#85 Transform the Way We Support Women 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, everyone, it's Dr. Donnie, and today I want to introduce you to Dr. Kiran Dunstan. She's an OB GYN who has completely shifted her practice in the way she helps women after years doing a conventional OB GYN practice. And she's here to tell us all about how her health transformation actually ended up transforming her practice and what she offers to women now. So thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me. So glad to be here.

It's been so fun to get to know you also through your Stop the Menopause Madness summit. And thank you so much for having me be a part of that and really educating women about what's possible for help during perimenopause and menopause. Right?

Yes. It's so important. There's so much misinformation out there. And really, the quality of health and the deterioration in health, the quality of life that women put up with is amazing. We've come to accept it as the norm that we're going to be tired and overweight and sexless and lose our hair as we age. And I'm just over it. It's not right that we should believe that this is what's possible for us, because exactly the opposite is what's possible. We should be able to be as healthy and vital and vivacious and alive at 60 and 80 and 90 as we were at 20. But most women are not aware of that.

I love that. Just that message and that vision to just be like, wow, that's possible. Wow. We can look at this differently and share with us your story a little bit. Like, how did you come to this realization in your life?

Right. Well, as a traditional OB gyn, I practice typical medicine, which is symptom management with pharmacologic agents or surgery pill for every ill, surgery for every symptom. And when the symptom was squashed, we claimed victory. But if you look at the trajectory of people's health over their lifetime in an industrialized country like America, you see that the majority of us suffer with chronic health conditions throughout our life. We excel at emergency Care. And this is why our lifespan has increased dramatically over the past hundred years because of emergency care. But when, when it comes to actually reversing chronic disease and symptoms, we do fail miserably at it. And this is really where the quality of life hangs in the balance there. And so with my own health, when I hit midlife, I started having, I was always a fairly healthy person. And then I started having multi system dysfunction from my GI system where I all of a sudden had gastritis and irritable bowel. I didn't know if I going to go 10 times in one day or not go for 10 days, have bloating, gassy, pain, reflux. And then I started having problems with my mood and severe anxiety and depression when there was really nothing to be anxious or depressed about. And I was so anxious, Donni, that I would literally visibly be shaking. But there was nothing for me to be anxious about. I started losing my hair. I had no, no sex drive whatsoever. And I heard from women every single day they would say I don't care if I ever have sex again. And I used to think I don't either. I had none.

So I was having dysfunction globally also with my periods. At one point I went through also difficulty sleeping. I would wake up in the middle of the night for hours, or even if I did sleep, I'd be tired when I woke up. I wanted to take a nap in the afternoon. Then I went through a period where I slept all the time. All I did was work and sleep. And nothing that I had learned in med school or residency or in over a decade of practicing really taught me that this was all related to perimenopause and impending menopause. It taught me that these were all discrete functions that I actually needed to go to a gastroenterologist, which I did. And what did he do? Scope me on the top, scope me down below, give me drugs, you know, PPIs and antispasmodics, you know, went to the psychiatrist who ran no tests and basically gave me various prescriptive agents for anxiety and depression. At one point I was on five psychoactive medications.

And no one had an answer for my fatigue, for my lack of sex drive, for my hair falling out. And these are all, this is what I was taught to do with the women I treated. Right. It was birth control pill. When you have the period crazies, oh, you don't feel like yourself. Here's an antidepressant, here' a sleeping pill. It's just a fistful of prescriptions, but no One ever came back to my office and said, oh, my gosh, I lost that £30. Dr. Kieran, my energy's back. I have a sex drive. My hair is growing. I feel amazing. But I used to pharmacize them, and they would just end up in varying levels of disarray until. And they would blame it on midlife. They would medicate themselves with caffeine in the morning and wine and chocolate at night. I went through that, too.

I mean, what you're describing sounds like what so many of my patients say when they come in, too. It's, like, so common.

It is, it is. It's so common. We think it's normal. And even a lot of us doctors have come to believe it's normal. We tell our patients, that's normal for your age.

And 60% of us are overweight or obese. At age 50, 75% of us, three out of four women, are overweight by the time they hit 60. So it is our norm, quote, unquote.

Excuse me, because it's kind of.

It's not what's possible or available. Like, we're ignoring the fact that you have major systemic dysfunction that's causing this and that that should be corrected. And hence, you know, the hormonal poverty that we women live in, starting with somewhere in our 40s usually, and accelerated into our 50s. So we' living in a state of hormonal impoverishment. And the medical establishment says that's okay, when they would never say that's okay if you are potassium impoverished or you were calcium impoverished or vitamin D impoverished. Nobody says that's okay. But somehow, when it comes to women's hormones, we say, oh, yeah, that's normal for your age. Don't worry about it. So that was my story. And I ran all the tests, and they kept coming back, quote, unquote, normal. And even my doctor would run tests. I'd say, I've got to have a thyroid problem, right? I've got the top five symptoms. I'm overweight, I'm tired, I'm constipated, hair loss and cold. Thyroid tests would come back, quote, unquote, normal. My doctor would run tests. She'd go, they're fine. And finally, after years of this, I remember the last time I went to her office, she said, okay, Kiran, your tests have all been normal. I'll do them one more time. But I want you to come to my office for the results because I'm kind of tired of this. She said, there's nothing wrong with you. And I was Literally terrified. This last time, she was once again going to tell me there was nothing wrong with me. I had tried all the diet programs because I was convinced if I could just lose the weight, I would feel better and I would have some minimal success and then I would gain back more. And when I had enough energy.

I feel like you can never get anywhere. I know so many women feel that, like you. And like you said, you like we put the. We think if we achieve one thing like the weight loss, everything's going to get better. But first of all, it's hard to achieve that when everything else is out of balance. And it does not going to fix everything because it's. The weight is really the symptom, right?

Yes, but most women think the weight is the problem. But if you go about dealing with the problem as if it's the problem, you'll never get the answer. You have to go to the cause of the symptom. And weight is a symptom. You know, the analogy I use is if you come home and you have water on the bathroom floor, what do you do? You clean it up. You come home the next day, water on the bathroom floor, you clean it up. At some point you're going to realize the water on the floor is the symptom, it is not the cause of the symptom. And you're going to look for the cause of the problem. Did someone leave the window open and it rained and water came in? Is the roof leaking? Did the toilet overflow? Did the bathtub overflow? Did the dog come in and pee on the floor? And it isn't until you find the cause of the problem that you're going to fix the symptom. So I was taught in medicine, we're all taught in mainstream medicine anyway, that weight is a math problem. Calories in minus calories out equals your weight. And so if you are overweight, it's your fault. You didn't move enough and you ate too many calories. When that might be true when your hormones are balanced when you're 20. But as women age and they have programmed obsolescence of their ovarian function, meaning their hormones are programmed to go down. That uncouples caloric input from calorie output and weight. And it's not a math problem anymore, it's a communication problem. Because your hormones are the regulators and communicators that tell all your cells at what rate to burn fuel, which is fat or sugar, and make energy. So they determine your metabolic rate. And so this is what I finally discovered when one of my patients who I had been doing the prescription t go with, went away for a year and came back looking like a new person.

And so I learned from Suzanne Summers, one of her books about this field, which looks at these special tests and optimizes function, which is the cause of weight problems. So I started doing it with myself and 100 pounds lost later and off all prescription medications, looking 20 years younger, feeling 20 years younger, my entire health change. And of course, my patients who were all midlife women with the same problems, were like, what are you doing? Because we want that. And that was 10 years ago. And so I actually knew it wasn't the right thing to do, to do hysterectomies and give people birth control pills anymore, because that doesn't fix the problem. And I walked away from OBGYN to do this full time with women. And that's just a little bit of my story.

Oh, my gosh, it's such a. It really is powerful to hear it from, from an OB GYN's perspective, you know, and thank you for sharing, being vulnerable to share your experience in your story. And not only that, but inspiring other women with it and helping them with it based on what you experienced. Because, you know, I think you were making such a good point there. I mean, I learned the same thing with calories as a. I was trained originally as a nutritionist, and they were trying, you know, I had to learn all of this, you know, input, output and calculate caloric diets for people. And first of all, this was back when they were really talking about being fat free. I mean, this was in the 90s when I was a nutritionist. So it was all this, you know, trying to avoid fat, and then people were having more carbs. And still, I think that still lives on to some degree. I don't know if you see that too, where women are, you know, like, there's this misinformation also about cholesterol, you know, like where. And like you're saying women feel so much pressure to somehow be able to manage their weight with their calories, and it's. It's going to be near impossible because. Because what happens is, as you're saying, when the ovaries decrease their function, the insulin function also decreases. And so then we're even. Any carbs we eat are more likely to stick with us around our waist, usually. Right? Like, and that's if, you know, like, if you're like, oh my gosh, I'm gaining weight, especially around my waist. Right. It tells Us, like the. The carbs are getting turned into body fat because. Because the insulin function has shifted and it's not going to help to just starve yourself more. I think it's a good point.

It makes it worse. It makes it worse. And then the other issue is nobody's talking about cortisol effects. Nobody's looking at cortisol. And most of us have so much stress inside our bodies from our blood sugar, from inflammation in our gut, from toxins, that we've got cortisol problems. And so, you know, I learned. I say everything I. Everything that I learned about helping a woman heal her body and lose weight and regain energy, I learned after.

My med school and residency.

Absolutely. Yeah. Because they don't teach this stuff. I mean, when. I mean, this is how I figure is that most times that medical doctors and endocrinologists, when you learning about the adrenal glands and cortisol, you're mostly paying attention to if the cortisol is way too high, like Cushing's, way too low. But what about in the middle here where it's maybe a little bit too high or a little bit too low, or different times of day where we know it is most likely to occur when we're just stressed humans living our lives?

Well, you know, it would be if it were like cholesterol and there you had a drug to sell you to fix it, then you would totally hear about that. But there's no drug.

Right.

So it doesn't exist. Like, if there's no drug for it, you're not going to hear about it in medicine. And that's true with cortisol, you're just not going to hear about it. But nothing could be more foundational to the way a woman and a man's body functions. And, you know, men have cortisol, too, but because their testes have more of a gradual descent. And even now you see so much in the media about andropause, but it's much slower, more gradual.

But we women have this precipitous drop that nobody's addressing as a state of hormonal depravity that it is.

And it's so common with, with, you know, at this stage in life, I think probably because of accumulated stress and so on, it's like by that point, the adrenals are, you know, the cortisol and adrenaline production is all out of whack and. And then that effect affects ovarian function, that affects the insulin, so it becomes this. Right. I think that's what you're saying is it becomes just this big, you know, interconnected knot.

Yeah, right. You know, I call the seven main metabolic drivers. They're all the hormones, right? Insulin, thyroid, cortisol, dhea, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, they're all related. I used to have this mobile above my desk and I would show people like they're all connected. And if you're not addressing any one, then it affects the other others. And so we're eating in a way that's causing our hormones to be unbalanced. But nobody realizes that because in mainstream medicine they're not checking the hormone levels. Right. No one's looking at your salivary cortisol profile. Nobody's checking dried urine hormone levels. And so it's more of, we're going to wait until you have a disease and then we're going to prescribe you a medication to stop that symptom and we're going to claim victory. Never mind the fact that the same dysfunction that you had is accruing and going to cause other problems. And so it's just, I mean, you know, I went, I knew that I wanted to be a healer, and I was a healer, and that's why I said, well, I want to be armed with the most information to help people. So what do I do? I go get my MD degree because I thought that would give me the highest ability to help people heal. And, you know, I fortunately had to learn after my own health tank that, no, that's a very small toolbox. And it is a toolbox and you don't want to throw it out, but it's just like it's the hardware store. And when you go to the hardware store for nails and hammers and they're very good at that, but if you want bread and milk, you can't go to the hardware store. So now I've gotten trained fellowship, trained in anti aging, metabolic and functional medicine. I have a big toolbox. I don't claim that it's the toolbox anymore.

There's always something we can learn about, Right? Right.

Energy healing and light healing and vibration and sound and all of this. But these hormones feed on each other. And it does. I call it like a knotted ball of yarn, all your hormones are in a knot. They're all feeding on each other negatively. So they're bringing each other down. And you need to do tests, not guess and find all the imbalances and work on them from as many points as possible to get them all helping each other. And then when they help each other and the Communication and the regulation in the system starts functioning. That's when the weight comes off, the energy comes back, the hair is growing. I had one woman tell me a couple weeks ago she started growing eyelashes again.

I love it.

Which is great. It's like the body has energy for eyelash.

So, yes, it's a very complicated issue.

Well, and I think, you know, you're explaining it so well because it's sometimes because of the complexity and because it's a different way. It's a different perspective, a different way of looking at it. Sometimes it feels like, how's this really going to work? But, I mean, I can. I completely agree with you. I see the same thing. You know, when we can get those imbalances rebalanced, now the system's functioning in a balanced way, and you get a whole different outcome in your body. You know, the symptoms are not there anymore because. Because there's no reason for the symptoms. Things are lined up and working. And I think it. I love the way you explain it because I think it really can help people to realize that it can be, you know, because some of these tests you're mentioning, and I agree with you, it's better to. I'd rather do a test and see what is the cortisol level, what is. How is your body metabolizing estrogen, what are the hormone levels? Exactly. Because then we can. We can use our tools more specifically. But sometimes these tests are out of pocket tests. So I know sometimes people struggle with like, well, do I really need to invest in a test out of pocket? And I would say yes. But what do you say to people?

Oh, my gosh, that's a whole other conversation. So this concept that first off of health insurance is going to pay for me to be healthy is a fallacy. Health insurance was created in the early 1900s as a way to make sure that you didn't miss work so your employer would lose money. So basically, it was designed to pay the health care system to get you a drug to get you back to work as fast as possible. It was never designed to keep you optimally healthy any more than your house insurance was designed for you to remodel your kitchen and bathroom so that your house could have a higher value. Right. And your car insurance was not designed to get you a new paint job. So you. Your car looked good. Right. It's. If you get crashed and your car gets totaled, that's what it's for. And really what you need to realize is that that's what your health insurance is for. It Is for disaster insurance if something catastrophic happens, for emergency care, where mainstream medicine, modern medicine, shines. But when it comes to these chronic diseases, you have to realize that the healthcare industry is a for profit industry that profits off of you being sick for a very long time, not so sick that you die, because once you die, you are not a profit center. And I hate to be this blunt about it, but people need to wake up to the truth of this is what is happening. You are valuable to the healthcare system. The longer years you work, the longer years you live with a lot of chronic diseases, right? So more chronic diseases, more procedures you need, more prescriptions, prescription medications. The pharma industry, big pharma is for profit. The insurance industry, big health insurance is for profit. Healthcare is big health care for profit. And so is the food industry. So you know this concept, my kids used to say when I was raising them, like, oh, I would say, oh, you can't eat, you know, Cheetos because they have bad things in them. They're going to make you sick. And my kids would say.

They wouldn't allow it. Right? They wouldn't allow it. If there was some they that was going to protect us. And I think that we adults have the same concept when it comes to health care. They wouldn't allow this. They hear this and they think it's a conspiracy theory. And it's actually, I did, I had a podcast. My podcast episode this week is a guy who used to be a Madison Avenue food insider who used to help them engineer the food to hit that bliss point of sweetness and fat that keeps you going back with these abnormal adulterated fats and sugars that are toxic. Right? Artificial flavorings, colorings, preservatives.

Oh, interesting. What did he say?

Oh, yeah, he used to be the guy who made the Cheetos where you couldn't stop eating them. And now he. He had his own food issues and he finally figured them out and he figured out that that was part of the problem. So now he's on the other side. So people. So this concept of you've got to pay out of pocket is like, nobody would question that if you want to remodel your kitchen and put marble countertops.

That you have to pay for it. But we are so conditioned that we only want things that our health insurance pays for. And if our health insurance doesn't pay for it. So if you poll most Americans, what do they value most in life, Number one, everyone is going to say health. They get that this is their most valuable, irreplaceable Asset. Look at Steve Jobs, right? Billions of dollars could not add one second to his life once he got pancreatic cancer. But if you also poll those Americans, where do you spend your time and your money? You would think that that would be commensurate with what you value.

Match up.

Yeah, the health is at the bottom. They spend the least amount of time and money on their health, yet they recognize it's their most valuable.

Because we've been conditioned to believe that we should not have to pay for our health. We shouldn't have to pay for organic food, right. Our health insurance should pay for everything with a $30 HMO copay. But despite our highest per capita expenditure on health care in America that we have, we have some of the lowest health outcomes of any country in the world.

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So if you want the norm and you want it to be normal for your age, you're going to be tired and sexless and overweight. Keep not investing in your health and expecting your health insurance to pay for all of it. But if you say wow, I see what's possible for me and that 60 really is the new 30 and 80 could be the new 30 and you want to start living in integrity with what you say your values are. That means you have to spend the time and money that means you have to invest in your health, pay for the tests that your insurance doesn't cover, pay for the providers that your insurance doesn't cover, pay for the supplements, pay for the food and invest in yourself. It will pay you back in spades with better health. And I find it so sad that people don't get this and they don't do anything about it. And then you're like, my friend who is a colorectal surgeon who pooh, poohed all of this that I was doing. And then what happened? A few years later, I saw her in our neighborhood health food store. I had never seen her in there before. I had been going for years, and she was in there. I said, what are you doing in here, Susan? She said, oh, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Now I'm going to the health food store to see what supplements I can take to help me. She didn't say now, but she's like, that's why I'm here. And I'm saying to myself, all those years I was telling you this, you didn't listen to me. And now people wait until they get that catastrophic diagnosis.

And it really is like the things you've been talking about, like the metabolic issues with the blood sugar and weight gain and insulin and the cortisol, we know these are the things that increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, dementia. So it makes sense that eventually those conditions are going to show up, up. But like you're saying, might as well start addressing it now before it gets to that point as much as you can.

Yeah, it's much harder to reverse things, especially once you have an anatomic problem, like you already have plaque in your coronary arteries. You know, number one killer of women is heart attack, heart disease. Once you already have plaque, it's way harder to reverse.

Better to know that you have inflammation.

Early and fix it. But you're not going to know that if you don't do the right tests and you don't read them the right way.

But people think, oh, well, I'll go talk to my doctor about this, my $30 copay doctor. And what you don't realize is you're not getting the full story, because they're trained in a certain paradigm and belief system of health care. I know you believe it's science, and it is, but it's not complete science, and that's hard for people to understand. Well, we go to our doctors, right? They're good people. I'm not saying that, but they're like I was 15 years ago. They were trained in a certain paradigm of healthcare, which is all about what. What is the diagnosis, what drug do I need to give, what surgery do I need to do? It's not about why. And functional optimization. So. So if you want better function, meaning you want to weigh the weight, you want to weigh, you want the energy, you want your hair to Be great. Your gut to be great, your brain to be great, your heart to be great, all those things. That's functional optimization. You have to go to someone who specializes in function optimalization, and that's not what your regular doctor does. And again, I don't want to. I'm not, not saying that they're bad. It's just. That's the hardware store. At the hardware store, you're going to get drugs and surgery and you're going to get. Oh, that's normal for your age. So if you want to have better function and you want to be vivacious at every age, you have to go to the people who ask why you're tired in the afternoon, you're waking up in the middle of the night, why you don't have a sex drive. Why? Let's look at all the inputs that go into you having a sex drive and let's fix them. Your hair's not growing or it's falling out. Why? Let's look at all the things that, in your body that go into giving you great hair, into great cardiac function, into great brain function. So it's just. That's a different store. So you go to that store if that's what you want, and you pay out of pocket. And if you want your health insurance to pay, you're going to get the pill and surgery, medicine.

Now, I think, thank you so much for explaining that for me, your point of view, too, because it, I think it's, it's so important to recognize that. And then it becomes very clear that we're, you know, as the patient, as the person, we're the ones choosing, you know, and there may be times where we go to this hardware store for certain things, screening tests or. Yes, you know, if you need a surgery, okay, that's the right store to go to. And if you, if you need to, you need, you need something else, then. And you can do both. It's not one or the other, it's both.

It's both. But you pick and choose, right? So for. If I want my car, you know, painted, I go to the car paint store and I pay them cash. If I get in an accident, then I go to my car insurance and to the collision specialist. But I'm not saying throw out mainstream medicine at all. You still need it. But you just got to understand these are all tools. What do you want to use the tool for? For.

Well, I, and I wonder if, if you don't mind just taking, you know, this is such a great conversation and to transition into talking about it from the perspective of hormone replacement. Because I think a lot of, you know, what happened is from, from my, you know, and you and I have been kind of in parallel in, in the, in medical practice over the years. And, you know, when the studies came out, the women's health studies about HRT years ago, and I think it, I mean, in some ways it kind of put this scare, you know, almost this fear in place about hormone replacement, which I think was in some ways good because the hormone replacement that was being used years ago was scary. It has a lot of risk associated, so rightfully so. There was this kind of like red flags that went up. But then I think where it's left us is there's really not enough good research for us as practitioners and for women to know, hey, what is my best choice for hormone replacement? Say if you are in the place of wanting or needing to use some, you know, say, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA later in life. And so it's become where there's some research and there's some practice and there's some tools that we use. But it's. I like for women to know that it's important to work with a practitioner who feels comfortable with individualizing it, explaining it and finding the right dosages for you. But I'd love to hear your perspective on it. What happened with hormone replacement and what questions should they be asking?

Right. So what happened was exactly what you said. They tested synthetic hormones that are different from what your body naturally has, which, which is horse estrogen, also called equilibrin, brand name Premarin, and medroxyprogesterone acetate, which is a progestin. Neither one of these is exactly the same as what your body naturally has. And they proved that it did increase your risk of breast cancer, heart disease, clots, all kinds of problems, and they stopped it prematurely. This study was done 19 years ago.

And then the media seized on it and called these hormone replacement therapy and said all hormone replacement therapy is bad and causes problems. Every woman came off their hormones and it's been a disaster ever since. Because what people fail to understand, including a lot of clinicians and scientists who do the research in our papers, is that those hormones that they tested, let's say they're apple, they then said all fruits are bad. When these hormones that are oranges, that are exactly what our body naturally has, exactly the same as our body's natural estrogens, progesterone and testosterone.

They put them all in the same and said all fruit is Bad. All fruit causes breast cancer. All fruit causes heart disease, which is insanity. I find that when, when most women are educated about this, they go, oh, yeah, I get that, that makes sense. But why are you so confused? Is what I want you to help you understand is because our scientists and doctors, even in some of the papers and literature where they do research, in one sentence will say, in the Women's Health Initiative study, Premarin, which is horse estrogen, was shown to increase risk of breast cancer. And the next sentence they'll say, estrogen increases the risk of breast cancer. They basically are like, apples increase the risk of breast canc. Breast cancer. So oranges increase the risk of breast cancer. They don't understand the difference because they lump into one category all types of estrogen, the apple types and the orange types, when nothing could be more different. So what I like to say to women is if estrogen caused breast cancer, first off, every woman would have breast cancer, as would every male, because we all have estrogen, right? So number one, that's not true. Number two is the women with the highest levels of estrogen would have the most breast cancer. Who is that? 20 year old women, do they have the highest rates of breast cancer? No. So what this tells you is it's not estrogen that causes breast cancer. In the Women's Health Initiative study, it is horse estrogen. And, and I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to give women horse estrogen.

I know, you just wonder, right? Like, how do they even come up with this idea?

It kind of makes sense to me that if we try to take horse estrogen.

That it might cause a problem for humans. So this is why you're confused. Plus, the media loves a scary story because.

It keeps you glued to the television. We're biologically programmed to favor negative information. The news media knows this. They exploit your fear with their teasers. And you've got to watch. They did come back years after that study and actually say it was a very flawed study. And so there have been thousands of studies done on biologically identical estrogen, progesterone and testosterone replacement that show that it's safe and effective. It's been used in Europe and for over five decades. Anything that you replace in the body that you are naturally deficient in by design should not cause you a problem, right? And this hormone, our bodies and our.

Receptors know the hormone, know how to respond to it.

And so this concept that we, I think that we women have been socialized also into this belief that hormones fall in A separate category, because I've never heard a woman say, oh, my vitamin D is low. It really acts as a hormone in the body. Low levels of vitamin D are associated with every type of cancer and chronic disease known. That shortens your life and increases disability. No woman ever said, oh, I'm not taking vitamin D. I'm going to do this naturally. As if it's some badge of honor. And we've all heard of toxic masculinity. We know what that is. But I think there's a toxic femininity that we can ascribe to, too. Like we get some badge of honor, I'm going to do menopause naturally. But really, what you would never say, oh, I'm calcium deficient, I'm vitamin D deficient. I'm going to deal with that naturally and not replace it. But when it comes to hormones, we have this value judgment that somehow there's something wrong. We don't see it as a medical condition. That is hormonal poverty. And that's what it is. And we don't realize that our brains need these hormones to function and our heart needs it to function and our bones and our muscles. And so I think for any woman who says that, you've got to educate yourself on the consequences of hormonal deprivation and hormonal poverty. What's going to happen to me? What is E going to look like if I don't have my natural estrogen, progesterone, testosterone on board? It's not pretty. Right? And so I find that if you educate women about why they're confused, why they're afraid, why maybe the people who are advising them are confused and afraid, and what is the truth and what's going to be the consequences of being in a hormonally deprived state maybe for three decades? And what do they want 80 to look like? I have yet to find a woman, educated woman, who doesn't say, wow, I get that, that. And I'm going to choose to replace my hormones in the form that God gave them to me because they benefit me and I want that benefit into old age. So I hope that makes sense.

Well, and I think too, the point earlier is that if you're going to the standard gynecologist under your insurance, they're probably not going to suggest bioidentical hormones. They're going to to be, you know, they're going to tend to want to get a prescription hormone if they're going to give you anything. And these what we're talking about, I mean, yes, there are a couple different types of bioidentical hormones that are made by pharmaceutical companies now. But really, if you're going to get, I think, the most optimized and customized bioidentical hormones, you're going to need to do it from a. More like a compounding pharmacy where you can get a dopamine that's specific to you. Because we don't all need the same dose.

It's much better if we can customize the dose, in which case you're going to need to get it from a compounding pharmacy. And most practitioners are not doing that.

Yeah. And so just to be clear, because I've been on the other side, so I know what you're going to get at your doctor's office. And the mainstream credo is for perimenopause and menopause. Hormonal deprivation is only treat for symptoms in the least dose possible for the shortest amount of time. And the only two symptoms, or maybe three, they recognize are hot flashes, vaginal dryness and bone thinning. And so really there are about 50 or maybe even 100 symptoms of menopause, considering you have hormone receptors in everything single system in your body body, including your eyes, your gastrointestinal tract, your immune system. And they don't recognize any of those. And you're only going to get treatment for those three symptoms in the shortest dose possible for the shortest amount of time. And nobody is going to educate you on the fact that, wow, your gut is having these problems and you have dry eye and you have depression and anxiety and you have all these health problems problems because you don't have the proper levels of sex hormones. Because that's not what they're being taught. I'm not saying that they're bad people, they're good people, they're just doing what they were taught. That's what I used to do. And so no one's educating you on what do you want 80 to look like? Because here's what it's going to look like on the trajectory you're on. But what you have to understand is that is one paradigm of health. We only are concerned with what is the diagnosis, what drug to give you. And that's all they're concerned with. And you're absolutely. If you do need a hormone, say you're having hot flashes and it's waking you up at night, they might give you a hormone. They're not going to test your levels. They're going to give you a one size fits all prescription and then they're going to Say.

If your hot flashes are better, that they claim cure, and then they're going to keep trying to get you off of that as soon as possible. But it's just kind of insanity to me. And if you had told me this 20 years ago, I wouldn't have understood it because. Because when you're in the water, your fish, the fish in the water, and you believe that the world works the way you believe it works, and you're a doctor in the system, you can't believe that there's something outside of the system that you don't know or understand. You know, I like to say that we doctors have contempt prior to investigation. And I was guilty of that too, because I had actually come in contact with this information probably a decade before I needed, needed it. But because I thought I knew everything about health, I, I just guarded it. I said poo, pooed it. And I say that it's pain that cracks you open to the truth. The pain will push you until the vision pulls you. And that I had to hit a wall. And all the doctor, a lot of the doctors who do what I do, they had a health problem that wasn't solved by mainstream medicine or they had a loved one whose health problem wasn't solved. So their pain cracked them open to be get rid of their contempt prior to investigation and start saying, maybe I don't know everything. But I think nowhere is this more clear than like, I just did the Stop the Menopause Madness summit with over 50 doctors, many of whom are like you. We are in menopause. We got cracked open pretty good. And a lot of them are traditionally trained and came to the realization, wow, we don't know anything about women, women's hormones.

So you'll, you'll find us. And so you want a custom, you want custom testing and you want the right tests. Blood testing is not the right test. You want. My favorite is the dried urine hormone.

Yes.

And, or salivary. And you want to do the right tests, you want to read them the right way. And then you want a custom dose that gives you exactly the levels that you had when you were 20 so that your cells can heal and they can get rid of that weight and they can main maintain your muscle mass and your bone mass and your eye health and your gut health and your neurotransmitter levels and give you a great sex drive. Not just to have a good sex drive, but because your sex drive, I call it your vitality thermometer, it tells us how healthy you are if you don't have a sex drive, like, that's a red alert, that your immune system's out of balance. You are out of balance balance. And this whole concept of, oh, that's normal for your age is kind of insane because if your vitality, if your sex drive is going down, your vitality is going down. It's just that mainstream medicine doesn't have the tests to figure out why, but luckily we've got them. Donni?

Yes, and I like to really emphasize that, like, I mean, it makes sense, like, if you're going to use, I mean, really any substance, even if we're taking vitamin D, like you used that example before, we're going to measure it before we're going to take some D, then we're going to measure it and see how much it increases and we're going to monitor. So same thing with estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. We want to be able to measure it, but in blood work, it doesn't accurately measure. We can't see are we at the right dose. So to do that, like you mentioned the urine test, the precision analytical urine test, it actually allows us to, to check your dose. Are we at a good level not only of the estrogen progesterone, let's say, but it also helps us see how well your liver is detoxifying the estrogen, which is so important in terms of breast cancer and so on. Right. So I feel like there's a way to help with hormone replacement in a safe way, in a smart way, so you can get the benefit without having to feel like you're putting yourself at home. Risk.

Yes. You got to be. You've got to look at the detox. And most doctors who give you the one size fits all prescription from a regular pharmacy, they're not testing your levels, they're not following your levels, they're not looking at how you're detoxifying it. Because that's where people will run into these problems with increased risk of breast cancer if their liver can't dispose of that estrogen properly and is sending it down pathways that increase their risk. Most women have no concept, so. So, you know, it's like if you're going to put your foot on the gas pedal, you got to be able to see through the windshield to know where you're going so you don't hit something.

So I love your analogies. They're so simple. It's like, of course we need a windshield.

You know, we need a windshield where that windshield is your detox pathways for your estrogen. So before you put your foot on that gas, you better know where you're going and have a windshield. Such an important point.

So tell us how, like, what do you offer women now? How can they, like, in terms of. When you have all this knowledge, knowledge and experience, how is it that you're helping women at this point? Do you meet with them one on one? Do you meet with them in groups?

Yeah, so. Well, I have two companies. One is TheHormOneClub.com, which I think I shared with you, that I can't work in every state and nor can you. And there are women who reach out all over the country, all over the world, really. And so I realized that women needed a telemedicine solution to obtain bioidentical clinical hormone testing and treatment. State of the art, I should add, with the tests we're talking about and the treatment. So I have the hormoneclub.com which offers that in 47 states with telemedicine physicians from the comfort of your home. And then I have my coaching company, Midlife Metabolism Institute, where I work with women in groups because actually the data shows that women do way better with this type of, with all types of health care, and not only women, men, when it is administered in groups. And I know it's kind of a status symbol in the industrialized countries that we have one on one care and we've come to be very protective of. No, I want to see the doctor one on one. And that's kind of a status symbol. And it's what we are indoctrinated to believe is best. But the data clearly shows that our healthcare outcomes for chronic diseases, which is what we're talking about is, is far superior when administered in a group format, of course, with some customization from providers. But that's why I do all my programs with women in groups. And they can see, wow, I'm not the only one dealing with this. And they can get that support and get that oxytocin. Speaking of hormone balance.

So important, right?

And so I educate women on all the things we've been talking about. And then I, you know, I have my podcast, the Hormone Prescription, which is about all the things you need a prescription for, but also the things that you just need a life prescription for.

Yeah, Things like taking a break and doing some meditation or being out in nature, things like that. Right. That we almost wish we could write it on a prescription pad because then it makes it more real or more. But it is that important, right?

And what you eat and your insulin and just all the things you don't need a prescription for. They're super important.

Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for. I mean, how exciting that you created these different opportunities for women to get access to help, this kind of help and information and resources. I really appreciate what you've created and I appreciate you being here to talk it all through with me.

Thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much for being a part of the Stop the Menopause Madness summit. Such great feedback on all the information you offered. And I, too, love the way that you explain things so simply so that people can grasp fairly complicated concepts. I think that's a real gift that you have.

Thank you, Karen. Thank you. And oh, my gosh. Well, it's so fun to get to talk to you, and I'm so glad we got to cover really important topics today. And so we'll be in touch. But thank you again. In.

Okay. Thank you.

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