Suffering is Optional: Harmonize Your Hormones and Feel Like Yourself Again, with Dr. Lorraine Maita

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Hello, and welcome back to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. We have a very special guest today. Ed Lavitan has joined us on the podcast. And. And we have Dr. Lorraine Maida, who we love personally and know personally and are just delighted to have here. Dr. Mehta is a hormone harmonizer. She's a detox expert. Right up our alley. Right. She specializes in helping you, the listener, have boundless energy, stable moods, a lean body, sharp, clear mind, and balanced hormones so you can feel like yourself again. Who would want that? So welcome. Lorene, we're so happy you're here.

I'm happy to be here because I want to get the word out. So many people don't think that there's help out there. They don't even know what's going on in their minds and bodies.

They can't remember what's going on in their mind because we all have brain fog.

Yeah.

Sometimes it's better when you don't remember. But they do know.

Some of my teenage things I'm happy not to remember, but yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay, how'd you get into this topic? Like, is it personal? Did your mess become your message? Like, how'd you get here?

It's a little bit of both. You know, I was a newbie and I was, you know, a medical director in a big corporation. And this was way back when when there were hardly any female executive. I probably had six. Right. And one of them came down to me. And you got to realize I'm just out of residency. Not too long, we don't learn this. Someone came down to me. She was a very high powered woman. I had a lot of respect for her. And I was just like, oh, my God, she's coming to see me. Wow. But she said to me, you got to help me. I'm in the middle of giving a presentation, and all of a sudden I'm sweating. I lost my words. I turned red. The men in the room, and they're all men in the room. There were no other women there. E either elbowing somebody, like, look at her. Or they're hanging their head in shame. And she says, I just can't live like this anymore. So I learned a lot about hormones at that time. And I used to do these roundtable lunch and learns and, you know, listen, I didn't even have pms. What did I know about hormone problems?

Right?

And all of a sudden, like, people were just pouring their hearts out to me, and I said, I need to do something. Flash forward. Somewhere around the time of 9 11, I just kind of lost it. I used to live across the, from the World Trade center, so I thought being so emotional, not sleeping, gaining weight, crying at the drop of a hat was maybe, you know, because of all that happened. But then I said, what's wrong with me? It's my hormones. I took some progesterone and it was like the same stuff was going on in my life. There was a lot going on in my life at the time. I could cope with it. And it was like, oh, yeah, a lot of this was my hormones. And, you know, I felt so much better. And you, you know, that's how I said, you know what? I can't let anybody else go through this. And that's why I just decided to dedicate my career to it.

What about detox? Because I know you have a big focus on detox too.

Well, I realized after doing hormones for so long. Well, first of all, I spent 25 years doing occupational and environmental medicine. And whenever you go to the conferences and we had chemicals around and I had to make sure people were safe, people weren't getting exposed, and also that they were not having symptoms related to them. And you know, you go to these conferences and you don't want to breathe, you don't want to eat, you don't want to drink water. You know, you're, you're like paranoid about, oh my God, this is such a, it's a toxic, toxic world. And after doing hormones for a while that were, you know, most people feel great, right? But then there was some that, no, what's wrong? What could be wrong? Well, you know what it was? Toxicity. It's just like that straw that breaks the camel's back. You know, your liver is doing all this work. You add one more thing, the hormones get processed by the liver and boom. Oh my God. Then they, you know, I tell people it's like trying to flush a backed up toilet.

All that stuff is, I hate that visual arrangement.

I hate it. But you know what? People get it. They, you know, so that's really why now I don't even give hormones to people until I detox them first. Because you know what? Sometimes they don't even need the hormones after detoxing all the things.

Let's talk about that. Yeah, okay, let's talk about that. Because I'll say to people are, you know, when we kind of drill into it and they say, oh yeah, I'm having sweats. I'm like, well, tell me, are they only at night or are they during the day too? And they're like, no, it's only at night. I'm like, that's not your estrogen, that's your adrenals.

Right?

So. So you're really nailing, like, when you transition into menopause, you're. Your adrenals should pick up the slack and keep you balanced. But if your adrenals are quivering puddles on the floor and they can't do anything but keep you alive, you're going to be miserable. But you can see the signs of it ahead of time, so it's really interesting.

And perimenopause can go on for about 10 years. I mean, mine gone for a long time. You know, it can go on for about 10 years and you don't even know. Nobody talks about it. You know, I had some woman come to me and my husband says, I'm unbearable.

And, yeah, wait, should he live to tell that story? I'm just asking, like, say that to someone.

Well, I'm not saying nothing.

I can't even believe the number of men that bring their wives into me. And it's actually an act of kindness. And I'd say to them, are you sure she's okay with that? It's like, yes. And when she explained all her symptoms and how she went around for eight years to so many different doctors, and they either wanted. Dismissed her, said, you're stressed, you're getting old, or wanted to drug her with, like, antidepressants.

I was gonna say they're just. They're just depressed. What are you talking about? All these women, like, they're just. They have a. They have a Zoloft deficiency.

That's what it is. Exactly.

Or they're anxious. You know, you're just stressed out. So they're drugged or dismissed. And, you know, when I told her, oh, no, everything that you're describing to me, you know, she's anxious, she can't sleep, she's moody, she's snapping at people, she feels bad, she's tired, she's foggy. Brain, Brain, all of that. And I said, these are symptoms of perimenopause and you can do something about it. Well, she burst out into tears. She burst into tears. It's like, why didn't anybody tell me that? And it's like, yeah, that's why I'm doing this. That's why I'm on these podcasts. That's why I'm blogging all the time. That's why I'm writing all the time. Because she suffered for so long. And I'm sure there are a lot of you out there that are either suffering or know somebody that's suffering.

I call it the invisible pandemic.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because every. If you live long enough, you're going to go into menopause and there's a transition period. And do you know our next book is called Sweaty and Bitchy? Because I love it. I was sitting in the car. Poor Ed. I was sitting in the car one day. We have all of our kids in the car. It's dead of summer and we're waiting to go somewhere. And Ed's outside the car, but he pokes his head in. Lorraine, to this day, I have no idea what he asked me because I was in the midst of this, like, head to toe, hot flash. I, like, couldn't. I couldn't do anything. And our kids are in the car, so I can't let loose with my favorite words. And so he asked me some question. I can't hear anything because, like, you know, my whole body is. Is a fire. And I was like, if you value your life, turn on the car. And then when he turned, thankfully, he's like a smart and kind human and he turns on the car and the air is on and we get driving and I'm like, I am so sweaty and bitchy. Oh, we gotta write that book.

Yeah.

Really, it just came out of nowhere. So you're right. Like, it really does just kind of happen. And you don't just not taught in schools and it's not.

No. And I remember when I used to go into the office, you know, I always chose my words very carefully. You know, I'm kind, I'm compassionate and, and. But somehow or other when you're in that state, when you haven't slept, you're irritable, you're. You're tired, you, you know, and you're sweaty and bitchy just comes out wrong. And I used to walk in the office and everybody be like, let's start. Let's, let's, let's. Let's get out of here. You know, like, she's coming. What mood is she in? Right? I mean, it was. I felt so hurt by that because I. I really went out of my way to be kind and fair and, you know, but it. Women feel out of control. And I say it's like being in a. A rowboat in rough seas with no oars and directions. You just bounced around and it's, it's very sad. That's why I find my work so gratifying, because people really transform. There's hope, there's help. And they, they all say, I got my life back or I feel great again, or I feel like myself again, or I feel like a million bucks. So I want people to know this transition is, you know, it can be a smooth ride or you can go through these roller coaster mood swings and health swings.

Yeah. And I mean, I don't know in terms of. When I see the. The challenge is, I think a lot of women believe that a, this is normal and this is the way it should be. Like, this is, like, this is just normal. This is what everybody goes through. It's not a problem. Everybody goes through that. So that's one challenge. The other challenge that I find is when you start talking about hormones. Oh, my God, that causes cancer and heart attacks and oh my God, you can't have any hormones. And that's such a barrier to some women that it, it just takes time to talk about what are the risks. Let's talk about the studies. What do they actually say? What did. And I always say, like, the quality of life. You got to think of a quality of life, not just all these other risks that probably are not very substantiated. But even if they were, how do you want to live your life?

Exactly. And I give all my patients a synopsis of all the key studies, and it's pretty thorough and it's pretty. You know, people don't realize. The last few years, a lot of new studies came out saying that bioidentical hormones are safer. They're safer, they have less risk. And the risk of cancer was overblown.

And.

The press still calls progesterone progestins, progesterone. That people don't know the difference between a synthetic and a bioidentical. They don't know that the way you take the hormones, when you take the hormones makes a real big difference. But the risk of cancer is just not there.

I want to dive into this. You go. And then I'll.

Well, yeah, I mean, I was going to say that maybe we should go through it, but the thing that, for me that I found recently, that I found is really like a big thing, is there's now studies showing that with estrogen, it's protective against Alzheimer's. And when I start talking about that, they're like, okay, sign me up, you're done. Bam.

Well, also, you know, it decreases the risk of certain gastric type cancers, you know, in women. Say they learn to live with these symptoms. Oh, it's a normal transition, right. Well, hot flashes, they'll say it's just Hot flashes. I don't need hormones. I don't want hormones. They're not benign. They're a biomarker of risks of osteoporosis, dementia, cardiovascular disease, artery disease, and the quality of life. Women tell me they lost themselves. They lose their self confidence, they lose their self esteem. You know, when you're in menopause, things go from color to black and white and gray, and they're just like, blah. Life has no sizzle anymore. And they. It's. It's so sad to. To hear that from people. It just. It makes me want to cry. But, you know, that's my job, is to transform them and give them. Give them their life back. Because hormones can do that and they're safe. And I make sure I detox everybody first. I educate them. I give them, you know, the studies and the. Of hormones so they make an informed decision. I'm not here to push hormones on everybody. There's just a fraction of people that shouldn't have them. But even the North American menopause society and 20 other organizations say the benefits outweigh the risks. It's in writing. You know, they said it, they said it, they wrote it. They stuck that stink in the ground. It's the benefits outweigh the risk over and over and over again. And when my patients see study after study after study, it's like, okay, I get it.

I want to talk about the detox part of this because, you know, for me, this is the part that's so poorly understood for a lot of people, which is that hormones are fat soluble, toxins are fat soluble. If the way that your fat soluble toxins and your hormones get processed is the exact same route, and it's through the liver. And it happened. And this is my favorite thing to talk about. So phase one, you take your toxin and counterintuitively, you make it more toxic. Right? You make it into a free radical. And then you go to phase two where you bind it and make it water soluble, because fat doesn't dissolve in water. So you cannot pee out your toxins or your hormones until you make them water soluble. So phase two makes them water soluble. And then phase three, you pee, poop or sweat it out. And so when you talk about detoxing people first, it's so amazing to me. It's. I'm so happy. I'm like, okay, great. Because if you have toxins, I'm sorry, if you have hormones that you're inappropriately processing, they act like a toxin.

Yeah.

And then you get pro cancer forming and then it, it's, you know, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. And so I'm so happy that this is your approach because it, it really does make sense from a physiological standpoint.

Yeah. After doing this for so long and then, you know, seeing the results, I had to change the way I did things. And that's why I don't even accept anybody unless they will do the detox first. I don't even take them into my practice because I said I don't. You know, even if you eat healthy, you eat clean. You, you know this and you eat. No, because I. You'd be surprised. People think moving their bowels every two or three days is normal. Oh, my bowels are normal? No, it's not normal. They're coming out like little golf balls and funny poops. No, you need like a big snake every day. A big snake or a log. You know, it's not normal to not move it out. Just again, that visual, try to, try to flush a backed up toilet, that all that stuff that you want to get rid of is just hanging out in there and it's getting reabsorbed. And you know, these are the women, the constipated women get the breast tenderness and the bleeding and they're just not.

And the fibroids.

Yeah, yeah. And they're just not, they're not feeling as good. It's not like the magic pill for them. And then also the women without a gallbladder, people don't realize bile is big in getting rid of toxins. And you know, if you have a bad gut and you eat a bad diet and your gut bugs are gonna cleave all those toxins from the bile. You're just going to reabsorb them and you're not going to feel good. And you know, it's unfortunate how many women get their gallbladder out.

I want to stress what you just said, Lorraine, because remember when you go through phase two and you bind it and you make it water soluble, you put it into your gut to poop it out. So now if you separate the binder, it's back to being a free radical, a fat soluble free radical. It can't stay in the gut. It leaves, it goes back in your system and your liver is like, oh, I already dealt with you, I got to deal with you again. Yeah. So it really is this nasty hormone cycle that we gotta break. So, yeah, you poop every day, sometimes twice every day.

I mean, the other piece I'll kind of add to that is you may have a great diet, you may do all the right things, and then maybe you'll have a glass or two of wine every night. Oh, and just pushing that detox to work that much harder.

Yeah.

Can be. Just put you over the edge, especially for women. For whatever reason, women just tend to have less tolerance. And they do. It's just not a way to go.

No. And that was very hard to break, especially during the pandemic. You know, more and more people, you know, they were not happy. Was not a happy time. They were having more wine. And, you know, then I saw people who were very steady with their hormones. Same Joe's, everything's hunky dory. And then all of a sudden, so some wine. I'm not saying don't have any, but, you know, I am again, you know.

I think there's a moderation that's.

Here's the challenge. I don't think that two glasses of wine a night for women is moderation. I would say maybe three drinks a week is moderation for women, but two glasses of wine a night is way too stinking much because we can't process it. And we're dealing with our hormones and we're dealing with the toxins. And by way, alcohol goes through the liver. Phase one, phase two, just like the hormones do. So you're either processing your hormones or you're processing your alcohol. You can't do both. You only have so much bandwidth in the liver. So I mean, I'm like, eliminate or significant increase.

2 or 3 servings a week is probably the most I would personally recommend.

Yeah, I couldn't handle that, though.

Yeah. Even the literature supports that. So, you know, it's. And then also the serving size is like, you know, it's a thin bowl. It's not the glasses that you get when you go out. It's really not.

It's not a sniffer.

Right.

But think about, like, a bottle of wine has 750 calories. So if you drink a whole bottle of wine and you do that 50 weeks a year, that's 35,000 calories that you've just drunk. And for any woman who's trying to lose weight, that's. I'm not really good at that conversion in the other direction, but I think that's about ten pounds, like, probably. So getting rid of that. Is that ten pounds, that five pounds you can't lose.

So I want to go back to kind of, I we. You. You threw a lot of things out there in terms of. There's a difference between Hormones and bioidentical hormones and the roots and all that stuff. And I think it's, it'll be really great to kind of talk through what, what are the different choices so that people really, if they, if they do decide, they can actually think they can really make an educated decision as opposed to, oh, my doctor's doing this. And it's okay, because I think a lot of things people do may not be the best. Let's. Let's suboptimal.

So let's just talk first about what's the difference between bioidentical and synthetic hormones. Can we sort of drill into that, unpack that first?

Sure. Well, I use the analogy, is a trans fat the same as an omega 3 fat? No, it's been changed. Your body wasn't developed to detox a synthetic hormone. So if you know, do you want horse urine or do you want the same bioidentical. The same exact chemical structure that your body makes? That's what a bioidentical hormone is. So it's familiar to your body. Your body's like, oh, I know what to do with this. This is exactly I. We play nice together. The synthetic hormones, like the synthetic estrogen, just, you know, think of the estrogen receptor like a bell. It's sending a signal. Like the hormone goes and rings the bell. Okay. You know, your estrogen as your bioidentical, rings the bell. It's nice. Open the door. That's fine. The synthetic, it's just like, it stays there, it stays on the receptor and it just keeps. It's stimulating and stimulating and it doesn't really turn off as easily. So that's the difference between. With estrogen, there's not as many studies, because what came on, the difference between bioidentical estrogen and the synthetic estrogen. But there's a lot with progesterone. And unfortunately, the press always calls progestins, which are synthetics, progesterone. So progesterone does not cause clots, synthetics do. Progesterone does not cause gallbladder sludging, synthetics do. Progesterone relaxes the coronary arteries. The synthetics constrict the coronary arteries, so you get less blood flow. There's big differences. And the risk of cancer, that's really what they postulate, is that the cancer risk is not from estrogen, it's from progesterone dense. So when you look at the studies that, because they didn't do that many studies on the bioidenticals until recently, but when you're looking at those studies, the risk of cancer is so much lower than it is with the synthetics.

I mean, the ironic thing about the 2002 World Women's Health Initiative is that if you actually had symptoms that were bothering you, you couldn't participate in the study. They excluded you from the study if you had symptoms. So I was like, well, I mean, sure, people want to help their bones and their heart, but, like, most people aren't walking in saying, prot. My brain. They're saying, I'm not sleeping and I can't focus and I'm having hot flashes and I have sandpaper vagina. That. That's what they're saying. They're not saying, protect. Protect the things I can't see. Decrease my colon cancer risk. They're not saying that.

No.

So that was really challenge. I was like, wait, they. They excluded the women who really are the ones who are going to take it.

Right. And they waited too long. You know, the studies show that under the age of 60 and within 10 years of menopause, that's when you get the most benefits. Because after that, you've already lost your bone, your brain is already fried, your arteries already.

Oh, my God, what a bad picture.

It's bad. You know, so it's. You know, you can still have some benefit. But I. I say it's like 50, 50. When women come to me in their 80s, like, look, if they're having trouble with their brain, it does help them. They do. They do notice a difference. And, you know, I tell them, you may not get all the. Wow. You may not get all those benefits because it's. It's harder to turn around the. Than it is to prevent it. So that if you start early, the earlier you start, the better.

You know, I have a patient who's 59 years old and still has her regular periods.

Yeah, I've. I see some. Yeah.

And we've just. Her. Her FSH just got over 10. I've been monitoring her. It just got over 10. It was 11. I was like, well, you're on your way, but you're not there yet. But so I was saying to her, like. Like, you know, for you, I wouldn't wait too long to start your hormones because you're already 60, but you have some time because you still have the natural impact of what you had. I was just like, oh, my God. She said, my mom did it, too.

Wow. And do you balance her with progesterone? Because estrogen. You know, people don't realize that even in menopause, you're making estrogen, but you're making it in your fat and adrenal glands. So that's why I say women not on hormones can get cancer. Where's it coming from? It's coming from the toxins. This type of estrogen you make in your fat and adrenal glands is not the feel good estrogen that's going to get rid of the hot flashes, make you sexy and juicy. It's not, it's not. So, you know, they're under the impression like estrogen. Oh, no, no, no. But they're making it, they're making it anyway.

Yeah, yeah. And so. Well, first of all, I want to just make sure you, you referenced horse urine. So I want to make. So for everybody, it's premarin, pregnant mares, hormones. So it's literally pregnant horse hormones. Yeah.

Yes. Pregnant mare.

The, the other challenge with synthetic versus bioidentical. With synthetic, everybody, it's a one size fits all or two sizes fits all. With bioidentical, we can actually measure and get you to what's. What is considered a healthy postmenopausal range. Not a 20 year old range, but a healthy postmenopausal rage.

Yeah, you know, people don't realize you can't measure Premarin. There's no measure for that. You can't measure Provera, the synthetic progestin. You don't know if somebody's imbalanced. You don't know. You know that. You just know by the symptoms. And you know, women don't. And, you know, that's what I observed when I had that woman come down to me like, like telling me you have to do something. And I knew nothing really at that time. I mean, I could save your life in the emergency room, but, you know, I couldn't stop the flashing. It was so funny. But, you know, I learned a lot from that. And you know, it's, there's so many nuances to hormones. And also what people don't realize is they, you know, I have a lot of doctors that won't make women get off their estrogen when they go through surgery. Well, oral estrogen causes clots, so the way you give the hormone makes a difference. If you give estrogen through the skin, like I usually give it in a patch or sometimes when someone's allergic to the glue, I'll do a cream. The risk of clots is negligible. No one can say never in medicine because there's always. But there's not a risk of clots. So giving it early, giving it through the skin, and making sure it's bioidentical. I mean, ding, ding, ding. It's the winning formula. Because when I saw those other women come to me and they'd say, I want. Because I would recommend the bioidenticals, and then they'd say, I want what she has. And because the people on Prempro were the ones who were gaining weight. They were. The breast tenderness, they were always spotting, and, you know, that's not pleasant, especially in the summer, wearing white. So it was an eye opener for me. You know, I was a young newbie and innocent about these issues. But they were serious. They were serious. And, you know, I wanted to see women succeed because during those days, There were only six in a company of 120,000, you know, and I know I. When I was promoted, I'd walk into a room with a cmn. It was intimidating.

Have you ever had patients who can't tolerate any form of hormones?

It happens once in a while, but if they let me clean their gut, but if they. I get their bowels movement, if I get their gallbladder working properly and I get them balanced properly, they can. But I have had some that gave up because they didn't want to. They didn't want to either do the testing or they think everything's normal and they just don't want to take the time. But I have had people who. You know, one woman in particular, I remember, she. She was constipated since childhood. Since childhood. And when I saw her, and I saw her over Zoom, I could see the big red rash on her face and she was bleeding all the time, and she just couldn't stop, and it was interfering with her life, and it was so often, and she was tired and she couldn't sleep and she was constipated. So when I got everything going well, I detoxed her first, and then she. She had more energy, she slept better, but, you know, she did need hormones. And it took a while, but once I got her bowels moving, life changed this. The clouds parted, the sun came through. She felt fantastic. But in the beginning, she had a lot of breast tenderness, and she. The periods were still a little bit irregular, but she's doing great now. And she goes, oh, I feel good. I feel good. You know, so how.

What percent of people are you like? I'm not going. I mean, essentially, you basically say to everyone, I'm not coming near you until you detox. And you've alluded to the. The gut and the toxins so how long does that take for people?

I do a very abbreviated version because I can tell people you can do anything for two weeks. I have my nutrition coach work with them. She prepares them for a week, tells them what to. What to expect, what things to buy. I give them some. Some a shake to heal the gut and calm the immune system down. I give them some herbals to detoxify the liver, and I have them eliminate. I call them the troublesome 10, the 10 most troublesome trigger foods that can cause inflammation. And I have them do it for two weeks. First week, maybe people don't like me so much. You know, they're like, oh, a little bit irritable. But by the second week, they're like, oh, I feel better. I'm losing weight. I have more energy. I mean, that woman, her rash went away. She was sleeping better, she had more energy, and she felt a lot better. And I have that experience with people often. And then one woman said to me, you know what? This is the first time I've felt good in years. And I want to enjoy this for a while before then I add something else that's new. So she's going to come back for the hormones in a little bit. But, you know, she has her honeymoon period now, but she feels. She feels great. So I do a very abbreviated version. And then a lot of people feel so good that they choose to continue it, and we add the foods back in to not limit the foods because it takes at least two weeks. I mean, somebody who's really ill, I like to go longer. But to convince people to do it, I say, anybody can do it for two weeks, and they can, and they do, and they're grateful. And, you know, one woman took two years for her to do it, because that was before I was strict. And she would come and she'd say, you know, but my hands hurt. Finally, like, she loved to play golf, and she couldn't grab the golf club anymore, her hands hurt so much. And she would. She would get a pain in her right side all the time. So I said, will you finally do the detox? Well, she did it and she said, I feel so good. Why didn't you convince me to do it sooner?

Right, right. Definitely your fault.

Totally. It sounds similar to what we do.

I don't care. As long as they feel good, I'll take the blame. I don't care.

I mean, it sounds similar to what we do because essentially, often when you're starting with us, we're sending you to nutrition to start to level up on your food because there's that gap of time where we're doing the testing and you're waiting for it. So we're like, let's get going on something. So people start to level up their food and they feel so much better coming back in six weeks just with food because it's so foundationally. Totally. Can I pick your brain on something?

Sure.

I looked at the dosing of the patch. The lowest patch is the.025 milligrams and it's 25 micrograms. Okay. Now I'm putting you on the spot, so I apologize if you don't know anything about it. That's fine because I didn't know anything about it. 25 micrograms is about the dose of what we give women who take the pill. You know, there's a 20, the 25, and the 30 microgram pill. I always, in my brain had this thought that the hormones we're giving women for menopause are so much lower than what we give them in their reproductive years, but they're not. They're similar. Do you, have you ever thought about that? And do you have any comments on that? And it's okay if you haven't, but.

I'm just like, no, I do know that that is the dose that can be effective for cardiovascular health. I mean, some women need higher doses. I mean, I actually have a woman on two patches, but it's rare. It's very, very rare. Most people, I start them there, but the delivery system is very different.

And yeah, with oral. That's true.

Yeah, it's very different.

And it's synthetic. So, yeah, it acts differently.

Yeah, I was like, it's. It occurred to me like, oh, wait.

You can't really compare that. But that's why I go by blood levels. But you can't measure blood levels of synthetics.

Now, speaking of that, now, I, I have something that I want to pick your brain. And we can cut this out, but there are people that I get that put on. We cannot bring their. I cannot bring their estrogen up through blood for whatever reason. And their estrogen can go up a little bit, but their estradiol will. No, go. Go up. It's a small subset.

Does their progesterone go up? Yeah, just not the estradiol.

Just not the estradiol.

And I just, I have, I have a few like that too.

So do you keep treating like, do you keep raising the estrogen or are you treating to symptoms?

I treat to symptoms, but I do. I measure in blood and in saliva and urinary. That's what I've been always somewhere in the middle. Where's it going? Right, where's it going? You know, because some of these, these hormones are lipophilic. So some people just stays. But they, they do get it's going somewhere.

Right. And their symptoms improve.

Yeah. So, so if the symptoms improve, I measure two ways and, and two, three ways really and see where it's going. And I, I have had the same problem and you know, like one woman just kept, kept, you know, wanting more and more and more and more and more. And you know, even the pharmacy called me and said, look, you know, I said, I'm, I'm actually doing this to teach her something because her hot flashes are from stress. Her hot flash, she would, she would literally start talking about something and her whole face would get red, but she was fine otherwise. So her hot flashes were not. Because her hormone levels were perfect. Her hot flashes were brought on by.

Stress, which is super common.

Right. And that's why sometimes I have to measure several ways to and go to symptoms. And you can't always go by hot flashes. The diet makes a big difference in hot flashes too.

Yeah.

And you're stressed.

I really want to make sure to summarize so much. So detox, super important to do beforehand. And I'm going to emphasize continually also.

Right. It's not a one and done.

Right. Because estrogen can be cancer reducing if you're not detoxing properly. Two really important not to have estrogen by mouth.

Yes.

Right. And making sure that they're bioidentical, not horse hormones or artificial progesterone, which is called progestins and really measuring to measuring the levels, not just giving people one size fits all is super important. So if you're, if you're listening to the podcast and you're a woman of a certain age and we're awokens and you're really looking for somebody to. Those are kind of the minimum criteria I'd say to be looking for a provider that really this, this is the minimum case that you should be taking.

I would add one more thing to that, which is test, don't guess. Right. Because, and I'm talking test don't guess not only for your levels, but I'm more worried that they're too high as opposed to too low. Because if you feel good and you're too low, I'm like, well, as long as you're estrogen isn't way higher than progesterone, I'm kind Of. Okay, right. I'm just testing to see that you feel good. But test your bones, test your heart.

Yes, exactly.

Test the systems, test your detox. Make sure that you can get rid of it properly, that you, you know, maybe you do want to go up on your estrogen if you have bone loss. But test. Don't just take a dose test.

Absolutely. You want to see the end effect. And also the Dutch test, we didn't talk about that. But that. That's really important to understand. What is your body doing with these hormones? Are you making toxic metabol or more benign metabolites? And just like sorting the garbage, Even clean recyclables, you got to get rid of them. So you want to make sure you're able to methylate, which is another form of detoxification. Just think of it as putting the garbage in a bag so that the garbage van can take it out. Because if you don't methylate your hormones, you're just going to reabsorb them again.

I put all of any patient I put on hormones. I put on our product. It's called Estroval Complete, because it helps you process your estrogen inhibitors, inhibits beta glucuronidase, which is that enzyme that separates the hormones, and it inhibits that in the gut and supports the liver. And like, you gotta. If you're gonna take hormones, you have to make sure you process your hormones properly. So I put everyone on that.

We're on this. We're on the same page with that because you. You have to check all the boxes. And that's really why I think we're different. And that's what people don't. Don't get, because they'll. They'll go, you know, the shocking news, they'll go to the gyns who don't learn about this. And there. There was Johns Hopkins did a study that most of the residency programs don't teach them about this.

I didn't learn in residency. I learned after.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm an internist, so I didn't learn that either. But I figured all the gyns learned.

This, but family docs don't learn it either. Just to round it out.

Yeah, we all don't know. We all don't know. And then, you know, they. They think that they're going to get the same dose that everybody else gets. They're probably going to get the pill and they're not going to measure because I have people who left me and then came back saying something changed, but they just copied what you did. And they don't know what to do now. I need, I need something different. And you know, that's. We personalize it. It's, it's so important. It's just like the difference between having that one size fits all tater sack dress versus nice couture clothing. It's you, you know, when it fits you well, you look and you feel the best. You have that self confidence, the self esteem. You feel great. You're.

You got your glow on.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

All right, so the real question is, where can people find you? Where can people find that information? You've got so much to teach.

I have a lot of blogs too. For 15 years I've been vlogging. So it's the feelgoodagaininstitute.com be sure it's the feelgoodagaininstitution.com and you can feel free to take the femalehormonequiz.com it's free. It's on my website. You'll figure out which hormone is the most important to work on and you'll get some education and advice. And I'm like, get the word out. Don't suffer in silence. Don't be drugged or dismissed. It's oftentimes your hormones and the toxins.

Yes, Lorraine, you said it beautifully. Don't be drugged or dismissed. And suffering is optional. So.

Absolutely.

You know where we'll put the show notes that, that'll have the Feel Good Institute. Feel. Feel Good Again Again Institute. So we'll put that in the show notes and a. Lorraine, thank you for being here. This was awesome.

So much fun. You guys are the best. I, I listen to you and I listened to your, your, your summit and I just enjoyed it so much. And two of you together are great, you know, magic, you know, but you're, you're both, you're great alone. But I'll tell you, there's a little magic there, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for being here and thanks to the listeners for joining us for another episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. Our guest today is Dr. Lorene Maa. And, and our fearless leader Ed joined us too, which is like awesome because we haven't seen him in a while. So welcome. Thanks for being here.