Hormonal Imbalance - The Truth About Perimenopausal Weight Gain

Hi, I'm Marcel Pick, OB gyn, nurse practitioner, women's health expert, and best selling author of three books. And what I want to do today is for the first time, this is Facebook Live. I'm going to start doing this once a week. And what I'm trying to do is to give you the most important information about women's health issues. And today what we're going to do is we're going to start on the question I have so often in my practice. I'm perimenopausal, oftentimes starting late 30s to mid to late 40s. And I'm starting to gain weight and I can't understand why. So today in the Facebook Live, what I want to do is share with you this information so you can be the person that starts to understand what's really going on. So many of my patients will come and say to me, you know, I've been everywhere. Everyone just says, after you're in your 40s, it's much harder to lose weight. And the other thing that they say is once you start gaining weight, you're going to gain £5 every year. Well, here is the truth that does not have to happen. But we do have to understand that there are some intricacies that you need to understand about this. So let's look at a couple of slides here. What I'd like you to understand is that hormonal changes that go on in the body contribute to weight gain a huge amount of stress, which affects the adrenals, which we'll talk about at the end. And that also causes people to have problems with weight gain. We know that, believe it or not, toxins in our environment and sometimes amalgams in our mouth, they can for some people, cause weight gain. And the time that we see it the most is in perimenopause. That's when the hormones start to fluctuate. And what we see then is oftentimes we see that imbalance that occurs that then contributes to more weight gain, especially with estrogen. Estrogen loves to cause weight around the middle and, and the upper thighs. The other thing that we see is many times people might have thyroid issues that are associated sometimes with their adrenals. And we see all of these things together that make up the orchestra of the body that contribute to weight gain. So the key piece for us is to start to understand what might my problem be? What's the cause of this perimenopausal weight gain? And the biggest thing that I see is, is oftentimes this hormonal attack. Now here's what's so interesting. We oftentimes think that the most important hormones are estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Well, guess what? They're not. The most important hormones are adrenaline, that comes from stress, insulin, that comes from the food that we're eating, as you can see in this slide here, and also cortisol. Well, two of those are related to stress. Who knew? Now here's the other part that's so interesting and that is that cholesterol, we all talk about cholesterol, how important it is to keep our cholesterol lower. Well, I'm one to say I don't want it too low because if it's too low, it's not able to help produce estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. We call those the sex hormones. Now here's another interesting thought, and that is that normally cholesterol contributes to the production of those hormones. But if we have too much stress, you heard me, stress that can come from many different places. It can come from our work life, it can come from our home life, it can come from the environment, it can come from friends, relationships, families, everywhere and also self imposed, that causes the sex hormones to go down, which causes this huge hormonal cascade that once again contributes to weight gain. So we'll see here is that there's an intricate relationship. I call it the orchestra of hormones. Everything's related to everything else. And unfortunately, the way we have medicine now is we have all of our specialties. We have the cardiologist, we have the gynecologist, we have the endocrinologist, and we all have our subspecialties. The problem is that no one's looking at the big picture. And that's where you come in. Need to understand that everything is related to everything. So what do you do? What do you do about this? The most important thing that you're going to hear me talk about almost every single Facebook Live is going to be food is the most powerful drug you have because as you change your diet, you can see here that insulin is in reaction to what? Carbohydrates and fats in our diet. Not so much fats that are good for you, but processed foods that have lots of carbohydrates in them, sugars, and then they have the poor quality fats that contribute along with the carbohydrates to that additional weight gain. Remember, we've got all these changes occurring in perimenopause. So the balance of that will be to help the adrenaline, to help the cortisol and to help the insulin and the food part is the most important part. Now, where does estrogen come in? Well, estrogen levels are going to go up and down through our cycles as we start our periods when we're younger, estrogen levels start to go up mid cycle, they come down a bit and progesterone takes over, goes up and then goes down when you have a period. As we become more perimenopausal, the hormones start to shift. Also, stress can cause those hormones to shift too. And we see with the imbalance of estrogen and progesterone, that's when we see the middle weight gain. And people come in saying to me, marcel, I'm doing everything the same as I did it before. I exercise regularly, I'm still watching my diet, I'm decreasing my calories, and nothing's helping. Well, herein is some of the issue, and that's the estrogen. It's not estrogen that's the problem. It's the imbalance that's occurring from the poor diet, from the increased amount of stress, perhaps from the toxins in our lives. So the first place that you need to start is by looking at what can you do in your environment to decrease the amount of toxins you're exposed to. For example, don't put plastic in microwaves, don't use plastic bottles, especially if you leave them in the heat and the sun. Be mindful of the kind of cans that you have that don't have additives in the inside of the can, and be more aware of things like wifi, not putting your cell phone by your bed at night, all of these things. Now we're starting to understand from research contribute to our body being in what I call dis ease. Now, we also know that stress is a contributor, and I mentioned to you before that the three major hormones are adrenaline, cortisol, both of which are produced by the adrenals and come from excess amounts of stress. Now look, the reality is we can't change our stress, but what we can do is find ways to decrease the reaction that we have to that stressor making sure that every single day you do something for five minutes that causes your body to be in relaxed mode when the parasympathetic is more activated. I'm a ballroom dancer, and when I borrow and dance, I can't think of anything else because I have to be present for my partner and I have to be present for where we are in the dance routine. So that's my form of meditation every day. Some people like yoga. Some people like to meditate. Some people have quiet times twice a day. Whatever it is that works for you, that's going to be really important to help decrease the stress. That will then help with the hormones. So remember that weight gain is, is a combination of many different things. Now, if you're eating 4,000 calories a day, you're eating a lot of junk food, and you're really not paying attention to your diet, this is the perfect opportunity for you to start. Because what we put in our mouth affects us greatly. Everything that we put in has a reaction biochemically in our body. And if we want to age well and not gain those five pounds every year, especially in perimenopause, cutting back on the carbohydrates pretty significantly, perhaps even doing intermittent fasting and not having breakfast until maybe 10 or 11 in the morning, and also having more fruits, vegetables, and really good quality protein. That's going to be your solution because you do not have to be someone that gains five pounds every year. I'm just telling you that none of my patients in my practice have that problem once we understand what, what the problem is. So I'm here to be your cheerleader, to let you know that you can make changes in your life and you can be healthier as you get older. And that's the most important, exciting part. So perimenopausal weight gain is not a sure thing. So stay tuned. I'm going to be talking more on my other Facebook lives and also, if you like this, please like it. And also share with other people if you find this information helpful. And I'm going to continue to build on this repertoire. So every week, follow my Facebook lives and we'll get you much more educated.