people don't understand is that sometimes when trials are being done, they'll actually put women on the pill to basically correct for the menstrual cycle or try to control. So this is the way they think they can control for the menstrual cycle, except as we know, hormonal birth control can result in adverse mood symptoms for some women. Some women may develop acne, they may develop gut dysbiosis, they may have more inflammation, they may have cardiometabolic changes that are unfavorable, or they may see tons of benefits just by being on the pill.

So maybe their acne does clear up, or maybe, you know, they find that their mood is a lot more even. And so that's important to understand is that they think like the menstrual cycle is a confounding variable when in fact, adding an additional medication, 1 that also depletes nutrients, is more problematic. So sometimes we see that in studies as well. And so you're absolutely right. Drugs do not always affect the ovaries and the testes the same way or people that own those.

And in addition to that, a lot of research will be done on men because it's a lot easier. But let's not negate the fact that who signs up for these trials. A lot of times you will find they are young college students who were poor, like I was poor in college. And so you're getting a certain population. The real drug trial starts when you introduce this into the general population.

And we all know that to be true. Some providers, I don't know, they just like miss that memo or they don't care, or they're not staying up on the facts that like, just because a study showed that there isn't this side effect when they did the study, once it gets into the general population, now we truly start to understand. This is why it's so important to believe the patient's story. When we look at a normal distribution, a bell curve, I actually almost put this in my book and my editor was like, this is a little dry and boring, but I think it's just important to understand in terms of statistics, when we say normal, we have a normal distribution. So it's going to be a bell curve and in the center is going to be the average, except there are always standard deviations of people who fall outside of that.

And that is normal to fall outside of that to a degree. There is. And so that is all just to say that if you are having an experience that doesn't match what the research study says, or what your provider says is the only possibility, that doesn't mean you're lying. That doesn't mean you don't know your body, and that doesn't mean it's not true. And that's just really important that we always ask the question, what is true for me and what is my experience?

Okay, so-

That's okay.

Okay, so this is interesting because to give an example for someone, you said the college-aged, I guess, sample size. Imagine, just for people listening, this is a great example, I think. Imagine if we tested the effects of alcohol on a bunch of college aged individuals, and then use that to explain how alcohol affects everyone. Now, everybody listening knows alcohol feels very different when you're 21 or 22 versus when you're 41 or 42, so that would be very unrepresentative of how that may affect you. So I think that that kind of illustrates what you're talking about.

The other thing I'm gonna ask you is the difference between common and normal. In other words, I used to get this with clients all the time where they're like, oh my back hurts, my knee hurts, and they say, but that's you know that's that's normal because I'm you know I'm 45. Well okay, just because lots of yeah just because lots of people have back pain, any pain doesn't mean that that's that that that's normal. It's common because so many people don't exercise and so many people are overweight. So let's talk about the difference between normal and common and why we need to look at normal, not necessarily common in a unhealthy population, for example.

Who goes to the doctor? People who need help. People who have symptoms, people who have problems. If you're going to your doctor and you've got period problems, fill in the blank, any period problem or hormone related problem, odds are your doctor is going to say, this is normal. That's because this is what they're seeing day in and day out.

So from their perspective, they're like, this must be normal because everyone has this. No, sir, or ma'am, or whatever. No, these are people who are coming to you. And so it is very common by some estimates, upwards of 90% of women have struggled with hormone issues at some point in their life. And when you take a look at our environment, that's not surprising whatsoever.

So to your average doctor, they're gonna be like, Well, because period cramps are so common that people complain of, because PMS is so common, and it is, I mean, 75% of women are estimated to struggle with PMS. They chalk that up to normal. That's not normal. That's not a normal state of being. Miserable, pain, not living your life to a full extent, that should not be considered normal.

And it is that dismissal and that mistake that providers make of calling what is common normal that leads to the underdiagnosis of very real and life-threatening conditions sometimes, and if not life-threatening, they at least are hijacking your life and making it so that you can't bring your gifts, your talents to this world and get what you came for. But at the same time, we have to also recognize that these mindsets of what is common is normal is also told to us via commercials on tv uh cosmo magazine not to call out cosmo but like many magazines you know have indoctrinated us with this and even our own mothers aunts teachers have told us like that's just normal like you get your period and it's painful and you're fatigued and you're breaking out and you feel horrible. And your doctor or your mom, or maybe your sister is just like, welcome to being a woman, it sucks. We need to change that narrative because that is absolutely not true. And to your point about libido, I'm curious if you like read my book and that's how you're still in the know, or if you made observations in your life, like it's completely possible for any man to do, that libido is so much more complex than just hormones.

And yet hormones absolutely play a role in all of this. Because I wanted to go back to that and shout out that you even said that because a lot of people miss just how complex it can be. And at the same time, when we talk about this common versus normal, it's often told to men and it's propagated that it's completely normal for women to never be in the moon, for women not to be able to orgasm, for it to be impossible, like finding a unicorn in the forest, you know, is going to be easier than making a woman cum. These kinds of things are also propagated. And there are women who also internalize this and believe this to be true about themselves as well.

Of like, oh, well, I'm just not that into it because I'm a woman. That's not true either. These are more of that common scenarios that are playing out, but not it just to be accepted as normal.

Yeah. I think part of that is the potential, because we see this in our space too, is that the potential shame that comes from being like, oh, this is something that I can work on. Maybe this isn't necessarily healthy or normal. Like you don't have to feel shame around it. Uh, but, but actually look at it and say, okay, how can I make this better?

And I think that that kind of fuels it a little bit, right? Like a man may be like, well, that's normal. You know, that happens to all women to make himself feel better. Or maybe a woman says that cause she doesn't want to feel the shame associated with some of that. Are hormone issues more common now, or are we just more aware?

In other words, has the world and our lifestyle changed so much that they're just super common or is it that, you know, people just, you know, they read about it and report it more now.

I think it's both, but I do think it's a lot more common now. So we are paying attention a lot more to our bodies. I mean, take it back to like the 1950s and doctors were like, let me just like medicate your that you just can like, you know, numb out to the world and we don't have to listen to you. And so, I do think that we are, we've got the internet, we are much more body literate than we used to be. We still have a long way to come.

And yet, it is a lot more common to see hormone imbalances because we do live in the most toxic environment that humans have existed in. So endocrine disruptors, these are exactly what they sound like. So endocrine means hormone for anyone listening who's like, what's that word? Endocrine is hormone. So I'm a naturopathic endocrinologist.

I am a hormone doctor. Endocrine disruptors, exactly what they sound like. These are chemicals that exist in our environment. So they might be lining your to-go cup in your coffee container. I hate that, that's the worst.

I love my coffee, why are you sabotaging me? They may be found in your personal care products. And they are also just found in the air that we breathe. They are everywhere, and they have the capacity to cause issues with your hormone system. So not just having more issues in terms of PMS and mood symptoms and waking, but also things like increasing your risk of cancer, fibroids, we certainly see that a lot of the common products that women are using, especially in the BIPOC community.

So I have straight hair right now, but I usually have curly hair. These kinds of products that are targeted to Latinas and to black women, they are very problematic. And we have studies showing the increased incidences of cancer. We also have studies showing a correlation, we can't quite say causation yet, of these endocrine disruptors and women starting their period much younger. So these are certainly contributors.

We also live in a society, at least in the United States, that is like hustle culture, grind, have babies, but do it without support because you're supposed to be a super mom, go to work all day, run a household. And that's a lot of stress. The nuclear family as it is, has a lot of stress and we are more fragmented than we have been in the past. So I could keep going. I detail all kinds of things in Is This Normal that are leading to our disruption in our hormones.

And another big 1 that I would just mention is our food supply. I mean, that's another source of endocrine disruptors. You know, people, the argument always comes of like, organic food is not healthier than non-organic food. And I'm like, look at the health of the field workers. And I call bullshit because people who are working in the field, they're dying at a younger age.

They're getting more of these reproductive related cancers. Like this, These are the people that are being exposed to this, and then you're being exposed to it day in and day out. And so if you want to just take the argument of like, well, it's such a little exposure to me, then how about you think about the people who are out there laboring to collect your food and to make it so affordable for you, because these chemicals are having an impact. And so that's that food piece. But there's also, and again, this comes back to the metabolic health, the way that a lot of people are not taught, but then find themselves eating as health food or better choices or even the anti-diet culture that's just like, just eat anything and it's fine.

We see people are eating nutrient-devoid diets and that is what's highly problematic is the highly processed food-like items. I don't even like to call it food because it's not, if it doesn't deliver nutrients, if it doesn't signal the microbiome in a positive way, if it's not loving up your body, it's not really food.

Yeah. Jolene, you mentioned these endocrine disruptors. And, okay, let's just, let's just, because I know some of them aren't even tested. So let's just forget that for a second. Let's just imagine that each 1 of these is individually tested and approved by the FDA.

They don't test potential cumulative effects of combining multiple chemicals. In other words, your face cream may have a chemical that is a potential disruptor, but it's under the allowable limit with the face cream. But that face cream testing doesn't go with the hairspray, the makeup, the lotion, the deodorant, you know, even, even your hygiene products, all of that, those cumulative, there's no testing for that, right?

No, there's not. And there is no research going like, well, what happens when a girl starts wearing makeup at like 13 years old, and then we get her at like 63 years old, and she's been, because we tend to be brand loyal that entire time and applying that day in and day out. We don't have those studies. And so whenever people are like, the dose makes the poison, so this 1 product is fine, I'm like, but you don't know where that person lives. Do they live, so you guys are in California, do they live in the Central Valley where there's a huge ag, that is exposing them to other endocrine disruptors and carcinogenic chemicals.

So you can't just say like, oh, the dose makes the poison and there's no other considerations because this really has to be very individualized. So what's their family history? What's their personal history? Like, what are their genetics and their detox capability? We do all have the capability to detox these hormones, but we do know from the research, we have to end the overwhelm and not be loaded up on these things.

And allow me to step into my privilege for a moment, but because I get paid to go overseas and speak on stages, I get to go to Europe annually, and I will make a trip to Paris, and I will load up at the French pharmacies, if people have seen this on TikTok, because the EU can be trusted more than the FDA. And what the FDA is approving isn't often tested to the extent it needs to be. In the United States, we have a habit of going, well, is there anything showing harm? No? OK, well, until there is significant harm, like people are dying, or like in the case of DDT, all the animals are dying, just put them out there.

Just put it out there, and then we'll just let it roll. We'll just see what happens. And now in the case of forever chemicals, like, you know, that's like, we have tested the hypothesis and found out, which is the more academic way of saying, we fucked around and found out that that was a really bad thing. And now we've got forever chemicals in our environment that we're never going to get rid of. And they're always going to be impacting our species and every species on this planet.

So I think it's really important for people to understand that it is really lame. The burden falls on you in the United States to have to do all of your due diligence, but it does. And you can take action not only to support your detox pathways, but to minimize. You cannot eliminate all exposure. That is not even the goal.

Listen, I've gone to bed crying a lot of times and having anxiety because I read these studies and I'm like, oh my God, like what about me? What about my kids? I don't want people to go into that spiral because there's so many things you can do in your own home to take action. And we know That is the most impactful thing. Switching out your plastics for glass, not drinking out of plastic as often as possible, opening up your windows once a week, trying to get rid of flame retardants if you can't.

You are vacuuming every single week in your house, if not more frequently, to clean those up, just for people to understand flame retardants. I don't think this gets enough play. It doesn't get talked about enough, in my opinion. We knew decades ago that this was impacting our animals, our pets. Dogs were getting autoimmune hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's, most common autoimmune disease in women.

Cats were getting Graves' disease, hyperthyroidism. Vets knew this. They knew the flame retardants in the bed, was it their pet beds were a problem. They knew that what was dropping out of our mattresses and out of the couch was a problem. And so those have to be cleaned up.

You think about babies, they spend as much time on the floor as pets, at least if you mom like me. And these are impacting our thyroid significantly. They also may be impacting our fertility. And this is really important to understand because men have about half the sperm that their grandfathers once did. Male fertility is declining.

We know things like BPA and flame retardants are disrupting the ovaries capacity to create hormones. So even if you don't want a baby, understand you can't have optimal hormones if these chemicals are messing with your ovaries. And In addition to that, they're causing oxidative stress. Anyone on a fertility journey understands that oxidative stress is killing your eggs. And I say this as a woman going through IVF, that I'm taking supplements and doing everything I can safeguard against the oxidative stress.

There's natural oxidative stress, it's good, but the oxidative stress created by BPA in the ovaries. And we are just getting more and more research to understand that. And I think it's really important for people to understand we've had BPA for decades that we've been exposed to, and we're now starting to understand how significant the impact is on our fertility.

Julian, I want to go back to when you and Sal were talking about normal and common, and I want you to help Describe what healthy hormones should feel and look like and the reason why I want to do this is because in in our we actually Used to joke about this all the time like off-air when we talk to somebody who be like, oh, yeah, I feel fine I feel normal I feel good and that and They think they feel good because they never have felt optimal before. They don't know what good sleep, good diet, good exercise feels like. And it's not until we get them to do those things that they go, holy shit, I feel so good. And it's like, Yeah, you were feeling bad, but you didn't realize you were feeling bad because that had become your normal. So can you help, and I'm imagining this is the same thing in your field with hormones, right, and women, can you help describe what a woman should feel like with really healthy, balanced hormones?

Okay, Adam, I love this question. This is so awesome that you're asking this because I think this is exactly what happens is that the body is so good at compensating that we will adapt. And so this is why I ask patients, when's the last time you felt like yourself? And it makes them pause and they're like, oh, hold up. Like there was a time that I felt optimal and I just got used to how I've been feeling now.

So if we take it to a menstrual cycle, I want everyone to understand menstrual cycle actually starts with the ovulation, but we teach it from menstruation because the bleed is a lot easier to recognize and it's a very easy way to wrap your head around this. So When it comes to your period, you may feel a little bit tired. That's normal. You may have a little bit of cramping. That's normal.

If you find that you are having to pop ibuprofen endlessly, you know, you're popping Midal all the time, you are hugging a hot water bottle. It interferes, anything that interferes with your activities of daily living, that's not normal. A period usually lasts on average about 5 days, 3 to 7 is considered normal. Less than that, you might not have enough estrogen. Longer than that, you might have too much estrogen going on, or it's not being challenged by progesterone, or you could have thyroid issues.

So this is all to say it needs to be investigated. And in my book, I give you quizzes, I give you charts, I give you all kinds of things. You can literally figure this out on your own, but you can also take that data to your doctor to advocate for yourself. So that's the period. As you leave the period, you should notice your energy starts to climb.

Your libido will start to climb. You're finding that you could probably get by on 6 hours of sleep, but friend, you should not just try to get by on 6 hours of sleep, but because you are just finding you are more resilient because estrogen and testosterone is up. I was actually thinking this morning. So let me take a little side tangent. IVF stimulation, your estrogen goes really high.

I find that in pregnancy and during IVF stimulation, my boundary setting, my kick-assness, my take no shit, all of that is just so on point in a respectful way, in the way it needs to be. And I was like, man, everybody talks about testosterone being an alpha hormone. Estrogen is an alpha hormone. Like estrogen makes me boss like no other. And part of that is because estrogen helps with how your brain, your corpus callosum is connecting.

So both lobes are talking so much better. Estrogen is also going to help you be a little more sensitive to insulin. So during this follicular phase, that's where we're at from period to ovulation, you're also gonna notice that you have less cravings and that you're not as like angry as you can be in the luteal phase. So it's not normal. If you are feeling all the time like you have significant cravings, your mood is tanking because estrogen plays with serotonin.

If estrogen goes up, serotonin goes up. So you should be feeling happier, more elevated in your mood. So understand that if you are finding that you have a very low mood, you find you're very easy to cry, like these things are not normal. Being a little weepy right before your period, that's normal. So as we get into ovulation, libido is gonna be up, your like your strength training ability, you're gonna be like, why am I lifting more at the gym?

Like you should be able to have more resiliency and more capacity to push the limit. So whether that's pushing how much weight you're lifting and yes, if you are a woman listening, you should be lifting weights. It is 1 of the most impactful things you can do for your metabolic and hormone health throughout your entire lifetime and is literally how we get to longevity front. So if you want to live long and have ovaries that work for you as long as possible, please be lifting weights. So I'm taking lots of side tangents.

And I'm very long-winded. Keep going, keep going,

keep going. You're good, you're

good, you're good. Everybody be taking notes. Okay, so we've got this ovulatory phase. After ovulation, and let me say that. So after ovulation, the corpus luteum is gonna be formed in the ovaries.

This produces progesterone. Progesterone is a hormone that makes us feel really calm, really chill. If you're having anxiety, friend, let's talk about progesterone in that luteal phase. So anytime someone has anxiety, I'm asking the question, is it thyroid? Is it cortisol or adrenal related?

Or is it possibly that it could be their progesterone's not getting up? Because cyclically, this is only happening like a week or 2 out of every single month. And it corresponds with the luteal phase. That's not to say other things can't cause anxiety. They certainly can, but when it comes to hormones, those are the big ones I look at.

And let me say, if you have anxiety caused by something else, those hormones are also going to be impacted. So they have to be looked at. So I want to back up to that ovulatory phase because at the top of this, Sal was talking about libido and hormones and what's going on with that. Research has actually classified this phase as the sexual phase. And I write about this in my book.

As soon as I read that, like the abstract and it was like the sexual phase, and I was like, that's ovulation. And I love the way we frame this because if you're done having babies, you don't care about babies. You're like, nah, I can't even have babies. I don't want to talk about babies. It's so great to not be reduced to just your reproductive capacity and to have someone actually speak about your sexual capacity.

And so when we are in that ovulatory phase, about 3 days before you ovulate, you're going to find that estrogen has ramped up and testosterone will follow because your body, regardless of sexual orientation, biologically speaking, is like, we could capture some sperm here and we could make a baby. Whether or not you want 1, your biology is wired a different way. You're just an animal at the end of the day. So with that, 3 days before you ovulate, that is when it is, you're gonna be like in the grocery and you're gonna be at the checkout line and you'll just see someone on a magazine and you'll start your sexual fantasies or you'll get brushed the right way and you'll be like, ooh, like I'm getting like in the mood. It's a lot easier because of the way these hormones stimulate your brain, which is the main sexual organ.

And then they also stimulate the clitoris to swell. The clitoris and the penis, same exact tissues, embryologically speaking, this is where we started out. You got the testosterone washed and if there was a Y chromosome that was set up to respond, you got a penis, you deviated away from the clitoris. So in the same way that a penis becomes erect, the clitoris becomes erect, and this can be a lot easier around ovulation. You just get quicker to get there.

So there's a lot of ways that your hormones impact the sexual phase. You're also wetter during this time, which is normal. And then you're drier in the luteal phase, which is normal. And yet, we're also told this myth that like, if you can't get wet every single day, then there's something wrong with you, you're broken. Not true.

Okay, 3 days before, then you ovulate. So now we got, we got 4 days. Now your sexual phase may be 6 days, but it depends on how quickly that corpus luteum starts pumping out progesterone because once ovulation happens and progesterone starts, so you might get to day 5 or you might get to day 6, her gesturum is like, I call it the cock block in my book because it's literally what it will do. It is like, I know, right? But it makes her really chill and calm, which means that what Sal was talking about before, the stressors of the day, they're less apt to get to her.

And so that break, as it's called in the dual control model that I talk about in the book, which is some brilliant research, y'all got to read about it. So that's a break, those stressors, whatever those stressors are, if your progesterone is right, those are less blockades. Even if they end up blocking the system, they can be easier to remove. While it's being like estrogen, you take a back seat. You're going to find that maybe you're not thinking about sex, you may be less inclined to initiate sex in the luteal phase.

If your progesterone is right, then your relationship is going to be better. Your kids are not going to get on your nerves as much. Look, 1 to 2 days before your period, if like your partner chews the wrong way or breathes the wrong way, and you're just like, I'm gonna throw a shoe at them, like the chancla is in full effect, that's normal because progesterone and estrogen are dropping to trigger the blade. But if you're like, I'm pulling out my hair, every sensation is aggravating me, and I feel like I'm losing my mind, that is not normal. Although we're told like, oh, hormones make women crazy.

Or do people make women crazy? I mean, hormones do play a role, But it's just important to understand that those are regarded as normal, but they're not in fact normal. And in addition, I encourage anyone, if a week or 2 before your period, You find that sensory inputs are really aggravating you, or your ability to concentrate is just completely gone, or it's just so difficult. You're not productive at work. I talk about this in, Is This Normal?

You need to look into, could this possibly be a concomitant autism or ADHD situation as well? Because our hormones impact our brain so much. We know a lot more women have autism and ADHD than they've been actually diagnosed or even recognized because, spoiler, we're not little boys, which is all the research has been done on and the diagnosis was made off of. But it's important to understand this because you might get a diagnosis of PMS or PMDD. And PMDD in particular, which is about 2 weeks out of every month, your life is completely hijacked by physical and emotional symptoms.

I have a whole quiz, a checklist in my book for you to identify this. That is very, very high among the ADHD community and even higher among the autism community. So once you get 1 diagnosis as a woman, it's very easy for your doctor to be like, this is who you are and all you are and to forget everything else. And so definitely clue into those things. Okay.

I said a whole lot of stuff. You probably have questions. I'm sure listeners have questions.

I actually have a sidebar that I said, and I hope everybody doesn't get mad at me for doing this, like taking you to the left here. But you said that we're talking all about sex right now. You said some things about like stress hormones and where a woman's at certain parts of her cycle or she's gonna be calmer and then okay, and it affects how wet she is, orgasm, all these things. So you had me thinking and I would love to hear you describe what is happening on a hormonal level when a couple gets in this massive fight where they were like ready to do on the verge of breaking up and then they have incredible makeup sex. What is, what is happening hormonally?

Can you describe that to me in that situation?

Yeah. Oh my God. I love that. And uh, no, I think everybody's going to appreciate this question because like, what's up with the hot makeup sex? So I do talk about this in the book because this does happen.

So there are some people where that level of stress is a complete break to them. Like, and if you are, if you have a vagina and sex for you is penetration, like that's super vulnerable to have a like penis inside your body. And so it is normal if you're like, I have to feel really safe and secure and I don't feel this way right now. And so I don't want to have sex in that way. That is normal.

What happens with this like hot makeup sex is that for some people, and this happens for both men and women, this is actually a stress relief. So their cortisol is up and their stress hormones, epinephrine, norepinephrine is up. Like they're getting this signal of like, man, I need to fight or freeze sometimes. So fight, flight, run away or freeze. That's what these stress hormones do.

And for some people, they know that sex is a great stress relief. And it is because when oxytocin gets released during an orgasm, and it's getting released as you're being close. And that's the other thing is like being close, being intimate like that, like you're getting all these sensations to your nervous system that's helping calm you down if this is you and this is what resonates with you. And oxytocin is getting released and when oxytocin hits after that orgasm, it is like cortisol, get out. I don't even want to hear you right now.

And it takes those stress hormones and drops them significantly. And to even get to an orgasm as a woman, you have to be in your body. You have to be present. And it's an act of mindfulness. And as we know from the research, mindfulness is a great way to combat stress as well, to help bring yourself out of that, you know, that hyperdrive of stress hormones that you've been in.

And so mindfulness as well, that being present in your body and being able to achieve orgasm, that in itself is going to help with stress hormones as well. And so it is something that I will hear from people that are like, that's crazy that anyone would ever want to have sex after a big fight. And for other people, so I will also say, I put in there Dr. Rosemary Besson's model, I put in, is this normal, is a circular response model. So this is how women enter into sex, like why they want to have sex.

Pleasure is 1 piece, but the other piece can be that they just need to feel connection. They need to feel close. And so in that fight, that fragmentation, they're feeling so separate. And for them, the closest way to get that connection is to have sex. And for people who are like, oh, that's toxic.

It is sometimes, but not always. Sometimes this is the quickest way to get over it. And that really melts everything so that the couple can now communicate and can now work through that.

I love you explaining this because I feel like, and the way I would say that you would decide whether this is toxic or not is if this is a common behavior, right? Like I grew up in a household that this, like it was almost like an addictive behavior, the hot cold. My parents would go on this cycle of like crazy fights and then madly in love with each other, crazy fight, almost like they were seeking that hormonal response that you're describing. And so I think that is toxic behavior. If it happens to a couple randomly that this happens and then they come back together, I think that would be considered maybe healthy.

And if it's something that you repeatedly do, it's probably toxic.

Well, Jolene, I think it's an understatement to say that sexual desire and then the actions that potentially could occur from that desire is very complex. But I think it's also an understatement to say that it's more complex in women just from an evolutionary standpoint, because women are, they have to be more choosy. They're more of the gatekeepers, the potential risk of getting pregnant. I mean, the burden of that, if you want to call it that, lies with women. There's also a safety component.

Women need to feel safe. If you look at the, you know, the data, this is my, what I've read, and I'd love your input on this. Safety plays a big role. Whereas with men, not so much. We don't necessarily feel as threatened.

Whereas a woman, she got to make sure she's safe because otherwise this could be a bad situation. So the complexity of sexual desires, I mean, it can't be overstated. So hormones play a role, but gosh, so does other things, including, you know, catecholamines and other chemicals in the brain. You mentioned some of them. In fact, I wanted to ask you about dopamine and serotonin.

Going back, talking about like ovulation and different phases of the menstrual cycle, it sounds like some of them might would be more dopamine heavy and others more serotonin heavy. Do you, is there data showing where you're more dopamine versus serotonin during the cycle?

Yeah. So I love this question. I want to answer this. I'm like, how do, how do we go about this? Cause I do want to just briefly just say, I'll briefly say it.

When we look at primates, and I know people don't like to be compared to primates, but we are most closely linked to the bonobos, they will have sex as a caretaking, as part of caretaking to the tribe from making people feel better. Like, well, other, other primates feel better. And so that can be part of it as well in, in this fight, like fighting or why women enter into sex is also because they want to care, take their partner. And it's also why we see the phenomenon of altruistic deceit, which is faking orgasms. It is not because women are like, Oh, I just like, you know, hate you or whatever.

They wanted them make a man feel better because women understand that in society, there's way too much pressure on male performance in the bedroom. And men have a lot of pressure and a lot of expectation on them. And women are like, I want you to feel good. I want you to feel good because if you don't feel good, then this was just a null experience for all of us. Now, back to your point about serotonin and dopamine, some of this like, let's fight all the time and then have sex is definitely dopamine chasing behavior in some people.

What we see, So estrogen, as I said, will play with serotonin. So as estrogen goes up, serotonin goes up. So this is why in the follicular phase, we'll see that serotonin is up. Sometimes if you're somebody who's like, why is it certain times in my menstrual cycle? It is so hard to orgasm.

It takes me forever to get there. That may be because serotonin is up. And when serotonin is up, we know this from studies on SSRIs, that can lead to anorgasmia. So difficulty to achieve an orgasm, no orgasm, or like meh orgasm where you're like, is that it? Did I just work all that time for that?

That's all I get? Like that kind of situation. And so serotonin, so even though I'm like, oh, ovulation around that time, this hormone's rising, it can be a really good fun time. If that serotonin is really up, that might be, it might be really difficult for you to orgasm. Now, as you go into the luteal phase, progesterone comes up, estrogen's still there, but takes a backseat, or at least it should.

If it doesn't, now we got symptoms. That is when serotonin is going to come down. It should. And as serotonin comes down, estrogen comes down, we see that there is less insulin sensitivity. So now cravings are going up.

You actually, and because progesterone's up, your body temperature is going to be up and your calorie burning capacity. You may require 5 to 10% more calories during this phase of your menstrual cycle. So this is why, you know, I talk all about, I was actually lecturing 2 years ago in London, all about biohacking on the menstrual cycle and intermittent fasting, and where does it fit in and how to do this as a woman because the hormones matter around all of this. So that's the serotonin component. What's interesting about dopamine is that we find that, so people who are on ADHD medications, they report that during the follicular phase, ADHD medication works just fine.

This is when estrogen's up. When they get into the luteal phase, that's when they start to struggle. And I wanted to go into all details about this and is this normal? I couldn't because I already wrote 126, 000 words for that book. So I put it on drbrayton.com.

I have a whole article about ADHD and hormones and what you need to know about your menstrual cycle. And it absolutely can be tied to part of the shifts that are happening in dopamine. So seeing those shifts and how estrogen is stimulating the brain can be impacting how these ADHD medications work, or even how you want to seek out things more to get more stimulation. So what most people think of during the luteal phase is chocolate. So chocolate, dark chocolate has magnesium in it.

It's got polyphenols. It's got good stuff that maybe you're seeking it out, or maybe it is that serotonin is down and dopamine is like, I just, I just want to get a little hit. And you're like, I know that something sweet and this chocolate is going to do that for me. And it's going to make me feel good for a period of time.

Interesting. Very interesting. You know, as you're talking about hormone imbalances and how they're potentially worse and endocrine disruptors, I go and I start to think about how we can help our body deal with some of the stuff. And I keep thinking about lifestyle changes and potential supplements that help the body potentially detox, right? Like get rid of some of these chemicals and maybe, because I know estrogen, our body gets rid of estrogen through our digestion.

I know like when people are, let's say constipated or have gut issues, that can all cause what I've heard be labeled as like estrogen dominance. What are the things people could do with their lifestyle and then supplements? What supplements can they take to help their body, I guess, detox from some of these chemicals and help balance out some of these potential issues.

Totally. You know, I love how controversial the term estrogen dominance has become, uh, lately where it's like, so what is estrogen dominance? This is when we most typically do not have enough progesterone in the luteal phase. And so we'll be experiencing too much estrogen. And I actually had somebody, they subsequently took their video down, but they were like, it is Dr.

Brighton's fault. She coined this term estrogen dominance. And I laughed and I was like, friend, go to PubMed because there were studies saying estrogen dominance before I was born. I wasn't even here yet. I was just a little like, you know, pre-seed.

I wasn't even swimming around yet. So estrogen dominance has been something that has certainly become a hot topic. And anyone who's experienced the hot flashes, the adverse mood changes, the PMS, the bloating, the issues, the heavy periods, the things that we see that we don't like in the lineal phase is probably experienced issues with too much estrogen relative to progesterone. So what can we do now? And as you were saying, xenoestrogens can absolutely be leading to, they're not gonna cause elevations in your total estrogen levels in your body, they're going to stimulate the receptors in a similar way that estrogen would, or they'll block it.

But if they stimulate those receptors, they're changing the DNA and they're changing the way that things function similar to what too much estrogen would do. Now, our liver is really good at detoxing if you give it everything it needs. And this is what's important to understand because there's people out there who will say, if you don't take detox supplements, you won't be able to detox. And then there's people that are like, you don't need detox supplements. It's called your liver." And I'm like, okay, the truth is always like somewhere in the middle, it seems.

The liver has several phases of detoxification. So phase 1, phase 2, and then it is going to move things out. And then we're going to get to the gut. And when we get to the gut, we've got to move that out. We're also going to urinate it out.

So let me just say that as well. That's how we test urinates tablates for estrogen. So the liver requires certain nutrients And in Beyond the Pill, I nerded out on a whole liver chapter and people were like, that was too much biochemistry. And I'm like, sorry, I'm a chem nerd. I have a chem degree.

This is the way I do. This time in Is This Normal, I'm like, here's a diagram. Here's what you need for phase 1. Here's what you need for phase 2. And then I put a chart in the back of the book and here's like, here's the foods to eat to get those nutrients.

So we know we need cruciferous vegetables because they're going to deliver us DIM. We need to be bringing in high quality proteins because without amino acids, we don't run these detox pathways in the way that we should. We need to be aiming for at least 25 grams of fiber every day. If you have certain non-immune conditions, that might be too much for you, but for the average person, the average woman, it's going to be 25 grams every day. The reason for that is because we want to eat nutrients that support the liver.

But once it gets into the gut, we have to make sure that we are moving it out. And there's something called the astroblome. The astroblome is the bacteria that interacts with your estrogen. If you've got dysbiosis, it's not pathogenic, it's not causing disease, it's just an imbalance of these organisms, they're going to increase beta-glucuronidase. Beta-glucuronidase is an enzyme that reactivates your estrogen.

So your liver goes phase 1, phase 2, get it out. The gut with the beta-glucuronidase is like, take it back, do it again. And so the way we can safeguard against that is 1, eating fiber, taking care of our microbiome. So maybe you're also taking a high quality probiotic. And we additionally, on top of like eating the fiber, is probably bringing on some calcium deglucorate.

And that's because calcium deglucorate makes that beta-glucuronidase stay in check. So it's not gonna squash it so you have none because you need some, but it is gonna help keep things in check. For anyone who's struggling with pain with sex, repeat UTIs, vaginal dryness, anything that's related to an estrogen issue, taking care of your gut is key. And this is a key component because that estrobilum is also taking care of your vagina. And estrogen is absolutely essential in stimulating the cells in the vagina to create glycogen.

That is sugar. And it's the right kind of sugar because it feeds the lactobacillus species. Everybody familiar with lactobacillus acidophilus, if they've ever had a yeast infection because this acid-producing organism keeps that yeast in check and it only is alive and thriving because of estrogen. So estrogen is not all bad and this is how gut health impacts vaginal health and it's super, super important. So we talked about cruciferous vegetables, having your fiber, making sure you're eating high quality protein.

Please make sure you're drinking enough water. And when it comes to supplements, calcium, D-glucarate, if you're going to take DIM, you also want to have sulforaphane and you want to have phase 2 detox supporters as well. This is how I formulated my balance women's hormone support is to help you get the right amount of estrogen and progesterone, but also support estrogen metabolism through the liver. So you get the right estrogen metabolites and not to get too nerdy, but 2 hydroxy estrone is the best. And the other ones you're going to have a little bit of them, but 4 and 16, those can become problematic as in causing cancer, causing fat, um, assist in the breasts, uh, growths in the uterus, growths in the breast.

So just be mindful that what you are using and what you are doing in your life can have huge impacts on how you feel now and how you feel in the future. You know, another, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Oh, I

was just gonna say, So you've mentioned a lot of like a hormone disrupting chemicals, like a lot of flame retardants being culprits. Like do you have sort of like a top 5 or top like 10 sort of offenders in terms of like what we should actually be concerned with? Cause there's so many things in the environment that like we can't like, obviously we have to live in it. And there's ways to, you know, preventatively kind of combat some of these things. But in terms of eliminating some of the top sort of 5 items that you're constantly exposed to, like, what does that look like?

Parabens and phthalates in your personal care products and formaldehydes in like nail polish, those kinds of things for sure. You can look at those in your house. This is what I would say. Get rid of anything nonstick. I'm sorry, you're going to have to use some healthy fats and do the dishes, but get rid of anything nonstick.

That is step 1. I would get rid of anything that's a fragrance in your house. So when it comes to fragrance, um, like plugins, like throw those away. If I get in an Uber and they have an air freshener, I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm very chemical sensitive.

I need, can I remove this? Like, can we take this? Cause if it's blowing on me through the vent, I'm like, we can't have this. Um, this is where it goes back to you saying Once people feel good, they're like, oh my God, once you remove all fragrances from your life, I went to a fragrance-free school. My med school did not allow any fragrance.

And once I removed every fragrance from my life, oh my God, I became so sensitive to it. And I realized like getting headaches, like that's not good. That's not a good sign. So when it comes to fragrances, what's in your laundry detergent, get rid of that sooner than later. When it comes to like shampoo, conditioner, lotions, things like that, phase them out.

I know that's expensive and it buys you time to be looking at what other products can you replace it with. So phase it out so that you don't go into, you know, analysis, paralysis, but also like, you know, it's just too much. It's too overwhelming. So you do nothing. So we've got Teflon pans, we've got fragrances in your house.

Take off your shoes before you come inside or immediately when you come inside. My family knows if they want to get yelled at, they're going to wear their shoes in the house. That is going to be my toxic trait is going off the handle when I see shoes in the house because everything you step in outside, you're bringing in. You are stepping on herbicides, glyphosate in the grass. You are stepping on antifreeze.

You are stepping in dog shit, like take it off. So in really easy way to reduce that. So take off your shoes before you come in, open up your windows at least once a week. So I remember back in like 2018, 2019, I was staying in Paris for about 3 months with my family. So everybody backstored, my son got really sick.

We couldn't get on a plane. We had to stay in Paris. And it was like winter and freezing. People still open up their windows all the time. And I was like, man, these French people are in the know on this because we were doing the same.

Even if it's freezing, open it up because get indoor air is some of the most polluted air that we come in contact with. So really easy step, open all that up. The other thing I said earlier, get rid of your plastics in your kitchen. You don't have to go, there's these people that I see on the internet and I just think they're amazing people who spend hours of their life organizing their pantry and putting everything and they have all these glass containers and crazy containers. Just get some mason jars.

They're super cheap. And then your kids break them and you don't care. But like, you can have a really easy replacement. We don't want to microwave in these plastics. We don't want to store anything acidic in these plastics.

We don't want to put fats in these plastics. Like we just don't want the plastics altogether. So that's another step that you can take. And everything I just explained, these are really simple things that you can start doing. The makeup, the skincare, the toiletries, ah, that's a bigger 1 to take on.

But I give you permission to slowly phase out and to take your time at looking at like, what are better alternatives and better solutions and phase those out. Last thing I'll say is that if you are buying clothes, Please wash them. So don't buy flame retardant pajamas. My God, don't even touch them in the store. But your children sleep in those, they stay in those for like hours, they're in their bed, like no, bad, bad.

I'm like, if you see those in Target, you walk the other way, like get away from those. But when it comes to buying clothes, Our clothes have a lot of chemicals on them. And it is like, I'm gonna tell you, this is gonna be the next big thing. It is on the hush right now. It's not being talked about.

In fact, when you try to talk about it, people are like, nah, like silence that. But our clothes, it has always been something that even my son knows. Like if he has, he, we bring clothes home. He's like, I can't wear those. Like I need to wash them.

And you do, you need to wash your clothes and as much as possible, be very mindful of fast, fast, fast fashion. The cheaper it is, the more synthetics it has, the more chemicals it's probably coming with.

I'm glad you went that direction. You mentioned your son, and question piggybacking off of what Justin said, we're all parents now. What is going through your head as far as your son's timeline, right? Like I think about it like, Oh, at this age, I want to make sure I'm teaching this. What are you thinking from like a hormonal level?

What are the things that you were thinking about you? Like, like there's certain things like Justin Pony, like he's got to live in this world. So he's going to come into context with some of this stuff, but what are you trying to prolong? What are things you're for sure carving out right now? What does his timeline look like for you as his mother to protect him as long as you possibly can?

Oh God, yeah, that's a thing. He's been messing with me lately. Has he been talking? Oh, McDonald's. He's been messing with me.

And I know he's 10, already going on like 16 and so annoying. He's like, oh, I know if I say, McDonald's looks so good that that's going to like trigger my mom. And I'm like, oh, but you don't know that I was that kid. So like, I'm not, you're not going to get to me. But it is like, I'm like, oh God, like, do I let him just like eat McDonald's 1 time?

Spoiler guys, he has an autoimmune condition that affects his brain. So no, The answer is no, we're not gonna mess with that. So it's really scary when I think about the trajectory of the world. I definitely, you know, we unschool slash homeschool, world school, so he gets exposed to a lot of cultures and gets to see a lot of different ways of doing things. And I will say that the way other cultures values food is, it's just not the same as the U.S.

The way the U.S. Is like, how cheap can I get it? And like, how much value do I get kind of situation. And so I think that's been beneficial. I am, you know, I just try to educate him as much as possible in every way that I can in a non shameful way, Especially when, you know, cause he's a kid and he'll look at other people and like, oh God, we had a babysitter quit 1 time because she told him she had Crohn's disease.

And then she was eating like all of this processed vegan food. And he's like 8 at the time. And he's like, you know, that food is not good for you. And if you have gut condition, you shouldn't be eating that because it's bad for your gut bugs and you have to take care of your gut bugs. She was so offended and so upset.

And, you know, he was just trying to help. And I had to have a conversation with him about like, you know how I know a lot of stuff and like I go through a grocery store and I could literally help everybody with their cart. I don't because we only help people who ask for it and it's not our business to think we know how to live someone else's life better than them. When it comes to the hormone stuff, we have a very open household. My son, we've been talking about it.

So at like 3 or 4, I have a picture on my phone where with his connects, he built an anatomically correct uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries and like brought it to me. He like woke me up and he's like, look mom. And at the time it was so cute cause he could only say odories. And I was like, Most people cannot even identify those things, let alone build a connect structure out of that. Like, only God, like super genius human anatomy.

So we're just really open. I take more of the Dutch perspective in terms of sex education, which is that I've been teaching consent, which is, I think, really important for males to understand consent because while everybody's like, men are toxic and horrible and they're abusers, they don't want to be the trauma inducers. They just sometimes don't understand what consent actually is because nobody taught them. And so, this starts at a very young age. So, I also have a two-year-old.

He is, my God, He's a totally different child. He is, I'm going to have my hands full with that 1. But with him, it's like, I'll ask, can I kiss you? If he says no, it's a no. Can I hug you?

If it's a no, it's a no. Grandma's like, can I give you a hug? He says no, it's a no. This is teaching body autonomy. This is teaching consent.

And when you teach consent from that perspective, it's a lot easier for them to understand later in life how to keep their, well, now how to keep their body safe as it is, but also how to have those conversations. Because they've just been normal conversations, Just like we have normal conversations about periods and about, you know, man, next week, I'm going to be like even closer to egg retrieval and I'm going to cry. There's going to be tears. Like there's just going to, and I explained to my sons, like mama's got a lot of hormones right now. And so like these little things are going to trigger me more and I'm going to cry and like, that's normal.

This is what happens. So a lot of just like normalizing normal conversations that happen and these normal human experiences. In terms of like, how do your guys' kids, so Sal, you've got a teenager.

Yeah, I have 2 teenagers and then a two-year-old and a seven-month-old, and then Justin's got almost 2 teenagers.

Yeah, 10 and a 13 year old. Yeah. And then

mine's 4. Okay. Wow. That is like the spread. And Sal, I love that because I have a 10 year old and I have a 2 year old.

And I actually, I love that age gap so much. It works for us. It works for us. So, you know, I just asked that because it's very different, like, try to tell a teenage girl what to do. That can be like a challenging thing.

And so, we want to start the education earlier of like the why and how this benefits their body and then making observations without shame. So we've always done, I'll use Halloween as an example, we've always done this switch, which thing like, give me your candy, I'll give you a toy, like, let's do some Legos here. And it's always worked. But this last year, he was like, I really want to eat the candy. And we actually termed Halloween Shug Night.

You guys familiar with Shug Night? I know this joke in London telling this story and everybody's like, Suge Knight. And I was like, it's funny. Trust me. We're like, okay, it's gonna be Suge Knight.

Like, and it's gonna be as bad as Suge Knight was, like, get ready for it. And so it was, he decided to eat the candy. And I was like, okay, I told him you can't eat all the candy. I pulled out things that were like, okay, this is the red dye, this is going to be bad for pandas, ADHD. And so I went through and I was like, you can eat the candy.

And he snuck even more and he binged on candy and he felt so sick and he threw up and it was horrible. And I just said to him like, so, wow, like you ate the candy and like, how did you feel? And he's like, I felt really bad. And I was like, do you think it was worth it? And he was like, no.

And I'm like, yeah, I mean, what do you want to do in the future? And just like ask questions and let him get to that place of like, okay, coming to that understanding of the way things are, because we're not, we're in a situation where he does want to experiment with things as children do. They're little scientists and they should be able to. And so I want to do it in like a controlled fashion that he can actually learn from the experience and it not be an, well, you did that, See, I told you so kind of thing. Because if somebody said that to me, I would be like, oh yeah, watch what I do next.

You know, earlier you had talked about the benefits of, uh, of lifting weights and strength training, and it made me think about the importance of muscle and how it affects hormones. I know we've talked about hormones a lot here. What is the effect of muscle on hormones like insulin, estrogen, testosterone? Why is it so important for people to maintain or build muscle?

Okay. This is going to be a big 1. Okay. So my master's nutrition research was on sarcopenic obesity. So this is like 20 years ago.

That's how old I am. And, um, I was blown away because at the time I was a vegetarian and seeing, we were doing this in animal models, and seeing that if you put someone on essentially a vegetarian vegan diet and they're devoid of these branched chain amino acids that only roll with high quality animal protein, the muscle wasting that happens and the metabolic fallout that happens. And this results in sarcopenic obesity. Sarcopenic obesity, I call it like the M&M body, like the round M&M guy, because you've just got all your fat in the center, which is the worst place to have it, because that's going to affect your organs and your metabolic health. And then you get really skinny arms and really skinny legs.

Sarcopenic obesity is increased morbidity and mortality. Like you're gonna die younger and it's gonna be bad. The way we combat that is through nutrition and lifestyle and lifting weights. You have to challenge your muscles. If you are somebody who wants to have an easy time in perimenopause, transition gracefully into menopause, and have a great sex life, you need to lift weights.

Lifting weights is good, So having that metabolically active muscle mass is going to sensitize you more to insulin. Spoiler, insulin insensitivity, so when you lose sensitivity to insulin, is so bad for the clitoris. Your clit hates it, okay? And that is gonna lead to decreased sensitivity. So less sexual pleasure.

We have always understood this. Well, we've understood for a really long time. Remember I said clitoris, penis, same, same. So if we've got metabolic chaos, the penis may not become erect. The penis may be less sensitive due to the increase in your blood sugar and this can cause problems with your nerves.

And so having that muscle mass is going to help Sensitize your body to insulin, maintain that insulin sensitivity, keep your blood sugar optimized. This is what I call the foundation of your hormone health along with adrenal function. In Is This Normal? There's a pyramid. The base of the pyramid is adrenal health, insulin, okay?

Gotta have those on lock. Above that, you're gonna find that is where the thyroid lies and the tippy top is the sex hormones. If your sex hormones are not right, like you gotta go to the base because you can work on those and we do it, you know, real time for symptom management. But if all you're doing is working here and you do not have a good foundation, you will forever be chasing these symptoms. And part of that foundation is building that muscle mass.

Now, as I talked about that visceral adiposity, That's when that fat likes to pack in around the organs. That is going to lead to a higher risk of diabetes, of cardiometabolic issues, so like high blood pressure, heart disease, all of the really bad stuff we don't want that we get super concerned about as we get into menopause. Now here's the part that really sucks. We start losing muscle mass in our 30s, it's even worse in our 40s, and it just keeps going down. But it doesn't have to be that way if you are lifting weights and challenging your body in that way.

The other great thing about having that muscle mass is that when you've got the right proportion of muscle to fat, and again, we're getting rid of that visceral adiposity, that is going to keep your inflammation in check. Now inflammation, and this is especially important in men, but it's important in women as well, increases aromatase, an enzyme that takes testosterone into estrogen. So now we've got like man boobs, that sucks. We've got irritability. We've got like we're crying more.

This is also problematic in women because fat loves estrogen. Estrogen loves fat. They're besties. They work together. So estrogen can increase fat.

Now you're like, why am I gaining weight? Like what's going on? And all these like fitness bros on the internet are like, your hormones have nothing to do with it. You just lack willpower. And it's like, friends, no, there's something very complex going on.

Because if we don't have that testosterone, now we can't build that muscle mass and this becomes problematic. So balancing out the muscle and the fat, because we do need some fat, is going to help in terms of inflammation. If you're helping inflammation, you're helping your adrenal glands, because cortisol's job, 1 of its jobs, is to keep inflammation in check. So muscle is something that is so overlooked in women. And I want them to understand, I want women to understand, yes, you can keep doing your Pilates.

I think you should, because it's so great for your pelvic floor. And we want to keep a healthy pelvic floor because urinary incontinence is 1 of the top reasons that women end up in nursing homes, okay? It's like 60% of women. So I just see people all the time that are like, why are you doing Pilates? Like you should just be lifting weights.

I'm like, it's an and conversation and you should have flexibility. Like do your yoga, you do those things. But don't negate the strength training because you need that pressure. You need that pressure on those muscles to actually stimulate them to build. You have to be uncomfortable and then you have to fuel.

Trust friend, if you are in your 40s, it better be at least 1 gram per kilogram of body weight of protein that you're eating every day. That 0.8 is not going to be enough. So you have to basically shred the muscle and make yourself really uncomfortable. And then you have to fuel correctly, especially getting those branched chain amino acids. And as we were talking about with supplements before creatinine friends, take your creatinine because It's not just good for muscles and it's not just good for energy, but super good for the brain as well.

And that just leads me to the last thing I'm going to say, which is that strength training, helping your metabolic health, helping your hormones is going to be neuroprotective. We know that women are the highest population with Alzheimer's and dementia, strength training can help prevent that because the more mitochondria we are building, especially in our thighs, it's correlated with more mitochondria in our brain.

Yeah. Jolene, it's a, uh, I wrote a book on this. And when I was doing the research for strength training, I was surprised at how much more effective strength training was for hormone balance and for brain health. In fact, it was, I think it's the only form of exercise that's been shown to stop and maybe even reverse the beta amyloid plaques that are associated with Alzheimer's, which is kind of weird. When I used to train clients, I used to work a lot with functional medicine practitioners in conjunction.

And as a trainer, my tools were exercise and diet. And strength training was the most effective thing I could do with a person to see changes in hormones. And it was even before they built muscle. And I want to say this because you're talking about muscle and people think, well, I have to build all this muscle for that to happen. No, just simply sending the signal starts to organize your hormones in a way to build muscle.

And that organization of those hormones is actually the hormone profile we tend to look for. So it's just even the act of doing so that starts to change those things. And I wanna make that point so that people don't think they have to build like 20 pounds of muscle to make this happen.

Well, and you're probably not going to as a woman, you know, be able to do that because just the way that your hormones and your genetics are set up. But I'd love that you make that point because what we are told day in and day out in society is that your body needs to look a certain way. In fact, what we're often told is take up less space. Be quiet, don't ask questions, take up less space, shrink yourself down as much as possible as a woman, which is so bad for our health in the long run. But I love that you say that because It's not about how your body looks.

I talk about that in Is This Normal? You can't look at somebody and know their metabolic health. So there is somebody who might look really thin and they're fitting the societal profile of what's in right now, what women should look like in the moment. And yet, I've had patients where their cardio metabolic profile is so scary. I'm like, oh my God, like we've got to fix all of this fast.

And that is 1 of the ways. I'm like, you've got to start fueling appropriately and putting on muscle. And then you'll have people, you know, people love to hate on Lizzo and her body. And I remember I saw Lizzo in concert, I was in medical school and I saw her in concert. And that woman is like doing pushups on stage while singing, doing high kicks, playing a flute, running around.

And I was just like, I don't even know. Like I was a Nike tester. So I was a shoe tester for Nike during this time. And I would go out to their campus and they would like push me so hard I would almost like throw up. And even I was like, I don't know if I could ever like keep up with Lizzo because like she is seriously like so fit even given how her body looks.

And this is why I'm always very careful to talk about visceral adiposity because being a curvy woman, having a badonkadonk, these kinds of things, these are not problematic. What we see in the research that's problematic is when that fat is packing around the organs. And you can't always just see that in someone. It's not easy just to see. And so to your point, it's so important for people to understand that you don't have to see the change immediately.

And especially if you're someone in your 40s and you start strength training you won't see the change like a 20-something does. Like it's gonna take more time but know that consistency is king or queen in this instance and that is actually making changes internally. Again you can't see it but notice how you feel. How you feel matters so much more than how you look. Are you able, like, are you not dragging in the afternoon anymore?

Are you not feeling these cravings anymore? Are you able to wake up in the morning with energy? Are you noticing that like, despite your doctor being like, yeah, of course your knees hurt, cause you're 40, you're like, no, they're getting, I go, I went up the stairs. I feel like totally fine. These are the things that society is not telling us to measure, but a good practitioner like Saul will tell you to be on the lookout for.

Yeah. I appreciate your approach because I think a big challenge also, especially in my generation and older is that you go to the doctor and you're afraid to question, you're afraid to, you know, to, to maybe counter some of the things or say, well, actually I feel this way because they're like the God. Right. And I think what you're doing is you're arming people with not just information, but the right questions to ask and maybe the right tests to look for so that they can take their health into their own hands. And so that's 1 of the main reasons why I appreciate what you do.

I'm making troublemakers. Like I want everyone be a troublemaker in your doctor's office. If they're just being like, this is normal and passing you off. I don't do lab testing. It won't matter.

Like be a troublemaker and question them because we've absolutely been taught, especially in women's medicine, that you don't question the white coat. You have to question them because they make mistakes. They're humans. Not to mention that like the third leading cause of death is doctor induced because of, you know, issues with medications. I mean, that could be a whole podcast in itself.

So you have to be a troublemaker. You have to ask questions. And that is how I set up. Is this normal? I want you to figure out in real time what's going on for you.

Like, there is like, is it perimenopause? Is it PCOS? Is it PMDD? Like, is it fibroids? Like, you can do that, that quiz and you can figure out, okay, this is what's going on.

You take that same data to your doctor. And when they start to be like, Oh, I don't think it's any of that. And I don't think it could be that. Okay. Well help me understand.

Like I'm showing signs of excess androgens. Like I've got her suitism, I've got acne going on. My periods are irregular. Like let help me understand, like, could this be PCOS? And if you don't think it is, what have you done to rule that out?

That kind of conversation is what needs to happen. It shouldn't, the burden shouldn't fall on the patient, but it's what needs to happen To slow down what, you know, essentially insurance companies and hospital administrators have totally screwed up in medicine, which is packing a schedule of 36 plus patients and expecting that you can give the individualized care that someone needs. It slows the role of the provider. So understand your doctor is not your enemy. They are trapped.

They are trapped in a system often that's making it impossible for them to do the kind of job they always dreamt of doing. And you need to approach with curiosity and kindness so that you can get them thinking, get them critically thinking about your case and get exactly what you need from that doctor's appointment. We also know like doctor's visits aren't cheap. Healthcare in America really sucks when it comes to insurance. I know in Canada, they're waiting like 6 months to see a gynecologist.

And you also as a patient don't have time to feel sick. And I think this is so important to understand. We only get so much time on this planet and we should not spend a minute of it feeling unwell if we can avoid it.

Excellent, well thank you so much for coming on the show again, Jolene. This is awesome, I can't wait to have, my wife really loves your stuff, so I'm gonna send this book to her. Aw. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you coming on.

Yo, thanks so much for having me. I always love talking with you guys. You have the best questions. This is like 1 of the best podcasts out there, so keep doing what you're doing.

Thank you. And next time you're around in California, please come visit us.

I know. I need to make a trip.

Please. Please. And good luck with everything.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jelena.

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