They Lied to You About Menopause

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They lie to you about menopause.

If you're a female, this is going to be a super important presentation.

If you're a man, married to a female, this is going to be some very valuable information

because the common story with menopause, if you ask any mainstream doctor, is that menopause

is caused by a lowered estrogen and all the symptoms related to lower estrogen can be

treated with hormonal placement therapy or estrogen replacement therapy.

Now superficially, it kind of makes sense if you're low in a hormone, just go in and

take it and you fix the problem.

Well, the problem with that is that there's some slight complications when you take hormonal

placement therapy.

The side effects include breast cancer, endometrial cancer, clots increasing your wrist for

a stroke, gallstones, fluid retention, increased triglycerides, which then could potentially

increase wrist for cardiovascular problems.

So there's a lot of side effects and not just side effects from that, it's all the other

medications that you are put on.

Typically, menopausal females are put on medications for hot flashes, ozemic for being overweight, SSRIs

for depression, NSAIDs for joint pain, certain medications for bone loss and muscle loss

and high blood pressure.

The term for that is polypharmacy, poly-meaning many, pharmacy-meaning drugs.

Because of this one big lie related to menopause, having all of these different symptoms come

from different sources when they really come from one main root cause that we're going

to get into.

So I'm going to take you through step by step of what happens with menopause and I have

a really good solution.

So it is absolutely true that roughly around 52 is when you have menopause.

Now, some women, earlier, some women are later, but the average is age 52 where the ovaries

go in retirement and they stop releasing eggs.

And then from that, you have a dip in several hormones, not just estrogen, I mean, it can

go from 400 down to 20, so you get this severe drop in estrogen.

I want to give you some additional things on this that you probably haven't heard.

It is true that estrogen drops, testosterone drops, but also progesterone sometimes tanks

to almost zero, but a lot of people don't talk about that.

We will be talking about that, but I'm primarily going to be focusing on this estrogen.

When the estrogen drops, it signals the thermostat in your brain.

There is a thermostat and it's part of this hypothalamus, which is like the master gland

that controls everything else.

It's like this micro computer and there's many different little sections that control

huge things in the body.

Part of the area that's in hypothalamus that's related to menopause is literally a thermostat.

That's right.

And so it's constantly getting feedback from your core temperature, which should be 98.6.

And if it's going too high or too low, it makes adjustments.

It might heat up, it might create a fever, it might create a hot flash, or night sweat,

or it could be on the other side chivering to try to generate more heat.

So you have this thermostat going on.

And what's really interesting about the thermostat is typically in the thermostat you have in

your house.

Let's say it's set at 72.

There's a certain amount of fluctuation that can go up or down before it gets triggered.

It's a picture like a zone from this point to this point.

After menopause, when the estrogen drops, that zone shortens significantly, which means

that if you just have slight variations, tiny variations in that temperature, then it gets

triggered, and then you have this cascade effect of a hot flash and other symptoms.

And there's several things that can trigger it, temperature, blood sugar.

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Stress?

So there's a lot of different triggers that can trip this thermostat.

It does several other things too.

It regulates your set point.

It's that weight that your body is comfortable at.

Like it just kind of gravitates to a certain weight and it's really hard to get below that.

And when you go on a diet or you exercise, you lose weight and then you hit that set point

and then that's about it.

It's like stuck.

It doesn't go below that.

That is controlled by this little mechanism in the hypothalamus.

The other thing that just controls is appetite, okay?

So that could relate to how frequently you're hungry also what you crave.

It also regulates body weight to a certain degree.

This is why during menopause, a lot of women start gaining weight.

You think about metabolism, but that whole thermostat or regulatory system is in this

little part in the hypothalamus.

Energy, okay?

Your ability to generate energy is also involved with this.

Insulin is involved with this.

And the hypothalamus is also a very sensitive light signals.

It's interesting because it's connected to the circadian rhythms.

So when someone goes to menopause, not only do they get hot flashes sometimes, but they

start gaining weight in the midsection.

They get mood changes, inflammation, their libido crashes.

They start to lose bone, okay?

They start to lose muscle.

They get atrophy.

They get high blood pressure.

The risk for diabetes goes up.

The risk for heart attack goes up.

Just from having this change in this part of the hypothalamus, this doesn't seem normal.

So I found some interesting things.

We already talked about this narrowing of this zone of temperature.

So now your thermostat gets triggered more easily, but also prediabetes or type 2 diabetes

or even something that comes before that called insulin resistance.

They're more at a double risk of getting a hot flash if they're going through menopause.

That's an interesting connection.

Another thing that popped out that was very interesting is I was looking at different cultures

and I wanted to see if certain cultures have more hot flashes than others and this popped

out 80 to 91% of African American women that are going through menopause get hot flashes.

Now that was really interesting to me because that stood out as a huge clue because if you

do a comparison and other cultures, it's not even close to that.

I mean up to 91%.

So then I started looking at why that could be and then I found this.

People that have low vitamin D levels, they're vitamin D deficient, have a much higher

risk of getting hot flashes.

The color of someone's skin does influence their ability to get vitamin D. So melanin

is a pigment in the skin that acts as a natural sunblock.

And so the darker your skin, the less UV you're going to get to make vitamin D. And especially

in America, there's a direct correlation between skin color and the amount of vitamin D

that someone gets.

So now let's dive in a little deeper and start connecting the dots with all the things

I just mentioned.

Okay, let's take a look at estrogen first.

During menopause, we get a major decrease in estrogen.

Now what's the relationship between estrogen and some of these other things I've talked

about?

Number one, estrogen is very important in protecting a cell in the body called the beta cell.

That's in the pancreas.

The beta cell is all about helping you regulate blood sugars and controlling insulin.

And diabetes occurs because of damage to that beta cell.

So that was very, very interesting.

And it helps keep insulin sensitive.

So in other words, if you're talking about insulin resistance, which by the way is a root

cause behind so many different chronic diseases, diabetes type 2, obesity, fatty liver, high

triglycerides, etc.

And estrogen has a huge purpose to help keep insulin sensitive.

And when you lose estrogen, now you're going to lose insulin sensitivity.

What's going to happen to your blood sugar?

Up and down.

What is that going to do to your weight if you now have insulin resistance?

Now that's just going to worsen the whole thing.

Estrogen also has a purpose of controlling inflammation.

And one of the things that really creates a narrow spectrum of this thermostat in your

hypothalamus is inflammation.

So anything that reduces inflammation will improve menopausal symptoms.

So estrogen regulates the amount of sugar that's produced by the liver.

Let me explain.

In a diabetic, the liver is so insulin resistant that it doesn't work anymore.

So the insulin doesn't really go into the liver to work and blood sugar's don't go in

there.

So the signal is we're starving of sugar.

So then the liver starts on making sugar like crazy.

And even in a diabetic, 80% of their blood sugar is actually being produced by the liver

and only a smaller percent comes from the diet.

So that term is called gluconeogenesis.

The production of new sugar by your liver.

And that's influenced greatly by estrogen.

So when the estrogen goes down, your blood sugars are going to go down.

You're going to have a problem with insulin.

And that right out the bat, we'll start explaining visceral fat, weight gain, that set point

problem that you just can't get your weight past a certain level.

Because I've talked about that in other videos, you have to correct insulin resistance if

you really want to bring that weight down any further.

Now let's get into the interesting information, vitamin D.

I had no idea until recently that estrogen has a huge influence over vitamin D in the

activation of vitamin D.

In the blood, you have an inactive version of vitamin D.

It's not really doing anything.

It has to be converted in the kidney.

And that conversion needs help for the estrogen.

Not only that, the vitamin D receptor in your cells requires a good amount of estrogen

to be able to work.

And even if it does get activated, it's not going to penetrate through receptor too much

because estrogen is down.

I mean, just think about the importance of vitamin D for pretty much everything I already

mentioned.

There's even an enzyme that you have in your adrenals and in your fat that helps you make

estrogen from testosterone.

Because you no longer can get the benefit of the ovary.

Now you're dependent on your estrogen from adrenal and your fat cells and also the enzyme

that converts it.

But not unless you have enough vitamin D, wow, that's interesting.

So basically, vitamin D and estrogen are bi-directional.

They both influence each other.

If you don't have enough estrogen, then you're not going to have enough vitamin D.

If you don't have enough vitamin D, you're not going to be able to produce as much estrogen,

which is a double edged sword.

So you need both of these things.

Also when you're vitamin D deficient, you're going to have less temperature control.

There is a hormone around your thyroid called the pera thyroid hormone.

And that hormone kind of acts as a plan B for vitamin D.

It's like a backup to vitamin D.

So if you don't have enough vitamin D, that goes up.

And what it's going to do, it's going to start to mobilize calcium from your bone.

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This is why the bone loss after menopause, when I was in practice, I would have women coming

in and they go through menopause and all of a sudden they have osteopenia and osteoporosis

like within weeks, that's because of this high pera thyroid hormone.

This can be brought down if you get enough vitamin D.

The problem is most doctors are operating off of this outdated information that we only

need 600 to 800 I use the vitamin D tree, which is completely false because if you take

a look at all the other important things of vitamin D does, immune system, helping with

the estrogen, helping with your muscles, et cetera, et cetera.

For that other system, you need between 6,000 to 8,000 to even 10,000 I use every single

day just to maintain that system.

I'm not even talking about creating a therapeutic effect by using more for inflammatory conditions

like autoimmune.

I'm just talking about maintaining things.

If you're operating off of this outdated information that you will need a tiny amount

and it's okay to have 20 nanograms per milliliter of vitamin D in your blood, that's normal.

Then you are going to be in a heap of trouble because you're not going to have enough vitamin

D for all of this to work.

Compound about the fact that estrogen is so low, you're barely getting any vitamin D.

Then of course the pera thyroid hormone is going to spike up and start robbing all this

calcium out.

Do you see the problem now?

You can't go into this having a fixed idea.

You have to be very open to looking at all the different viewpoints and also to have a

different viewpoint of lifestyle changes because insulin sensitivity or insulin resistance

has everything to do with your diet and unfortunately that's something that it's not going

to be brought up when you visit your doctor and the same thing with vitamin D.

They're not going to really talk about that.

They're going to be more focused on treating all of your symptoms.

What can we do?

What is the plan?

The most important thing for menopausal symptoms is to fix insulin resistance.

Now, are you going to start increasing estrogen and start taking that?

The problem with that is there's too many side effects.

Why can't we just improve insulin resistance and see if that doesn't help a lot of the symptoms

that you have related to this because it is normal to have a dip in estrogen.

You're just trying to bring it up enough where you don't have any more problems.

Fixing insulin resistance is going to be super important.

How do you do that?

I'm going to put the link down below.

You're going to have to cut down your carbs.

You're going to have to do intermittent fasting.

There's a couple other things to do as well, nutrition-wise, but this is doable.

You can reverse insulin resistance in a very short period of time just with diet.

Number two, vitamin D3.

I wouldn't just take 10,000 I use.

I would highly recommend you do 20,000 I use every single day.

Now, you say, oh my gosh, that's a lot.

That's literally 40 minutes in the sun, but you're going to need to bypass all these other

barriers that are going on to get enough vitamin D to then help estrogen work better and

also vitamin D can greatly help your insulin problem as well.

I would also recommend taking magnesium with that and vitamin K2.

Magnesium is another thing that can help reduce cortisol.

It'll help you sleep.

It can actually help a lot of things related to menopause that I didn't actually cover,

but vitamin D is going to be the most important, but definitely take magnesium with it.

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You could take the doesn't have the amount of side effects and yes, there is.

NK3R agonist is a certain drug that they use for certain menopausal symptoms.

If you looked up the natural version of that, there's several things that may help you

or things that you might want to try, soy isoflavones.

Now, typically, I don't recommend soy, but in these situations, a little bit of this

could help you.

Resveratrol is another option.

Black cohosh is a very popular antidote to hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms.

Red clover is another one.

Number four is light and dark.

Before I told you, the specific part of the hypothalamus is very sensitive to light and

the circadian waves.

You can improve your menopausal symptoms by aligning yourself with light and dark cycles.

So in the morning, if you can go outside when the sun is rising and for 20 minutes, get

that sun.

It'll be awesome.

If you can't do that, get one of the full spectrum lights that they have, more of a therapeutic

light, and you put that up for a half an hour in the morning next to your computer so

you can get that light.

And that way, you can start to influence this circadian effect inside your brain.

And then at night, when it starts to get dark, if you're watching TV like one or two

hours before bed, you get the little blue blockers.

And that way, we can simulate more the darkness and, of course, turn the lights down around

you.

That'd be very, very important to help reset that hypothalamus.

Some people get a lot of benefit with some of the bigger symptoms with menopause by

progesterone cream.

So that's another thing to look at.

Estrogen goes down, but progesterone really tanks a lot more than estrogen.

So that ratio is going to be important.

Some women that have problems sleeping at night might need to take melatonin.

Normally, I don't recommend it, but if you've tried all these other things and it hasn't

worked, getting to bed at the right time and being able to sleep is like the most important

thing.

And if you compare melatonin with the drug, this has virtually like almost zero side effects.

And we're just taking three milligrams.

Maybe that might actually help you out of all the biomarkers that seem to go really,

really, really high after menopause.

Lutinizing hormone, LH, is the one that really, sometimes you can go up at like a thousand

percent.

That can make menopause miserable for you, especially high flashes.

So there is something to lower that melatonin.

Interesting.

You can also get melatonin from just being out in the sun because when you're out in

the sun, or 50% of the rays are infrared, infrared triggers melatonin to be made inside

yourself.

So that's another thing to help you.

And number seven, if you've tried everything and just nothing's working, you might want

to get your testosterone tested by a competent doctor that really knows about doing the testosterone

pellets.

And the only reason I bring it up is because the amount of plastics in the environment

are so high, both men and women, their testosterone is like crashing to such low numbers, but don't

be deceived with their normal range of testosterone because they're taking an average of the population

and that's your normal.

So you're comparing your hormones with everyone else's hormones, which is not a good comparison.

They're not comparing your hormones with someone 20, 30 years ago.

They don't do that, which is interesting.

But testosterone pellets by a competent physician could be beneficial for some women.

The thing you need to know is that testosterone is like a mother hormone that turns into estrogen.

So this could be one way to bring this up just enough to satisfy the insulin sensitivity

issue, to help you absorb and more vitamin D at the receptor level, to convert more inactive

vitamin D to the active vitamin D, and to lessen the allow the symptoms that occur because

of the inflammation that's created.

I think the most important thing right now is to really learn about how to fix this insulin

resistance problem, and for that, I put this video right here, check it out.