#28 Understanding Your Hormones with Dr. Carrie Jones

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists, and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi, and welcome. I am very excited to introduce you to Dr. Carrie Jones today. She is a naturopathic doctor and has also masters in public health and is the medical director at Precision Analytical, which is the lab that has created and offers what we know of as the Dutch urine hormone test. So welcome. Kerri, thank you so much for being here with me today. Thank you.

Dr. Donnie. I was so excited because you and I have known each other for a while, so I was really pretty thrilled when you reached out about your podcast.

Oh. And you know, you and I both love to talk about and think about hormones and understanding the body, Right. And, like, how do all these hormones work? What are they up to? I mean, what. By the way, what got you headed in this direction in your life?

I grew up wanting to go. I wanted to be a conventional, either pediatrician or OB gyn, And I actually got sort of disillusioned with their approach to medicine. And so I was in the. I was in Ohio, and I moved to the West Coast. I moved to Oregon, to Portland, Oregon, found naturopathic medicine and went, oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And I continued on, though, in gynecology and hormones and endocrinology with a naturopathic spin to it. Did my residency in hormones and women's health, and it's just continued because I find so many women, as you do, struggle with hormonal imbalance. And then their partners oftentimes get sent in, too, because we help them. And they're like, can you help my partner? Can you help my husband, my wife? We're like, yeah, absolutely. And so hormone imbalance seems to be pretty rampant, and it can be tricky to understand as you know, if you don't do it day in and day out. And so I just love it. I love to explain and to educate like you. And so that's what kept me in it.

Oh, it's awesome. And like you're saying, I mean, for a long time, we didn't have this test. Like, I mean, I've been practicing for 20 years, and for most of that time, If I wanted to understand a patient's hormones, I would need to do a blood test. And of course, we still, of course, look at a patient's symptoms and what's going on in their body and how they're feeling. So. But before, we had to much more rely on that because this test didn't exist. And so I always, each day, I'm so grateful that the Dutch test exists because it's so valuable. And so I want to talk more about that today. Like, why is this test so valuable? Who would it benefit? If you're listening, so that you understand, could this be a test that would be helpful for you in solving the mystery of your health or the mystery of your hormones? Because they really, like you said, they can feel like a mystery. And I think it's because, I mean, part of that is kind of the sense of medicine is it almost feels like our bodies are mysteries. But as you and I know, when you really get down to it and understand the science, it doesn't have to be such a mystery. We can actually understand the biochemistry, understand how these hormones relate to each other, and then we can implement dietary changes, nutrients, herbs that can actually help rebalance these hormones. So I always say I like to do tests where we can do something about the results. And that's one of the reasons I love this test, is because it gives us information we can do something with.

Yeah, I agree 100%. Yep.

Now, like before when we wanted to test estrogen, progesterone, let's say we would do a, say 24 hour urine. Now, some practitioners will still do 24 hour urine, but that's a pain to try to collect your urine for 24 hours. It's not enough to, you know, get our lunch in and get enough sleep, let alone collect urine for 24 hours, you know, so that's one of the key differences here, is that we're talking about a urine test for hormones. But you don't have to do 24 hour urine. You're doing what they call dried urine samples. Maybe talk that through. Like, how was it that that was even developed as a possibility and what kind of difference that makes?

Yeah, so as you said earlier, so blood testing is sort of what obviously started first. We still use it all the time. It's gold standard for a lot of different markers. And then what happened is we wanted to test cortisol more. So then saliva testing became really popular because nobody wanted to get their blood drawn four or five times in the day. That sounded awful. Susan was created to still give you hormone markers like estrogen and progesterone, but also be able to do it at home and give you throughout the day measurements, cortisol throughout the day, because you could spit in a tube and that's pretty straightforward. But then what happened was we have 24 hour urine, like you're saying. But research has shown us that a lot of people miss one or two of their collections in that 24 hours. You know, if you have to pee really bad and you're at work and you're like, oh my gosh, I have to get my jug awkward, like I'm go and hope for the best. And so it's not true. 24 hour or you're at home or you know, like just like a lot can happen to get in the way. So the creator of the Dutch test, Martin Newman, came up with dried urine. So instead of collecting in a big orange jug all day, you urinate on these pieces of filter paper four or five times during the day. Even simpler than saliva because there's no spitting. A lot of women especially have maybe urinated on a pregnancy test or an ovulation predictor kit. And so we're kind of used to, we've peed in a cup before and so it's pretty straightforward. And you just pee on these little strips in the morning, two hours later, around dinner, before bed. And if you have insomnia in the middle of the night, let them dry, that's the dried part, and then mail them back to the lab. And so it's pretty easy collection that a lot of people understand. Now, the bonus of it being urine is that you get all your hormones that you're used to. Estradiol, estrone, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol. But we then give you what are called metabolites, which are basically a fancy word for pathways. So you get estrogen, but where is it going? Estrogen goes through three steps to get through detoxification. The Dutch test gives you step one and step two. You have testosterone and you want to understand if that's the reason you have acne on your jawline or baldness at your temples or hair growth in places you don't want. But if your testosterone is normal, let's say in the blood work, and yet you still have all the symptoms. Doing the urine testing gives you that extra added information of, oh my, testosterone is normal, but what I make is going down the pathway that causes acne and hair loss and all this stuff. And so you get this extra, like an onion. We just peel away the top Part and we're like, okay, here's where it's going. Because those pathways are active and can cause symptoms.

And we can pick up on that in the urine in a way that we don't. We can't get in a blood test because I still do see that, like, a lot of patients will be having their doctors monitoring. And of course, yes, you can do, you know, say with estrogen, a quick. Or cortisol, you know, or testosterone, you can do a blood test, but you're going to get just that moment in time, whereas you're saying, like with cortisol. I think it's the only hormone that starts out, it should be higher in the morning and gradually decreases through the day. So if you only have your blood drawn in the morning, you're not going to know what the rest of the.

Day looks like, right, as Dr. Stephanie Estima says. So blood testing is like a snapshot, a picture, whereas the urine hormone testing gives you. It's like a video. You can just get more context, more movement, more information to pull it all together, which is nice because nobody wants to get their blood drawn as soon as they wake up. And then right before you go to bed, you would have to go to a lab, get your blood drawn, come home, and it doesn't work that way.

I find too, that the reference ranges are off. Like when we're looking at a reference range for estrogen, often in the blood work, the reference range is really broad, so it's easy to fall in the normal range and then it ends up being dismissed a lot of times, like, well, it's in the normal range. But when we look at, say, estrogen and these other hormones on the Dutch panel, you guys give it to us on the report, like a little speedometer. And so we can see this nice range and we can see it relative to the other hormones. So you're getting more of a dynamic look at the hormone level instead of just this, oh, you're in the reference range kind of a look.

And we also give on it for the estrogen markers and for the progesterone. We also give you a menopausal range, which is important to know if you are menopausal. You can hear my dog barking, hi, doggy.

So we give you. It's important to know if you are menopausal, but it's also important to know if you're not menopausal, but you're in that range. And I can say to somebody, you're in the menopausal range, but yet you're 27. This is not right. We need to figure this out and get you out of that menopausal range. So it is a good visual for a lot of women and even men when they look at their testosterone. We give you ranges, but also age ranges. So when you have a man, he can see like, ooh, I'm way lower than I should be, or I'm right where I should be, and it's a nice visual for him.

I mean, I really see that that makes a difference in practice when patients can actually see what's going on with their hormones in their body. Because we're so used to kind of being in this ambiguous space of wondering what's going on and not really knowing and seeing a lot of practitioners that are not really giving us answers. And here's a test that can just kind of turn the lights on, so to speak. And you just can see, oh, that's where my levels are. And like you said, you can see the metabolites, too, where you can see how those hormones being processed. I mean, a lot of times I like to clarify, like, you would think that all we would care about would be the production of estrogen, but no, in the case of estrogen, the exit pathway of estrogen is also huge. Like, you might have completely normal production of estrogen, but if it's not exiting in a smooth fashion, that can cause a lot of symptoms. So I just want to transition a bit and talk about, like, what are some of the. You've already mentioned some of the health issues that this test can help.

In terms of, and we'll come back to men as well. But for women, like, along these lines, if we can look at the detoxification pathways, I mean, that can definitely help. One of the areas I specialize in is helping women who have HPV and abnormal Pap smears. And a lot of the research around that can relate to how those women are metabolizing estrogen. Now, for a long time, we would just give dim, which is.

A substance from broccoli extract that help metabolize estrogen. But I find if we can do this panel, then I can find out for this particular woman, is that part of the issue that's causing her to be susceptible to HPV and abnormal Pap smears. So I can really dial in her protocol based on her hormones and her detoxification pathways.

Right.

Have you seen that, too?

A lot less. Potentially a lot less. Supplements. Where is.

If you are a woman or even a man, and you're struggling with estrogen issues. And your practitioner is just like, oh, here's. Here's what I, you know, like, Dan, like, here's all the supplements. I know that, you know, gets rid of estrogen out of the body. Here's liver support. Here's all this, you know, but when you. When you test, I can actually, because I said there's three steps. So if you know which step is broken or slow, or maybe you have all three, but if it's just one step, then I'm like, oh, we just need to hone in right here. Here's the step we need to hone in. I don't need to work on step one, and we don't need to work on step three. It's step two or whatever it is.

And I think patients are like, it's worse than the cost of the test because you're saving. You're not spending all this money on extra supplements that you may not even need for your body, right?

And sometimes it can make you worse. So we're trying to be individualized, right? We're trying to cater to the person and what they're going through. And in some cases, though, people mistakenly think, like, well, is it possible you can have too much detox? I'm like, you can, because you want all the steps to be open. But if you are. If you are just gearing up, ramping up the first step as fast as possible, as hard as possible, because you don't know any better, but your step two and your step three are clogged or slow, then your step one just builds up and it builds up and it builds up and it builds up and it has nowhere to go, right? So just like a bathtub that's about to overflow, it's still going to. You know, you're going to get water everywhere and ruin your bathroom and ruin the floor. It does the same in your body. You have to be very careful. So. So I say to people, you can maybe get away with it for a little while, but the body is going to push back. And I've had so many women that will say that was me. Like, I was taking all this estrogen support thinking. I just read it online, I read a blog article about it. I saw it on Instagram, and I was taking all this stuff and I started to feel worse. Like, I started. It helped for a minute. And then like, oh, I got so much worse.

Yeah, that happened to me. Oh, my gosh. I was, you know, I wish this test existed way back then when I was really struggling, because, you know, I was the one where they're like, oh, just take all these B vitamins and herbs for the liver. And I was worse. And I was like, I didn't know what to do then, you know, but if this test had existed, it would have made a big difference. Then I would have been able to see, oh, this is where the slowdown is or the traffic jam. And now I can address that specifically.

Yeah, it's like menopausal women. Menopausal women already have lower levels of estrogen because they're heading into menopause or menopausal. And then they do all this estrogen clearing stuff. And some of it, like dim, will lower estrogen out of circulation. So I would have menopausal or perimenopausal women say to me, well, I read this blog about dim and I took a bunch of dim and now I'm having hot flashes and night sweats and my joints hurt and brain fog. Like, well, you're clearing your estrogen out way too fast. Like you sped up the process.

We approach it differently when you're perimenopausal and menopausal. So you can do more harm than good.

No, it's so true. And I've really now come to recommending that anyone who's perimenopausal, even.

Postmenopausal, especially if you're thinking about doing hormone replacement, and this test is essential, I would say, on at least an annual basis.

Then, because we want to also help with the metabolism of these estrogens in order to prevent breast cancer.

Right? Yeah. Or at least lower the risk. Right. Mitigate. Mitigate the risk as best as we can, as best as we know how.

Yeah, I mean, I hear you. Because it's, of course, with breast cancer, there's so many possible variables and contributors, but one that we can, you know, pay attention to based on this test is the metabolism of the estrogens. And if estrogens. Sometimes I describe it like there's these three possible pathways in the, in this, in the phase one of detoxification, and that's influenced what your body's going to do is influenced by your genetics and it's influenced by your stress exposure and your toxin exposure, but you don't know. So the only way to know is to do this test and see, hey, how am I metabolizing estrogens? Is it going down a pathway that's going to be more toxic and potentially damaging to DNA or cells? And then if you know that, again, I don't know Who. I don't know if you know who the amazing, brilliant person is who figured out broccoli extract and sulforaphane.

Sulforaphane, yeah.

Yeah.

Who would think that this substance in broccoli, I mean, there's dim we talked about from broccoli, but there's also sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts. And it helps with protecting us from these toxic estrogen metabolites. I mean, that. Right. Like, when you think about it, like, how do they. How did they figure that out over any other substance, but somehow they figured that out.

Yeah.

We can use a natural substance to help protect ourselves, but knowing that you need that to begin with, we can see in this urine test.

Yeah, absolutely. I took my sulforaphane this morning. Usually I either take it or I grow my own sprouts. I've started doing that, which is so much fun.

So women will say, can I just. Can I eat? Can I eat my way to help? And I'm like, in some regards, you can. You can grow broccoli sprouts. Not the full broccoli stalk, you know, that you would. Florets and stuff, but the sprouts. I said, you can totally grow organic broccoli sprouts and, you know, chew them, chop them, put them in your smoothies and your salads, eat them as a snack. You know, like, you can absolutely eat your way to improving your estrogen and getting that sulforaphane. Yeah.

That's amazing. And I. And definitely, if anyone's listening, who's using any kind of hormone replacement therapy, whether oral or transdermal or even vaginal estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, this test is essential because it's such a great way to monitor your doses and to. Right. To make sure you're in a safe range in the fact that this test can be done while you're using hormones. Like some tests, if you just say, did blood work, it might show your estrogen's high, but that's just because you're taking the hormones. It's not very helpful for fine tuning the dose.

Yeah. And where it's going. Right. Where maybe it's. I mean, it may be high because you're taking it, but it may also be high because you can't get it out. So it's just recirculating. And so that's nice with question marks.

But with this test, it's eliminating those question marks.

Right, Right. Helps you fine tune more. Yeah.

So I think that that's a really important time for the test. But I also use this test for. Definitely for pms, pmdd, pcos, fertility. Did I tell you that? I've seen this happen several times. I don't know if you've noticed this, but when a patient does the test, somehow just the fact of doing the test, they're more likely to get pregnant.

Yeah. It's kind of a joke sometimes for women.

Yep. They'll spend the money, they'll get the test, they'll be mid collection, they'll collect, they'll mail it in, and then we'll get this call, you know, my gosh, I found out I'm pregnant. Like, can you not run the test yet or can you hold it?

Yeah, well, because it's. I think sometimes it's the intention, you know, like now you're paying attention to the days of the month and when you're ovulating. Because when you're doing a test, say with someone who's menstruating or infertility, you know, fertility, we would collect usually about day 20.

Right.

I think, which is after ovulation. So you kind of have to know, when was I ovulating? When am I going to collect the test? And so I think maybe just. Just bringing attention to it makes it a little more likely you're gonna conceive.

But even without that interesting little thing that can happen, it can make such a big difference in fertility just to again, understand. I mean, you also offer a cycle mapping option too. Right? Tell us about that.

That's probably my favorite test for a woman who is cycling, especially if she's having symptoms throughout her month. So a lot of women will say, I have symptoms close to my period. But other women will go, I have symptoms around ovulation. Or I'm very. You know, I have symptoms on day 8 and day 10 and day 13. But it's hard. You don't want to blood test all of those days. I mean, that's a lot. So we offer the cycle mapping, which is where you do one urine test every morning, pretty much every morning of your cycle, and then we graph it out for you. So we see the hopeful rise and fall of estrogen and the rise in fall of progesterone, and then we can look for patterns, we can see what's going on. Like, okay, here's where it seems to be the issue. Or, wow, you're not really making that much progesterone. Wow, your estrogen's not getting high enough prior to ovulation. And we can also, for that cycle, we can tell somebody when they ovulated which is because we can see after ovulation is when progesterone rises. And so I can say, oh, this month it looks like you ovulated on this day. And sometimes they're like, I had no idea or that's not what I thought at all. You know, I thought I ovulated earlier, I thought I ovulated later. I'm like, well for this one month I can tell you what you did. And so it can give just that sort of macroscopic overview for people.

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Mean that's again, it can be so helpful I think, to just be able to see it, to have that validation.

And then to be able to have help, you know, like from a practitioner who can help guide you to. I love how you were talking recently about the ovaries and how the ovaries work and you know, and you know, about even the mitochondria. We can talk about mitochondria in the ovaries and mitochondria in the adrenal glands. But.

Give us a little bit of that. Carry science on the.

Well what I was talking about the ovaries is a lot of women don't realize that there's. We have two kinds of cells on our ovaries. So on our ovaries we have all sorts of follicles. That's what contains the egg. And when it's, it's the follicles start to grow, we have a set of cells that make like testosterone and then we have a set of cells that take that testosterone and magically convert it into estrogen. So these two cells make two different hormones, but they rely on each other ovulate. Once you release the egg, those two cells magically convert, like Cinderella, into a third type of cell called lutein cells or your corpus luteum. That group of cells makes progesterone. So women will often write me, and I'm sure they write you and they say, what supplement can I take to ovulate better or to make progesterone? I'm like, well, you have to go back.

Because it takes two cells to make a third cell. So you have to go back and you have to support the cells that make testosterone, because then you have to support the cells that make estrogen, and those two become the cells that make progesterone. So you actually have to support yourself your whole month if you're trying to just affect what happens in the last half of the month. And I think that really surprises women that the magic happens in a domino effect, in a cascade effect. You have to have one before you can have the other. Now, in the cell, though, right? In the cell themselves, where these hormones are made are in the mitochondria. So we all learned in high school, the mitochondria are cellular powerhouses, and they absolutely are. They make our energy, our ATP, but our hormones start here. So the first step to everything is in the mitochondria. Then everybody leaves and goes over to the, what are called the endoplasmic reticulum. And then you become progesterone. You graduate, you mature into progesterone, mature into testosterone, right? Estrogen, and then you go out in circulation. Cortisol is different. Cortisol comes back into the mitochondria and finishes its graduation in back in the mitochondria. Mitochondria are super important to start your hormone production and then to end your cortisol production. And mitochondria are fragile little beings. They're really powerful, but they're really fragile. They don't like chemicals. They don't like to get damaged. Right. They don't like environmental toxicants. They don't like it when you're not moving. They like when you move. They like oxygen. So they don't like when you snore. And they don't like if you have sleep apnea, and they don't like if you're a mouth breather. They like things like red light. So people, you'll, you know, a lot of people are in a red light therapy now. They like cold. They help like cold showers, cold plunges. Some people are into cryotherapy, which is those little sort of cold machines you'll see at biohacker clinics and whatnot to help, to help fortify them and stimulate them. They like exercise and weight training. So there's a lot of things they like and a lot of things they don't like. And so if we can. If we can err on the things they like and avoid the things they don't like, then it can really help hormone production.

I love that, you know, because it also, all of what you were just saying really brings us back to realizing how interconnected our bodies are, you know, because sometimes you figure that, like the. Because we're talking about a menstrual cycle, that it's all located in the pelvic area or that it's, you know, that it's only that time of the month. But it's actually like everything that we do every day is going to influence these mitochondria and it's going to influence ovary function, and for men, going to influence testes function too.

And it's the same for men. Men, testosterone is made in the mitochondria, so the same thing apply to them as well when it comes to testosterone production. And with men, as you know, it's like sleep. Sleep is critically important for women for a lot of reasons, but for men, for testosterone production, there was a small research study, but still a research study on humans, and they took men. I want to say it was nine men, but it could have been even. I think it was nine. Anyway, so a small study, but still they shortened their amount of sleep to five hours. They just kept them at five hours of sleep. And they found that over a very quick period of time, their testosterone production went down. And I was like, I know a lot of men that only get five hours. I know a lot of men that are up gaming. I know a lot of men who are entrepreneurs and up late. I know a lot of men who can't sleep. I know a lot of men who are on their phone, on their computer, on their tablet, on their tv. They're sucked into Netflix. Men who are working second shifts. Second, second shift, right. So they're up later and then going to bed, but maybe they have to get up in the morning. So they really are only surviving on five hours of sleep. And it's going to, if it's not currently over time, going to affect your testosterone.

And it's sleep. You know, everyone's like, oh, give me testosterone. What herb can I take? What nutrient can I take? You know, what can I do to, like, pump up my testosterone? I'm like, you just told me you get four hours of sleep every night.

Like, start there.

That's where it's made. It's made in your sleep. It's not made in the day, it's made when you sleep.

Wow. Yeah, that's something. I mean, and just eye opening to think what a difference we can make with our hormones with. Yeah, just.

Eight hours of sleep. And I, I love too, like, I've been really trying to get myself. I see you all the time with your blue light blocking glasses on to help with your melatonin production at night. But, you know, I've been trying to get myself to go to bed earlier because of trying to get. Give myself more time for deep sleep, which happens more in that before 3:00pm, right. Like earlier in the, in the night. So, but that's my challenge. I tend to want to get more stuff done before I go to sleep. And I have to be like, no, Donnie, you need to go to bed.

Which is the. It's the entrepreneur and it's the parent curse, so to speak. Right. The entrepreneurs and parents.

It's the second wind, right? Their kids go to sleep or they've had dinner and they've, you know, they're like, okay, now I need to get the rest of this stuff done. I'm going to get back on my computer. I'm going to do these things. I'm going to knock this off my checklist before I go to bed. And it winds them up. And for a lot of people then they struggle to wind back down and they don't sleep nearly as well as they think they do. Or they struggle to fall asleep, or they wake up early because their mind is going again. They were stimulated too late. And so I'm equally as guilty. I mean, don't get me wrong, but it is hard. It is hard trying to retrain. Like, hey, look, in the evening, I do need you to wind down an hour or two before bed. I need you to get off your computer. I need you to, you know, not be even. Even with all the, everything happening in 2020, you know, Netflix and, you know, Amazon prime and whatever. Everybody's up watching all these shows because they're work from home, their kids are home, everybody's home. And what are they, what are they watching? They're watching like murder mystery stuff. Like all these shows that came out that were, you know, kind of, they're like, who done it and solve it and, you know, all these crazy things.

That's what my daughter wants to watch. Yeah.

And they're like, I can't sleep. I'm like, of course you can't sl.

And you reminded me that this panel, your panel, I've found it very helpful for my patients with insomnia who've been trying to solve insomnia because yes, we can look at the estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, but we can also measure melatonin levels in the urine. And let's talk more about melatonin and cortisol.

Yeah. So melatonin is like the moon and cortisol is like the sun. So we want melatonin at night and we want cortisol in the day. And so melatonin is, believe it or not, it's primarily made, well, you know, this, it's made in your gut. But it's the pineal gland that up in our brain that makes melatonin that helps with our, what we call a circadian rhythm. So up in the morning, down at night, light, dark. It's that light, dark cycle. So when melatonin starts to come out, about an hour or two before your average bedtime. So you know, so if you go to bed at, let's say between 10 and 11, your melatonin is starting to come out around 8 or 9pm and it generally starts to come out when it gets darker and dimmer. Therefore, at night we want to dim our lights. We don't want bright lights, we don't want blue lights. We don't want, you know, our 55 inch screen TV showing us the scary movie that's bright and flickering because that tells the brain, be active, keep cortisol up, right? And so melatonin goes, okay, get suppressed and cortisol stays up. And then we struggle with sleep. So we need melatonin. Melatonin is our onset sleep hormone. So to fall asleep, not necessarily to stay asleep. If you're struggling to fall asleep, then you're the person who is going to need the blue light blocking glasses. And you will need to get off your phone or your computer TV about an hour or two before bed. You're going to need to wind down.

Give the signals to your body and your brain for the behavior that you want it to do.

You know, exactly. Read a real book, not your tablet, you know, and you know, or, or med, do some meditation, journal, talk to your family, you know, do, do easy stuff around the house. You know, like a lot of times as I'm like getting ready to go to bed, you know, I may.

You know, like clean, you know, like, not organize like extra. I'm trying to think of the word. I like putter. Like I putter around my house, you know, I like put the piles together and you know, I like refolds.

Just this one more thing.

I. I know, but it's just, it's just like numb my. It's just, it's an easy routine for me. Like I'm going to, I make tea. I just get like, I set my stuff out for the next day. I let my dog out at night, you know, like, I kind of just have these slow routine stuff that I do to get ready for the next day and wind down, come upstairs for bed. I'm not, I mean, I am, I have been guilty of. Don't get me wrong, but I'm not like rushing to finish stuff on the computer, you know, like paying bills and getting stressed out. And I don't have every light on in the house. My husband loves all the lights on in the house and it drives me nuts. And then he can't figure out why he can't sleep. I'm like, because you have bright light all the time. So we are compromising on that routinely. So as I tell people, I'm like, well, tell me about your wind down routine. And don't you find it so amazing when people.

Stop and think, like, what do I do before bed? Oh my gosh, you know, like, I'm kind of a crazy person and running around and stressing out and doing this. And it's way harder for the mamas, you know, I mean, I'm not, I'm not dissing the dads, but for like, the moms tend to be the caretakers. And so now with school at home, you know, it's a lot where moms are like, oh, crap, you know, I have two kids or three kids or four kids. It's more on their plate and their home. You can't send them off to school to get stuff done in your day. And maybe you're also running a business or working or you're working from home. And so it's a lot. And so they use that time at night to.

No, I'm finding it to be a really important time to do this panel because the stress has shifted in our life. Our daily routines have shifted. And interestingly, the patients of mine who've been working with me for a while and we worked on like, maybe in the past they had a low melatonin or high cortisol at night and they corrected it and you know, through our work together, and then now with all these different things changing, they'll call me and they're like, oh my gosh, Donni, I can feel it happening again. And we recheck and sure enough, we can see that cortisol going up. And so we go in the evening, right. So we can talk about that more like when, if we see cortisol high in those evening samples, we know that your body's trying to help you out to deal with something. Because normally as that melatonin goes up, the cortisol goes down, like you said. I like how you said that. The moon and the sun.

Yeah, I haven't seen that for years and years and years. Cortisol is like the sun. Melatonin's like the moon. But you can force flip it, you know.

You can mess it up. You can force your cortisol to be sunny and keep going, you know, but then you're going to struggle, you're not going to sleep.

And then a lot of times it's, you know, you're waking up in the morning tired. Because now, because you really want our cortisol to be high in the morning. Talk about the cortisol awakening response. Because that we can also see in your panel.

Right, See it in the panel. And what's even better is that much like the wind down routine we've been talking about addressing, the cortisol awakening response is oftentimes free or very cheap. And this is what people like. They want things that they can actively input into their lifestyle that doesn't cost a lot of money. And it's pretty easy to do. So first, let me start with what it is. We call it the car, the cortisol awakening response. So when you are in bed, as you get closer to your wake up time, your brain is telling your adrenal glands, like, now, can we make cortisol now? Now, Now, Right.

Like kids on Christmas now.

And the adrenals are like, no, not yet. Not yet. He or she hasn't opened their eyes. Once you open your eyes because your alarm went off or whatever light comes in, light tells you, you know, like, oh, it's morning. Light comes in and your brain goes, now. And the adrenals make a lot of cortisol very quickly. In normal amounts, everyone's like, high cortisol, that's bad. It's supposed to go up like a mountain. Very quickly. In 30 minutes you hit this peak and then it starts to decline. Why does it go up very quickly to a peak in 30 minutes? Because in 30 minutes, think about caveman days, think about survival. You wake up in the morning and the body's like, all right, I need to get you alert. I need to reduce your inflammation. I need to help you get going. I need to get your butt out of bed because you could get eaten. And I need to help your blood sugar management because you've been fasting all night and I don't know when you're going to eat breakfast or if you're going to eat breakfast. That's what it does. It's all protective. It's all normal. It's all important for the body.

Love it. I love it.

We have a cheater question. This is my cheater question. I've been asking forever. How long does it take you to get going in the morning? How long does it take you to feel alert? Right. Most people tell me, well, it takes me about two hours and two cups of coffee. And I'm like, well, your awakening response kicks off in 30 minutes. So I know you have a low, slow awakening response and you're reliant on coffee. Whereas other people say, well, I wake up stressed out. I wake up anxious. I wake up hyper vigilant. I wake up with my heart racing like, okay, your mountain is a little too high. You do go up to Kilimanjaro as opposed to where I live. We have like Mount Hood, which is.

Where your parents live, right? Mount Bachelor. So we like a better mountain. So we want you to be in an appropriate, healthy range. And the great thing is all of this is dependent on. What did I say? Light. Light. And so what I tell people is when you wake up, don't grab your phone. Not that light. We want full spectrum light. We want sunlight. We want a full spectrum lightbox. We want a full spectrum alarm clock. So open your blinds, open your window. Get this. Oh, just knock my table open. You know, go outside for a couple minutes, don't look at the sun. Let's not blind ourselves and burn the retina, but just go outside for a couple minutes, get some of that sunshine in. And if you wake up and it's still dark out, consider buying like a 20 or $30 light box on Amazon. I have no affiliation. I just got online and found one that I liked. Some people like them that clip to their computer. Some like them that stand on like a box, that stand on their desk. I have that kind. My best friend has the alarm clock kind. So as her alarm, as her wake up time gets closer, it starts. The full spectrum light starts to glow and fill the room. So everyone's different. So I say, do that in the morning. And that can really help Stimulate an appropriate response, and it can take a couple weeks to reset yourself. But, man, the feedback I get from people. I've been lecturing about the awakening response for years now. And the feedback I get from people is, wow. Since I've started implementing that, I didn't even think. I just grabbed my phone in the morning and now I open my blinds or I sit outside, especially in the summer, like, it makes a huge difference. I'm like, I know. And the why? Because people like, well, why? So we have these genes in our brain called, appropriately called clock genes, like your clock on your wall, right? And they help us determine our rhythms in our day. So they help us figure out morning, noon, and night. It helps how our body kicks off in a rhythm. They are very, very, very, very, very triggered and reset and censored by light and dark. They're not. They're not asking for ashwagandha. They're not asking for B vitamins, they're not asking for sugar. Right. They're not asking for hiit training. They're asking for light and dark. So I'm like, well, give them what they want. Give the genes what they want. They want light in the morning and dark at night. And so. And that's pretty free.

It really is amazing when you think about, you know, how our bodies are so responsive and yeah, it can be. It doesn't have to be that complicated. But the thing is just prioritizing it, right? To realize, oh, this is going to make a difference. Now, how do I prioritize that in my day to make that purchase and when I wake up to remember to make that decision?

But I think that it's so amazing to just also see how our bodies are so responsive to nature and our surroundings, you know, and to just realize that to go, wow, light and darkness also plays a role with the ovaries and ovulation.

Yep, 100%. And I tell people even our bigger cortisol circadian rhythm, so up in the morning, down at night, that rhythm is our master rhythm. Those clock genes are our master rhythm. We call it the pacemaker. And so every single other gland in your body has baby clock genes in them, mini clock genes in them, and they all, they all, like, answer to the main clock genes in your brain. So I tell women, if your cycle is really irregular or off or you're not feeling it, the rhythm is crazy. How is your actual rhythm? Are you sleeping? Are you using light in the morning and dark at night? Because if your main rhythm is working, it just helps more all the rhythms underneath it, including your ovarian rhythm, your ovulation rhythm, your period rhythm. And now, now in 2020, I'm sure you are getting the same feedback I'm getting is, women are going, kerry, what is wrong with my cycle? I didn't ovulate or I'm four days early. I'm seven days late. I skipped June. I've never skipped a cycle. Your rhythm is completely off. 2020 is like, can we just hit do over? That would be amazing. Our sleep is off. Our stress is through the roof. Everything is different. Our normal is not normal. And so our body's going, well, this seems like a threat. I'm not going to make your cycle. Like, why would I want to actively help you try to get pregnant? Not that you're trying to get pregnant, but that's the sensors in the body.

Yeah. So what happens is the body's like, oh, not this month. No ovulation for you. And this was me the month of September. My September was very stressful and my body was like, well, no ovulation for you. And I feel it.

Not that I wanted to get pregnant, but I sure wanted my progesterone, I tell you what. And so as a lot of women, if we can. So I'm working very hard to keep my master rhythm. So I'm.

We were talking beforehand, like, I'm trying to go to bed at a decent hour. I'm trying to wear my, I'm wearing my blue light blocking glasses at night. I'm winding down and I'm getting up and I'm going outside with my dog or I'm using my full spectrum light box because if I set that rhythm, I'm hoping I will calm my nervous system and then retrain my reproductive rhythm.

Oh, I love, I love, and I love how you share, you know, from, you know, what you're doing and showing people that, you know, that it's doable to integrate these things into your life pattern and that it can make a difference and that you can then see the difference in these test results, you know, and to be able to have, you know, that test that can give you that feedback and validation so that, you know you're on the right track. By the way, I always joke because, you know, we refer to it as a Dutch test. Like, you know, and I would say to people, this has nothing to do with the Netherlands, although that would be fine if it was, but it actually comes from Oregon. But do people say that a lot of times?

All the time. And it's even funny when we go to conferences before when we were allowed to go to conferences, especially international conferences, where Dutch people would go, are you testing Dutch heritage? Like, no, it's an acronym dried urine test for comprehensive hormones. Yeah.

So that's, you know, this is the test we're talking about, is the Dutch test. But that's. Yes, the dried urine test. And it's. And you can. We can do different. We can do either just the estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, or we can do just cortisol. DHEA is another adrenal hormone, or we can do all of those hormones.

And so, you know, this is a panel that I offer through my office and with my patients, and I'm also offering to do consultation. So if someone did this panel somewhere else and they're just needing help to understand what to do with the information or. Or say you want to just do this particular panel and meet with me to get, you know, what does it mean? What am I supposed to do? You know, where do I go from here? Then I offer that through my. Through my practice. And I help people all over. I do. I was. I had a virtual practice before 2020.

But I continue to offer a virtual practice, which is so great because this is. This is a test you can do at home. You can mail it in, we can easily get the results to you, and we can discuss it without you ever even having to leave your house. So.

It'S perfect for this scenario where if you're really feeling like you were describing that 2020 threw your hormones for a loop and you're like, how am I going to get this all back on track again? Because another thing sometimes people kind of wonder is if, say, we use some of these, even nutrients or herbs to address hormone imbalance, it almost can seem like, am I masking my hormone function? But I really try to explain to them that our goal is to understand where your body is right now so that we can shift it and that we can actually help the body shift hormone production and hormone balance toward a more optimal range. And then it becomes a matter of how do we maintain that as best as possible over time. And then if it gets thrown out of balance again, at least now you know what to do. What worked the last time to get it back on balance again. Right.

So that when you have this issue again, you can go, oh, this feels familiar. I know what to do. This is what Dr. Downey and I talked about. I'm going to implement it again. And I highly. We at Dutch highly recommend people work with a practitioner because the Full test is six pages long. And it's comprehensive, is in the acronym for a reason. Like, it is really comprehensive. And we've definitely had people who've maybe ordered it themselves thinking, oh, I understand estrogen, or I understand. I've read enough on cortisol to understand it. And our cortisol page is really a lot. We talk about enzymes and we talk about cortisone and we talk about melatonin. We talk about metabolize cortisol. Like some things that are not.

So mainstream on social media and blogs and stuff. People stick to cortisol, but they don't get very deep underneath that. And we're pretty deep. And so.

Then they're like, oh, my gosh, I got my test results back. I don't know what to do. Who do you recommend? And so we're constantly referring to practitioners to review it. So I think that's really important to work with someone like yourself who can one order the tests, decide which one you need, and then what do I do with it once I have the results?

Oh, wow. Well, thank you again so much, Kerry, for chatting with me and doing what you do. You share so much information on Instagram, and I know some people are enjoying hearing the science explained by Carrie as much as I do, then I would encourage them to find you on Instagram. Is there anywhere else you recommend they go to get more information? They can.

Absolutely everything we have on Dutch Test is free. So Dutch test.com so all of our podcasts, like this one, all of our videos about the test, everything, people, you don't have to be a practitioner. You can be a practitioner, but you can just watch and learn more information, which I think you know, knowledge is power, education is power, and. And do it. So check out Dutch test.com okay.

All right, will do. Oh, thank you again so much and I appreciate everything you do and for. And it's just so wonderful to get to chat with you. So thank you.

I know, My gosh, thank you so much, Donni. It's great to see your face.

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