#30 Menopause Support is Possible with Dr. Kyrin Dunston

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 happy to introduce you to Dr. Kiran Dunstan today. She's an OB GYN of 24 years and specializing in functional medicine at this point in her career. So it's really exciting to be able to have her here and share her perspective from being an OB GYN and now specializing in functional medicine. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me, Dr. Donney. So excited to be here with you.

So tell us, like, how did that happen? How did you, what inspired you first of all to want to be involved with women's health and then how did that sort of evolve through your career?

Yeah, so. Well, I, you know, when I had a baby and I was in medical school, that's what got me into ob gyn. I just fell in love with it. And I remember the first time I saw a baby being delivered when I was a med student and I just fell in love with it. So it was a natural progression and I loved doing it. I delivered thousands of babies and I did pap smears and hysterectomies and had wonderful relationships with my patients. And so from everything, from the outside I looked like everything was going great, but on the inside I was really dying. So I got to this place where I weighed over 240 pounds. I suffered with extreme fatigue, so I was generally in bed or working. I had pain in various places in my body on a daily basis, something called fibromyalgia. I suffered with anxiety, depression, my hair was falling out, I had no sex drive, my gastrointestinal tract was in an uproar. I had constant pain and heartburn and then irritable bowel. So I was just, my health was a mess.

You're falling apart, like, and I mean, I know that because I was trained as a midwife. I know that it requires a lot of all nighters. So I start to think, oh my gosh, how many nights did you not get good sleep? And you were working long hours and eventually your body just started saying, I can't keep up anymore.

Yeah, I guess that's what it Was. And you know, in hindsight, definitely. But I thought, you know, my body's a machine. I just need to shove some food in it and sleep sometimes and I should be good. But that wasn't happening. And everything that I knew as a board certified OB GYN to figure out what was wrong and fix it failed. I would run tests and they'd come back, quote, unquote, normal. I'd even go to my internist and she would run tests and they'd come back, quote, unquote, normal. And I think I had checked my thyroid at least 10 times, kept thinking, I have to have a thyroid problem. And it came back, quote, unquote normal. And finally she said to me, you know, stop, there's nothing wrong with you.

Wow.

Stop with the testing. And I remember going home that afternoon and just crying and feeling so hopeless and helpless because here are these great medical minds and they're saying, nothing's wrong with me, but clearly you can look at me and see something's wrong. I look 20 years older than I was. I was 47 at the time. And I felt like a prisoner in my body, just like a stranger in my own skin. And I really got to the point.

You probably were like, I just gotta come up with some answers here. I mean, that's.

Well, I didn't, I didn't think there were any. Is the problem. I thought that I knew everything, right? I thought I knew everything about women's health. So if there's something. So my health is suffering and I can't figure it out, then there's no answer is what I thought.

Wow, that's even scarier to be in like, that, like such a conflict, you know, where you're like, the medicine is saying, I'm normal. I'm a medical practitioner and I agree with them. This looks normal in all my labs, but I can clearly see that I don't feel normal. Wow.

Exactly. So I was really hopeless. And I even thought, you know, if this is what life is going to be, I don't think that I want to live it. But I didn't really have a choice. So I kept putting one foot in front of the other and doing my job. And then through a series of miraculous events, one day I discovered this thing called functional medicine. And it was a patient of mine I had been working with. And she was in her 40s and having, you know, she couldn't sleep. I slept all the time, right. And then she, her mood was. She was having problems with irritability and her hair was falling out. And her periods were crazy. And I tried the usual treatments. My board certification said to give birth control pills, sleeping pills, antidepressant, right fistful prescriptions pill for every ill. And it wasn't working. And she went away. I didn't see her for a year. And she came back. I saw her at the end of the hall and I said, oh my gosh, something's totally different. She was slender and her hair was full and her eyes. I was.

Won't happen. I want that.

That's exactly what I said. I couldn't wait to get her into an exam room so I could find out. So I did. And she said. I said, what did you do? She said, I went and saw this doctor who practices functional medicine.

Wow.

I learned. I had learned about it in this book by Suzanne Summers. And I brought it for you. And you know, I. Clearly, she was a walking billboard. But I took the book home and put it on my nightstand. And I was married at the time. And I said to my husband, I'm not reading this book. It's by Chrissy on Three's Company. Like, I'm a board certified OB gyn. What's she gonna teach me? And then he says, yeah, she was a Playboy bunny too. And I said, oh, for sure. I'm not reading it. So it just sat there for months.

Donnie, it's just this conflict. Probably because what you and what was you were being presented with weren't matching. So you're like, how can I bridge this? How can I? You know, what am I gonna do?

How am I gonna learn from Chrissy everything about health? When I went to school for all these years, it was what I call contempt prior to investigation. So for a long time, that's a good thing. I wasn't even willing to open the book. But then one Saturday, I was in my bed in my pajamas. Cause that was my Saturday position. And my kids came in and they said, we're going to the movies with will be back. They didn't even bother asking me because they knew the answer is always no. Mom's gonna work and she's gonna be in the bed. So I said, let me pick up the book and look at it so I can check it off my to do list and give it back to her and say thank you very much. Right? But then the strangest thing happened. It was her interviewing all these scientists and doctors in this field I never heard about, talking about tests I never heard about.

But.

But based on everything I learned in medical school, all the biochemistry, physiology, and how the Body works. So I knew that. But why didn't I ever hear of salivary cortisol testing? Why didn't I ever hear of salivary hormone testing? Why didn't I ever hear of these things? So before long, I'm reading Suzanne's book like it's the Da Vinci Code.

I finished it that day right when the sun went down. And I had this epiphany and this hope that I hadn't had in a long time. Oh, my gosh. What if I don't know everything? What if there is more to healing the body? And I made a commitment right there. I'm like, I'm going to learn everything I can about this, and if it works, I'm going to help my patients who are suffering just like I am. So that's what I did. And I just. I actually started working with a naturopath. And we started with simple tests. Didn't know I was doing the wrong thyroid tests and didn't know I was reading them the wrong way. And she showed me, oh, you're reading them. Those aren't the right tests. You need, you know, free T3, need all this other stuff. And when we get the results, I immediately think, oh, they're quote, unquote, normal. She says, no, you're not reading them the right way. You're looking for normal, which is defined by sick people. Do you want to be sick? No. So you got to read them. Optimal function. Oh, my gosh. I have low thyroid. I knew it. Then she had me do sex hormones. I had low progesterone. Well, I'm an OB gyn. And the standard is we don't have any standard of care for checking women's hormones, which is insane. What else, Doctor?

Yeah, but would the standard be that there's no way to check them? Like, it makes no sense.

They say we don't have any normal values, which is kind of bs.

Yeah.

And so I checked them, and I was low progesterone. So those are the first two things I found. Then I had some high inflammatory markers and a few other things. So I started working with that right? Vitamins, minerals, herbs, botanicals, lifestyle. Started feeling better, started having more energy. And then I discovered. So I started going to conferences. I was like, there's something to this. Started going to conferences, learning. I learned about salary, cortisol, Immediately ordered the test, did it. Oh, my gosh. I was a flatline.

Oh, my gosh, it was low. I bet, like I said, after all those years of all that stress, your adrenals were probably like, forget it. We're done.

They were. They were so done. Like, I saw that. I said, I can't even believe I'm alive, actually. But I didn't have a disease. And nobody's ever said, check your cortisol. I mean, I didn't have Addison symptoms or Cushing's in that top or bottom 2.5%. So then I, you know, changed. Even added other things to my regimen. And then I went to another conference and I learned about functional stool testing.

I love it.

And food sensitivity testing. And then it was like someone popped a balloon. And I. The weight just started melting off and my energy just started blossoming.

Your whole body shifted. Wow.

Everything. So my whole journey was about two years. I lost about £100.

And had more energy than when I was 20. Hair growing and long off. Prescription medications for anxiety and depression.

Gut happy and quiet. I used to even kind of look at my stomach sometimes and go, like, is it there still? It's so quiet and it's going every day.

I mean, what's it look? Something feels like it's missing, but it's because it's working, because it's work.

It was. Yeah, it was amazing. Felt so good in my own skin and just had so much energy. And of course, then my patients see me changing, so they grab me, what are you doing? Yes, what are you doing? I want that. And so I started doing this work with them. So I discovered functional medicine in 2008, started doing it with them, and then I quickly realized I can't do a functional medicine visit in my regular GYN practice, where I see six patients an hour because it takes an hour at least.

I actually had two days a week. I was doing functional three days a week gyn, and then it just got to this point where I was telling all my GYN patients, well, my board certification says I need to give you this birth control pill and all these pills for everything you've got. But that's not what you want. You want to come see me on Mondays and Wednesdays and we'll talk for an hour, and we're going to test your hormone levels, we're going to do salivary testing, and we're going to treat you the root cause. I have never met an intelligent woman who, when she heard the difference, well, do you want to mask your symptoms with band aids and maybe have worse symptoms down the line, or do you want to identify the root causes and treat them so you can not only heal those symptoms, but improve your health and prevent other diseases? Who hasn't said, yeah, I want that? Me, please. So they were all just coming to see me on the functional days, and finally I just said, I'm not in integrity, even having a traditional GYN practice anymore. And so I closed it in 2011, and I've done this full time ever since.

It's amazing. It's so interesting to hear that path. And I think a lot of people listening will really be so impressed about how open you were. I mean, I know at first you were like, how can I even read this book? But then you still were open enough to read the book, and then to think of it from a scientific Europe, scientific background, and say, actually, there's information here that I could learn and apply to help people. And that's quite a transition to go through, I think, when you're based on the training in conventional medicine to.

What I went, you know, I've been doing naturopathic medicine since the year 2000, so it's been 20 years. And I, you know, it's. I agree with you. It's amazing when patients get to experience a difference when they can see, oh, okay, the standard blood work is just based on those conventional medical standards. If that sounds like you and you're being told that it's normal or you're just getting old, or they're. Your results are fine, then do like you know, like you did and look further. Be willing to say, hey, maybe there's a different test. Maybe there's some other practitioner who has answers for me. Because to resolve that, that's it, and that's the rest of your life. It makes me feel sad because I know so much from my experience, I know so much is possible. And from what you shared, we can see what's possible. What. What you proved was possible. You know, that we can. I think of it like when you just mentioned.

Cushing's is when cortisol is way too high. And that's a condition that's established and acknowledged in endocrinology and in medicine. Addison's is the opposite. When the adrenals just stop working completely, but there's a whole range in between where the cortisol may just be not as optimal as we'd like it to be or want it to be needed to be. And that's where functional medicine and naturopathic medicine, that's where we focus. We go, hey, your cortisol is not optimal. There's a lot of things we can do about that, from diet changes, lifestyle, nutrients, herbs. And it's the same for the Thyroid, it's the same for the pancreas. It's the same for the digestion. You'd almost rather not fit the criteria of a standard diagnosis and do something about it before it becomes something, you know, that requires a medication or a surgery, right?

Yeah. Because if you're just waiting till you get symptoms or a diagnosis and then you're masking it with a drug, that drug's just controlling the symptom. It's not necessarily fixing the problem. It's just. It's telling your body, shut up with the messages, number one, because messages from your body that it's not happy. Like, I have a headache, I have a stomachache. These are messages. It's giving you to. Something's not right with me. Can you please pay attention to, I don't know, chemical exposure, what you're eating, you know, how you're living your life, something's wrong, your hormones are out of balance. But we just shut it up with these pills. And so I think it's really important that people know that there's so much more available that's outside your mainstream doctor's office to actually heal you. And I think it's so important to know that it's not only about the symptoms that you have right now, but it's about the trajectory of your health. Because if you're not paying attention to those symptoms and you're just shutting them up with Tylenol or a PPI acid blocker or an antidepressant, you're headed still on the same trajectory. It doesn't stop your trajectory. In fact, it probably accelerates it because it causes its own problems. So your future health is compromised. And so don't be like I was. I had contempt prior to investigation. You know, there was even a doctor in our town who was a medical doctor who practiced functional medicine. But I didn't know that's what it was called then. But we knew he was in a different part of town from us and that he did some weird stuff. And we used to talk about him, all the doctors, you know, he's a quack and say all these things, but did we ever stop and investigate? Maybe he knows something we don't know. Maybe we should talk to him. Maybe we should find out. No, we didn't. So we just pooh, poohed it. And I think I'm glad that I finally. I was willing to open that book and just to look at it. And then I got hooked right away. So if you're listening, and that's you, you do not have to put up with fatigue, sleeplessness, or chronic fatigue where you sleep all the time. You don't have to put up with any of the health problems that you have. There's always a solution that gets to the root cause instead of just band aiding it.

And I love how you're pointing out that by taking care of whatever that is that's going on right now, you're actually benefiting your health for the future. You're preventing heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, osteoporosis. These things all get prevented by these same steps. So it's so powerful. And, you know, you can, you know, once you kind of shift onto that path, you can go, oh, my gosh, this is, this is really going to benefit me now and into the future. And I wanted to take a chance to especially focus on women who are in perimenopause and menopause time of their life, because that's. First of all, that's such a big number of years of women's life. Because, I mean, the way I think of it is that menopause is the average is about 51 years old when the period has been gone for a year.

But it's before that, the perimenopause could even be 10 years long. Right. Is that. Or tell me, is that how you.

5 to 10 years. And some women start as early as 35. And of course, with hysterectomy, menopause can happen way early, right away.

Overnight. Yeah, overnight.

Right. So the symptoms can start very early. And, you know, sometimes the problem is that it's such a gradual change that happens over years. It's not like all of a sudden. So if you have a hysterectomy and your ovaries are removed and you're thrown into menopause, most women say, oh, no, this is not acceptable, and I'm going to do something about it. But because the perimenopause comes over five to 10 years, it's gradual, gradual. And you become normalized to the symptoms. And it becomes, it makes it feel.

Like this is just my. I'm. This is just my energy level. It's lower. I'm, I. This is just the way I sleep or the pains I get or the hot flashes or that, you know. Yeah, it just becomes part of the routine. You don't, you don't. You accept it as. It's just the way it is.

You go to your doctor and they say, oh, it's normal for your age. I don't have a sex. Yeah, it's normal for Your age. I'm gaining some weight. Well, eat less, exercise more. But it's normal for your age. And this is kind of the refrain. And I'm here to say, no, it's not normal for your age. There's a reason it's not your age. It's the imbalances that you're not paying attention to. And so that's what's so important to know.

I think that's. I love that that message is coming from you because you're like, I used to be the doctor saying, this is fine. This is just the way it is. Get used to it. And now you're like, nope, forget that. I'm saying this other thing now because I've not only seen a difference for my patients, but I've seen it for myself. That. That doesn't have to be the story. It doesn't have to be that you live the next however many decades of your life feeling less than optimal. That just doesn't have to be.

No, it doesn't have to be. And you can make a different choice. But, you know, back when I practiced regular medicine all the time, women would come to me, oh, I'm tired. Oh, I want a nap in the afternoon. I can't fall asleep. I just don't feel like myself. I'm just. I feel. Not depressed, but I just don't feel like myself. Or I'm getting anxious and upset for no reason and all these things. And I just would, oh, here's this, here's that. And, you know, I wish that I had been more awake. And I don't know how you can think yourself out of a paradigm that you've been trained in. Is that possible? I think it takes some outcomes force in order to kind of crack the shell of your reality. And, you know, I had a series of. Well, but I actually had a series of events before she brought me the book that made me available for new information.

So it was actually a spiritual awakening that I had. And I started really becoming more aware of just what is the nature of my being and who am I, and what am I doing here? And praying and meditating. After, I would just have these breakdowns. And when do I get a break? When do I get a break? Because I felt so overwhelmed. And then I got a break when a horse threw me off and I hit the ground. My foot hit first, and. And I knew it was broken. I knew it was broken because I had been screaming for a break. And I actually had to take six months off of work. And so, you know, I really didn't have any spiritual training growing up or connection. And so this ushered in this spiritual awakening. Oh, there's. There's some force out there. And, you know, what is it and how does it work? So I think that that was the original cracking open that made me realize I don't know everything.

And so when it came, I was. I think I was willing. I don't know that 10 years before I would have read that book. I probably wouldn't have.

Well, that gives me goosebumps, that story. Because, you know, when you. When you have, you know, sometimes. Yeah. I mean, I can. I imagine that a lot of people listening can probably recognize that they probably have a little voice in their head saying, when do I get a break? When do I get just a little break from this? When can I just have a little space to myself to figure this all out and see if there's another way? And I think a lot of people probably live a lot of their lives. I know I lived a lot of my life that way. Even as a naturopathic doctor, I was getting severe migraines, and I eventually figured out that these migraines were really my body saying, you need a break. Like, if you don't take a break, you're going to have a migraine, which is going to require you to have a break.

And I said to myself, well, I don't really want to be in pain during my little breaks. I need to figure something out so that I can have breaks before the migraine happens.

Like you're describing in your story. This fall happened and requiring you to have a long break from work, from your, you know, your usual practice, that was just long enough that you could kind of go, wait a minute. How can I go back to that? There's got to be some other way for me to do my life. I'm thinking that's probably what your mind was like kind of going, how do I. How. There's got to be another way here. So it makes sense to me then that you're like, okay, now this book is going to come in as an answer.

Exactly. So I had to be. I had to be available for divine guidance is honestly what I think. And then when I was available, it could come in. And so that's why I say a series of miraculous events. Because I don't think if I had been available. I think people listening probably come across things like we're talking about all the time, but maybe they aren't really paying attention and don't listen or aren't Open to information. And they're thinking, no, my doctor would have told me. So that's what I hear from women sometimes. Why didn't my doctor tell me this? My doctor didn't tell me this. Well, because they don't know what they don't know and they weren't trained in that. I don't blame them. That's how I practiced for years. They're doing what they were trained. But there's this whole world like. And if they're listening, they probably know you. So they know that there's this whole world.

Well, and it's sometimes I'll say it like, you know, there's a toolbox, right? The toolbox that doctors are trained to use in their. There's tools in this toolbox. It's going to be prescription medications, it's going to be a procedure or surgery. It's going to, you know, there's certain things in that toolbox. But if say a different, like herbs are not in that toolbox.

Nutrients, very few nutrients are probably in that toolbox. Maybe vitamin D. Right. But very few nutrients. So if you're expecting your doctor, you're going into the doctor and you're expecting them to give you a different something that's not in their toolbox. It just can't happen. And again, like you said, it's nothing negative. It's just to have to know, recognize that and go, wow, there's so many valuable things. I'm right now with a health issue. I'm dealing with finding myself in doctors offices and I'm so grateful that they can help me with procedures and surgeries because we need those things in certain circumstances. But when we're talking about things that really the solution isn't in necessarily a medication or a surgery, then you need to go to a practitioner who has different options in their toolbox. As you mentioned, it's had many names over the years, holistic medicine, integrative medicine. Now in the past decade or so it's being called functional medicine. This idea that we can use food as medicine, we can use clinical nutrition and herbal medicine and help with those situations when maybe a pharmaceutical or a surgery isn't going to be the solution or to solve it for the long term. And so to just recognize that you don't have to choose either or, right? It's not an either or. It's more like going, hey, what is it that I need right now? And where's the best practitioner to help guide me with that? And especially with perimenopause and menopause a lot of it is that situation where, you know, let's talk about those common symptoms. Like, I mean we talked about fatigue and weight gain and hair loss and low libido. Those are, there's also like these hot flashes and night sweats and vaginal dryness. I think those are probably the three I hear about the most.

Yeah, hot flashes, night. So it's the vaginal dryness, urinary incontinence. And a lot of people don't think that new onset gut problems, but that can be associated with menopause. Cognitive problems, difficulty with memory or thinking processes and mood problems are huge. Anxiety, depression. Some women experience their first anxiety attack in perimenopause and menopause. It's not uncommon. And then of course, the sex drive. That's a very kind talk to women all the time, say I don't ever care if I have sex again. I felt the same way before I discovered functional medicine, you know, but it's, it's such a healing part of our health, our sexuality. So it's so important.

Really. The symptoms run the gamut in all the systems in the body. You know, bone loss, really, we start losing bone at age 30, but it's markedly accelerates in the menopause. And this is why the rate of osteoporosis is so much higher in women than in men. And there's so many things that you can do to slow bone loss, prevent bone loss, reverse bone loss naturally, not drugs that are going to build up unhealthy bone so that it's at more risk for fracture. And then, yeah, we talked about the hair loss, skin, nails, I mean it really runs the gamut. And so any woman listening who's in perimenopause or menopause and having any help problems, you need to really find out because most likely there's something to do with the perimenopause and menopause, with the health problem. And a lot of times I've even seen some women with skin changes and are funny rashes that just show up and they get their menopause straightened out and then it just goes away.

Sorry to interrupt you, but I was thinking, you know, sometimes what I'll say to women is anything that you even may have experienced earlier in your life and it went away is really likely to come back when the hormones shift. With peri and postmenopause, another one would be these migraines. I mentioned so many times women will say, oh yeah, I had migraines when I was 20 and now I'm getting migraines again in my 50s. And it's that I think when the estrogen and progesterone shift or drop, really, when the estrogen, progesterone drop, it really shows us that those hormones and testosterone are communicating all over our bodies. Like you say, it shows up everywhere from your head to toe, skin to gut. Because those hormones, they're not. We usually kind of think, oh, those are just kind of like women's hormones to do with the pelvic area, but they're not. They're going around your bloodstream. And when those hormones drop, you could feel it anywhere in your body. Right?

Yeah. I was saying earlier today in another interview that I think it's kind of a disservice that they're calling sex hormones because that's just kind of an ancillary function. Their main function is in. Elsewhere in the body. You have more of those sex hormone receptors in your brain and central nervous system than anywhere else. And you have receptors in every cell in your body for them. So reproduction, sexuality, periods, that's kind of like a bonus function.

And we think of it as it's the sex hormones and that's all it's about, you know, but it's about so much more. They're anti inflammatory, so they help all of our cells to deal with the inflammation that we create. Just every day as our body goes through processes. Just like you create trash in your house and you have to take the trash out every day just from living, right? Your body creates trash. And that trash, oxidative stress, it has to be gotten rid of and it has to be mitigated. Otherwise it can damage your cells. Because if you le the trash in your house, right, if it piles up, it can damage your house. So same thing in your body. So these sex hormones are anti inflammatory and they help to quench some of this oxidative stress that's going on. So they really play a vital function in our maintenance of our health. Promotion of vitality. And, you know, I call it hormonal impoverishment is really what we start going through around the age of 35 to 40. And our hormonal bank account just starts being depleted. And we're all worried about our 401k, but we're not looking at our 401h, which is our health account. Right.

That's a great. I love that. Thank you, Dr. Kiran. Because it's like, yeah, it's like we need to be looking at our health account and going, hey, what's getting depleted here? These Hormones we know for women that estrogen, progesterone, testosterone are going to drop and it's going to influence everywhere else the other hormones in the body. That's why, right? That's why the weight gain happens, is because the insulin function shifts when the estrogen shifts. And so now your body's going to be, you eat the same amount of carbs, you know, all the time, right? Women will say, I'm eating the same thing I was. And those, now your body's deciding to put those carbs around your waist and into cholesterol into, instead of burning it. And you're like, wait a minute, I didn't approve this.

I didn't approve this process change. It's so true though. But you know those seven main hormones I call thyroid, insulin, cortisol, dhea, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and you know, they're signaling each other, store fat. And you're just like, I'm eating the same thing I always ate. And they're just telling all the cells, hey, store that, store that, don't burn that fat, don't get rid of it. And you're thinking, what has happened? But when you restore that communication, hormones are communicators. Then the cells start getting the right signals. They go, oh yeah, our mistake. You can start burning the fat now. You can make energy from the fat. And women just go, oh, I feel like myself again.

Yeah, no, it's, it's so true. And I love getting to break it down like that. And we don't usually realize that all those hormones are communicating with each other because you have to go to different doctors, right? You're going to the different doctor for the thyroid, different doctor for the ob gyn, different doctor for this and that. So it gives this perception that our bodies are separate, have all these separate pieces, but they're not separate. It's all in one body communicating.

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So yeah, with this concept that because all these hormones and communicators in our body are interconnected and that's what's creating the symptoms, we can use that same concept then to reverse the symptoms like we can. The more we can balance each of those hormones, then the symptoms start going away. And it's, I find that it's like, it's just so powerful. It's like this exponentially beneficial effect.

Because sometimes people will say to me, well, I have all these different symptoms and problems, so how am I going to address all of them? It feels like an overwhelming list. But actually, because there's so much inner communication, we can do some of the same things that starts to reverse all of them. So we can, just by making diet changes. For example, you were mentioning inflammation. Right. So the more we make diet changes to decrease inflammation, that has a positive ripple effect on all these different imbalances. And so you start to see that one dietary change influences on all of those symptoms. And so it's not like you have to do something different for each symptom. You can make some major change, you know, some changes in your diet that have a major influence throughout. Or so I'm curious, is that what you find too?

Yeah, absolutely. I think we're trained in mainstream medicine to believe that we have to go to a different doctor for every system and symptom we have. And we're going to take different prescriptions, but that's not creating health. But when you go, those are in the leaves of the branches of the tree, go down the trunk to the roots and you address the root causes, the first of which is hormone imbalance. It's usually simple things that start unwinding that downward spiral that a lot of people feel like they're in as they get older. It's like every day they get up, oh, what now? What's next? Oh, now I have aching knees. Oh, now I have this, right? That's that downward spiral. We reverse the spiral. So just simple things with hormones. And I think what you eat, like you said, Dr. Donnie, is the most powerful hormone balancing tool there is. You can significantly help your cortisol by decreasing the inflammatory load with what you eat and eating less inflammatory foods. You can decrease your insulin by lowering the glycemic index or the sugar load of what you're eating. And then both of those directly affect your thyroid and your cortisol and your sex hormones. So if you just change what you're eating, I've sometimes seen people tremendously unwind that downward spiral, even in a matter of weeks. It's pretty amazing. You know, the body is so resilient.

So I think that what you eat is the greatest tool to help your hormone balance. And it's also the biggest problem that gets us in why we're having problems. And you know, it's funny, I was talking with a patient yesterday, and I had told her initially to stop eating gluten because we were going to do a food sensitivity test. But until then, you know, gluten's off the table, table because it's just so inflammatory. And so we get her also her functional stool test back and she's got this high, high anti gliadin, which is the antibody in the gut for gluten, which means she's been eating it. So I said to her, well, where. Where are you getting gluten? She says, well, I don't eat that much. I. And so what. You know what? I think a lot of people listening and just everybody doesn't really get that it doesn't sometimes take but a little drop of gluten. So the impact of your diet can be huge. And some people say, well, I tried going gluten free, didn't help me. But I find that very few people actually do it so rigorously and completely eliminate it, truly, because they think it's, oh, a little bite here, a little bite there, it's okay. And so I just think that they diet is huge with hormone balance.

It's such a good point. And it's. And I think I agree with you that, you know, it's hard. It's hard to just, I mean, gluten is in all this delicious stuff and it's served right in front of us in restaurants, you know, so it's like it can. To choose to avoid it is really a tough decision. You know, it's like going. You'd have to really be focused on it and decisive about it. And so I, you know, I find it like when people just try to just choose that it's hard to see enough results also, because it's probably not just gluten, it's probably other. But I agree with you in that doing a food sensitivity panel, it just is eye opening and completely shifts it because now you have something on paper that says your body Is this food is causing inflammation, whether it's gluten or dairy or eggs or all of them. But when it shows you on paper, then it becomes more real. Right? And then you can go, okay, now I can see that I need to change my diet and avoid these foods, because I can see the inflammation showing up on the piece of paper. And there's something about that having objective information that makes a difference. And so for those of you who've been saying, well, I'll just try, and you can certainly start that way. You can certainly start by trying to make some diet changes with some of these common inflammatory foods. But if you don't see enough of a difference, then, as we're saying, it's worth it to do tests and work with a practitioner who can guide you to go, what really are we missing here? Because there's got to be something inflammatory that can explain it, and that could really benefit you on gluten. You're right. Is. Oh, my gosh is such a troublemaker. I call it a troublemaker because not only is it inflammatory, but it's causing leaky gut and disrupting the gut bacteria. So it's like, you know, some foods are pretty much just inflammatory, but gluten, it's got all this troublemaking that it's doing. And so it's definitely an important one to consider. So, yeah, I love that. I love that we're getting to make that connection to food and hormones, because I think most people that doesn't wouldn't think that. Right. You wouldn't be like, food got to do with my hormones. But it really does.

It does. And they don't think that because no doctors are telling them that, because I don't even think doctors really understand. I mean, it's just. It's fascinating to me now, knowing what I know, being fellowship functional medicine trained and looking at the training that I had as a regular physician and what's not taught about the interactivity of these hormones. And it's. It's a whole. It's a parallel universe is literally what it feels like. And so, you know, it's like, I want to be in the universe that understands the interconnectivity of all of these things, because once you understand that, you eat that sticky bun, you start off a cascade of events that causes hormonal imbalance. Hmm. That's something I think everybody should know. That's life changing.

It really is. It really is. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And I really want people to know how they can reach you and.

You created a online summit or really like a conference where people can come and learn more about all of this. How. But tell us about it. Yeah, tell us.

Yeah. So it stopped the menopause madness. This Summit, we have 53 experts who are going to give you their top strategies on how to lose weight, regain energy, balance your hormones and your moods, feel sexy and confident, look great and Master Midlife. 34 of them are doctors and all trained in both conventional and holistic practices. So you're going to get the best of everything. It's just an amazing event. Dr. Donna, you participated and gave a great talk about stress and cortisol and really went into detail on how that's interacting with these symptoms women are having at menopause and things to do about it. There's just so much information. I myself am an expert in this field and I learned so much from this summit, from the experts. So I'd love to invite any menopausal women, perimenopausal women, but I would say anyone with a human body could learn so much at this summit because, you know, are there some particular character of imbalances that happen at menopause? Yes, but these different imbalances are also. You have these same hormones, so you need to hear about them. So I invite everyone to participate.

Yeah, even even men? Even before menopause, even.

Yes. If you have PCOS or you're having infertility, there's so much that you're going to learn about. Like I said, we have all the hormones covered, including three talks on estrogen itself. I think we have three people covering cortisol. We've got someone talking about insulin, thyroid, and then we've got people talking about all the other things that go into health that we didn't even get to talk about. So for me, the foundation is hormones, because those are the communicators. And then comes toxicity and gut health. We've got people talking about those. Well, we talked about inflammation, which comes in that category. Got to quench that. And then we've got a bunch of people talking about nutritional repletion, food sensitivities, all of this. And even the mental, emotional, spiritual aspects, the intangibles. What are some unique issues at midlife, but actually they occur at all times.

That you need to deal with. And we have people talking about skin. We have two integrative dermatologists. We have. It's just an amazing event.

Wow, that's so exciting and I'm so proud to be a part of it and so glad to be able to, you know, tell people about it and really encourage you if you're struggling with some of the symptoms we talked about today and you're just kind of thinking, well, maybe there is something else I could be doing. This is the perfect place to learn because you can join online from home and it's free to listen to the main section of the event. And so I'm going to have links. I'll share a link with this recording so that you guys all know where to sign up and where to join. Because this is all happening in November, right? Tell us.

Yeah. November 2 through 6, Monday through Friday. And it's. Yeah. Hope you. Hope you'll join us.

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for being here and for creating that event. I mean, I really see that you have from your life experience. It was so profound for you and it really inspired you to share with others so that, you know, other people don't miss this possibility for their life that they could feel better and change their future health.

You know, I've learned doing this now for 10 years with other people that there's no disease or symptom that can't be improved. And a lot of them I've had people get off prescription medications where they didn't need them anymore for diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, PPIs, autoimmune disease, all of these things. So if you're listening, there's a reason you're hearing us talking about this today. And there's likely something there for you to learn. Like I said, whether you're a menopausal woman or not, there's plenty here. And the question is, are you open to receiving new information or do you. Are you like I used to be and having contempt prior to investigation? So man or woman, you know, at whatever age, I invite you to join us.

Thank you. And thank you for being here again. I you thank been just so much fun to talk with you and I look forward to talking with you more soon.

Yes. Thank you so much, Dr. Donnie.

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