Balancing Your Hormones Naturally with Dr. Shawn Tassone

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Welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, fitness hall of famer and four time New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin. JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives with over 3.5 million podcast downloads and appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King Love Whoa, whoa, whoa.

This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Hey, it's JJ with a super cool guest for you today. I got Dr. T got Dr. Shawn Tassone and I am really excited to share him with you because he is going to give you a way to look at hormones that you've never heard of before. I can tell you. And we are going to have the coolest quiz. In fact, I'm just going to let you know this right now. You can go to jjvirgin.com Dr. Sean D R S H A W N. You'll be able to get the world's first integrative hormonal mapping system. It's a free quiz that literally maps out your hormones and helps you figure out which type you are. And he's giving you a guide to reset and restart your hormone balance. And so here's, here's why you want to listen to Sean. His patients call him Dr. T. Okay, so he's a double board certified physician. He's an OB GYN and an integrative doc and a math whiz. His undergraduate degree in math was math, but he has treated over 40,000 patients. Turns out a big part of that happened when Suzanne Summers put him in her book Sexy Years and he got inundated. You'll hear his story as to how he found bioidentical hormones and started really listening to patients. And it's been the listening is where he's learned so much. And that has resulted in this innovative new way of looking at hormones that's going to let you get back in touch with your body and figure out where things are so that when you do get to the doctor, you will have gotten yourself most of the way there and then you can just get the fine tuning. So super excited about sharing Dr. T with you today. All right. Now again, amazing show notes, that fabulous quiz, his hormone reset and balance guide, all that cool stuff you can get@jjvirgin.com Dr. Sean all right, Dr. Shanta Sone, welcome to the show. This is going to be awesome. I'm so glad you're here.

Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Well, I think I kind of had to beg to get you on, but.

You know, no, I'm just, I forgot to ask.

When I see genius, I will do what it takes, bring it to my community. So you are doing some really interesting stuff around hormones. I know today we're going to be talking about getting your hormones balanced and how when you do that, it's going to make you have a great, high quality, long life. So before we get into that, because you have such a different way of looking at hormones and I'm really excited to share that with everybody. But how, how did you get, you're a dude, I guess everyone probably, probably knows that you're doing, you're really, you're a fun dude. How did you get into women's hormones.

Dr. Sean and I guess in life and many things in my life anyways, I sort of fall into things at times, you know, right place, right time. Synchronously a la Deepak Chopra. I was practicing in Tucson and was probably 12 years ago, had this crazy, this pharmacist showed up at my office and she was talking to me about these weird things called bioidentical hormones. And at the time it was like voodoo. I don't know anybody in my city that was using them. And I started just prescribing them because we were prescribing Premarin and Prempro and the usual culprits. And I started prescribing them as we noticed some huge differences. And what was interesting is after about a year or two, one day, Suzanne Summers went on Oprah Winfrey show and with her book Sexy Years. And in the back of her book, she referenced me as a reference. I had no idea. And I had so many phone calls that day that I had to shut my panel down because I didn't have enough appointments. And from that day on, 12 years ago, I've had women flying from around the country to come see me. And it's been. It's been fascinating evolution. Just kind of immersing myself in the. The stories of, you know, over 40,000 women so far.

Wow.

I did not know that part of your story.

I hide some.

You've learned a little bit working with these 40,000.

Plus, I learned to listen. That's what I've learned.

Well, you should teach that course to men, so we'll leave that alone, though. So you say that every woman has a hormonal narrative that deserves to be heard. I'm reading this because I'm like, what. What on earth is that, Sean?

Well, it's the. It's the story. And I think what happens is women will go in and they don't know why they're going into the doctor. They just feel horrible. You know, 30 years old to 55, you just. You don't know why. You just don't feel like yourself.

Yep, I remember it.

Yeah.

And the doctor does their blood and comes back, and 99% of the time says, oh, you're fine. You're just getting older. I can't tell you how many times I've heard this. And that's the narrative. The narrative is, I'm gaining weight, I'm bloated, my periods are irregular, I can't sleep, I have headaches all the time. That's the narrative. And they're all different, but they're not being heard. And it's not because doctors are bad. They just don't know how to listen to what the patients are telling them. And I always say to my patients, normal isn't always normal. Normal for you is different than normal for J.J. virgin. Everybody's different. And it's that particular story, that symptoms and the lab values that I think is the narrative. And that's what needs to be heard.

I love hearing that because that has always been so suspicious to me, as I think, you know, I'm sure my idea of hormone balance is it's going to be very different than, say, you know, I'm. I'm kind of a lean, athletic, never had big issues with, you know, PMS or any of that stuff. Be very different than someone who's more curvy and, you know. Right. I mean, it's just obvious. Like, why would you treat us all the same? It doesn't make sense.

It's funny is that, you know, like, if you look at, say, a testosterone Level, the, at the normal range is 0.2 to 2.0. Most women come in at 0.2, so they're normal. But I could multiply that tenfold and it would still be normal, but you might feel a hell of a lot better. So that's why it's. You can't just look at the numbers. You have to look at the person.

So what about these hormone imbalances then? Like what? You know, what are you seeing? What's common besides feeling like you're going to want to crawl out of your skin?

I think the most common one that I see in this generation, around this time in our evolution is estrogen dominance. I mean, so many women are overweight. Fat cells create more estrogen. There's estrogen, there's xenoestrogens in the food supply, there's estrogens in the meat that we use birth control pills. There's so much in the, in society that's estrogenic that I think that even when we try to eat well and we eat phytoestrogens, we might consume too much. And so probably 70% of the women I see have estrogen dominance where they just, you know, they're gaining weight, they're holding on to water, they have horrible cravings, migraines, they're not sleeping well. Just. I call it the big bag of hurt. That's what I call it.

All right, so the big bag of hurt. What are some of the other ones like? I will tell you, I could tell when mine started to shift because I felt like I wanted to crawl out my skin, but I just ached all over. That was mine.

The, the second, second biggest one is probably the one that I call the plague of the 21st century is testosterone deficiency. And I, I think that it's, it's for a lot of reasons, but the main one is we're just not recognizing it. If you look at the market right now, there are probably 10 medications for men to get erections. You know, I mean, they sit in the bathtub on TV and hold hands and everybody has an erection. And it's a wonderful thing, but we're ignoring women. And there is absolutely no FDA approved testosterone replacement therapy on the market for women, which I think is astounding. Wow.

So the ones that they're using for women, they're just off labeling the men's ones?

Well, what they're doing is you're compounding it, so you're having it made, but there's nothing that's FDA approved. And what that shows you is that the FDA and the medical community don't think it's important. They don't think that it's important for women to have testosterone. And you have it, it's a normal hormone. So that's really common. And then some of the other ones that you see commonly, you know, if you look at cortisol, cortisol excess and even cortisol deficiency on the back end, and I find a lot of women don't have optimum levels of thyroid hormones either.

All right, so someone walks in and I would think that these things can coexist. And you've created a mapping system. And so you've got this mapping system and then a woman can find her hormone type. So how does this work? I know everyone. Just so everyone listening, you're going to get this quiz. This is super cool. I'm really excited about this, but I want to hear. This is the first I've heard of this integrated mapping system. I'm super excited about it. Talk us through it.

You know how things just sort of evolve. And I played with this idea years ago where I would talk to my patients and I would ask them if they wanted to find their hormonal compass and just kind of the direction that you're pointing in is your estrogen too high and whatnot. I was talking to women and I was noticing that I could say estrogen dominance and they'd get all glassy eyed. I tried to come up with a conversational way of explaining this. And what I came up with is archetypes or types. So estrogen dominance, I call the queen. And because estrogen is a female hormone and very powerful women are queens. So what I did with that was then I looked at. I found out that what I was telling queens was pretty much the same things over and over again. And there was a spiritual component, a hormonal component, an energetic component, a nutritional component, an exercise component, and a supplementation component. So what I did was because I majored in math in. In college, and I'm actually a very boring human being, but I majored in math. The reason I majored in math was because I couldn't get an A in anything but math. Is it weird? So I made it in math. So what I did was I came up with questions. There's 36 questions, and these are based on the stories of the thousands of women that I've spoken with. These 36 questions have a big algorithm on the backside that my web designer had fits over because it was weird for him. But anyways, you answer these 36 questions. And it gives you a hormone type and this hormonal type, it could be the queen, it could be the testosterone deficiencies called the nun. Cortisol excess is the, the workaholic. So there's different names and they all have their own maps. And the maps are, so what happens when you take the quiz is it will give you your, your archetype or your type. From there it's how do you then do something with this? What do you do with it? And that was the other key to this puzzle was women need a map. They don't need somebody to tell them what to do. They need the map to show them what they can do on their own. And so 80% of this mapping system is stuff you can do at home. 1 20% is hormones, which might need a practitioner for that. But it's all about self care. And the map is going to be different for every 12 of those women. So because it's integrative, I call it the integrative hormonal mapping System.

Well, I love this too, because what's so great is you can actually get someone to get 80% of the way. There's so that you can do the tweaking, fine tuning and use bioidentical hormones where needed and not use more than what's needed. Because they're doing, you know, they're taking care of say, getting their cortisol in check with tapping or, you know, reducing their estrogenic load in their diet. Right, right.

And you know, I had a, I had a lady come in the other day, she's a pharmaceutical rep, three kids, all under 10. She drives all the time, she eats horrible, she's working out, she's doing all the things she needs to do well. She takes the quiz and she's the saboteur. The saboteur is cortisol deficiency. And I explained to her, I was like, here's a saboteur. Saboteurs do everything for everybody else at their own expense. They don't take care of themselves. She started crying. And it's because she said to me, that's the first time anybody's ever said that to me, but it's so true. And I said, it's not me. This isn't me telling you this. These are 20,000 women telling you this. Right? These are their stories. And so from there it sounds weird, but I actually, and you might not like this, I actually told her not to work out hard for no, like high intensity stuff, but to maybe walk or something. Because when you're A saboteur. And you don't have any juice left. The least, the worst thing you can be doing is burning the candle with a blowtorch.

So, hey, I'm right there with you on that. You've got exhaustion. You don't go kick it at the gym.

You take it easy, you meditate, you do yoga, you do body resistance training, stuff like that. And that's part of her map, you know, the other part of the map is maybe taking some adrenal cortex from supplementation and eating a better diet because she's on the road and she's not eating well and just boosting your own energies and using essential oils and doing massage and taking care of yourself. And I don't think I like to prescribe massage because women don't usually get them. And for me to write it on a piece of paper and say, you need a massage, it's empowering. Oh, I have to do it now.

Can you write me a prescription for that too, Sean, while we're at it? Sure. All right, like you've been holding out on me. Now, I would think this, you, you've got this process called shines. Is that part of that 80%?

Yes. So the only part of shines that is the 20% is the H, which is hormones. So the first S is spiritual practice hormones. The I is in faceticals, a la our friend Harry Massey, which is energetic medicine. So Reiki, healing touch, essential oils, infraceuticals. The, the N is nutrition. So there's ob, nutrition component, the N is nutrition, the E is exercise, and then the final S is supplementation. And what I've been doing lately is nutrigenomics testing where we actually do a buccal swab and look at the DNA of the patient to see what kind of supplements they really need. I've saved a lot of people a ton of money with supplements because you go to the store, you ask the 16 year old that works there, what works, and they tell you whatever they're trying to clear out that day. But this is actually testing that tells you what to take and it works for your hormone type too. So it's great.

I love that. And I think that is one of the key things. I went around lecturing for metametrics a couple, like what, I don't know, 10 years ago. And that was the big thing is test, don't guess, you know, because it's hard to know with some of these things. You take them, it's not like you take them and your hair is going to all of a sudden get thick overnight and your skin's clearing up. It takes. Takes time. You can't really tell that your cells aren't oxidizing. You can't see it. You. Some of this stuff, it's hard to be aware of. The changes are subtle, but it's so key to do. So love that you just mentioned that. Now I'm going to throw a little curveball at you. And I know, I know, I know. Since I've met you, I've seen you, like, lose some weight, make some shifts. So what about you, Dr. Sean? Like, what's one thing you do every day that you feel makes a big difference in your life?

Right now, as we were talking about before, I'm going through a little bit of a personal evolution. But for me, what's important for me is to eat right. I grew up comforting with food. It was just the way that I'm Italian. We ate pasta. We had to eat everything on our plate. And I just grew up with food being a comfortable thing, family. And so for me, what I did was I really. My. My doctor see, I don't like to be challenged because I am a rebel. And so he said, you need to lose weight. And I was like, well, screw you. I'm not gonna lose weight. I don't need to lose weight. And I took it as a challenge. And I actually stopped eating processed foods, which is silly. You know, A doctor, great. It's like. But I was, like, such a hypocrite, right? And I'm like, I'm 20 pounds overweight or whatever, and I'm telling people. People to eat, right? So I took it really seriously, finally, and cut my carbs down to less than 20 grams a day. And what I find for me is if I. If I can live in that. Not necessarily ketosis, but eat a really solid Paleo, whole foods, kind of a diet, I just. I feel better, and I just am a completely different person. I mean, I lost £25, but it's. It's really just. I'm happier. I'm just a happier person. And I think it's just because I don't need the comfort, you know, as much as I used to. So that's what's important for me. And intermittent fasting. I like intermittent fasting, Yes.

I mean, intermittent fasting, that is one of the key, easiest takeaways is just when you're done with dinner, which you should eat earlier, get out of the kitchen and stay out of there. We really need to have some kind of a Lockdown system. I keep talking about this. I want to invent this where your kitchen's just on lockdown for 12 hours, so you can't get in, like a.

Shock collar that, like, you know, the dog.

Right? I mean, it'd be perfect, like, nope, you can't get. Nope, you can't go in there. Because how many times mindlessly do you just wander in the kitchen, get something, you don't need it, you're not hungry. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with being a little hungry either.

I even think you walk to the fridge and you see, like, I. I just went and saw blueberries, but it's like, there's still sugar if you eat them at 10 o', clock, right? So it's the same thing. And that's how I look at things now. It's like, do I really want that? And most of the time I'm. I answer no. So I close the door and guess what?

Too much healthy food is unhealthy. We actually need to eat less, less often. We are all eating. I mean, it's the only way we know to extend lifespan is eat less, less often. So think about that one next time you're going in for this snack. And I'm glad you kind of blew out that. You know, this whole idea of snacking is crazy. It's. It's great to miss a meal. And that's how I look at weekends. I go. Weekends are a great opportunity to miss meals, sleep a little longer, have breakfast later, have dinner earlier, skip a meal.

Yeah, I was a big fan of Bill Phillips back in the day, but he had that cheat day. And I mean, I would eat, like, everything in sight, which was stupid. I mean, I mean, it doesn't make any sense to do that because then you'll eat a whole pizza. But I always tell my patients, too. I mean, I hate to do it, but calories are important. And you can't eat 3,000 calories. Like you said, if it's good food, it's still caloric.

Yeah, it still is. Too much, too much healthy foods, unhealthy. Don't you want to eat less, not more? And the idea of a cheat day makes me crazy because, you know, generally you're going to cheat on your ultimate trigger. Foods that create all sorts of food intolerances, and then it gets you. It's a slippery slope. Next thing you know, you're craving that food all over again, and it's got a stronghold on you because no one's cheating on salmon and brussels Sprouts.

Well, I might cheat on brussels sprouts if I put balsamic vinegar on them. But you said that's too, I was like, damn it, I can't even eat balsamic vinegar.

She took that from me. Unbelievable. All right, let's talk about this quiz because you've got super cool stuff for everybody and you can everyone, you'll be able to pick this up@jjvirgin.com forward slash Dr. Sean and spelled S H A W N Dr. Shawn. And so you're going to give everybody the quiz so they can do their, their hormonal map. And also you're giving them, ah, you're also giving them the N of shine. So the your balanced food guide to reset and restore your hormone balance. How awesome is that? Tell us about it.

So balance goes through everything from your carbs, your proteins, nuts, herbs even that are good for hormone balance. And the other thing is we're going to be starting for people that in the next week or so we're going to be starting a hormone reset seven day plan where you're going to get a setup where you have the ability to, you know, if you're going to start something, everybody wants to start something on Mondays or whatever. But if you want to start to do the reset, this is the way to start. When we give you spiritual practices, essential oil recommendations, nutrition, exercise to really get yourself back to starting point where you can really focus on things. Now Normally that's a 29 deal, but if we give people the code JJ Virgin, they'll get it for free.

Fab. We will have that in the show notes. That's awesome. Love it. I appreciate you so much for doing this again. Jjvirgin.com forward/doctor Sean. And thank you, Sean for being with me. I appreciate you.

I appreciate you. Thank you very much. Sure.

Alright now everybody stick with me. I'm going to be right back after the break and I'll be answering your questions.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer listeners questions. Today's question came from my Facebook Live the other day actually was yesterday and Cheryl was on and she asked, we started talking about CBD on Facebook Live and she said, well CBD ever replace antidepressants? And my answer was not straightforward because it's not a straightforward question because really with anything you've got to look at what's really going on and what's going on with the depression in the first place. And so here's some things I want you to think about and I thought this was really appropriate question to talk about with Dr. Sean Tassone being on to today because one of the things that's a symptom as you start to get hormonally imbalanced is depression. First thing you always want to look at is thyroid function because low thyroid function, a big symptom is depression. And same with low estrogen. Low estrogen, estrogen can be a little bit of nature's antidepressant. So low thyroid or low estrogen can, can be create depression and depression symptoms. So that's the first thing I always want you to look at is do I have that going on. Secondly, start to make sure you've optimized your vitamin d at least 50 ngs per milliliter. And when you're taking your vitamin D, always take your vitamin D with vitamin K. I've got a product we'll put in the show notes called Vitamin D plus. And the reason being vitamin D helps you absorb your calcium and vitamin K directs it to the right places. And that's what you want to make sure is that it's in the right places. Next thing, make sure that you've optimized your omega 3 levels, especially DHA. And so that means getting fish oil. We've got two different types we'll put in the show notes, a liquid and pills. Omega Ultra I think is the name of it. I never can remember it's got omega in it. I don't remember what I named it. So make sure you're getting in good fish oil generally at least about 2 grams a day. High quality fish oil, especially with lipase that helps you absorb it and digest it better and then get moving. That can help tremendously, especially get moving and get out in the sunshine. Super important. So exercise of course releases endorphins that can create that can be like nature's antidepressant. And another one never to avoid is connection. I think that one of the biggest Risks we have to our health now is not enough connection and community. And so make sure you're getting that connection now. Those are the top ones. And then you can look at like, do I need to go further with this and add in say 5 HTP to boost serotonin or Sami, that's going to be giving you some boost to serotonin and dopamine or maybe cbd. So those are some of the things to look at. But again, we're going to go back to what's going on. And I liked when Dr. Sean talked about getting you 80% of the way there. Those are the things that should get you 80% of the way there. Of course I'm going to say the disclaimer, you know, work with your functional medicine, doctor. They'll help you get to the root cause and you know, medications. Look at what you can do before you ever need to go to a medication. I really like the work of Dr. Kelly Brogan in this as well. And you can go back and we'll include in the show notes her interview that I did. She is an amazing integrative psychiatrist, super disruptor that's showing you how to do a lot of this stuff by getting to the root cause. All right, thank you for that question. I love it when you guys jump on Facebook live and Instagram live. I super appreciate that. So if you haven't joined me yet, come on over. JJ Virgin on Instagram and JJ Virgin Official at Facebook and I want to do a big shout out to Shu Kavage and Shukavage did a five star review says changed my life. Lots of podcasts out there. I Now listen to JJ's in the gym while doing sit ups and stretching after workouts. I've gotten so much out of it. Interview with Dr. Rita Maria A while back showed me how to measure blood glucose and set me on a path beating back my my onset of diabetes. I use her low carb Paleo inspired Shake powder each morning. Lots of good info here. Thank you so much for that. These make such a massive difference. I'm looking over them right now because my team, we have one Google Doc where we put in all of the podcast testimonials and we all check them out just so you know like they were. We all read them and celebrate them. So just want to let you know how much we appreciate you doing those reviews. Not only do they make us all feel great and like we're not here in a little cave by ourself with no one paying attention, it's helping us get our message out into the world and help people take personal responsibility responsibility for their health. So I super appreciate you doing that. If you haven't done it yet, Big ask to leave a review and while you're there and you're subscribing, share it with your pals. Alrighty. I will see you next time. Bye bye.

That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

Week.

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