Scared of Estrogen? Listen to this Dr with Breast Cancer Survivor

Confused about estrogen or confused about aging and what estrogen can do for you in aging, balanced hormones overall. This is for you, hands down. We're living in an era in a year and a really recent 6 months where hormones are getting limelight. So let's give them their due justice. Inside this episode, you're going to get all of that. I'm Debra Atkinson, and you're listening to Flipping 50, where we answer your questions about menopause fitness before you even know to ask. Our hope is that we're helping over 1 million women flip their second half with the energy and vitality that they want, need, and deserve. Scared of estrogen? Confused about estrogen? At the very least, it's not your fault. Teaching doctors about hormone therapy was halted and it's not yet resumed. The question is, should it be? Will it? And my guest is the perfect woman to have that conversation with. It's not just you, but doctors who are scared of estrogen because most of us are scared of things we don't know. Oh, but you're going to get so much more than that. If you want a beautiful idea of what the late could look like, I've got you. If you are a single woman over 50, you are gonna wanna tune into this one. And if you want evidence breast cancer survivors can thrive better with estrogen than without it, you'll hear it here. And if you want a couple more resources for yourself or for your physician, we've got those too. My guest is Dr. Devaki Lindsay-Birxen. She's considered a thought leader in functional medicine with an emphasis on hormones, the environment, cancer, and the gut. And by the way, I've added this, she is the GOAT, the greatest of all time in this space. And at 76, as she admits, almost 77, she's going strong in spite of multiple bouts of cancer during her life due to, as she would say, she's thriving because of balanced hormones from compounding pharmacists. So I want you to get that clear. And I think you are going to love this episode. Really is like a couple of girlfriends dishing over the fence and we're just letting everybody else listen. Well, welcome back. I have to say, Dr. Devaki Lindsay Bergson, how are you?

I am doing so good and I'm excited to be here with you because you're one of my favorite Ladies, in fact, I was just telling you I wanted to become not just on this level of commerciality and of our vocation, but I wanted to become girlfriends with you because I have so much respect for you. So I'm excited to be here to have an organic conversation with you.

How awesome is that? So maybe we should just put some juicy girlfriend talk in here.

We'll see.

We'll see what we can do weaving in here.

Oh, I'm all for that. Okay.

It's just over the fence in the backyard, guys.

All right.

I have to ask you this because before in the green room, I asked you this and this is like point blank. We've known each other, it must be for almost 8 years. I'm pretty close to it anyway. And I remember distinctly you gave me strict instructions when I've interviewed you before those, all those years ago. And you said, do not ask me my age. Do not mention my age. You gave me explicit instructions, but now it's in your bio, which was actually kind of a shock to me. I was like, huh, things have changed. So tell me about that.

That is exactly right. For so long, I felt judged because I was older than the people I wanted to hang with and date with and be with. And I felt that with the age, I got judged. It's not easy to be an aging older woman in the United States. I remember I was on a ship once, and I've always thought before the pandemic, before all the last few years, America— I was of the mindset that America was the best place in the world to live. And I was on a dance cruise and I was on the ship and all these people from all over the world were sitting, watching the sun go down on various tables. And one couple was from Germany, one couple was from France, and they asked me where I was from, although it was probably obvious. I said the United States. And they, looked at me and they said, you know, we're so sorry for the women in the United States. And I was kind of shocked. So of course I said, why? And she said, well, because you have to make the money, you have to be constantly gorgeous, constantly thin, you have to do everything. You're usually— your grant, your community, your parents don't live close by. You have everything. You have to drive everyone around. It sounds exhausting. To be an American woman. And it sounds like you're very judged. And one of the women from France said, you know, we last a long time in our marriages. So if a guy strays, we like figure out why, and we don't like just kick them out the door. But you guys, you're a very reactive society, and you're often left alone with a lot of kids doing everything. And I pondered so long about that, about why it is that women who give birth, rule the roost in the nest, are so demeaned from 40 onward. And especially, I'm gonna be 77 soon. I'm a few months away from 77, and that sounds ghastly old. I was just talking to my dear friend, a family practice doc, Dr. Brownstein, and he said he was shocked that even in functional medicine, he noticed that minute a woman became menopausal, she's not taken as seriously, even by functional medicine doctors that are supposed to be like the natural doctors. Women, older women are really, you know, we say Black Lives Matter, we say yada yada matters, but we don't say old ladies' lives matter. And I actually wrote an article called Why Do We Hate Older Women and What to Do About It. And I spent about 3 months digging into the literature. The American Legal Association had done a lot of research that women are— they even— there's a famous study that musicians, if they're auditioned, women get worse jobs even if they're more talented. So they had people be auditioned behind curtains so they couldn't tell which gender the musician was. And then women got hired more. But the women that— the minute that they were viewed and saw that this is a woman playing the cello versus a man playing the cello, they got hired less, especially if they were over 40. That's— there is a huge bias. That's why women feel this way about their age. And that's why women are doing everything that we can do to be thin, to be gorgeous, to be young, to be this, because we're so judged on it. So I finally got fed up with it. And, but the other thing is that I feel better than I've ever felt in my whole life at this age. Eureka! Who knew that would be accomplished? So I decided to try and be in sync with my age and hide nothing anymore and see if I could help push that Titanic away from those biased icebergs. And broaden the scope. Because why should women be so biased? Sean, I love the line from First Wives Club where Goldie Hawn says, I mean, look at Sean Connery, he could be 300 years old, and he's still a hunk. The minute guys get, you know, that's where the salt and pepper, the little beard came in and salt and pepper. So older and older men look better, but they're with younger and younger women. Older women get the short Shaft and I want to really try and help move that needle.

Debra, I love it. And that was always my feeling about you. I was like, why are you not proud of that? Because it should be. You're leveling it up for all of us. And that was such a mystery for me. I was like, wait a minute, you should be saying this is what you can look forward to because it is you're an anomaly. And that, I think, is the problem. I think women first put their expectations so much lower because as soon as they do hit a birthday— and I just heard somebody say yesterday, whether there's science behind this or not, but I do believe it— it starts at 30. Women start thinking they feel old now at 30.

Really?

Yeah.

So, you know, I bought into that. I was handcuffed to that. I was totally— I mean, I was handcuffed to that. I admitted I was embarrassed that I had those older numbers even though I had those younger cells. Mm-hmm. But now I'm trying to take off those handcuffs and open it up. But I didn't know that they were— see, this is crazy. Our society is really— I don't know what's happened, but there's a lot of things in our society that are not mentally well. And to bemoan your age at 30 is not mentally well. And life is such a gift. And to focus on that aging rather than to focus on the anti-aging and making yourself feel as good as you can in the moment, that is sad for me to hear and makes me all the more happy that we're having this conversation to turn that needle if we could. Absolutely.

Okay, so I heard— here comes the juicy part, everybody. Spoiler alert. So early on in your little monologue there, I heard cougar. I know you didn't say it out loud, but I heard cougar. Do you have a dating life that is juicy that we should know about?

So I do. So for most of my life—

X-rated, or can we say it?

It's X-rated, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna open up the curtains here. I'm gonna be very, very candid so that maybe somebody else that was in this boat can feel inspired to really grab life because it's a gift and you ought to live it. So all my life I was raised to be a good girl and find a husband and only make love with that husband, but that wasn't happening for me. So what do you do if you got your hormones balanced and you're doing kind of Debra flipping 50 cool exercise and you've got a lot of resilience, you got vitamin R on steroids and you got no husband. What do you do? So for years I was in pain over this, in pain, seeking, looking, looking for my husband. So the pandemic hit and I was by myself in my house. And for the first time in my life, I got plantar fasciitis. So I couldn't even walk from the couch to the kitchen. So I couldn't go outside and go walking. And I was so by myself. I had all these conversations with self. Life is a gift. No husband over here to endure the pandemic with. I must rewrite this script. There's no reason. I'm a hormone specialist. I help other women with their libido, other women with their intimacy with their husbands. If I don't have a husband, why should I not have intimacy? But I was trained not to have intimacy unless it was a husband. So I literally sat down and rewired my brain. And I first went on Bumble right when the pandemic was finishing and said, I'm older. I put— I think at that point I was 75 or something, and I put that I was 65. I cheated by 10 years. I said, I'm older than this age. But I sat by myself in the house And it— I don't want to do that anymore. So I'm open to adventure and I don't know what's going to happen. So I put that on Bumble and I was— I sat down with, I think, a shot of mezcal or tequila to warm up my cells to do that because it was against the way I've been raised to be a good girl. And the funniest thing happened. So this guy responded to me. Who was really— he said his age was much older than he was, it turned out. And it turned out that we had this incredible connection. He didn't even leave my house for a week. And he would put his mother on the phone and his family on the phone, letting them know how happy he was. But his mother was begging me to marry him. I've never told this story out loud. And he was a really good guy. He was a really good guy. And there was no difference between us. There was no difference between us.

We were really compatible. I couldn't get over that age.

I could not tell even my best friend about what was going on.

I can't believe I'm saying this on air.

And we had a wonderful time.

And then I had a conversation with him that I just couldn't endure, but it opened up the door. It opened up the door. And he and I have stayed friends. He and I have literally stayed friends, although his mother reaches out to me here and there. She still bemoans that I didn't marry her son because he was happier than he ever was in his life. Those, you know, times that he almost lived at my house. And Then I started to open myself up to saying, well, I could have a variety. I could, I could be looking for what I prefer to be a reality, which is a best friend, best lover, partner. But in the interim, why should I not be having, as long as I can be safe, which is the question. It's not, you know, there's a lot going on and you don't know everything going on with other people. But I've ended up exploring the boundaries. And then of course, I had Sue Bratton on my podcast, who's the diva of exploring boundaries. And I love Sue. She's a phenomenal woman. So I just started putting not just my toe, but my whole thigh, and then my hip, and then my torso into new waters to experience life from different ways. And I ended up meeting so many people that I never would meet in a million years because they weren't husband material in the classic sense of the term. And I started to be so much happier because I wasn't lonely wanting that which was not. And a lot of peace comes from being with is-ness. You could prefer something, but if you're Velcroed to wanting, wanting, wanting that, so your is-ness is, I don't have this, I don't have that. If you could be with what is, you could still prefer with what is not. But if you could be with what is, that's so much cellular peace, body, mind, and spirit. So I just let myself explore all these different— they say in chemistry, combinations and permutations. That's a famous line in biochemistry, and it really is a good line here. And I've ended up making friends with benefits and all kinds of people that are different people than me. I even— I'm going to be really honest here. Oh, God, this is— I feel like I don't have clothes on.

But I feel better about my body than I ever have in my whole life. I would be— I almost would be okay with that. It's really good to feel that you feel good with who you are. But I am— someone reached out to me that said his wife was very, very ill with this disease, and they had an understanding, and he kind of had a feeling from my profile. So I ended up talking to his wife first and then being with him. And then I had that practice in Florida where I worked in Dr. Perlmutter's old clinic. They flew out and had her see me as a patient. And over the year that I was with this gentleman, she got off the walker, off the cane, she got her cognition back. She had a severe autoimmune disease. She was completely floored. And now she's a totally healthy person. So at that point, we ended up just becoming friends. They even wanted me to move in with them. It was crazy.

We became such—

that is amazing. Who would have thought that a good Jewish girl from Chicago would be having these experiences and saying them on a podcast. Oh my God. And I realized life is to be lived, and you don't know what the universe serves you. But to be sitting in front of the TV weeping— you know, I have one patient that said to me she was so unhappy with her husband, and he never wanted to touch her, and he never wanted to talk to her. And she would just talk because I'm a hormone doctor, so I get in to depth of what's going on in my patients' lives. And she said she would sit and just weep looking at shows where other people hugged on the show. I don't want to be sitting watching other people living. And if your life isn't what you would prefer it to be, then you've got to make it what will give you more joy, because you never know when your expiration date is up. And there's so much life to be lived, and it might be in different forms that you ever thought. So this last few years has been a total eye-opener. And all my friends say to me, we've never seen you so happy, yet I don't have that thing that I thought I was looking for and I needed to have— and this home, this husband, this dog, this, you know, this whole thing. So I've decided to have it in a different way till the other, but maybe the other never shows up. So I want what is. I want to be grateful fully for what is. So I kind of took matters into my own heart. And it was quite a, quite a ride the last few years.

It is amazing, but I will have to vouch for this. So those of you who are seeing clips and/or you might be watching this on YouTube, you know that you're probably looking at this video in disbelief, like you're saying, no, no, no, that's not what 76, almost 77, looks like, which is exactly the point. But I agree, I mean, you have always floored me with, wow, okay, this is exciting because this is what we have to look forward to. But you do, you look even better than ever. I mean, I am embarrassed. I think you have better arms than me and we don't—

No, no, I don't. So, you know, I've always, always loved kayaking and I was bemoaning that I had no one to kayak with. Why? Why? It's so hard to get somebody to go down to the lake and kayak 5, 6 miles. Most people don't want to do that. So once again, because I had this experience, don't wait, live your life, do it, do it yourself. So I started a women's kayaking club. And lo and behold, this one lady that's been the most consistent with me, we call ourselves committed to the water. She lost 75 pounds kayaking with me over the last almost 6 years now.

Amazing.

She looks like a totally different person. And because we do so much respiratory fitness, I don't know, I've upped. And I— and because the Women's Health Initiative final reanalysis came out in December '19, so I had breast cancer 30 years ago and was on hormones 3 years after that, and everybody was saying, don't do it, don't take it, they cause cancer. When that happened, I upped my hormones. And then when last April 2024, published in Menopause, the 10 Million study came out of our own NIH and it became— they looked at 10 million American women over 65. And if you're on hormones, you live 4 years longer. You statistically have less breast cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, less neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. You have a better life. So I finally, I think two things happened. I pushed my hormones when I'd been only the toe in the water for quite a time because everyone was— it's hard not to be scared by the cultural mind sync. And then at the same time, I decided to really move and create what I wanted. Don't wait for it, create it, and let it be whatever it's going to be, even if it's not exactly the way you wanted it. Those have been game changers for me, really. And it's extraordinary. I have never been this healthy or look this good in my life. And I'm like 3 and a half years away from 80. And it's— I myself am kind of surprised by it. But it's a little bit isolating because a lot of my friends are not having the same experience.

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No question that you probably— you have to not only date younger people, you have to have younger friends. Yeah, totally love it. Okay. And I want to come back to something else that you said a bit ago. You say older women, and specifically even professionally, women in functional medicine, or any, any woman going into menopause, after that she's not taken as seriously. You know, I think it's funny because right now, being on the other side, and I don't know when this happened to me, but You know, I think about, you know, professional women, doctors, functional doctors who are talking about researchers also talking about, you know, hormonal change and talking about menopause and giving advice. And it's like, you come back to me in 20 years, you know, because, you know, I've seen so many women. It's like, okay, a study said that great, but we still don't have enough because there are so many outliers. So many women aren't covered in all of these studies. And that, you know, you give them a basic, and this is what they should do. Many of them are not feeling good doing that. And we're just not asking basic questions like, but how do you feel? And let's make a change based on your own personal data and what it is you're measuring in terms of energy. So, you know, that piece of not taking older women seriously, I'm at a to the point where I don't take those younger women too seriously. I'm like, you just don't even know what you don't know yet. Like, come on.

Well, I was shocked because Dave Asprey, who I really respect, and he— his great book, Superhuman, he mentioned me in his book. I've been on his podcast. He just had a huge anti-aging conference here, but they didn't talk at all about hormones, and they didn't have any women in their 70s and 80s. And there's like a man or two that's on testosterone and still looking pretty good in late 60s, but most of the speakers were in the 30s and 40s selling anti-aging gadgets, which— but I have a lot of respect for him. But hormones are truly— and the re— you know, I was a distinguished hormone scholar at an estrogen think tank at Tulane and working with the scientists who discovered how they first worked, the first two receptors. But now we see that hormones even signal every single cell membrane in your body. They run the Wi-Fi, the the physiologic internet of your body, your Wi-Fi. And you know what happens when your Wi-Fi freezes? You can't get a single thing done. And as you age or have disease, your Wi-Fi is freezing. And you need to look at hormones, not just for anti-aging, but they rule tissues. And we're a reactive country. So when the misinterpretation of the first Women's Health Initiative came out in July 2002, we just stopped teaching. It's crazy. Based on one randomized trial that in a few months, um, Leon Spiroff, who wrote the book that we all were weaned on in school on gynecology, he said, don't listen to this. And clinically, women do better on hormones. Don't— there was, there was methodology issues. No one listened and they stopped teaching hormones in med school, osteopathic school, and in naturopathic school. So now if you ask your well-intentioned family practice doc or whoever you're seeing. You know, it's human to be down on what you're not up on. So if you say, what do you think of hormones? Women get the wrong answer. They say, you know, I wouldn't do it if I was you. You should age gracefully. Bullcrap. We live in a toxic world and it's very hard to age gracefully. And aging ungracefully is extremely uncomfortable, if not painful and disease-riddled. So, um, It's very hard to find who to go to, and the problem is older women are looked down upon in our society. We are the one of the most downtrodden groups, and we don't have anyone fighting for us, which is why I love this conversation, because older women are phenomenal, just phenomenal. But if you don't have your health and you don't have your energy and you don't like yourself— body, mind, and spirit— and have a few rupees in the bank, older health can be extremely painful. But if you have a strategic life— of course, there's no guarantees on anything— but if you have a strategic life, there's so much more of a possibility to soar at this time, Old age is given the wrong, wrong viewpoint. They're made befuddling idiots on the media, and it's, it's not accurate at all. This is such a fabulous time. I could go on and on for several hours about the benefits of old age, but only if you have your health and you have a few rupees in the bank.

Amen. Well, and I want to say so many things. So obviously, I mean, you're thriving, but One of the things I want to point out is you, you also are— you're firing on all cylinders. And I think a little brain fog and a little hesitation, can't find my words, I mean, that can happen to any woman, particularly starts happening more frequently in midlife. It's not happening to you. I want to point out to every listener and viewer, but if you could see the video, you can see her skin, her hair, her, her everything is like What? She's that old? You're lying to me. I know we would— we wouldn't do that here. But your voice also tells a story. There are, there are ways that you can detect what happens to a voice when it ages. You have a very youthful sounding voice.

So where target tissue are tissues that have a lot of receptors or satellite dishes that take beaming signals from hormones, the vocal cords are covered with receptors for estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. So women who take hormone replacement have younger voices. And I've been lecturing for years and years, so I've also honed that muscle that operates the vocality of my body. But the thing that really gets me, and I love that you brought this point up, our medical system is looking for this big drug to treat Alzheimer's disease. They even have— the FDA has approved drugs that had a high death profile status. People— that was the drug, was $38,000, I think, a month. And there was a huge possibility of dying from this drug. Most people in my space feel that if women and men both— because this applies to both genders— if we're on hormones, you have almost a nil chance of getting Alzheimer's disease because the hormones Revolving— aging is shrinking, and hormones revolumize the piggy bank of your memory and self-awareness called the hippocampus. And there's functional MRIs that show that it does this in several weeks to several months. And in fact, I had on my podcast the amazing neurologist from the University of UCLA, Dale Bredesen, and he wrote The End of Alzheimer's. And I'm sure you've probably had him on your podcast, you should. He's amazing. He's, he's trained over thousands of doctors. He's— it's been— his work has been replicated, which is the hallmark of science, and he's published in peer review, which I don't even know if I respect peer review anymore, but he has. So that's a big deal. And if you have mild or moderate cognitive decline, and it could be Alzheimer's, Lewy body disease, a variety of every which way that your brain is not working the way that it should. He has a protocol that's not being respected because it doesn't have a medicine to it. And it's a whole list, a checklist of things you need to look at. And it works in 4 to 6 months. And it's being replicated by doctors that have trained with him all over the country. But at the top of the list is hormones because hormones can revolumize the hippocampus. We all hear about the liver. It's so cool because it could grow back another lobe. It's an organ that can grow some of itself back. Not if you have complete cirrhosis of the liver, but certain— it's a, it's an organ that has a lot of resilience to it. The hippocampus, where our memories and sense of self live— God is generous and it is rebootable. You can actually take a shrunken hippocampus and in a moderate period of time with the right dosing of hormones, because in medicine everything's about the dose. You can revolumize the hippocampus and then you get more neuroplasticity and memory and so forth. So people on the right dose of hormones, the right balance of hormones, and a lot of people don't know how to do hormones because we stopped teaching it in school. So there's all of these, you know, confusing complications surrounding the real application of hormones. It can keep your brain younger for longer and it It makes me grind my teeth to powder when I go to these gerontologic conferences. They're talking about cognitive decline and they all go, there's no answer, there's no answer, we have no answer. Well, we have an answer, but the answer isn't pharmacologic. It's not making any big corporation money. And I'm so tired with how women at the bottom of the line, and also men, miss out because, you know, what medicine— and there's many parts of medicine that are phenomenal. Trauma medicine is phenomenal. ER medicine is— it's just extraordinary. So certain surgeries, eye medicine, but in chronic care, brain health, and in the application of hormones, which now run the Wi-Fi of your body, we don't know what to do to stop Wi-Fi freeze. And we throw more drugs, and the more you need more drugs, then you're on a conveyor belt where you need even more drugs from the iatrogenic effects of the first drugs. It's, it's crazy when a lot of this, if people knew, and the other problem is that we now live in a dirtier planet that's surrounded by chemicals that assault hormones. And we have younger and younger men and women in their teens that have less and less hormones. And hormones, yeah, they are lipophilic. They only like fat. The blood is water. So they have to get in an Uber that will carry them through this water. And then if you have too many Ubers, the hormones are stuck in the Ubers and they can't get out. Those are binding proteins. There's a global phenomenon of young people having less and less hormones and more and more Ubers. And they don't work. So we have more kids with anxiety and body dysphoria and bone loss and shrinkage of various anatomical areas of the brain. And in fact, Harvard just published a study a few years ago and spun about 50 papers off. They did it with General Mass where they took about 170 young girls, 13 to 24 years of age, and they have this litany of symptoms that a lot of young girls have today. Anxiety, insomnia, body dysphoria, suicidal ideation, starting to have osteopenia, bone loss, and they're like young. And they gave them hormones just like you would do to an older woman. To half the women, it was a randomized trial. We're always wanting a randomized trial. And half the women, the young girls weren't given it. And the girls given the hormones, check, check, check, got rid of anxiety, check. Got rid of insomnia. Check. How soon? A week or two. Fast. They didn't wanna get off the hormones. So we have hormonal imbalance now threaded through cultures, and we have the most chemicals of any country in our food and the most chemicals in our soil. And we have, uh, my new book coming out in September. I, I, I talk about, you know, school shootings and violence and a lot of things happening. How much of this is coming from The areas of the brain are shrunken even in young people. And there, and in the amniotic fluid, we have 200 to 300 to 400 chemicals in a healthy American woman. We're swimming in chemicals from the time we're in the womb to the tomb. And hormones don't function well with those chemicals. So we have a new situation and we don't have providers within this terrain of medicine trained to even observe this in practice, test and track and treat this in practice.

Well, and the other thing you said, there are 4 things, and you said at the top of that list is hormones. On that list is exercise, because 3 times a week, about 45, 40 minutes of exercise also improves hippocampus tremendously.

Exactly. And, you know, one of the reasons it does is exercise boosts testosterone. It boosts the healthy hormones. The guys in the gym, because I go to the gym every day, the ones that are there every day, I tell them you should all get your hormones tested. One guy who's 66 or 67, he, he's hunk. I see him every day. We're in there every day. We always have a nice conversation. You, you have your gym buddies. Mm-hmm. And he went and tested and he didn't need any hormones because he works out so much that exercise boosted it in him. Plus muscles caretake the brain, you know, healthy muscles caretake and make you potentially have a healthier brain.

Mm-hmm. Love it. Okay, talk about— very recently, as we're recording, at least, there were, you know, there were panels going in front of the FDA talking about specifically testosterone. We heard so much about that. Tell me about what's your level of hope that this, like, insufficiency of hormone advice and hormone support for women and/or fermenting will turn around?

Gosh, you know, Debra, that is the question of the day. I actually go to bed at night and I put my head down on the pillow and I think this, because this is— I would not be who I am today with no— you know, I've had many cancers, many health issues when I was younger because my mother took the first largest model compound of endocrine disruption. She took diethylstilbestrol when she was pregnant with me. And I had so many issues. And then I went ahead and went on hormones anyway, even though I had hormonal cancers and then kidney cancer. So I really think about this before I go to bed. Where are we gonna go from here? I really— and I'm terrible with names, so I mispronounce names. That, that's— so I think everything else went to my, my health, but my brain didn't reboot. I've never been well with brain— with names. I could always tell my patients' faces, but I could never remember their names. So McCary, McCary, I can— he— I thought he was great in the opening. I think he's amazing. He's written 2 books, so he, he really understands the conundrum of hormones. And he also had a mother who wasn't allowed to be on estrogen and ended up having a lot of fractures. You know, if you have a severe hip fracture, a third of those women might go on and die in a short period of time. And women on hormones have less hip fractures and have stronger bones. End of story. Although it's not across the board. I just had a patient that's on hormones, but because she smoked for many years, even though she's been on hormones for a few years, it hasn't caught up with her. So the way you've lived your life is part of who you are when you show up in the office. Change doesn't take place overnight. But I appreciated what the first meeting was all about— removing the black box warning. A vaginal estrogen. And black box warnings are the highest level of warning from the FDA that this drug has some negative side effects, but they're still letting it be on the market. And a lot of people weren't using vaginal estrogen because of that. And when women get older and the vagina loses its estrogen and kind of shrinks, it's painful to make love. And then you lose your intimacy and glue with your beloved if you want that. Not everybody wants intimacy, and that everybody gets to choose what they want. But I thought it was a really good first step to remove this negative shadow, like Pigpen with that cloud over his head. Estrogen had a cloud over its head on the label of vaginal estrogen. But I was sad to hear a lot of the— not all, but a lot of the other speakers were so immersed in sciencies and the way that they stated things. They're so bogged down by wanting to sound intelligent, whatever, and they didn't really have a lay of the land of the hormone land. And we don't need any more science. We have so much science. And that's what I fear is they're going to want to have more studies when we don't need them. I mean, the Women's Health Initiative was reanalyzed something like 16 times, and the original authors On the last reanalysis said, there's no question if you've been on estrogen for at least 5 years, and it should be balanced estrogen, you have 23% reduced incidence of getting breast cancer. And if you do get breast cancer, it's not that the estrogen gave it to you, but now you're in a better position that you get breast cancer and you were on estrogen and you have a reduced fatality incidence of 44%. That means if you were on estrogen and you got breast cancer, you're less likely to die from from it, it's a— most of the time it's a less aggressive disease. Nothing. But now if you get cancer while you're on hormones or you stroke out while you're on hormones, you're a man or a woman, your doctor's gonna tell you it was the hormone's fault. 'Cause they don't know it. Your doctors do not know hormones and they have it the wrong way. So I was saddened by that and I was thinking they're gonna call for more of our taxpayer money. Mm-hmm. We don't need that. We have so much research and so much science, so So I've been so upset over all of this and, you know, I had breast cancer and I'm on hormones, which is supposedly foreboding. So in April, I am gonna be giving a 16-hour CME course for MDs, nurse practitioners, naturopaths. I have, I have to try and figure out how to get CMEs for pharmacists. I haven't done that before. And, um, I'm, it's going to be on how do you, use hormones and what's the science behind using hormones and the safety, efficacy, and reality with women who've had hormone cancers and that also have genetic clotting disorders like Factor V Leiden. So I've got the staff now and we've got an incredible staff and we're really excited. We're going to push the needle because there are 25 studies One at MD Anderson, one at the University of Wisconsin, one at the University of Georgia. One of the studies followed women for 30 years. One of the studies followed women for 26 years. One was 2 years, but 25 studies where they gave women with ER-positive breast cancer— ER-positive means medicine thinks it means that estrogen fuels that breast cancer, but does it mean that? We don't think it means that. Well, they gave women with ER-positive breast cancer, so it was mild or moderate disease, gave them estrogen. And then they had matched cohorts, meaning women who were very similar in age, in diagnosis, in tumor size. They were also ER-positive, mild and moderate disease. And they track— every single study had two arms where they tracked women with ER-positive breast cancer and women with ER-positive breast cancer, one group on hormones, the other not. Every single study, and this was from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, and in every single study, women on hormones had less recurrence, smaller tumors if they did, less aggressive tumors if they did. They, they also tended to die less and they had a much higher quality of life. We have 25 studies. No one ever talks about these studies. I don't, I have it summarized in a little ebook on my website called Estrogen Vindication. Abram Bluming, who's an oncologist that was very instrumental in changing the trajectory of breast cancer surgery, he has a book out on it called Estrogen Matters, but he's very down on bioidentical hormones. So everybody's got their own, you know, flag that they're raising, but it's really a shame that women should be denied hormones, especially if they're triple negative because they have no receptors. So if you're saying these receptors are really fed by hormones and they have no receptor positive, those patients for sure. But then we have the work of Rebecca Glasser, who's an ex-breast cancer surgeon doing incredible things with testosterone in breast cancer patients. So that's the most published data we have is the safety of giving testosterone and that makes everybody's life better on so many levels. And yet most women, like, if you're on an aromatase inhibitor, it hurts your joints, it hurts your life. And if you're on testosterone with it, you're much better off. None of this is translated into a regular oncologic visit with your doc. So we're hoping to change the needle with that. And, um, it's also been my personal experience. So, uh, I feel like this is kind of the reason I was born.

Absolutely. What, what a service you're doing for all women and humanity, really. So in a sense, what you've said is, you know, we don't need more science, we don't need more information, we need transformation. We need to implement what we do know. We more need more physicians empowered to give the right information and choice to their patience.

I like the way you said that, Debra. I like that. No less misinformation and more transformation. That's well said. Well said, Debra.

Well, and thank you for sharing the book. So I'm going to send everybody there. Is there, is there anything else that you feel a woman who is considering, you know, maybe second-guessing now after hearing you and considering, am I getting the right information? Have I gotten all the choices available to me? You have so many assets. I know you've been doing this for a really long time. You mentioned the ebook, Estrogen Vindication. Is there anywhere else that you would send them as a resource?

I, so we want your oncologist in on everything. We want transparency. Usually today, oncologists, not all, but are more open-minded. So if a woman says, my life is miserable, I can't bear it, I wanna go on hormones, I'm willing to sign a disclaimer, that's what you do. And usually the oncologist will say, okay. And I try and call the oncologist and talk with them and share and ask them to write the script and let them experience what the patient does. And I just was on the phone with a Mayo Clinic oncologist and she was really open. She said, if this works with this patient and she feels better and I don't see a horrific recurrence, you know, I'm gonna be open, more open to other patients. So I have a little ebook. Work called Hormones for Breast Cancer Survivors. And it's really meant for you to read, but for you to hand to your oncologist to get your own, because this isn't like you should hide away and do something and you should do what you wanna do. And everybody you work with, you listen to them and you have to go into your gut. You have to develop a relationship with your gut picker. About which trajectory in life to go. But, you know, your gut instinct is actually based on non-genomic estrogen signaling. And as women get less— and so estrogen hormone balancing helps you stay more in tune with your gut. Actually, it's kind of an interesting phenomenon, but it's really good to learn to trust yourself. Your relationship with yourself is the lens through which you live your whole life. And if you want a better life, it starts with your relationship with yourself, which for none of us is easy. None of us— life is, is a big ball of, you know, potentials, and you never know what's coming your way. And it's not easy for anybody. But the way that you'd, you'd work out at the gym for those muscles, if you work to live within yourself for your congruency muscle, to really figure out What's in my nooks and crannies? What was my family of origin gunk about? Who am I and who do I really want to be? And what do I need to do to get there? You know, this, this is the world through which you are. And, and don't just live for everyone else, because when your kids see you living in that manner, the kids are your biggest mirrors, and they're going to see you living your biggest life, and that will help them live their biggest life, in my opinion.

Amen. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. Yeah.

I love that. We do, we do good together. You give good hosting. Isn't, aren't people now really upset over a jean ad because someone said she, she gave good jeans and it was all, they were all upset. I don't know, but I love that. You know, I think it's a great, I don't, why are we so upset over everything? What the, that's our hormones are out of balance and we have too many toxins in our foods. You know, get a life, stop getting upset and enjoy yourself because you could be taken out by a train tomorrow. It's so important to embrace the moment. And I mean this with every little nook and cranny of the chambers of me old heart.

And I buried the lead so y'all didn't know, but she does stand-up comedy too, just in case you want to You want to really hate her because she looks good, she feels good, she's so smart, and she's funny. So there's that. Okay, so you're gonna go and find her, listeners, at Dr. Lindsay Berkson. That's Lindsay with S-E-Y Berkson. She's Dr. Lindsay Berkson on Facebook. On Instagram, it's DL Berkson. All those things are in the show notes, and we'll mention the books, the ebooks, because I think you're gonna want to go and get those. I know a certain percentage of you—

My new book is coming out in September, Oxytocin Medicine. It's my 22nd book.

So good.

Oh my God, no wonder I'm single. I'm stuck at home in front of a computer. Other people have a ball and chain on them. I've got a, I've got a chain around my ankle and it's 3, 4 computers and microphone. No, no, no, I don't feel chained, but I used to feel chained and I don't feel chained anymore. And I wish that for you. And part of that is balanced hormones and part of that is listening to Debra with her exercise. It's multifactorial for sure. But man, life is such a gift and we don't want to waste it. But you can't enjoy it if you feel awful, so you got to go about figuring out how to feel better. I wish that for you. I wish that for you.

Amen to that. And on that note, we'll end with this: you didn't know it, but my dog's middle name is Oxytocin.

No, no. Yeah. Oh God. So, you know, I should have a picture of your dog in the book. It still hasn't gone to print. I'm like interviewing printing houses and things like this. We should have a picture of your dog in the book. I don't know. I think it's a cute idea. And I can understand why you named a dog Oxytocin, because they're just love incarnate, right?

Absolutely. Okay, everybody, now it's your turn. Remember, you could get hit by a train tomorrow, so start living. Do something fun today. So wasn't that fun? Dr. Berkson is dinner and a show, to be sure. So she has got the scientific knowledge, she's got the years of experience, decades more than most, and she is a stand-up comedian. So there was a lot there, and I hope you enjoyed it. So you got the personal side, you got the professional side, and really you got the living testimony of of hormones, but I have no doubt that you may want more. So again, those links are all in the show notes. But for you, if you'd like to uplevel your own personal longevity game, you can start with fitness. It doesn't even have to be with hormones, but your own natural influence of them. And get the fitness scorecard. It's fitness-scorecard@flipping50.com. Fitness-scorecard. The link will be in the show notes. These are tests that you can do at home. Many of them you could do right away. Several of them you'll need a little bit more something, a little bit more planning to do, but they're at your fingertips and you will find out what your own longevity