Beyond the Pill with Dr. Jolene Brighten

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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 novel 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, welcome to today's show. Actually, this is part one of a two part series. This topic is so important and so juicy there is no way that I could give it justice in one podcast. And in fact, what you're going to start to see is that I'm going to do this with a variety of subjects. So when I hear a lot of questions around something, I'm going to start taking it on as a series and really dive deep into it. And you know what that means. That means you'll want to make sure that you subscribe to the show because if you didn't subscribe, you won't know when the next episode's coming. And who wants to feel incomplete? Like I only heard half that cool stuff. So this one is a super fascinating topic because it's going to impact probably everyone listening. Even if you are a man in our community, you probably have some women in your life that this has impacted. And yes, we are talking about hormonal birth control. I always knew there was issues with it when you were on it because I saw it all the time with clients when they came in on it. I saw what it was doing to their weight, to their energy, to their mood. What I didn't know was how long afterwards it could impact you and that is what we're going to be talking about in this two part series. We're going to talk about the issues with it, what it can do to you short and long term. Long term. And then most importantly, now a lot of people might have cut that blooper out, but I think that it just makes it more fun. Most importantly, what can you do to turn this all around? Because no point telling you all this doom and gloom and then going well, darn, that stinks. Nope, there's a ton that you can do and that's what's super exciting. And I have the go to expert on on hormonal birth control with me today. It's Dr. Jolene Brighton. She is obsessed with this subject, which that's what I want. I want the expert that has dedicated their life to it. And that is Dr. Jolene Brighton. Amazing what she has learned over the years. And really her patients at her clinics are the ones that started to show her and that's what gave her a heads up that this was a big problem. Let me tell you a little bit about Jolene before we dive in. So Jolene earned her doctorate of naturopathic medicine at the National University of Natural Medicine. And before that she got her undergrad degree at Cal Poly San Luis Bispo. Cal Poly slo. That's where my stepdaughter goes. And she has, she got her degree there in nutritional biochemistry and clinical nutrition. What's cool is while she was there doing nutrition research, she looked at interventions for maintaining healthy hormones and body composition as we age. Then she went on to found three clinics before the age of 35. Now she's currently the medical director at Reubis Clinic of Health in Portland, Oregon. She also did her postdoctorate education training in functional medicine and clinical nutrition through ifm. And she continues to keep current with ifm's innovative therapies and education. I think that is a super important thing. You know, I refer everyone to IFM to find practitioners. She published her first book two years ago, depending on when you're listening to this, three years ago, healing your body naturally after Childbirth, the New Mom's guide to navigating the fourth Trimester and has helped thousands of people of women with that book heal themselves after birth. And that one became an instant bestseller, which I am absolutely certain this next book, beyond the Pill, will do. She's also a frequent speaker for both the public and medical professionals and a regular contributor to Mind bodygreen has been featured in New York Post, Forbes, Grazia and Fitness and and so many more things because this subject is going all over the place as it needs to be. It really needs to get out there. So I'm excited to share this with you. And again, this is part one of a two part series where we will be diving deep into hormonal birth control. Before we do though, I wanted to give a big shout out to Diana J. From Kazakhstan. How cool is that? That is so cool. It says total package for mindset, fitness, nutrition, five stars and Apple podcasts. Your episodes are so on point. Exactly what I need to hear. Witty and uplifting all the way. Go Warrior Moms. And I do a shout out every episode. I decided I was doing it at the end. I'm like, heck no, man. This needs to be right at the beginning. Big love for all of you. Leaving these awesome reviews. They, they're important for a couple different reasons. One, they like, make all of us over here on the JJ team feel awesome and know that we are actually making a difference out there, which is our whole point of being. But number two, it also helps people searching through the massive amount of podcasts going, what should I listen to? Helps them say, ah, I'll check this out. So I super appreciate it. I hope I can shout your name out on the next one. All right, Dr. Jolene Brighton, welcome to the show. Super excited to talk about this stuff topic.

Hey there. Thanks so much for having me.

So I will tell you, when I first heard you talking about this topic, it freaked me out a bit. But the information you have on how to fix it is so key. And so I want to get everybody's heads out of the sand basically for not even realizing that this is an issue. So we are today talking about hormonal birth control. Pill. We're talking about the pill before we dive into what we're talking about today because this is part of a two part series. We're going to talk about it in terms of metabolism and weight gain today. How did you get into this? How did you start discovering all of these issues with the pill?

Oh my gosh. So you know, when I came off of the pill, that was like 10 years on the pill. I came off, I developed cystic acne. I started having raging hormonal symptoms like all kinds of mood swings, the acne, the weight gain, all the issues. And my doctor was like, you're the only one. And so I felt like I was a freak. I thought I was the only one. And it was once I got into clinical practice that I discovered that like the majority, if not all of women struggle to come off of hormonal birth control. Which makes sense when you consider the fact that hormonal birth control shuts down your brain's ability to communicate to your ovaries. And so if a drug is that powerful, of course it can have some long term side effects, consequences. But really it wasn't until, like my patients showed me what was possible and I dug into the research that I understood the extent. Extent to which hormonal birth control is affecting us.

Yeah, that to me is the biggie, because I knew that it was doing bad things while you were taking it. And that's why I would get so frustrated when I hear people would use it for things like acne. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is the problem. The problem isn't like shortage of birth control. Like, this is not your issue with acne. Like, figure out the issue. And so I knew that it was causing depression, weight gain, all these other issues while you were on it, But I had no idea that there were long term effects to it. And that is to me the frightening thing. And I know that you have in your book beyond the pill, you have a way to deal with that. So if you're listening right now going, oh my gosh. Because, come on, like, I think pretty much most women listening were on the pill at some point in their lives. Like, I mean, how common was birth control pill usage?

Oh, yeah, it's like 97 to 99% of us have used hormonal birth control at some point in our life. Like, it is that common. And who can blame a woman? Like, the ability to control your reproduction, productive health, and be able to have the career you want or the life you want. Like, how enticing is that? I mean, I for 1am a first generation college student. I absolutely used hormonal birth control. I used the pill specifically as a tool so I could like, live my dreams. So nobody is judging you if you used hormonal birth control, but it is so ubiquitous. And I think you just hit the nail on the head in that, like, more than 60% of us are using hormonal birth control to manage symptoms. Like, once upon a time, hormonal birth control was to prevent pregnancy. And then somewhere along the line, doctors started using it as the one size pill to fit every female ill. As I say, I'm doing air quotes right now, but like, any symptom you go in with, you're like, I have acne, I have mood swings, I have migraines, I have heavy periods, painful periods, Irregular periods. And the doctor's like, here is a pill, here's a patch, here's an iud, here's a ring. And really, there's no question about the root cause.

Yeah, that's the. That's the frightening thing. Well, I know one of the things, you know, my. My whole world is weight loss. And. And I still remember back on. When I was on doing the Dr. Phil weight loss challenges for two years, we had one gal who was on birth control. And I remember looking at her and I'm like, going, we are gonna. This isn't gonna work for you. Like, you are gonna be st time she was. There were two gals that didn't end up like they were the two ones that didn't actually win a prize. And that was one of the issues. And so, I mean, I knew that if I had client come in who was on birth control, I was like, we were going to have to get her off birth control in order to lose weight. What do you see there? And not only is hormonal birth control contributing to weight gain, but why is that?

And, you know, I just want to say, like, you are so spot on in your observation, because what is hormonal birth control but a synthetic estrogen and progestin that is not the same as progesterone? Progesterone will actually help you lose water weight, whereas progestin does not have that effect. And so we know if you have estrogen, your own natural estrogen, that alone can stimulate fat cells to get plumper and fatter and help you gain weight in your hips and butt and thighs. And what I find so funny is that if you get into the literature and you start reading the studies, the studies are so quick to dismiss the weight gain. And they say, oh, you know, this.

Must be studies by guys who no women would dismiss that quickly.

Yeah.

Well, let me put it in perspective here. So, like, they will say, oh, the weight gain, it's not really an issue. It's only five to ten pounds. Okay, hold up. I'm five four. I'm barely five five. Maybe on a good day, hang me upside down, I might be 5 5, but like, £5 for me, that's. That's a lot, let alone £10. That's no joke to, like, a body. A body size that's like, less than five.

You're talking.

You just went up one to two clothing sizes and took yourself from healthy to now. Inflammatory.

Right? And that right there, I mean, that's such a big issue of why we gain weight on Hormonal birth control. Now, the researchers say, oh, it's just water weight. Well, why water weight? Well, one, there's the progestin. You don't have your natural diuretic progesterone. But the other issue is you're inflamed. And inflammation is always bad. There is never a time where chronic inflammation is good. Acute inflammation, take care of an infection. Yeah, okay, we got that. But that shouldn't be lasting years on it like hormonal birth control does. And so, you know, there's a lot of experts who say the weight gain is due to water weight alone. However, we also have to recognize that hormonal birth control is known to deplete nutrients that your mitochondria need. Now, your mitochondria are the powerhouse of your cells. They create it. They create energy, but they also are part of our longevity and maintaining our healthy weight. And what we've come to understand is the same nutrients that hormonal birth control depletes is starving the mitochondria. So these powerhouses that create energy but help you burn energy, they're being starved while you're on hormonal birth control.

You know, I. I was thinking as you were talking about this about, I was. I was in the pool in Palm Desert, and these gals were sitting on the side of the pool talking, and it was. Took everything. I was like, do go say anything, because if you go say anything, you know, and they were talking about, like, they were all late 40s perimenopausal, and. And one was talking about, yeah, I just, you know, I was just depressed and just feeling off. So I went to my doctor and he put me on birth control pills and Prozac.

Yeah.

But I see a lot of. Of women, you know, you hear about this not in our community, because they. They, you know, have learned better through all of this information. But out in the real world, one of the things that I see is that birth control pills are prescribed for perimenopausal women. What the hell? Like what? Like a what?

That.

This just makes no sense at all.

But what is it doing to them?

Oh, my gosh. So, you know, with perimenopausal women, they start having irregular periods because they're not ovulating regularly. They shouldn't be. Like, that's part of the natural process. So the irregular periods. And their doctors says, well, there's a. There's a pill for that. It's called birth control. Okay, let's all take a minute, and we can just recognize that Hormonal birth control was developed and studied on healthy women in their 20s wanting to prevent pregnancy. Now, that doesn't mean you can't be healthy in your 40s, but let's just stand back and ask the question. Is your objective really to prevent pregnancy, or is it to get rid of those pesky perimenopausal symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, inability to fall asleep? And that's what your doctor is passing you, a hormonal birth control pill for? Now, I said the piece about the mitochondrial health, but let's not forget that, like, in perimenopause, we can start having thyroid issues or adrenal issues, and hormonal birth control only makes those worse. And so while your doctor may be passing you hormonal birth control as a way to mitigate your symptoms, they may be overlooking some root cause issues. And I think every woman should know, in perimenopause, you know, once we get into our 40s, our risk of heart attack and stroke and blood clots is much higher with hormonal birth control. But, you know, in 2018, they published a study that showed that if you spent even six months on hormonal birth control, you were more than 30% likely to be diagnosed with diabetes, diabetes, and menopause. So what that means is, is that if your doctor passes you hormonal birth control when you're in perimenopause, so you're in your 40s, maybe early 50s, then it may very well be a situation where you go on to develop diabetes. And I talk about this a lot in my book beyond the Pill, because every single woman who is prescribed the pill or any form of birth control should be told that she's increasing her risk of insulin resistance and diabetes. And you want to know the fastest way to hot flashes, night sweats, having these irregular mood swings or brain fog, or even having insomnia. It really is blood sugar dysregulation. I mean, you can have hot flashes due to estrogen, but you can have hot flashes due to the fact that your adrenal glands are kicking out catecholamines and trying to regulate your blood sugar. So keep in mind that it's not just about these perimenopausal symptoms that are uncomfortable, but also that, you know, blood sugar dysregulation is so serious that it's been well recognized to lead to dementia and heart disease. And I know this is something that your audience is savvy, too, because you talk a lot about, but.

And it's not much by the way, this is something super important for people to realize. Just having a fasting blood sugar of 95 x's your chances of dementia. It is like blood sugar control is everything. It's like huge. So you've just like this again, like when you, when you get on your pill rants that you do so well, so eloquently, I go, okay, okay, okay. But I again, I go to. We've all, I am guessing that that 99 of people listening, women listening, have been on the pill.

Yeah.

And so you know how many of those people come off the pill and like, is it just that you have things happening for a year after, or is it that you've done some things that you have to repair that will, you know, continue to hurt your body for years?

Oh, I so wish I could say just stop hormonal birth control of any kind and it will be all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns, but it can't. Like, I cannot say that in good faith. So here's the reality is that we know hormonal birth control. I mean, it's been equated with being similar to antibiotics in terms of how it decimates your microbiome, causes leaky gut. But, like, how many of you have stayed on antibiotics for a decade at a time? I mean, I stayed on the pill for a decade like that. I would never have stayed on antibiotics for a decade. And so the reality is that between that and what it does to the brain, what it does to your nutrient status, to your hormone status overall, and the genetic, like the genetic alterations it induces in your liver, I've seen clinically that if you've ever been on hormonal birth control, there is definitely damage that has to be repaired. And that's. No one is finger wagging at you or shaming you. You did the best you could in that moment, but you're going to have to do some work to repair that. I mean, the gut doesn't repair itself without you putting some love and attention to that. Same with your live. Same with your mood and your brain. Same with your heart and your cardiovascular system. I mean, everyone in your audience already knows that. They know that, like, good health takes a little bit more effort than the average individual.

So since we're assuming pretty much everyone has gone, has taken the pill at some point in their life, what are a couple things that they could get started? Now, I know you've got a really fantastic thank you, thank you gift for everybody. So you will be able to grab at jjvirgin.com forward/ gifts PBCS for post birth control syndrome. So pbcs jjbirgin.com pbcs you will be able to get the detox diet quick start guide. But what are a couple things for people listening right now beyond grabbing the guide, which you're going to want to do when it's free, what are a couple things you could get people started on right now that they could start to make this shift and make, get, get, get detoxified from this?

Totally. So number one is you have to care for your liver. And you know, I talk about this in beyond the Pill. If you do nothing else, eat broccoli sprouts. So broccoli sprouts have never lost in the research. They are always winning. They are very high in the constituents that help your liver detoxify all of your hormones, including hormonal, like birth control, if you're on it, but just your natural hormones as well. You know, it's entirely possible for us to have low estrogen. Yet even though your ovaries quit making it, your adrenal glands are kicking in, other cells are kicking in. And your liver can actually make that a potent form of estrogen, the 16 hydroxy pathway, that is to where you're stimulating the breast cells, the ovarian cells, the endometrial cells to cause symptoms. And broccoli sprouts have been shown to be protective against.

I'm making a note right now for my grocery list. Okay, so the big question, because Magdalena.

Told me the same thing.

Eat broccoli sprouts. Like, what the hell do you do with them?

Oh, my gosh. Okay, so with broccoli sprouts, you, you can go to Trader Joe's or anywhere, really. Any natural grocer will have broccoli sprouts. And you can buy them there or you can go to Amazon. Actually, you can get a sprouting kit and broccoli seeds. And at first I was like, this is gonna be ridiculously painful. Like, I have a small human. I have a six year old now he's six at home. And like, I don't have time for this. And yet it only takes a few days. And even you could just do this in a set of paper towels.

Well, it's a few days. And it's not like every day. You're not spending five hours a day on your broccoli sprouts, right?

No, no, no, no, not at all. So what you do with them? Okay, so my favorite snack in the world. And yes, I'm a nerd. But I love getting, like, I'll get a slight slice of turkey, a slice of chicken, like whatever you want. And I'll actually roll the broccoli sprouts in that. And then I'll eat those. Like, that's like a. It's like a meat tortilla with broccoli sprouts. So I love that. I also put them on. I'll put them on a salad. I'll put them on top of eggs in the morning. I will also, like, if you're a fan of avocado toast, broccoli sprouts go really, really well with avocado toast. And that healthy fat from the avocado is going to help you build your hormones. You get some free bread that is rich in fiber. Now you're detoxing your hormones out.

It's.

It's full circle right there with that. But with broccoli sprouts, I also like to combine them where I'll just mix them with like some olive oil, some vinegar. I will throw some pumpkin seeds, some sunflower seeds in there, some again, healthy fats, and then I'll chop up a meat of my choice. And so in that way, I use the broccoli sprouts so that they're a little more like a lettuce. Now all you really need is about a quarter cup. So you don't need a whole lot of broccoli sprouts. You can do a quarter cup a day. If you have estrogen dominant symptoms like swollen tender breasts, feeling moody, Maybe it's anxious or irritable. You're feeling swelling in your hand, hands and feet, or really anywhere else. Or maybe you're still menstruating and you're having big clots in your menstrual blood or heavy periods or major PMS before your period. Broccoli sprouts can really help with that. And yeah, Magdalena and I, we can talk about broccoli sprouts.

Bet you guys geeked out. All right, so we got broccoli sprouts. I just had to figure out how to use them because, you know, it's kind of like, what the heck do I do with this? But sounds like you just sneak them into everywhere. Now what else?

So the other thing is that you cannot miss high quality proteins. So amino acids are essential in running your liver detoxification. And when your liver detoxes things, there's a phase one and a phase two pathway. And like, I'll hear women saying, oh, well, I take dim. Dim, great. That comes in broccoli cruciferous vegetables but you probably need to supplement with it because like just the modern society we live in, we need a little more dim. That's not going to get you all the way through. So you've got to have your high quality protein as well. So if you are vegan or vegetarian, recognize you have got to be on your game. Now if you're a vegetarian you can eat things like eggs or maybe cheese or maybe you're a Pescatari and you're eating fish. You're going to get the wide array amino acids. If you are a vegan you have got to be on your game. You have to be matching all those amino acids. Nods. Are you going to have to supplement as well especially if you're on hormonal birth control because that is wrecking your gut's ability to actually absorb things and can lead to food sensitivities. Now otherwise you want to be eating grass fed meats, you want to be getting in your high quality seafood. So you know, I, we're both a fan of vital choice. I think if you're going to do seafood you need to make sure that it's super clean because I mean getting seafood from anywhere these days is, it's pretty scary business. So seafood is rich in omega 3 fatty acids but also selenium which is depleted by hormonal birth control and is absolutely necessary for thyroid function and making glutathione which is what your liver uses to detoxify environmental toxins but also your own natural hormones. So that's a few of the things that I would add in. And of course as always you have to eat a wide variety of fiber and feed your microbiome because I mean if we know anything, we know if your microbiome isn't happy and healthy then like all bets are off when it comes to your hormones.

What I love about everything I'm hearing is it's not like okay now you're gonna have to stand on your head and put broccoli sprouts in your neck, nose. No, these are all simple things and I would imagine you've got more of this in the guide. I'm going to remind everyone. Grab the guide. It will also have all of the show notes and that is jjvirgin.com forward/p, b, C S. That's for post birth control syndrome. And this is part one of a two part series coming up. We are going to be talking more going a little deeper dive. We're going to talk about brain fog and fatigue, anxiety, depression, all those different things that you may have actually either noticed. Now post, post birth control, I see some people actually going on birth control for anxiety and depression. So we'll go dive into all of that. That's coming up next. And just wanted to thank you so much for taking your time for both of these sessions with me. Jolene.

Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me here.

You are so welcome. Now, now, now, stay with me because after the break, we're going to be answering a listener's question.

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Welcome back. So Jolene said something about oh, by the way, this is a time when I answer a listener's question and I always try to dial it into what We've been talking about, and Jolene was talking about things that you could do to detoxify hormones. One of them, she kind of slipped out there. And this is why you're going to want to grab the guide, which will have a lot more information. And Again, that is jjvirgin.com forward/pcbs. Post. No post. PBCS. Post birth control syndrome. PBCS.

She slipped out.

Fiber. And then Kathleen pinged on social media and said, all right, you know, you keep saying eat more fiber, but then I go add a bunch to my diet and I feel crappy. So here's the important thing. And this is what I mentioned, Kathleen, when I saw that this is not something. So I'll liken it to going to the gym. So you haven't been working out at all. And so what you decide to do, you think the perfect thing that you can do to start working out is just, I'm going to go to the gym every day for an hour. I'm going to work out super duper hard. And like two days in, you can barely move and barely get out of bed. So obviously we know that all is silly. You know, no one would do this, but that's the kind of thing we do with fiber. We're eating a standard American diet fiber of 5 to 14 grams a day. Way too low. We want to be eating somewhere in the, you know, 50 gram a day or more range. So we go, all right, I'm in. I'm all in, JJ. And the next thing you know, you go from 5 to 50 overnight. It's like deciding that you're going to go run a marathon tomorrow and you haven't been out of the house and, you know, worked out in years. You've got to do this over time, not overnight. So that is where I like to. I use high fiber foods. I have a bar, a dark chocolate fiber bar. That's amazing. 11 grams of fiber. That could be one thing to start adding into your day. I put extra fiber into my shakes. That's my fiber supplement. That's a great one. Eating higher fiber foods like wild rice, lentils, nuts and seeds. But again, you do this over the course of one to two weeks. And as you're doing it, you also make sure that you're increasing your water intake. Because one of the things that that fiber does is help. And this is how it helps detoxify is it basically helps give bulk to the stools. It's going to help you have better stools that are softer. And it will help pull the toxins in, but you want to keep that stuff moving. So you got to make sure you're doing a lot of fluid too. The only time you might have an issue with fiber if you followed the rules and titrated up over time, not overnight. You just notice that you're bloated. You may have an issue with something called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and that is when you want to work with the functional medicine doctor to check and see if this is an issue for you, and then use some different antimicrobial herbs to help kill that one off as you're building up better balance. I created a product called Microbiome Balance Specific specifically to help with this because a lot of the products out there are purely probiotics. But what I did was I put a prebiotic bacteriophage in there that can help feed the good bacteria while killing off the bad bacteria. And that is a super important thing. So it's another thing to think of as well Alrighty. Want to just remind you one more time to get this week's super awesome cheat sheet. Jjvirgin.com actually, it's a guide. She put a whole guide together. Jjvirgin.com pbcs/birth control syndrome I had to keep spell that out for myself. PBCS and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next one because this was part one. See you next week.

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

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading. Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.