In this solo podcast episode Dr. Tabatha Barber, a triple‑board‑certified OB‑GYN and functional‑medicine physician, explains how declining estrogen during perimenopause and menopause affects women’s appearance, mood, and overall health. She describes estrogen’s role in maintaining skin elasticity, hydration (via hyaluronic acid), collagen, cellular turnover, hair growth, melanin balance, and lip fullness, linking these external changes to the internal hormonal shift. Dr. Tabatha discusses common symptoms women report—fatigue, flat affect, loss of beauty—and frames them as signals of estrogen deficiency. She outlines therapeutic options: bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (including oral, topical estriol, and vaginal estrogen), an herbal phytoestrogen blend called EstroLift, and lifestyle considerations (gut health, thyroid function, alcohol, inflammation). The episode also highlights the serious long‑term risks of chronic estrogen deficiency—insulin resistance, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and dementia—emphasizing the need for intervention. Interwoven throughout is a faith‑informed perspective that views menopause as a new life stage made more challenging by increased lifespan, and that supporting women with safe hormone therapy aligns with a God‑given purpose to enjoy a high‑quality life and serve others. Listeners are invited to seek care through Dr. Tabatha’s virtual practice.
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So when your estrogen tanks during perimenopause and menopause, you not only feel sluggish, you're fatigued, you're having mood changes, you're not feeling like yourself. Some women describe it as feeling flat. Um, I had a woman say, I just feel disconnected. I just don't have feelings. Like nothing makes me sad or happy. Like I just feel flat and we don't feel beautiful. Hopefully you get to a point where you learn to embrace yourself and embrace your beauty and see yourself for what you are and the gift that God created. But it is true that we just don't feel the same. Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Gutsy Gynecologist. I'm a triple board-certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. After caring for thousands of women, I've come to realize that your gut health determines your gyn health and your overall health. And it's a super gutsy thing for me to go against conventional gynecology practice to bring you the truth. No more Band-Aid medicine, ladies. We're talking root cause resolution on this show. So if you're struggling with Hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place, and I want to be your gutsy gynecologist. So welcome! Why does the aging process take such a massive toll on our skin during peri- and postmenopause? Oh my goodness, that's a great question. Thank you for asking because Honestly, skin changes were one of the first things that I saw when my estrogen started to decline. It was feeling depressed, all of a sudden not being able to read up close and having vision issues, and my skin and face changing. So we need to talk about this because it's also one of the biggest complaints I'm getting from women is that their skin is aging. The fine lines turn into wrinkles, the glowing skin becomes dull, and you just don't feel as pretty as you used to. You're losing some of the collagen and the fullness in your face, and your face is starting to shift and change, right? So we start getting all the injections. I personally have never done any fillers because I have an autoimmune condition and I'm afraid that I might react to the fillers. So it's been really important to me to figure this piece out. Like, how can I maintain my good skin going forward? So what is happening? Our hormones are declining when our fertile years decline, and the main hormone that's impacting your skin and everything that's going on is estrogen. Estrogen is the beauty hormone, I promise you. Okay. God designed our estrogen to peak when we are the most fertile days of our cycle, when we ovulate, when we have a massive surge of estrogen coursing through our bodies. It makes us beautiful and desirable. Estrogen makes us feel sexy and makes our skin glow. It strengthens our collagen and elastin in the skin, preventing fine lines from turning into deep wrinkles. Right? And I've done other podcast episodes where I talk about all the other massive benefits that you receive from estrogen, how it protects you from osteoporosis and the mood swings, the anxiety, the depression. You have less joint pain, you have more energy, a better cardiovascular system, and protection for brain health. Like There are so many benefits of estrogen, but today I want to talk about the beauty benefits of estrogen. Okay, so I'm going to go over this list. Like skin elasticity: estrogen helps maintain collagen levels in the skin, preserving its elasticity and reducing the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines. Hydration and moisture: so estrogen promotes the production of hyaluronic acid. This is a molecule that retains moisture in the skin, releasing— I'm sorry, resulting in a plump, hydrated complexion and minimizing dryness. So those fillers that you can spend many hundreds of dollars on to plump you up are hyaluronic acid, and estrogen actually promotes the production of that. So there you go. Cellular rejuvenation for anti-aging. So estrogen accelerates the skin's natural healing process by enhancing cell turnover and promoting the formation of new blood vessels, which aids in the repair of damaged skin and reduces those fine lines and wrinkles. Again, fuller, healthier hair. Okay, this is all my real hair. Um, estrogen contributes to hair growth and thickness by prolonging the growth phase of hair follicles, leading to fuller, shinier hair and helping to prevent hair loss or thinning. I see this every single day in my medical practice. So if you are just starting to follow me, or if you're like, oh, who's this lady? I have a virtual medical practice. We see women all over the country. My team and I are licensed in 30 states, so we can probably help you. But I promise one of the first things that women notice is that their hair changes. Their cosmetologist or hairstylist usually comments like, your hair's getting thin. Or it's feeling a little dry, a little brittle, or women are just saying, I can tell my hair's thin. I can see through it like I never could before. And that is because they're going into menopause. They're going into this transition of not making as much estrogen as they made before. Obviously, we had this pandemic for a couple of years that really contributed to hair loss and compounded the picture. And If you have a thyroid issue that's not being addressed properly, it's not being optimized, that can affect your hair as well. I've done some Instagram reels on how alcohol causes hair loss, inflammation from your gut, all kinds of things can cause hair loss. So we at Dr. Tabatha, Her Higher Health, we can definitely help you with that. But estrogen is one of those things that go along with that. So I'm just going down the list. Another beauty benefit of estrogen is going to be skin tone and evenness. So estrogen helps regulate your melanin production. So melanin is the, the cells that give your skin the color or the texture. And promoting a more even skin tone and reducing the appearance of hyperpigmentation, such as age spots and melasma. So you got to be careful on this one. Too much estrogen can cause melasma, but so can a deficiency cause these age spots and these hyperpigmented areas. So if you feel like you're getting more dark spots. Something is shifting with your melanin, it probably is a sign that your estrogen is out of balance. So just a little nugget for you. Okay. Lip fullness. Estrogen contributes to the fullness and hydration of lips by stimulating production of collagen and elastin fibers in the lip tissue, resulting in plumper, more youthful-looking lips. So that is a really common thing. You know, when I worked at a wellness center for a while, I went through all the aesthetics training so that I could inject Botox and fillers and do all of the things. I didn't really get into it. Like, it's amazing. It's a beautiful art. But I knew that my purpose was different. I needed to focus on hormones. And what I realized over and over again is that women going into that menopausal transition would lose the fullness, especially of their top lip. They would lose the line or the structure between their lip and their skin. They would get the fine little wrinkles coming down that looks like a smoker's lip, even if you're not a smoker. And it's hard to correct that stuff with all the injections, and it requires a lot of maintenance, right? But estrogen naturally keeps that lip fullness. So if you're feeling like, man, I'm losing my top lip, what is going on? It's like getting pencil thin. All of that, that's a sign that your estrogen should be checked. So I hope that makes sense. Okay, so external beauty obviously can be measured by fuller hair, fuller lips, less wrinkles, youthful glowing skin. We, we look at younger girls and they just naturally have all that. My 13-year-old daughter, her ponytail is as thick as a horsetail. You know, that's how mine was in high school and in my 20s and 30s. They don't have wrinkles. They just have this plump, tight skin, totally different than us women going through the transition. And it's because they have nice, healthy levels of estrogen. So estrogen does provide that external beauty during all those fertile years. But you can maintain a lot of that without having as high of estrogen levels as you did in your 20s and 30s. Like you don't Have to have that high of levels. Okay, so I hope that helps. So when your estrogen tanks during perimenopause and menopause, you not only feel sluggish, you're fatigued, you're having mood changes, you're not feeling like yourself. Some women describe it as feeling flat. I had a woman say, "I just feel disconnected." I just don't have feelings. Like, nothing makes me sad or happy. Like, I just feel flat. And we don't feel beautiful. We feel— hopefully you get to a point where you learn to embrace yourself and embrace your beauty and see yourself for what you are and the gift that God created. But it is true that we just Don't feel the same when we go through this. So you could do bioidentical hormone replacement. We work with women all over the country. That's what we do. We test your levels and we give you the hormones back that you are missing. It's a state of deficiency. When your thyroid hormone level production is really low, we give you thyroid hormone replacement. When your estrogen levels are deficient, we can give you estrogen replacement. But there are supplements. That can help with that as well. Like my product EstroLift, it is a blend of herbal phytoestrogens that support good estrogen production during this transition. And some women, that's enough, that's all they want. And it helps them continue to stay feeling young and beautiful and slowing that age process. Some women will actually use estrogen cream on their face. And it works. Estriol is a weaker form of estrogen, and a lot of times we'll use it for vaginal health. It can regenerate that vaginal tissue, the bladder tissue, but it does the same for the face because what's happening is it's stimulating that collagen, it's stimulating that elastin, it's creating more moisture. And so I have seen women who have extreme vaginal dryness. They have loss of movement in the vagina, or they— it even shrinks, tightens down. Some women, it gets down to be the size where you can barely fit a pinky in it. They can't put a speculum in for a pelvic exam. Like, that's not okay. And that is all due to the lack of estrogen from the estrogen deficiency. So I will give women vaginal estrogen and that will improve. It will turn around and change. It's pretty powerful and incredible to see. So I have seen with my own eyes the miraculous benefits of estrogen over my 20-plus years. So good stuff. And if this is resonating with you and you're like, help, yes please. Please check us out at DrTabitha.com. Like I said, we can help women all over the country figure out why you're having issues and just know that it's not vanity because some of these outward changes that you're seeing are symptoms of a deeper issue and they can lead to actual conditions and diseases. Chronic estrogen deficiency leads to an increased risk of insulin resistance, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and dementia. Those are the things that kill women. This is a big deal, you guys. So don't feel bad if you don't Accept the changes that are happening externally because the things are also changing internally, and you need to know that and do something about it. So I hope that makes sense. You know, I get some women who are like, but God created us to go through menopause and we just need to accept it and deal with that. Okay. I do believe God created us to be like this. But we as a society have increased our lifespan so drastically over the past 100 years that our physiology has not caught up with that. The average lifespan used to be 49, so the majority of women didn't live in the menopausal state. Now we're living sometimes half of our life. in the menopausal state. This is new for us. We're trying to navigate this. And I know personally, God has laid it on my heart to understand women's physiology and understand how to support the body and help it thrive until its final days. And so I welcome the science and the research behind hormone replacement therapy and the fact that we now understand how to do it in a safe, healthy way. And I believe God has given me all these tools and all of this knowledge to help other women because it's about quality of life. Yeah, we have a quantity of life. We can make it to 80 or 90, but a lot of us are miserable For the last 30 or 40 years of it. I refuse to sign up for that. I don't think that's how God wants us to live. I think God wants us to enjoy our life so that we can go out and do more good in the world and help other people. I can't help other people if I'm depressed on the couch, full of joint pain, not moving my body, not sharing my gifts and talents with the world. So I totally believe that he has given me this understanding of hormone replacement therapy as a way to help other women enjoy their lives and fulfill their missions that he has given them. So that is my stance. That is how I feel. Um, and if you would like some help with If you're like, yes, sign me up, please. I'm tired of being miserable. We are here for you. So I hope that helps. I love you. Have an amazing week, and I'll see you back here soon.
