Men Have Hormones Too, Right?

Welcome to the Balanced Body Podcast, where Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, talks to us about health, wellness, and balancing hormones.

Welcome back to the show. We're so excited to have Sherri Griggs back here joining us again. Balanced Body Health and Wellness from Omaha, Nebraska. Welcome back. How are you today, darling?

Thank you, Jill. I am doing great. How about yourself?

I'm doing fantastic. For those out in New York, it's a beautiful, like, summer day, so we're really ecstatic here. How's the weather there?

It's actually gorgeous. The trees are all turning colors. It's very, very pretty. We, however, are looking for a freeze, and they're saying maybe snow on Saturday. Not ready.

Oh my goodness. Well, it's like 73 degrees here. It's abnormal right now, but wow, is that early for snow where you are?

It's hit and miss. You know what, it's actually 76 today, so, um, and then 38 tonight. So yeah, yeah, it's Nebraska. It's, you know, we could go until December, January without snow, so we never know.

Oh my goodness. Well, we're excited to have you here. Would you mind sharing a little about what it is you do? Tell our listeners.

Okay. Well, Balanced Body Health and Wellness is all about helping people balance their hormones and I'd say balance their life, their metabolic body, their blood sugar, their thyroid, their cortisol, looking out for them and helping them prevent those illnesses that can happen if you don't balance your body.

And now everyone's saying, well, what do you mean hormones? What do you mean hormones? Don't the doctors check this stuff? What's going on? But the truth is not all doctors check this. Could you share? It's not part of the routine, right?

Correct. Not all of them do. It's not part of the routine. And, you know, you may have heard the term in the past, you know, our medicine here is sick medicine. And that meaning that we wait until you are ill to treat you. So, for instance, I had a patient in Tuesday. She came in, her cholesterol was 212, not terribly elevated. Her LDL, which is the— I always call LDL the low-down loser, the bad cholesterol— was 98. So traditionally, if you're below 99, we don't worry about you. But when I asked her some questions, oh yes, heart disease is a problem in my family. Oh yes, diabetes is a problem in my family. So what that says is she is set up— to have a metabolic syndrome. So rather than wait for her cholesterol to get to the point that, uh-oh, we better treat this and give you a statin, we are treating her with some plant sterols, which many of your traditional practitioners will use as well, to try to see if we can keep that under control to keep her from getting sick, to keep her from needing that medication. We're also looking at what is her blood sugar and her insulin doing. Her fasting blood sugar, it was 98. We like to see it below 100. So she's creeping up there to where she will spend years with her results getting worse before anyone does anything. So before her general practitioner addresses it, because that's That's generally how we're trained. We're trained to treat you when you're sick. We aren't generally trained to treat you before you get sick and to prevent it. And that's what my specialty training is about, is about preventing illnesses if we can and doing everything we can to keep you from needing to need those pharmaceuticals later on in life.

Speaking of hormones, I said most people think women, you hear hormones and, oh, she's hormonal. She's this, she's that, but men also have hormones that need to be addressed. It's not just us ladies, right?

Oh my goodness gracious, absolutely. Another patient, a man, 65 years old, we did his testing and his testosterone is low, his DHEA is in the tank, it doesn't even really exist, which is one of our hormones. You don't hear a lot about it, but it's one of the androgen hormones. Like testosterone. And then we also looked at his cortisol and he— it looks like we'll do a little bit more testing. It's called an HPA axis dysfunction, previously called adrenal fatigue, but we understand the adrenals aren't really fatigued. But he is having symptoms— memory loss. His memory is terrible. Lots of problems with memory loss. Aching joints. Not— he's tired. He's not sleeping well. He has sleep apnea and he uses his CPAP, but he's still tired. So these are all symptoms of a lack of testosterone and DHEA. Now, he also happens to be— this particular gentleman also happens to be metabolic on top of it.

Uh-huh.

He is on a diabetes medication. He is on a cholesterol medication. Very fit, very active, not at all overweight, eats well. So we have a lot of work to do to help him get to where he needs to be.

Got it.

And just hold on, cortisol, is that the stress hormone? I get confused.

It is.

Ah.

Yes, that's the stress hormone. That's the hormone that our body makes when we're under a lot of stress and what happens if you've had a lot of stress in your lifetime, The brain, in order to protect itself—

Mm-hmm.

Because cortisol works in the brain, it's the brain that tells the adrenals to make it and it affects our brain. Our brain will tell us to stop making so much to protect itself to heal. So what we'll do is we'll work on some lifestyle modification, even just something as simple as 10 minutes a day To do some breathing or guided meditation helps the body start to heal. We'll work on supplements. There are supplements that we know can really help the body heal with inflammation. And of course, we will replace that DHEA that he's missing and his testosterone. And all of that together— Because testosterone affects cholesterol and blood sugar. May get him to the point— no guarantee, but may get him to the point that he may be able to go off that statin or potentially go off that diabetes medication. Now, I will preface, because I don't want anybody to think, oh my gosh, if I'm diabetic I can take supplements, I no longer have to take my medication, that he in particular had started that medication when he was considered pre-diabetic.

Okay.

Right? So they didn't consider his blood sugars to be running high enough that he needed medication, but because he was metabolic, I had him recommend to his practitioner that he be given a diabetic medication that also protects the heart because his father had died of a heart attack. So we convinced his primary care doctor to do a little prevention.

Yeah.

In the pharmaceutical sense, because generally that's what most primary care physicians are trained. In fact, one of the physicians I was working with said, well, why don't I learn about this stuff in medical school? And I hate to be the one to say it, but we all know there's a lot of money in pharmaceuticals, and we all know money talks. And so if they were to learn in medical school prevention and the use of things outside of pharmaceuticals, then the pharmaceutical companies wouldn't be making as much money and they probably wouldn't like that very much. So I provided him with a whole large amount of medical studies, evidence-based medical studies, which is what we as practitioners Doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, that's how we are to practice on evidence-based studies, not just, well, my friend did this, and actual studies. Provided him with a large amount of studies so that he could see they are out there, the studies are there, this is evidence-based medicine, but you and I can both guess why you don't learn it in medical school. You have to go outside of traditional medicine to learn how to treat people outside of pharmaceutical. Not that pharmaceuticals are bad. I always like to say that because—

I know, I know, I get it, yeah.

They aren't bad. Yeah, sometimes we really need them and they're very, very important to improve the quality of our life and the longevity. So I always want to make sure that I say that. I don't ever want anybody to think that I do not believe in them, that everything has its place.

Absolutely, what a good point. And would you mind if we took our quick break here? Could you share how we could reach you?

I'm sorry, what?

Oh, we have to take our quick break here. Would you mind sharing how we could reach you?

Yes, you may reach me at info@balancedbodymedical.com. You may call me at 402-807-5333 or go to my website www.balancedbodymedical.com where you can sign up for a free 15-minute phone consultation.

Perfect. We'll take a quick break here and we'll be right back. Excited to hear there is a free consultation. It can't hurt to reach out no matter where you are. Really, it's beneficial to everyone— males, Females, and especially for us ladies over our 40s, 50s, menopausal age, right? Is that mostly your clientele?

At this point it is. I do have a couple gentlemen scheduled to come in, but at this point it is because women suffer so much more than men when it comes to menopause.

Welcome back to the show. We're excited to have our guest here talking about, well, so much that's important that we may take for granted. Yeah, it's a simple word, Hormones. She's helping people, more of a functional medicine type holistic approach, I guess I can call it. Again, we're not saying don't go to your doctor, that's important too, but Sherri Griggs really has a lot of experience with helping men and women with their hormonal changes. As she mentioned right before the break, a lot of us in our 40s, 50s— that's me— and older, I think a lot of us do have some more issues, do I say, or hormonal issues that need to be balanced, especially because You know, it's coming to that point of menopause which I want to ask you about. Quick question, some early signs of menopause for someone like myself, could you share some of that? Are you familiar?

Right. Well, and you know, here's interesting. One of the things— I have a patient coming in next week that's 32 years old. So she is already starting to have some of those early symptoms and it was her mother who said to her, I think you're having some hormone issues. 32 is awfully young for that to start happening, but we do start to lose some of those hormones at the age of 25 and again at 35. Her symptoms: increased anxiety. Where is this coming from? You know, I've never really had a lot of problems with anxiety in the past, but all of a sudden I'm starting to feel anxious about things that shouldn't bother me. What's wrong with me, right? She currently does suffer from depression, takes medication, But she's noticing her medication isn't working for her like it used to. She's having more days where she feels down or unmotivated. So those can be some of the very, very earliest symptoms, and those tend to be the most bothersome because we've always been taught menopause— hot flashes, night sweats, right? A little bit more starting to learn about the memory loss. That can happen. But the anxiety and the depression isn't something that people tend to know a lot about or that, you know, is even really talked about, right? Because our history of— and I'm not saying anxiety and depression is mental illness, but some people think of it that way. So, our history of talking about these things, of talking about feeling depressed or feeling anxiety, is not real good about us being open. So those can be some of the very first symptoms and the most ones that are disconcerting to the woman because she has no idea why this is happening, where this is coming from, and what is wrong with her. And that can start fairly early before any of the other well-known symptoms start.

Okay.

Memory loss is one that you might not touch on a little bit. It's the not being able to think of words.

Okay.

The, why can't I— wait, what is that word? I can never think of words. And then you notice it increasing and you start to worry about, oh no, am I getting dementia? Am I getting early onset Alzheimer's? No, it's very possible you're just starting your Your hormones just start to fluctuate on you. Your cycle might still be normal, so you don't even think that it could be a sign of menopause. Testosterone in itself has a lot to do with our memory. It does not affect our cycle. Our estrogen affects our cycle, and our progesterone can as well. It obviously— those two work hand in hand. But testosterone can have a lot to do with memory, so that can be one of the first that starts to, um, starts to decrease in our body. We start to notice some of these little symptoms. Then comes our progesterone, and that's our relaxation hormone. That's when you start to feel the anxiety.

Wow.

Start to have trouble falling asleep or trouble sleeping when you always slept before, and then you find your brain racing when you can't sleep. So those are just some symptoms that are very, very common, but not necessarily talked about or passed down.

And when they say irregularity with your cycle, what does that mean? Is it just missing, skipping, getting your cycle earlier, or could it be— which I'm having, I'm 45— I've been bleeding for now 8 days. instead of like 3 or 4. Is that a sign of menopause, heavy bleeding, or is it less bleeding?

Actually, it's a sign of menopause and it can be either. So what can happen is your cycles can get further apart, they can get closer together, you skip cycles, you bleed longer than you've normally bled, you bleed heavier than you've normally bled. As you start to lose progesterone, right, then the lining of the uterus can become thicker and you can bleed longer and bleed heavier. It can start to lead to potentially some fibroids, but we found and we're starting to learn, unlike 20 years ago when I had my hysterectomy, right, you either did an ablation or you did hysterectomy We're starting to learn that by replacing that progesterone, we can help that with that bleeding and we can cut that down because, again, progesterone is one of the early hormones that you lose. So if you're having some trouble with the sleeping, right, and you're noticing that you're bleeding heavier, it may very well be and it most likely is a lack of Okay. You may be estrogen dominant. As you start to get estrogen dominant, you might start to notice a little more weight in your middle. Like, where did this come from?

What?

What?

What? I'm eating the same thing. I'm exercising more, right? I'm starting to put a little bit of this on and I'm bleeding more. And so that can be progesterone. Another way for women to think of this too is if a woman has ever had a An IUD, like the Mirena IUD. It has progesterone in it. And when they have those IUDs, some women don't bleed at all, or they bleed very, very little because it's the progesterone. So without getting your whole list of symptoms, Jill, I would probably guess it's a progesterone— a lack of progesterone.

Interesting. I called my doctor, I left a message. I don't think it's urgent, but they haven't gotten back to me. But I'm like, maybe I should go in for some more blood work. I was just there though, like 2 months ago. So I'm like, you know, it's like, I was okay back then, but were they really looking deep enough into the progesterone? I guess I— you got to be your own health detective at times, right?

You do. And they may not have looked at that. That is not the Mm-hmm. The normal blood work is not to pull up hormones. It's not to pull up the extra thyroid testing. It's to do the simple— and I've mentioned it before, you know, the simple testing, almost the least amount of testing. And not because the doctors don't want to do more, that's insurance dictates to them what they can and cannot do and what they will allow or pay for. And then, of course, if you're still cycling, you very much want to try to make sure that testing takes place between the 19th and 21st day of your cycle. And it can be a little challenging to figure out when that is if you're not bleeding routinely or on a regular basis, but it's best to test it during that phase.

Got it. So hold on, 19 to 21, you said what phase are we in at that point?

So at that phase between 19 and 21, you're going to be in— oh my goodness.

Well, it's the phase that can determine the progesterone. That's all. And that's what I'm looking for because I remember the FSH has to be done 3 days in, I think.

I'm not positive because that's probably— is that related to fertility?

Yeah, I think they always make sure they want to see your FSH at day 3. I don't know what that means though.

That's because you're in your follicular phase then and they want to see that that's up there so that it's telling the ovary to release an egg.

Got it.

So 19 to 21 is going to be in that luteal phase.

Alright, thank you so much.

We want to see where your hormones are at that point.

Alright. But now all this testing though, seriously, you can do? Like you send a script? So how does it work to work with someone out of state? that doesn't get to meet you in person and does a virtual session?

You were kind of cutting out. I'm sorry, Jill, what was that?

Oh, sure, sure, sure. I said, how does it work if someone's in another state? What— could you go over the process? You send them a certain script, they go to a lab. How do we get this testing done through you?

So if you live in another state, you have to visit me because I can only practice in the state I'm licensed And so you would have to come see me a minimum of once a year. We could do visits after that over the phone, and I can send you prescriptions in other states, but you have to have come seen me. So that's the nice thing about the free 15-minute phone consultation is we can decide, can I really help you? Now, if you decide you absolutely just do not— you know, Sherri, you're great, I absolutely— I just— I can't do it. Right. I can't afford it. I don't want to come to Omaha, Nebraska. Then there are other practitioners that are part of the— if you're going to do the Menopause Method or A4M or even the Institute of Functional Medicine, I'm part of all of those great programs where I could find you a practitioner in your area who practices similarly the way I do.

Got it.

All right. Perfect. Good to know. Unfortunately, we must wrap up the show, and I want to find out how we can reach you. So what is that number and/or website? Thank you.

Yeah, www.balancedbodymedical.com, where you can sign up for that free 15-minute phone consultation. You can email me info@balancedbodymedical.com or call me at 402-807-5333.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Always a pleasure to have you here and best of luck. I know you mentioned you, you're working on stuff with your— some stuff with your website guy, and I guess we'll see you on a Zoom soon. All right.

This has been the Balanced Body Medical Podcast with Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness. If you're looking to find Sherri, go ahead and look for the website Balanced Body Medical. If you're looking for the business and you want to find Sherri at her office, you can find her at 10815 Elm Street in Rockbrook Plaza.

Thank you.