Are Your Hormones Aging You Faster? Midlife Lab Tests & Toxins You Need to Know

Imagine moving back to your home state after being gone for a dozen years and really looking forward to being a first-time grandma.

And it, on the drive home, feels like literally you are coming home.

And less than a week later, it hits the news. Your new home state is number 1 in cancer rates in the United States. So imagine, you know, the feelings in the uh-oh, not winning in this category. Today's episode does get into that, but first, with my friend and colleague, Dr. Stephanie Gray, we explore all kinds of hormone questions and things that you maybe need to be reminded of and/or introduced to. For the first time about lab testing interpretation, how to avoid your exposure to certain chemicals that are there and disrupting your hormone optimization.

You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down.

You're just getting started.

But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before—they're working against you now. The advice you've been given—incomplete at best.

I'm Deborah Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping Fifty, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife.

For more than forty years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last twelve, right here on this podcast, and and the founder of Flipping Fifty, the stronger way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50 the Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week, you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger.

Are you aging faster than your birthdays? How does your hormone health matter, especially for women? Look, what you don't know about hormones in midlife could be accelerating your aging, and we all begin to feel it at a certain point. I know for me, I was naive up until a certain point, and I love naivety, right? You think, oh, this isn't gonna happen to me. And Then it does, and you learn things you didn't know you signed up to learn. But I have the perfect person to help us sort through what we really want and need to know about lab testing, reminders of what we're looking for, how it would be helpful, how to maybe get more with your personal physician and ask some that you're advocating for yourself. My guest is Stephanie Gray. She's a functional medicine provider who helps men and women build sustainable and optimal health and longevity so they can focus on what matters most to them. Specifically, she helps midlife women who feel like their bodies have betrayed them step back into their bodies by restoring optimal hormone levels. We talk about that, how to be hot. hormone optimization as opposed to replacement today. So you can regain your sleep, figure mood, and feel amazing once again. Stephanie's known for keeping hormone replacement therapy sexy, safe, and effective. By the way, she is the Amazon bestseller of her book, Your Longevity Blueprint and The Fertility Blueprint— Your Fertility Blueprint, pardon me— and soon to launch in It may be launched by the time you listen to this. Your Hormone Blueprint. She's got this little family of books. They're very cute. Live together, probably in a sweet little house. But she is also the host of the Longevity Blueprint podcast. So if you enjoy listening, head over there. She's co-founder of Your Longevity Blueprint Nutraceuticals with her husband Eric. They enjoy spending time outside with their sons and their mini golden doodle, and they found the integrative or they are founders of the Integrative Health and Hormone Clinic in Hiawatha. Iowa, by the way. She's literally my neighbor. However, we did this in her studio and in mine, and here we go. I think you're going to get a lot out of this. It was one gem after another after another. Dr. Stephanie Gray is in the house, and she's across town for those of you that don't know it. Across the state, but close enough. So cool! And yes, we have to get together, but this I want to make sure that we there's so much here to unpack. So we're gonna kind of do this in segments. We're gonna talk a lot about hormones up front, and the one that's gonna get everybody's attention here is, is about aging and what might be accelerating our aging that we can do something about. But I also wanna talk about toxicity because, as you know, I've recently moved back to Iowa, and I think it was like a week later this statistic comes up and I'm like, ooh, you know, I was sharing all these winning, winning because the temperatures in Scottsdale and Iowa were like coming up, and then I was Like, oh, not winning on that one. So we'll, we'll unpack all of that. First of all, because we all care so much, what are the silent signs that a woman is aging faster biologically than her chronological age suggests? And if this is bad news, tell us what we can do about it.

Yeah, I think there are silent signs that maybe don't feel like symptoms. And I don't know you with your clients, if you're measuring things like grip strength. But, grip strength declines, recovery from a hard session maybe taking 2 days instead of 1 day, waking up at 3:00 a.m. consistently, losing that outer third of your eyebrows, which I'm realizing, oh, no, I'm starting to lose that myself, visceral fat increasing when the scale number is holding steady. None of these maybe send a woman to her doctor because they're more silent signs, but they're all measurable. And, most of these are hormone-mediated. Again, they're not maybe measured on a standard physical, but they're hormone-mediated. I can talk about labs too because I think labs are maybe silent signs that you're aging. I think fasting— oh, go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, just so that you know, so we do, we have something called the Strong Aging Index. And for all of you who are listening, if you haven't got it yet, it's a free PDF of a checklist of tests that you can do at home. One of them requires dynamometer so you can do your own hand grip. But, I'm also teaching physicians to do that and a sit-to-stand and how to interpret results and set goals with patients so they could do that in 5 minutes. So, at least we're starting to make strength and muscle a vital sign.

Totally. I mean, muscle is so important as we age and hormones play a big role in building muscle, right? You have to have enough muscle to be able to get off the toilet, right?

Yeah.

I fractured my knee earlier this year and I was Realizing I felt like, oh my gosh, I'm so old. I can't imagine if I would have broken my knee when I was 80 or 90 because, I mean, I literally had to use only my left side at all times. And thankfully, I had quite a bit of muscle strength, but that's going to decline as we age. And, if we want to be able to travel and heaven forbid have an accident, we have to have muscle. I mean, that is the organ of longevity. And, hormones play a big role in maintaining that.

Yeah, so true. And, I want to just state this for everybody listening. So, they play a big role in the muscle and our ability to gain strength, but it is not direct. So it's not that women on HRT or not on HRT are gaining more muscle because of the hormones specifically, but the big obstacle—

there's no guarantee. Yeah, yeah.

The big obstacle I see is women, they're not sleeping, they have aches and pains. And so the HRT helps with all of the obstacles to being willing and complying with the exercise. It just enables you to do it, and finally you feel motivated to do it. That's what we've seen. So I would, I would totally agree.

I make a joke in my book, like, you can't just eat a steak, eat your protein, and sit on the couch. Like, you have to exercise. Yeah. But ideally, you're on hormone— you have your hormones optimized so that the steak you're eating and the exercise you're partaking in, right, all work together to build— well, not even just the muscle, but also bone density too, which we can talk about.

Yeah. Well, and the two go hand in hand, right? Um, it bothers me a little bit that there's so much emphasis on bone that everybody's going right to bone. And it is like, you know, in the end, you and I hope we don't test, do we or don't we have enough bone density to avoid fracture? How about we don't fall because we have agility, stability, and mobility, and the strength and the power to, you know?

Yes. Yes.

So it's like, let's not just go to a You know, in osteozones, and I'm going to pick on businesses, but and do something static. But let's get our movement quality better as well, and then the muscle is pulling on the bone. But I want you to come back to you know there are lab tests. We kind of left that hanging. So if a woman is doing a lab test in just a standard lab test, even what could she learn from that that might make her? Ask her doctor, challenge her doctor, or tell her, okay, this change is not good, and maybe I want to do more investigating.

Yeah, so I'm debating whether to answer that question based on like the basic labs that the doctors actually run or on some additional labs. I was listening to—I'm doing a peptide certification—I was listening to James Laval this morning speak about how magnesium, even just a regular. Magnesium needs to be high end of the range, not barely in the range. Ideally, you'd get a red blood cell magnesium. But, I mean, even just looking at your magnesium, your electrolytes, we don't want you barely in the range. So, I mean, those are going to be on basic blood testing. But, if you can get a fasting insulin done, that is a very, very important, very useful marker. Conventionally, you're not really considered abnormal until you're over at something like 20, 25. But, by that time, you've had insulin resistance for years.

But, back up a second. Conventionally, that isn't even tested. That's only glucose. It's like— and a lot of women don't realize, oh, there's a difference, and I have to ask for it in order to get it.

So insulin will rise before glucose will rise. That's what I see in my patients. And so on a comprehensive metabolic panel that should be done fasting, ideally they would have a glucose run. And I don't want to see glucose 99, right? Pre-diabetes is over 100. So high 90s is not good. Ideally, they'd be 80s, 70s, they'd be even lower. But, if your glucose is creeping up, by all means, ask for hemoglobin A1c, which is the average glucose over 3 months. But, what I think is even more helpful is that fasting insulin. You want to have insulin really lower, like 2 to 5 is ideal. So, you don't want to be zero, but lower is better with insulin.

So good. Yeah. And, we've got a lot of women who will resort to, I'm not having any luck with weight loss or belly fat, and so they'll do a continuous blood glucose challenge with me. I think sometimes that's— it's insightful, but it's also maybe not as informative as someone needs. Can you— what are your thoughts on that? What's the value of it?

On a CGM, or—

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I think there's great value. I mean, I have a lot of patients who feel like, well, I'm eating gluten-free and I'm having rice and sweet potatoes, and, you know, but then they realize, oh my gosh, those foods are spiking my blood sugar.

Yeah.

But for one patient, sweet potatoes may not be spiking the blood sugar. So I think it's very insightful to have that real-time data so patients know, okay, these are my safe starches, here's what I can have, or I need to pair that with fat, or I need to pair that with protein. Or a lot of times what my patients see is that their blood sugar is dipping or spiking overnight, and that's something that they would not have otherwise known. And so having that data like 24 hours, I think, is very helpful.

Yeah, having that irritating alarm go off at 2 AM, that'll, that'll get your attention, right? Everybody's like, how do I shut that off? And like, well, one of them is an emergency and you can't. There's that.

But protein before bed for so many of my patients just stabilizes the blood sugar. They don't need to have— back to the steak— you don't need to have a steak before bed, but just a small protein-rich snack for many can stabilize that blood sugar through the night.

Yeah, agree, agree. Talk a little bit about specifically like hormone testing in labs and Does that in a basic lab test that, that again, you're just going to the doctor that you've known and loved for years, and maybe the one that your mom had, because, because we do that. Are we getting enough information on the hormones? And is it telling us specifically enough about testosterone?

No, not at all. So if you're maybe— if you're— once you start not cycling regularly, if you're lucky, your doctor may test an FSH, follicle stimulating hormone, which is just a menopause marker. They just want to tell you you're in menopause or you're not. Well, I think it's pretty easy to tell if you're in menopause. If you stop cycling, you're in menopause.

Yeah.

Um, so I, I'm gonna just draw a parallel with thyroid real quick. So a lot of doctors will also test TSH, which is also a brain hormone, but I think TSH stands for too slow to help because by the time the brain hormone— by the time TSH is high, patients have suffered for years usually with lower T4 and T3. And that's the same thing with high FSH. When the brain— when those brain hormones are high, the brain is screaming for more hormones. So with the high FSH, patients usually have low estrogen. So, they're getting a little bit of the picture, but what they really need to see is where the estrogen— I check estradiol, estrone, I check progesterone, testosterone, and a full thyroid panel on my patients because I want their levels optimal and I want to intervene. We know so— there's so much more data coming out about the timing hypothesis as far as how important it is to start HRT early versus waiting.

Yeah.

If we wait 5, 7 years longer, we're losing some of the bone protection that those patients could have had had we initiated HRT earlier. And then, we do know from a memory preservation standpoint, I mean, well, cardiovascular standpoint and memory preservation standpoint, sooner is better to initiate HRT. So, you do need to get more labs. Back to your question. Sorry, coming back to your question.

Yeah.

You need to get more comprehensive labs to see where your deficits are. And, to your point, testosterone is never tested because we think that is a man's hormone, but we actually have more circulating testosterone in our body than our other sex hormones. So, yes, women do need testosterone. So, those all should be checked. And then, if you're low, they need to be optimized. So, I really like to describe what we do at my practice is not just offer HRT because I think HRT, which stands for hormone replacement therapy, is just replacing something and then not always having levels retested or optimized.

Mm-hmm.

I like to offer HOT, hormone optimization therapy. I talk a lot about that in my book. We want to get levels optimal. We want to test estrogen metabolism. We want to make sure bowels are moving appropriately, that you're You know, detoxing from potentially—

That is such a big problem. I'm gonna interrupt you right there.

Yeah, yeah.

Bowels moving regularly. I, you know, we've been doing just menopause fitness dedicated to that through 2013 to now. I would say 75% is not too high of women suffer from irregularity but don't talk about it. They either just suffer in silence, they claim it as, well, this is my normal.

They think it's fine, yeah.

Yeah, don't see— or don't think it's fine, but it's not something you want to talk about at Bunko Babes. And, you know, it's just, it's a problem you wish would go away, so kind of living in denial.

So I, I— this is a huge part of my book, is applying a functional medicine approach to hormone replacement therapy. As far as before we start hormones, we got to make sure you are regular. And, we're definitely not going to do any sort of Liberty talks until we know your bowels are regular because otherwise the toxins are going to get recirculated. So, it's just so important that we do get the bowels moving. And, I mean, at least once a day, if not 2 or 3 times a day. There are diet changes and a lot of supplements that can help there too. But, that's a huge part of making the HRT, or I should say HOT you're on, safe.

Yeah, I love that idea. Who doesn't want to be hot? That's awesome. Come back to just for a minute, and we won't dwell on this, but the regularity, why do you think that is? Is that, you know, the gut and the hormonal changes and the interaction there, or is it the level of stress that a midlife woman is under? And we, you know, I'm going to a friend's house for dinner tonight. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna sit down and eat. Hmm. It's very eye-opening.

I mean, I don't know. I think some of my patients are great with foundational things like hydration and movement, which help the bowels, and others aren't. Like, they literally just say, I went all day and didn't drink any water. Well, you're going to be dehydrated and you're not going to be able to poop regularly. So I tell my patients, roll out of bed, walk into the kitchen, and have a big glass of water. Just do it. Just get it in. You're drinking water right now. Yes. So that's hugely important. Took my cue. I do have a lot of patients who have maybe, we'll say, mild hypothyroidism, and I think that can contribute too to more sluggish bowels. I think we're not eating nearly as much fiber as we should, so definitely need more fiber. I do think a lot of patients are on GLP-1s now, and that slows everything down. They can assist with treating insulin resistance. They're a huge tool.

Yeah.

But I think those also, just like how HRT can just be kind of given and, you know, set it and forget it, which I think is inappropriate, I think the GLP-1s, same thing. I have patients who come to me, They don't even— their vial that they have doesn't even say the concentration that it is. They don't even know how much they're using. Their labs are never monitored, right? They could be overdosing themselves, getting constipated. Nobody's checking in on these things. And so, I think those medications can also lead to constipation. But of course, stress. Yes. I mean, stress is like— that's my worst enemy. That's something that I've battled my whole life. That's the journey I'm on always to try to— Reduce stress in my life. So sure, that's that's another variable.

I want to back up just a little bit to the FSH and the TSH. Too slow to help. I love that. That will that will be remarkable. We'll talk about that one in social, I'm sure. But those two things that you mentioned, you gave you know if it's too high, if it's too high, here's what's going on. When a woman sits down with a doctor. That, you know, again, maybe doesn't have quite the depth of knowledge about specifically menopause and hormone changes. Will that doctor interpret it the same way you just have?

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I think they will recognize if it's high, sure. I mean, on the paper, the lab's going to flag it as, you know, high FSH. Will they do anything about it? Not necessarily. I mean, if, if TSH is very high, yes, most doctors know the patient needs thyroid medication. You know, they may not put them on the right thyroid medication, but they'll try something. to bring that down. But with the, with the FSH being high, I think this is slowly shifting after the FDA lifted the black box warning last November. But I think previously doctors would just say, oh, this is a part of aging, you're going through menopause, it's normal, right? Like, kind of deal with your symptoms. Or if the patient had no symptoms, which is my pet peeve, they think, why would I replace hormones? I mean, back to protecting— I mean, the whole point of my book is to—

Yeah.

Provide these, you know, 4 major— we'll just say destroyers of your health as you age, which are cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and metabolic dysfunction. Hormones can protect against all those regardless of if you're having hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, which I guarantee you are if you're in your 60s plus, you know, problems sleeping. So a lot of times, I think your question is how will they interpret that lab?

Yeah.

They may interpret it as FSH is high, but We don't need to do anything about it. Yes, it's normal. Not you know, and from my standpoint, that's not optimal. That's not protecting my patient against the aging process.

Yeah, I love that. So this I also wanted to ask you. You know, we are we are what we are. Those of those of you who are listening, you know, I'm sixty-two. I can't go back in time, and and yet what do you believe about the value of testing your hormones when you're You're at optimal, you're in baby-producing era, and you feel really good. Should, should those young women be testing?

100%. And a lot of my female patients are asking me this for their daughters. Yes, I think it's important to test them because I have had some patients— well, and even, even their sons. I've had some patients get their sons tested, and these guys who are teenagers have low testosterone. Wow. You know, and they, you know, teenagers aren't really in tune with how they're feeling. So like maybe in college they may have said, oh, I have problems concentrating, or, you know, energy's not good. And, you know, maybe it could have been found then, but I'm so thankful that we were able to find this in, you know, the younger population. And I've been saying this for years, I think I'm just, I'm very fortunate enough that I got into this field in my 20s, so I started checking my hormones, right? 20s, 30s, 40s, like I've been tracking them. And I think everyone should track them, A, because we want to know Again, what your baseline status is, and we want to track decline from that. But sometimes in your— in the teens or 20s, you're actually not as optimal as you should be. And fertility is another, you know, um, I have a book on fertility. That's also something that I treat at my practice. So yes, even in the younger population, it is very important. We want to know what they're dealing with from a fertility status standpoint.

Yeah, I'm— I just want to bring that into the picture. So I'm a new owner, you know, the last couple of years of a daughter-in-law. And so I'm thinking so much more forward about her, and she's not quite six months post-breastfeeding. But you know, I gifted her a DEXA last year and said, "You know, I know I'm the sexy mother-in-law that you always wanted, but there you go. You know, when you're free, let's find out where you are with bones right now, so that you know when when you're comparing a DEXA and or we can look at have you actually gotten to your peak." Because let me ask you this, because I don't know.

It's all downhill from the peak. So it's good to know where you get— where the peak stands.

It is. And yet we now know it's, it's not the doom and gloom. I've seen losses reversed. And I'm sure we're not— we're not making them go higher than they once were. But if a young woman is 30, which is about the moment the door closes for bone density, is she not a little bit more at an advantage for gaining bone density then compared to, you know, at 50. It's going to be easier for her. Yes?

Yes, yes. I mean, back to that kind of window of opportunity. I mean, the other huge window is when you do stop cycling, we have like 5 years. We— I mean, the first 5 years post-menopause are so important to get the hormones, um, on board to protect the bones because there is an abrupt Decline in bone density after that. Okay.

So speak to that because somebody is listening and just feels like, oh, my heart just sunk to my shoes because I'm beyond that.

It's never too late. Be very clear. It's never too late. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So she's still going to benefit compared to not doing anything if she's 70. I, you know, reached menopause at 58. I could still start and I'm going to see some bone benefit.

Well, you're gonna see not just bone benefit, benefit across all organ systems. I will say a lot of times at that age, we're even just wanting to maintain bone density and not decline, right? So I would say there's a better chance of maintaining at that point versus building. The sooner we intervene, you know, the better chance we have at building, but it's never, it's never truly too late.

Love that. I would love to do some troubleshooting with you. Okay, so and maybe we've answered it, but not in black and white for a listener and/or for me. So let's say this: a woman is listening, she's lifting consistently, she's eating enough protein, she's been listening to me, she's she's hitting those things and hopefully getting her veggies and her fiber in, and she's still losing ground on strength and maybe losing the battle on what she feels is optimal body composition. What is the hormonal bottleneck most likely behind that? And, would a standard panel, blood panel, catch it?

There's potentially a lot of bottlenecks, but I'll bring it back to testosterone. So again, like before I was saying, you can't just eat a steak and expect to gain muscle mass. I feel like you can't just exercise and want to gain muscle mass. You also can't just take HRT and not exercise and not eat protein and, and want to make gains. And, I guess, I know this patient's wanting to lose weight, but you have to— like, the more muscle you have, that's the biggest glucose sink that you have, right? So, that will help with insulin resistance and help you burn fat. So, I guess getting testosterone checked, which would not normally be checked, I think would be very important. And, not just a total testosterone. The bottleneck around that is your total testosterone could be okay, but if your free testosterone, what's bioavailable to you, is not high, Then we're still— you still don't have the gas in the tank that's needed. So, getting those labs done is really important. You could have SHBG checked, which is sex hormone-binding globulin. That just helps us kind of calculate what free testosterone you have. Think of it as a sponge or a carrier protein. It can soak up excess testosterone. So, even if you have a good total testosterone, if SHBG is high, you don't have good free testosterone. So, I think that's really important to have checked. Back to we were talking about insulin, so not just having glucose checked but insulin. Get insulin checked. I think that's hugely important for weight loss. I mean, we got to get the insulin down. We got to treat the insulin resistance. And then thyroid is really important for metabolic function. So a lot of patients only get that TSH checked, and they need a T4, T3, reverse T3, thyroid antibodies. I mean, the whole panel really checked under stress, which we all have stress, right? Your body will convert T4 to reverse T3. And I just explained that as being more the brake pedal on metabolism, not the gas pedal. You want free T3, the gas pedal on high, and the brake pedal not on. So I think checking those things are really important in, in that individual situation. She's doing the work, but we can figure out some, some things metabolically speaking if we get additional labs.

That is so great. Awesome. You, in this, your upcoming book, this Part of your, your book family. They're like the little baby family over here and here and here, but they all match. They're very matchy-matchy.

Yeah, yeah.

You have a chapter dedicated in the Hormone Blueprint book to inactive ingredients in hormone products. Say something more about that. So a woman using a patch, a cream, or a gel, it's probably Like, is it in a carrier fluid? What else is in there as filler? What is she absorbing that is not a positive contributor to her health?

Yeah, I have a whole chapter on inactive ingredients. So, back to kind of the book, all these books I've written are under this kind of blueprint, you know, I'll say comparison. I'm kind of comparing how we need to, you know, build a house. You need a blueprint to build a strong house with a strong foundation so it's going to last a long time, right? But when you build a house, there are things that are needed. There's drywall and glues and adhesives, and right, there are other construction materials that I would say are really important to not be toxic, which is a whole— you could do a whole podcast on that. But the parallel I'm drilling— I'm drawing in my book is, okay, so the good news is a lot of people are now talking about HRT since the, you know, the FDA lifted the black box warning. We have a shortage of HRT. We sometimes— we can't get progesterone and estrogen patches and whatnot because more providers are actually prescribing this. But what I want the conversation to also shift to, which I've never heard anyone ever lecture on this, and that's why I wanted to include this in the book, is what are the inactive ingredients, right? So of that progesterone capsule or of that estrogen patch or that vaginal estrogen cream or the testosterone pellet, like what else is in there? Because the hormone is a small part of that. So we also need to be talking about if, you know, if we're trying to avoid endocrine disrupting chemicals, Because we're trying to optimize the patient's hormone status, we don't want the HRT ingredients to include endocrine disrupting chemicals.

Yeah, right.

And so, and, you know, I, as part of detox, I use a sauna. And so, you know, I'm thinking, okay, so for patients who use estrogen patches and who swim, and like, I just wanted to really dive into, are these ingredients safe if they're heated up, if they're, you know, immersed in chlorine? Like, what are the problems here? And so that could be a whole podcast in and of itself, but I'll say the big highlights that I discovered that I was unaware of was that commercially available vaginal estrogen has methylparaben in it. And, I had no idea that Estrace cream, even the bioidentical vaginal estrogen, has methylparaben in it. Now, why would I want to put methylparaben in my vagina, right, in that sensitive tissue? So, now, not all vaginal estrogen cream has it. You can get it compounded without those ingredients, but that's the purpose of that chapter in the book is to say, okay, here, You may say the risk doesn't outweigh the benefit. I just want to— and it's covered by insurance and I want to take it, right? And that's the choice everybody has. But I wanted them to know that there are other options for vaginal estrogen that don't contain methylparaben. So, you know, that's a big example. I can list lots of others, but that was a big example, yeah, that I discovered that I was unaware of. Yeah.

I guess my biggest question here is that do each and every one of them, other than maybe compounding, So, it's going to come with some pro and con that we've got to measure. Okay.

Yes. And, you know, we also have to think the dose is usually the poison, right? So, like, we're going to talk about toxins later, right, in this podcast. So, like, a farmer spraying pesticides, like, every day, you know, being exposed to those chemicals, like, that is a much higher burden than someone using a teeny little bit of, you know, of HRT that has a small amount of endocrine disruption. So, we need to take that into consideration also with these decisions. But, I do think patients have the right to know what's in their HRT. So, I will tell you the cleanest source of testosterone and estrogen are pellets. And, I know not everybody is for pellets, but we have a huge hormone pellet practice. I've done over 10,000 pellet procedures in my career. There are 2 ingredients in those pellets, stearic acid and the hormone. That is the cleanest option, period. Interestingly, I didn't think this would be the case, but estrogen patches are very clean. I would assume there would be some adhesive or something in there that really wasn't safe, but interestingly, the patches come in second. Those are very clean. Now, I will say back to the sauna, there have been studies showing like fentanyl patches actually killing people due to high heat, like having this kind of patch dump from the heat. So similarly, we think if you're wearing an estrogen patch inside a sauna or out in the sun, right, you could— that patch could be used up more quickly because it could dump into your tissue. But so far, we don't think the adhesive part is releasing into the tissue. It's just the estrogen, just the hormone that could be dumping, right? But then you may need to replace your patch more quickly. So a lot of my patients who change their patches twice a week, I say, well, use the sauna, Change your patch out. You know what I'm trying to say? Do your patch change day on your sauna.

Yes. That's what I was just thinking is that, okay, interesting.

Other than that, patches are actually very, very safe.

Good to know.

Yes. Now, a lot of the creams can have other ingredients that I don't even know how to pronounce, but one big one is TBHQ. It's tertiary butyl hydroquinone. It's a synthetic preservative.

TBHQ is good for me. Yeah, yeah.

So, that has mixed results with cancer studies. So, it's not essential to the hormone. If you can, I would get a compound of whatever cream that you're looking for, testosterone or estrogen, whatnot, without that. I don't like that ingredient. I also don't like all the synthetic dyes. So, sometimes Prometrium, which is a progesterone option, has hot pink, has red dye number 40 and those sort of fillers. I've never heard of that. Yes. I mean, you can get micronized progesterone that's a white powder. Now, white powder brings up another concern. I'll go there for a second. So, that has that kind of— we call it— I don't know how to pronounce this— Opadry white powder has titanium dioxide in it. That's also found in Armour Thyroid. So, it is a synthetic whitener. There are concerns in the EU. It's not— there's not as many concerns as the US, but we know we're behind Europe. So, they're already having concerns with that. So, if you can get a progesterone compound without titanium dioxide or thyroid medication without it, I think that's important too. I mean, the list goes on and on. There's sodium lauryl sulfate, polysorbate 80. I mean, there's lots of things that I think at least myself as a prescriber hadn't even thought about were in the hormones that I was prescribing. And so, again, that's just a huge— Part of the book is making sure you're finding not just safe hormones, but the other ingredients in your hormones are also the safest possible for your situation.

Yeah. Wow. That's parallel right now, I think, to the conversation on protein. I mean, everybody went nuts about protein.

But it's got to be clean. Yeah, yeah.

What else is in it? It's not just, oh, it's high protein. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Agreed. That was a great conversation. All right. I want to, for listeners who are still like, you are practicing in functional medicine, and I think the layer of knowledge, and I speak for you as you're listening, so I'm hopefully inclusive, but I think they know the difference or distinction between a functional medicine doctor really having a focus more on the underlying reasons for symptoms, not simply treating a symptom or waiting till it gets bad enough. That there is a symptom. Does functional medicine get longevity specifically right? What do they get right that maybe traditional or conventional preventative medicine misses?

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So I, I do think functional medicine should be catching the drift towards disease. So back to the functional medicine approach to HRT, I mean, what we were just talking about, right? Conventional medicine may say, oh, it doesn't matter if you have a high FSH and you're in menopause, you're fine, that's a normal part of aging. Or functional medicine, or we could even say integrative medicine, should get it right. They should say, no, no, no, if we want to prevent cardiovascular disease and bone loss and Alzheimer's, then we actually do need to optimize The hormones. So I think— am I answering your question right? Like, I do think functional medicine is, is, is preventative. They're looking to catch the drift towards the disease, the subtle hormone declines. Yeah, that could take years off of our life.

When I think what you just said, I'm going to restate, but you know, the— this is normal because it's what everybody experiences, but that's like saying You will lose 3 to 8% of your muscle mass every decade after 30. The end of that sentence is, if you don't do anything about it. It's optional. Like, you can do resistance training, you can eat a higher level of protein than probably you used to, you can focus on sleep, decrease your stress, and you may not lose that. Maybe you'll stay even, which is still a win. You're not going in the hole, so it's still a win.

But I think It's like you don't want to be average. Nobody's parents looked in the bassinet and said, oh, I hope you're average.

Average. Oh my gosh.

Right. So, so good. What does functional medicine do that we— I never ask this question ever, so first time ever. Is there any way that functional medicine might, might overreach?

Yeah, I think You know, I would mention I'm, I'm doing this peptide certification, and it's so easy with functional medicine to like latch on to the next best thing. Like, oh my gosh, peptides, all my patients need peptides. And like, at one point it was HRT, you know. I think we jump to the next best thing sometimes without forgetting the foundations. Now, we as functional medicine practitioners, we should be always recommending diet changes and stress reduction and sleep optimization and detoxification first.

Yeah.

But I think sometimes We run a million labs and want to jump to the cherry on the cake, but we haven't actually made the cake yet. Like, I think we need to make sure we're starting from the ground up. And I think sometimes we— not always, but sometimes we prescribe 30 supplements. Like, nobody needs 30 supplements. I mean, I shouldn't say nobody. I'm sure somebody out there does need 30 supplements. But I think we need to just get back to the basics. You know, when there are fancy bells and whistles, which are amazing that we have these tools, I think sometimes providers get it wrong where they search for the fancy things, you know, without building the foundation first.

Well, on that note, let me ask you this, because in fairness, are consumers though also part of the problem?

Oh yeah, they come in—

They want the bells and whistles.

Oh yeah, oh totally.

But yet I don't want to eat well.

Well, it's like, I wanted, you know, maybe they have, you know, poor gut health. Oh, I read about BPC-157, I want to take that for my gut. Okay, you can, but you still need to change your diet. We still need to treat gut infections. There are still other things we need to do because that peptide is helpful, but it's not necessarily getting to the root cause of the problem as far as why they had poor gut health in the first place.

Talk to me about peptides just for a second, and then I really want to transition and talk a little bit more about toxins. But peptides, are they a, I will start this and I'll be on this? Is there a rotation needed or necessary? And if there's a rotation, that makes me a little nervous. So does that mean if I'm on it for a longer period of time, there's greater risk, or why is that?

I do think sometimes peptides are also, well, even back to the GLP-1s, like I was saying, those are peptides. You know, some prescribers just say, here, buy this vial for me, set it and forget it, and they never follow up with the patient. And so that patient may be on it for a very long time, which is not necessary. But in general, a lot of peptides should be cycled, to your point. 3 months on, so 90 days on, 1 month off, or maybe 6 months on, 1 month off. They should be cycled. Your body can develop antibodies, they cannot work as well. So it's just good for the receptors to have a break. Um, some people believe that about HRT too, that eventually you should, you know, take a short break, like especially younger women, to cycle progesterone, whatnot. But, it depends on the peptide, like how they should be cycled and rotated and whatnot. But, with my patients, I never put them on one thing forever. We're reevaluating. Okay, we used this to help you recover from surgery. Okay, now you want to build muscle mass, so we'll use a body composition peptide. Okay, now we're going to focus on— we're always kind of rotating.

Okay, super helpful. And, to the point, that's the reason you work with somebody who knows what they're doing. So good. Alright. Let's talk about this. We've talked about this, you and I, behind the scenes a little bit in text and in messaging. And I'm like, what the hell, Stephanie? Okay, so as soon as I get to Iowa, I unpack all my boxes, or most, and Iowa appears as the number one rated state for cancer. So let's talk about hidden reasons though, because not every listener's from Iowa. Or an agricultural state, or worried about cancer. In fact, I think most of us think that happens to somebody else, you know, until maybe it gets too close to home. But let's talk about hidden reasons why health issues might at least be an obstacle obstacle for health and fitness, and at the worst be contributing to rising health concerns like cancer. You know, toxins are not the first. thing somebody thinks about getting in their way. We think diet and exercise, maybe sleep. And only until, you know, you've tried everything else do you really take a look at what is it we put on, like 14 average products before we leave the house in the morning as females. Talk to me about this endocrine disruption. And I know you said something earlier. It's only a little bit. So if you only have a tiny little bit, you know, it's not like spraying your crops every day. However, you have a little bit of fragrance, you have a little bit in your shampoo, you have a little bit in your toothpaste, you have a little bit in your— how does that cumulative effect hit us? And when are we going to see it?

The answer is we don't know, but this can't be good. And this has never really been researched, right? The cumulative effect of all these toxins. So maybe, can I come back and list some?

Yeah.

Most of your listeners, mine are too, probably from Iowa. I mean, I'm sure we have nationwide audience too, but I wanna read some statistics 'cause I had to look this up. I had a post go very viral on this topic and I thought, oh my gosh, people like really care about this. This is, this is a good thing. And so I wanted to, you know, I, I looked up some statistics. So when I looked these up, we had the 2nd highest cancer incidence. But we're one of 3 states where cancer is actually rising, where it's falling in other states. So that I don't like. Yeah. So according to 2025 Cancer in Iowa report from University of Iowa, Iowa's cancer rate is 14% higher than the U.S. national average. And in 2024 alone, there were 21,000 new cases of invasive cancer. 61,000 Iowans died from cancer that same year, most common being breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer. Over half of Iowa's counties have cancer incidence rates higher than the national average. And people in Iowa are 10 to 15% more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than the average American. But this is not just a rural problem, because I do think agriculture, which we're going to talk about, is a huge part of it. But it's not just a rural problem as far as Polk County, which includes Des Moines, like, you know, big city, also has rates above the national average. So I do think Our contaminated water could be part of the problem. And our— I'll say, I'll say 82% of high glyphosate counties have non-Hodgkin's lymphoma rates above the national average. And half of those counties are what researchers call hotspots, meaning they're in the top 20% for lymphoma rates. And I know some people, when I, when I put this post about Iowa cancer rates, I mean, there were just probably thousands of people saying, that was me. You know, I sprayed my crops and I ended up with lymphoma, or my mom or my uncle or whatever. I mean, I don't, I don't think this is falsity. I think this is, this is true, and it's backed up by multiple agricultural studies. So, um, I think this is very scary, and I'm, I'm glad that kind of like HRT, people are now aware of, okay, we do have toxins in this state, and, you know, what are we going to do about it is the question.

But so, question for you, where did I— I went off on a tangent. I asked you about 5 questions at once, so in fairness, you're doing great. So, I want to ask you personally this. So, you are an Iowa family, you have 2 young boys. I'm going to ask you a little bit here about what do you do at home for drinking water, the water you shower and bathe the kids in? What do you do?

Yeah, yeah. So, I've always had— when I built my house, which was like 20 years ago, I put in RO like back before this was a cool thing. I mean, I was in functional medicine, so I knew I was eventually going to want it. And so, I put an RO in my house from For drinking water, which back then—

Can you say just to anybody who doesn't know, RO?

Reverse osmosis. Just think of it as removing everything, even the good things. It literally will, will remove everything, including nitrates. So all other water filtration systems out— I shouldn't say all, but many of them will remove like the pesticides, the hormones, these sort of things that are in our water, but they won't take out the nitrates, which Iowa specifically has a big problem with, which is not good. So RO is the only sort of system that can take that out. Now, you know, 20 years later, you can get an under-the-sink RO system. We have one here at our clinic for like $200, $300. So I highly advise for drinking water that that's, you know, that's what you use. And I mean, I, when I send my kids to school, I'm sending them with their water bottles with water from our home that I know is, you know, RO. Now, when I had my first son, Bathing him, I actually live in Marion and the chlorine content in the water is very high and I can just smell it just bathing him. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't put this little body in this, you know, water. And so I called Culligan at the time and they, um, installed a whole house charcoal filtration tank, which isn't going to remove nitrates, but it's going to remove everything else. So it's a big tank. I think it was very affordable. So all of our showering and bathing water is filtered. You can get small charcoal filtration. You know, I had these before I got the whole house filter, like little devices you can put on your shower head or your bathtub head, whatnot, to filter the water. But I just figured I might as well invest in it. And I had them pre and post test my water too. I wanted to know specifically that the chlorine was gone. So I had, you know, at that time I had documented everything and I know that it's working. It had removed that. And I know not everybody can afford a whole house system. But if you can at least get something under your sink for your drinking water, that's very appropriate. And I will say, if you— this is what's very scary about the nitrates. It's really important if you have young infants and you're making— if you're not giving them breast milk, if they're being given formula, that that formula is mixed with purified water, preferably not a water that's been sitting in a plastic jug at Hy-Vee or something, but water from your home that is filtered of nitrates. So nitrates, long story short, for infants can essentially lead to suffocation. It can lead to very bad things. So you wanna make sure, literally like an internal suffocation. Um, so you really wanna make sure that if you have an infant, you are filtering their water especially. And you can look up, you know, what county you live in, how high the nitrates are. Just make sure you're using RO water if you're mixing that water with their formula, given how bad our water is here in Iowa. Yep.

Yeah, yeah. So good. And thank you for sharing that and going down that rabbit hole because I think, you know, we may think more about drinking water, but I think automatically a lot of people think they're upgrading by drinking out of plastic water bottles. So let's kind of— I want to visit that.

Well, speaking of endocrine disruptors, yeah. I mean, so the plastic, especially if heated, which, you know, it depends on where you're getting the plastic But, more than likely, that plastic water, whether it's in a huge old jug or small water bottles, has been subject to some sort of heat. And, the heat is going to allow the plastic to get into the water, which is an endocrine-disrupting chemical, which means that can bind to your hormone receptors and cause hormone imbalances. So, plastic is not an upgrade, it's a downgrade. So, drink out of glass or stainless steel if you can.

Yeah. Okay. You alluded to something else that kind of in passing somebody might've missed, but the chlorine in water. So there's chlorine, even not swimming pool level, but there's chlorine in bath and tap water where we drink, just to point that back out to everyone. But let's talk about swimming. So we are just kind of coming to the close of a swimming season here. Mm-hmm. And I've had my one-year-old grandson in, you know, a couple times every week. And yeah, I'm very conscious about, okay, I take him home. I'm like, you guys, he needs a bath right now. Please, like, make sure you rinse that off. Don't just put him to bed assuming he's clean. And, you know, for myself, I think the same thing more so when I was training like three times a week for an hour at a time, and I was in it more. How, you know, and yet here I am on the other side saying exercise is good. We need you to do those muscles. We want that. Where do you weigh that? Here's the pros and the cons. What do we do? How serious is just swimming, you know, in a chlorinated pool?

I want to try to unpack all that. Hopefully, I can remember what I was going to say. Okay, so first, let's just talk swimming. So it's not just swimming in pools, but it's swimming in the lakes in Iowa. So I would definitely caution the listeners about swimming in lakes near farmland because all those agricultural chemicals are going to dump into that lake. So, I mean, my family has had a boat. We grew up water skiing. This summer, I just didn't allow us to get in the lake water. I just, I just, it's been a weird summer. And you can actually, the DNR, I don't know what it's called. It's like DNR beach website or something will tell you, you know, if there's E. coli or like what the contamination level is of the waters. But There have been some lakes in Iowa that have had very bad contamination. So before you let your kids just go have a fun lake day, we need to be thinking about the agricultural chemicals. And we should probably come back to why these agricultural chemicals are bad too. So let's remember to go back there. But so really think about that before you just swim in a lake. Separately, the pool situation and the chlorine.

Yeah.

So it is important, I think, to rinse off immediately to try to rinse that chlorine off. These little teeny bodies that are going to soak in a lot of that, you know, chlorine, There are sprays that you've probably seen. Well, now that we're talking about it on Instagram, something will pop up across your feed about a vitamin C spray, something that will protect you from the chlorine. There is real research behind those, and we honestly didn't get in the pool a lot this summer. We played in our backyard and, you know, did a water slide and whatnot, but we didn't go to the pool a lot. But had we have gone to the pool more than once or twice, I would have gotten one of these sprays because you spray it on before you get in and it's almost— it will kind of I don't know how to describe it, but it almost neutralizes the impact of the chlorine. So you— and you can make those. You literally, you can just Google vitamin C spray. You can make it yourself. Another thing that can protect your skin is oils. So even jojoba oil or coconut oil. I mean, you might burn depending on what kind of oil you use. You may burn more, but the oils or the vitamin C spray can actually protect your skin against the chlorine. Now, back to the dose is poison thing. I don't think swimming a few times Is really going to really negatively impact your children. But we do know they have— they're a larger body compared to an adult, so we do need to be careful. Now, if you're swimming every day, let's say you're a swim instructor, I have patients who are swim instructors or that's what they do for their exercise. Every single day being in chlorine can impact, well, specifically your thyroid. So chlorine can displace iodine, long story short, and you need iodine to make thyroid hormones, so it can lead to lower thyroid. So, that chlorine can be an endocrine-disrupting chemical. So, I do think back to the dose is poison, the more exposure you have, the greater likelihood that it's going to cause harm. So, maybe rethink how often you're in chlorine and/or at least use some sort of protective spray and/or rinse off after swimming.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, all things that, right, I would never have done until I began Studying this, you know what else do my clients need to be doing that could be could be getting in the way of them not getting results, and what could they do to be proactive? Well, let me speak to that point real quick.

So I say this a lot to my patients: that toxins hide in fat. Your body will create fat and fluid to protect your internal organs from those toxins, and that's why all the time we see moldy patients who've had major mold exposure, which is another thing we've had in Iowa, especially in Cedar Rapids with all the floods. Swell up. I mean, they're just— they just are swollen because their body is creating that fluid to house the toxins to try to protect our internal organs. But in theory, as we help patients detox the body, fat cells release the toxins, fat cells shrink, patients lose weight, they're less swollen, right? So there is a huge connection between toxicity and inability to lose weight.

Talk about age a little bit. So we're at midlife, we're going through major hormonal changes, or we're, you know, 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond. I'm not sure what the average Iowan age is, but how much is that a factor in, you know, cancer rates or our susceptibility to it? I would think the older we are, the more we're prone to— the body is not new anymore. Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

I do think age is a— age is for sure a risk factor. We see more— you know, this is why I say hormones don't cause cancer. Because a 90-year-old with low hormones is at higher risk of cancer than a 20-year-old with high hormones. But yeah, we know as we age, our detoxification capabilities are starting— they're just becoming impaired. So suddenly we can't clear out these toxins as best as we once could. And the toxins can literally lead to DNA damage, and DNA damage causes cancer. But not just— I think part of what you're asking maybe is not just if age increases our risk, but Like, what about the perimenopausal and menopausal women? Like, are they more susceptible to these toxins? And I think the answer is absolutely yes, because these— this patient population is sleeping less. I mean, they're trying to sleep, but they can't sleep as well. And that's when our lymphatics kick in. That's when we're detoxing, you know, at night. And that's when we're making growth hormone and whatnot. So this population is already suffering from hormone imbalance, and now we're exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals that cause hormone imbalance. That population, I just think in general, is very sensitive to the effects from these toxins. But, I'm going to try to bring this back around, Deb. But, I interestingly recently interviewed Mark Atkinson. Any relation to you? He's—

Not that I know of.

He is, like, medical director for— I believe medical director for StemRegen, which is a stem cell boosting supplement company. He— I love how he talked about health. So he kind of said it's our load versus adaptability and our capacity to adapt. So basically, some of us based on our genetic structure, what we've inherited, right, we just didn't win the genetic lottery. So we already are set up to not detox very well. And health boils down to, right, like the load that we're exposed to of all these toxins, and then our ability to reduce the load to adapt to that. And I think women in this demographic don't have the best adaptive capacity, if that makes sense.

Yeah, totally does.

Which can make this season in life much more difficult, which is why it really needs to be well managed. We need to be detoxing them, we need to be optimizing their hormones so that we can set them up, swing odds in their favor so they have reduced risk of cancer later in life. I was trying to bring that all around. I don't know if I did that.

Yeah, you've done really well. It is a big topic. I mean, so first of all, just looking at, say, where do you live and geographically, what are the specific risks to you? So I do have a question. So Iowa, really a standout in its field. See what I did there?

Yeah.

But what about local or, or other regional, Nebraska and Illinois? Are they also high on the spectrum being probably also agricultural They are.

I mean, atrazine, last time I looked at— so when we talk about herbicides, I think a lot of us are thinking of, you know, Roundup, we're thinking of glyphosate. But atrazine is another huge toxin, has huge endocrine disrupting capabilities. There have been studies that, you know, frogs— you probably heard these studies that male frogs were feminized, feminized, um, from huge exposure to atrazine. And when you look at a map, you can just Google atrazine map of, you know, the United States The Midwest is hit really hard. Illinois and Iowa are like hit really hard. I don't, off the top of my head, I don't remember if like Nebraska, Kansas, like how hard they're hit. I just remember Iowa and Illinois being very high with atrazine. But it's not just atrazine and glyphosate, it's paraquat. I mean, there are lots of other chemicals. And it's not just back to even drawing this back to HRT. It's like the HRT has ingredients, right, that like surfactants to help Drive it in. And same with these herbicides and pesticides. It's not just the herbicide, it's the surfactant. It's all the other ingredients that are mixed in with the herbicide and pesticide, if that makes sense. There's more to that story too.

Yeah.

It's not my specialty.

You know, as a runner and a biker and a golfer, so I mean, notoriously you hear more and more about if you live in X proximity to a golf course, you're Risk or your exposures also increase. So, and I do, and I raised a golfer, and I still watch that golfer. And so there is so much you know that okay we we love this activity. It's a lifelong activity, or going biking or hiking. I think the point to everybody here is that we are we are all susceptible. You don't have to be the farmer. And you don't have to live in Iowa, but if you're even trails, you know, building in every state, really making it easier to get in exercise, go by fields, you know. And so during harvest or planting, all of us are exposed, then we're breathing a little deeper while we're doing it, right? I— what, what do you wish that every Iowan You know, particularly, or maybe agricultural state exposure, what do you wish they knew?

Well, definitely to filter their water because I don't think, I don't think all Iowans truly know how important that is. Back to your— you froze there, so I'm not sure I caught your whole question, but I do want to go back to kind of what you're saying. Like, there are other things that we can do to protect ourselves from these chemicals. Like, I think you're saying if someone is out even jogging and they're spraying the field, well, by all means, pick a different time to jog. So like if you can jog in the morning, always jog. If you're going to jog outside during spray season or even harvest season, that just throws up so much gunk.

Yeah.

Really jog in the morning and don't, by all means, do not, if you know they're spraying, don't let your kids play in the backyard. Ideally there'd be a rain and it would wash some of that out. Like don't open your windows on those days. Normally I'm telling patients open your windows, but don't open them on those spray days. And be very cautious. Also, one thing we didn't talk about was golf courses, which are not just a state issue, that's a national issue, right? Golf courses, because they're spraying, they're spraying the grounds with all sorts of chemicals. Yeah. So I see kids fishing on the golf course, you know, and I'm like, I hope they're not eating those fish. I hope they're just fishing for fun because that would be a horrible fish to eat, you know.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. So be cautious if you live near a golf course. Don't let your kids just play on the green. I mean, that green is just contaminated with With all kinds of chemicals. So be cautious about that. And again, I've lost your question. Oh, what you said, what do I wish Iowans knew? That to filter their water and to be aware of things like not opening your windows when they're spraying chemicals. I think maybe that's second nature to both of us, but a lot of people, I don't even think they realize what's happening. But I also don't want this to be a doom's, you know, gloom doomsday podcast. I think This is to bring awareness to, yes, we have higher exposure than we probably were aware of, which can lead to higher cancer rate, but the power is still within us. There are things we can do to help our body rid itself of chemicals and to lower our load, right? Improve our adaptive capacity. So don't be discouraged. There's a lot that, a lot that we can do.

So much great information.

We definitely—

you just got yourself invited back, so we will, we will do this again for sure, and maybe Locally and live, that would be fun too. But right now, I want where can everybody find you and point them to the new book, The Hormone Blueprint. Where can they find that? And if they don't always all have the family of books, they may want to look at those too. Sure.

So my clinic is the Integrative Health and Hormone Clinic. We're in Hiawatha, Iowa, basically Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So that website is ihhclinic.com. We're taking new patients. We test patients. For these sort of chemicals. Like, this is what we do. We have a functional medicine in it, in an HRT, or I should say HOT practice. Yeah. I also have a separate website, yourlongevityblueprint.com. That was the first book. So, that book talks about all the organ systems. But, in this last year, I wrote 2 other books that focused on the endocrine system. So, Your Fertility Blueprint is for young individuals trying to conceive. I have a whole fertility story that I shared in there in that book, which is available on that site. And, all books are on Amazon too. And then, my most recent book, Your Hormone Blueprint, which we talked about today, launches September 29th. So I'd love to have your support on launch day. You can pre-order it now on Amazon. But that's kind of where you can find my podcast also is Your Longevity Blueprint. So I can find that there. And then on Instagram, Stephanie Gray DNP. If you follow me, you'll see links to everything I just mentioned there. Fantastic.

And we've got all the links in the show notes, guys. So we'll put those— I'll put a couple notes And we'll have some notes too about the things she mentioned about vitamin C, you know, for swimming. If you're curious about that or just to jog your memory, you'll have a couple other notes there. So thank you so much for being here. Great to see you.

Thanks for having me on.

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