Speaker 1: 1:25

Welcome to the show everyone. Special guest today and actually we were just laughing before we came on because most of you know I was telling this is Dr Beth never had a menstrual cycle and I'm never going to go through menopause, and so I'm happy that you all get to finally hear from someone who will not just experiences these things but also works with a ton of women. So welcome Dr Beth Westy. It's so good to have you on the show. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:07

Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Yeah, same Same. It's so good to have you on the show.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited. Yeah, same same. Let's begin with the idea of hormones and whether they matter or not. Let me set it up for you this way, right, there's been an ongoing argument forever in the health and fitness world that calories matter and that's all that matters. And, of course, in the last 10 years we've heard an awful lot about, well, hormones matter and that's all that matters, right. And so there's this camp kind of going back and forth, and I think you and I would certainly say hormones matter and they matter a lot. From my perspective, I would say both matter and they matter equally. But I would love for you to educate us on how you see this whole thing and how hormones get involved and how you, as a clinician, approach this idea of incorporating the knowledge of hormones into weight loss and health, specifically for women.

Speaker 2: 3:04

Yeah, yes, this is such an important debate that people are having and I get I'm sure you do too like, get frustrated at the idea that, like we are just simple math equations calories in, calories out that's going to equal weight loss of some kind. And, yeah, calories do matter, and to a point, because I, the way I say it is like you know, 100 calories of almonds is very different than 100 calories of gummy bears, for what it's going to do. So it's not just about the calorie right, and what it's doing to your system and how your physiology is set up to process those nutrients is really, really important. And for the female body, the way our hormones shift and change alters how you absorb processed nutrients, a lot of other things, because we forget about the fact that estrogen and progesterone go everywhere in the body. We think of women's health as you know, they call it bikini health, like just the areas that a bikini covers, and that's women's health, right, women's health right. But when we're looking at the impact of hormones in the body and your overall metabolism and how those things, you know, work together synergistically, it's a systemic impact, just like thyroid, right?

Speaker 2: 4:20

People talk oh, it's just carbs and carbs out, and women are anybody, male or female, men or women. And they're like I can't lose weight. And they're like, oh look, you have hypothyroidism. No wonder, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:30

And you know it's interesting, you know I don't know that. Uh, uh, many people know women obviously are impacted more by thyroid, partly because of how estrogen impacts thyroid carrier proteins and things like that. But I also I'm one of these people who can gain muscle really easily, but I gain fat really easily and it's a little slow to come off because I have I'm one of the few men not a lot of men have this, but I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis and hypothyroid and it does make things a challenge. And it does bring up an interesting question, beth, because from my perspective, when I think about hormones right, we do kind of get this whole thing where, when we think of hormones, we typically think of sex steroids. But you just brought up the idea of, you know, things like thyroid, things like cortisol, things like insulin.

Speaker 1: 5:11

Some of these hormones are more impactful or more influential in some ways than the sex steroids and of course they communicate sort of back and forth. And so when you're thinking of hormonal weight loss, what are you primarily dealing with with women? Is it all of the above? Is it primarily estrogen and progesterone? And how do these things figure in to this from a woman? Because we hear it all the time right Women go. You know I need to balance my hormones and sometimes I'm like, well, I wonder what hormones they're talking about.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Yeah, yes, I feel like that's the. That's the biggest question there. What hormones are you talking about? And for so many women, it's like I feel like something's off in my body and the trouble is that a lot of these symptoms overlap I'm fatigued, I'm gaining weight and I can't lose it. I'm not gaining muscle, which is it right? Do you not have enough testosterone? Do you have a cortisol issue? Do you have a thyroid issue? All of the above right.

Speaker 2: 6:12

It's so hard to identify. So I do hormone testing, I do Dutch testing. So a urine test for hormones that gives you the metabolites of it and how it's processed in the body. That's my favorite to kind of discern a lot of these things. So it tests all of those hormones except for thyroid. It doesn't test your thyroid hormones, and that's a great place to just take a look at where you're starting. But it is. It. Is this the combination of everything? Right? And when we look at the like I'm eating food, I'm exercising, I'm trying to be healthy why isn't this working? There's usually something off. One of my, one of my favorite books it's called Doing Harm. Have you read it?

Speaker 1: 6:53

I have not. Who's that by?

Speaker 2: 6:54

Oh, you're going to love this Putting it on my list.

Speaker 2: 6:57

Yes, doing Harm. It's a long book. It's an audible as well. The Lazy Science that Leaves Women Misdiagnosed and Sick or something is the subtitle and the whole first chunk of the book.

Speaker 2: 7:10

When I first read it I was enraged because a lot of the stuff that they talk about in terms of how health is set up in our Western world is based on a male body. You know, only they. For so many years they only allowed men into medical schools, for so many years that only men did research, and they did research primarily on male bodies. Right, I mean, you can go all the way back to like the Flexner report and start from that position forward in time, which is like a hundred years ago now. I think that the way things were created in this country and why things end up the way that they are now and how slow that transition takes. So, even though over the last decade or so it's actually I'll percent, half of the women in, or half of the population in higher education for health are female, right, women are, you know, going to college, going to grad school, getting in the health field and all these different areas, yet still research is not done on the female body because it takes longer.

Speaker 1: 8:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:13

Because of the hormone fluctuation, so it's more expensive. And so companies are like oh, that's not right, we don't want to pay more to get accurate data, so we're just going to put a few women in the study and then call those points outliers and kick them out.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Yeah, and it's unpredictable too. It wasn't. I think it wasn't until 2001. That's usually the stat that I use that they actually came out with the AMA, ada, several other of these bodies, actually saying hey look, women are dramatically underrepresented in the research across the board. And it was just a couple of years ago that I forget which journal was, I think it was. I think it was a journal, cardiac that basically came out and said women are still dramatically underrepresented in cardiovascular disease studies. And part of what that is about for those of you who are listening is part of what it is is that just what Dr Beth was saying that a lot of the universities historically were dominated by men. The research departments were dominated by men.

Speaker 1: 9:10

But one of the things that they often cite and this will get us in Beth talking about how these hormones affect things is that women and their hormones. You know sort of they fluctuate throughout the month. Men are pretty static. Women have two sex steroids. Men have two main sex steroids. Men have one main sex steroid. Women go through four stages of hormonal even perhaps five if they get pregnant hormonal stages in their life. Men go through at most two puberty and andropause.

Speaker 1: 9:40

And so when you're doing studies on this. It's a lot to control, and also we know that each woman and their hormone cycle looks an awful lot like a hormonal fingerprint, so it's very difficult to draw conclusions if you're in your luteal phase and you're doing the study, versus you're in your follicular phase and you're doing a study. We know that women process carbohydrates differently at those times. We know their exercise capacity is different at these times. We know their moods change along with this, and so this is part of the issue that I think women are having, and what I would love to know from you is where do you tend to start with this conversation, when women are coming in and saying, hey, I'm doing everything right, I'm not getting results. I am counting the calories, or I did try this new diet. It sounds like what you began to do is look at some of these hormone profiles, or do you look at symptoms only, or is it a little bit of both? I'm curious how you, how you run things.

Speaker 2: 10:35

Yeah, yeah, the my process for all of it. Um, it is, it is both, it is symptoms, and then again I, I, you know Dutch test, um. There's other urine tests for comprehensive hormones, but that one's, that one's just my favorite for the you know, wide array of information that you get from it and then going through that information and really customizing things for people, because if they've already been struggling, if you've already, you know, done x, y and z, why start there, right, take how you're feeling, how your body's responding, and that data and and dutch testing is done. If you have a cycle, it's done at a certain point of the cycle, so you're catching, um, you know, between days.

Speaker 2: 11:16

you know 19 to 22 of of the cycle on an average cycle, so about five days post ovulation is what you're looking for, because you're looking for a progesterone that you did ovulate and that that's your body's producing progesterone. And then you're looking for that progesterone that you did ovulate and that that's your body's producing progesterone. And then you're looking for that little estrogen bump and the biggest difference. For, for anyone who's wondering, like, why not just a blood test? Why not do a blood test on a certain time, you can, right, and that's most helpful. If you're like, oh, I'm measuring myself at this certain time and that's also something side note.

Speaker 2: 11:48

When we talk about any type of progress that you're measuring for yourself measurements, weight, x, y, z, whatever health journey you're on I always tell women to, if you're measuring yourself, compare your body to last month at that same time. So if you're on day 10 and you're like I weigh myself every morning, well, great, but don't compare yourself to last week, you were in a different body then right, compare yourself to last month at that same timeframe, because that's going to be the most similar body that you're comparing to, because so many things fluctuate. But for blood testing and things like that, when you're testing things with blood, not that it's bad, it's just you're getting a mixture of free and bound hormone in that blood sample, whereas a urine sample. You're just getting that free metabolite coming through, so you're getting what is bioavailable for your system that it can utilize. So that gives us a more of a clue of okay, how is your system actually functioning? Do you have any available, you know, androgen in your body to do something with? Versus?

Speaker 2: 12:48

yeah, I got my hormones tested and it was a blood test and everything's fine. I'm using a lot of air quotes today.

Speaker 1: 12:54

Sorry, I like those air quotes, but don't worry about it.

Speaker 2: 12:59

This sounds weird. I'm moving my hands around, but that's, you know, I got my blood tested, and you know. And a blood test can give you certain information. I you know it, but it's free and bound hormone, whereas a urine test you get free hormone tested. That's why it's my favorite.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Yeah, and I and I think let's just cover this real quick for for you, the listeners, part of what we do in the medical profession, most of the diagnostic information we have and data is based on all of it actually is based on blood labs. So it's blood for diagnoses, but the problem is that diagnosis doesn't always tell us what we want to know. Long before you are diagnosed with a particular condition, let's say, you are going to be having some dysfunction, and so one of the reasons that we also like using these functional tests, like the Dutch test, is, for those of you who don't know this test, it's basically a test that uses saliva for cortisol and urine metabolites for estrogen, progesterone and other hormones. But one of the reasons we use these tests is so that we can see the different metabolites and actually see how your body is utilizing these hormones, whereas a blood test just gives you a single point in time in blood and does not look at any of these other metabolites. Detoxifying estrogen, for example, we wouldn't necessarily know what the estrogen progesterone ratios might be. We wouldn't necessarily know if you are more of someone who is aromatizing your testosterone into estrogen. There's a lot of different things that we can tell you, not to mention how important cortisol is.

Speaker 1: 14:44

So it sounds like this is essentially what you're doing, beth.

Speaker 1: 14:47

You're essentially saying, if I'm hearing you correctly, like this is essentially what you're doing, beth. You're essentially saying if I'm hearing you correctly and correct me if I'm wrong here that if we do blood, it's going to be fine for diagnostic purposes. You know, in terms of hey, you've got this particular condition maybe, but it's not necessarily going to tell us some of the things about function that we can actually do something about. For example, if we see that you're metabolizing more to 16-hydroxy and 4-hydroxy estrogens, there are things that we can do for phase 1 liver detoxification or phase 2 liver detoxification that we wouldn't know to do if we were just getting a blood lab, and so it sounds like this is how you're doing things, and I would love for you to just walk us through so that they know, when you are looking at these hormones, what are you paying most attention to? How much attention are you paying to cortisol? What are you liking to see? What are the things you're paying attention to with estrogen, progesterone, et cetera?

Speaker 2: 15:40

Yeah, oh, this is a really good question. I may go on a rant for a minute. That's good. I like rants. I may go on a rant for a minute.

Speaker 1: 15:47

That's good.

Speaker 2: 15:53

I like rants In looking at all of these things. A lot of times I take what their worst symptom is and match it to what we're seeing on the labs first, just because you got to put out the biggest fire first. So often by the time women get a Dutch test. Or we're looking at something more comprehensive, things have been going on for such a long period of time and like, oh, this is a subclinical or you know it's not. You know like the whole building hasn't burned down, but there's definitely fire started right. So we take the worst thing first and start working on that, and I am one that I want to sort of take a fire hose.

Speaker 2: 19:05

You's a step-by-step process but if your liver's not processing, and especially phase one, phase two, estrogen, I want to help support that. If your adrenals are not functioning well, want to help support that. And then overall, just the nutrients. And I feel like we talked about this just even last week that so many women are undernourished and that's a huge part of it, that, even going into this, whatever we're doing to target specifically for each person that's customized, we have to also address the overall nutrient values that you're getting in, otherwise you don't have enough fuel to even have these processes happen. You're just, you know, trying to drive a car on very little gas. You get like a half a cup of gas in the tank and you're like I'm going to. I always say like drive to Duluth, I'm in Minnesota, can't drive three hours in the car on just a half a cup of gas. You know you got to have that constant fuel and be really making sure you're nourishing your body really, really, really well, first to sort of do that repair work and get started with that.

Speaker 1: 20:11

Yeah, and it's interesting too, right when we look at the hormonal situation. You're talking about nutrients and energetics for women and men, but we live in a culture where it seems like there's two metabolic states that most people occupy. You either got the couch potato, who is sort of overfed, undernourished, right, so they're eating the Western American diet. There's lots of calories but not a whole lot of nutrients. That's going to present problems for the hormonal system. And then you also have the sort of chronic diet or chronic exerciser, who is sort of the other extreme. They're moving around a lot, they're not eating a lot, so they're using up a lot of resources and they're not necessarily getting those nutrients in and that actually has impact on this hormonal system.

Speaker 1: 20:54

From my perspective, the metabolism is very much like a stress barometer and certainly if it feels under stress which nutrient sensing is part of its stress apparatus like how much nutrient do I have to do what I need to do then it's going to make a determination about reproduction, and we don't always think about it that way, but these hormones are their primary. You know sort of utility is in reproduction. That's what we evolved to sort of do, and so I love what you're saying about the nutrient aspect here and how, paying close attention to the calorie gap, how much we're taking in versus how much we're burning and perhaps more importantly, according to what you were saying, the nutrients. This is going to be a primary thing that's going to be impacting the hormone balance and hormone levels, and am I hearing you correct in that that that's one of the things that we need to be, you know, paying attention to.

Speaker 2: 21:48

Yes, absolutely Absolutely, and I just I mean I do. I do see some of the, like you said, couch potato, but just more of the women that I come across it's the I'm doing everything, I'm running around, right Like they're, you know, very similar to me. Like I'm a mom, I've got three kids around. Right Like they're, you know, very similar to me. Like I'm a mom, I've got three kids. Very busy schedule. You know all the things always on the go and always taking care of everybody else first.

Speaker 2: 22:18

So it's easy to forget, or it's easy to let things like little things slide every day for yourself.

Speaker 2: 22:23

Right, I know that I don't want to say better than anybody, but just just the same as so many women who get stuck in this position of oh, I got up early and I went to the gym, but I was running late, so I just, you know, threw back some coffee and did this really intense workout, and then I got home and then had to take so and so to the dentist and had to run here that I'm going to work and doing XY, got to get dinner on the table and by the end of the day you're so exhausted and wiped out and then you realize, oh, I barely ate today, you know, and I had all these stressful things that I took care of and was taking care of everyone else which is wonderful. But then, day after day, week after week, year after year, you end up in a place where you're like I don't understand. I'm working so hard, why can't I get this type of a result that I used to get? You can't outwork it, you know.

Speaker 1: 23:17

Yeah, because it's the stress effect right. And that's the part that I think we don't talk about enough. We talk about hey, you know, exercise more. Hey, you know, watch your nutrition, but when it comes to stress management, we say it but I don't necessarily think people really understand and we don't actually often give the tools to how to manage stress Right. So we don't often kind of say here are the kinds of things that will help you manage stress better. And one thing I'll just mention here. I'd be curious what your thought process is on it, especially when it comes to exercise, which I spent most of my career doing.

Speaker 1: 23:51

Exercise is an interesting thing because most people, if you ask them what's their major way that they reduce stress, they will say exercise, which to me is problematic, because exercise can be a positive stress. It can be an adaptation signal when it's done just enough in the Goldilocks zone. But if it's done too long, too intensely, too frequently, it oftentimes becomes an additional stress and you can't adapt to it. And we've seen this in trials like the alpha and beta trials. We've seen this with Dr Herman Ponser's work out of Duke University with constrained metabolism effects. We've seen compensatory reactions that slow metabolic rate, increase hunger and cravings, and we now know that in a sizable amount of people and it seems that women are perhaps more sensitive to this than men that it can in about 25% of the women in research cause compensatory eating reactions, if it stresses you out. And so I oftentimes wonder, at least when I'm working with my female clients there are about 10 percent of women who are hyper responders to exercise. They get really good results from it, but that's only 10 percent. 25 percent actually seem to gain weight with super intense dirt and this is coming from the alpha and beta trials, by the way and then about 50% of women seem not to get any effect at all. So that's a full 75% of women who doing traditional exercise are not seeing the results from it that you would expect.

Speaker 1: 25:20

Terrible, yeah right, it's a really interesting thing. Well, and it's really interesting because it brings up this whole idea of stress. And, of course, if you ever listen to Herman Ponser be interviewed on this stuff, he's saying I'm not saying not to exercise, it can be healthy. What I'm saying is that exercise is not going to be the thing that a lot of people think it's going to be. But what I would add to that is? I would say, yes, it is, if it's done in the Goldilocks zone, if it's done correctly and not burning you out. You know, you know more than it is sort of delivering this anti-stress effect. So it is one very important factor here, I think.

Speaker 2: 26:01

Yes, yes, a hundred percent agree, yeah, and some of this is like. I've been an athlete my whole life. I was a three sport athlete in high school. I got a scholarship to play volleyball in college and then went right to grad school, still played competitive volleyball. I had my first two kids while I was in grad school Do not recommend. And then at the same time, I was still playing volleyball. Like I remember nursing my second and being on the sidelines and my teammates were like Westy, get in here, we're starting warmups. I'd be like she's not done with the other side. You know, like, just like this is. There was that moment where I was like this is too much.

Speaker 1: 26:45

Yeah, that's crazy. Dedicated to your sport there was that moment where I was like this is too much yeah that's crazy, beth.

Speaker 2: 26:51

This is too much right Dedicated to your sport, right? But that's all I knew. Right? I literally would think, okay, I only have an hour and a half to be at the gym, that's not enough time. Yeah, because I was doing two and a half three hour workouts. That was what I, that's what we did in college. Where I went to school, they had the olympic um speed skating and uh wrestling center and in northern michigan, and so we that was our training center. I was trained, you know, weightlifting, deadlifting, heavy lifting.

Speaker 2: 27:20

I was a beast yeah, it sounds like it but that my lifting coach was the same lifting coach for the Olympic speed skaters who trained like Apollo. Oh no, like we were in the same gym together.

Speaker 2: 27:32

You know all this stuff. And um, yeah, I didn't know how to train like a normal person is how I'll phrase that and and it really took me a while to learn and even after having kids, I didn't know how to train like a normal person until I, like, worked with a regular trainer who was like what are you like? What are you doing?

Speaker 1: 27:55

Yeah, yeah, this can be a little bit much, you know, and of course, and of course it brings up a point that the athletes you know you probably were, you know athletes, at least the ones who care about performing over the long run are not starving themselves with calories either. They are eating to fuel their sport. You know, which is another, I think, lesson that we could all learn from. If you're going to be training like that, you certainly don't want to add to the stress by not eating.

Speaker 2: 28:20

Yes, yes, well, and at that point, you know, with the stress of grad school, all the things and nursing and things like that, I was constantly eating. I had to, otherwise I couldn't nurse, you know. Yeah, so there was that. But there was definitely a breaking point in stress after I had my third and how it showed up for me. So and again, a lot of this comes from, I think, the stress response in the body. I graduated, started a business. It was not doing well, and then I had gotten pregnant again and then I had my third she was born two months early.

Speaker 2: 29:03

So I had a preemie, a two-year-old and a four-year-old and a failing business and I was stressed to the max so exhausted, had been through it was a traumatic birth experience, all that stuff. And after that I started having ovarian cysts. I had PCOS, never had issues before, never had any cysts before in my life until that point and I could not figure out why. And my only recommendations because the cyst would burst and I would have to go in to the. You know I'd get, like, brought in or I'd go in, make an appointment. You know, doing all the things, the only thing they would tell me is here's your birth control, here's your Vicodin. And I was like, okay, well, I can't be on Vicodin all the time. That's not a life choice that I can like. I've got, I've got three babies at home and I'm running a business. I cannot do this Right, I'm seeing patients myself. I cannot be doped up all day. No, thank you Like.

Speaker 2: 30:01

And then I they the birth control. I was like I get other side effects. Like, what other options are there for me? Like, why is? I just wanted to know why this was happening. And no one could give me a solid answer. No one could tell me like, oh well, let's look at other things in your life. Or what are your stress levels? How hard are you working out still all this stuff? And I was running myself into the ground and creating more health issues for myself, and it wasn't until I stopped. And so I'm a licensed in acupuncture and Chinese medicine and so a lot of the stuff that I talked about with eating for your hormones in your cycle comes from the Eastern medicine mindset of working with your body, working with your basal body temperature. All of that stuff and that's what I, but that's what I started diving into and researching more was the Eastern medicine side of stuff, because I wasn't getting any help or answers from Western medicine, which I know a lot of other people experience.

Speaker 1: 30:49

Yeah, so walk us, walk us through that. I would love to hear how that, how it works now and I'll set this up. So we talked a little bit about the idea of when people come to see you, what you're normally doing is you're looking at. If I'm hearing you correctly, you're looking at major symptoms, right, and you're basically saying, okay, now let's run functional lab tests. It's not that you're opposed to blood labs, but you run functional lab tests, like Dutch. You're looking at those things and you're trying to correlate that symptom stuff with the hormonal piece.

Speaker 1: 31:21

And just for you listeners to know what, one of the things that's really nice about Dutch for people like Dr Westy and me is that it looks at cortisol rhythms you can get a cortisol awakening response, which is a really nice way to see how people are responding to and recovering from stress and also looks at all the different hormones, sex steroids and their detoxification pathway. So it sounds like you're doing that and then you are putting in this which I find fascinating, this Eastern sort of approach, and I'm interested now in that right, because this is a very interesting way of doing this. My brother, by the way, is a master's in acupuncture and oriental medicine, so I have a little background, but not much. But I'm very curious now how you're merging this and what information it adds to. Okay, I've got the symptoms, okay, I've looked at your Dutch and your your functional hormone panel and now I'm doing this Eastern approach. What does that look like for women?

Speaker 2: 32:18

Yeah. So one of the things that I look at is um, so and just like splitting apart the cycle. You know people say, oh, you've got four different bodies throughout the month, all of that stuff. Really looking at those different bodies and how can we correlate your um, overall nutrient? And when we talk about basal body temperature, it's lower in the first two weeks, so days one through 14 of the cycle. We want to match that with your foods to keep your basal body temperature lower. We don't want it spiking, we don't want it elevated At that point, we want it nice and low and even and steady. So we talked about incorporating cooling foods. Cooling foods which sounds weird, but you can Google it and I have other lists and stuff online but cooling foods at that point it's chicken, turkey fish. This is the tone of the food that you're consuming More raw fruits and vegetables. Your body can. Actually your digestive system has different enzymes at that point that are more active, so you can break down the raw component of the fibers in those those things. For women, if you're like, oh yeah, I eat a salad for lunch and it digests just fine, and then a week later I eat a salad and, oh my gosh, I get bloated and I can't break it down as well. Yeah, your digestive system is different, you know, um, but so we're eating those cooling foods. There's different seasonings rosemary, thyme, mint, cilantro, dill. You know just some of those that I'm throwing out here. Those are cooling for the system, so we want to incorporate more of those at that time to work with that lower basal body temperature.

Speaker 2: 33:52

After ovulation, you know temperature spikes stays elevated we want to flip the switch and go to warming, warming foods, right, red meat is very warming. Beef, bacon, venison, bison, you know all that stuff. Cooking your fruits and veggies. More so, your digestive system can break down that fibrous component easier. Spice, spicy foods, hot sauce, put it on everything. Ginger, cinnamon, you know turmeric, nutmeg. You know just different seasonings that you can layer in your foods. Then to kind of work with that, that higher basal body temperature. And it's an easy thing to do using foods that you like. Right, it's not restrictive, it's not exclusive or anything, but it's an easy way just to start the process of leaning towards cooling, warming, working with that body temperature to help regulate the pattern and help support how your body is going to process nutrients and process everything else internally. It's a very I'll say gentle way of doing things, like just to get started, yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:09

Yeah, this is very interesting and I'm assuming, like most things, that are ancient wisdom, philosophies and medicine. You won't find a lot of research that I'm aware of on something like this, but you see this clinically being effective for women throughout the menstrual cycle. What is it that you mainly see this helps with? Is it helping with premenstrual stuff? Is it helping with mood? Is it helping with energy? What is going on with women when they adapt this sort of cooling in the first half of the menstrual cycle, warming in the second half of the menstrual cycle? Type of approach yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:51

So I started incorporating this because, um, so one of my like postgraduate um certifications that I got and this is again in eastern medicine and chinese medicine the my professor was one of the top fertility specialists in the US and he has since passed away, but this was part of some of the methods that he used, and so I was like this is great and if you do again clinical research, that's done. Now, right, they don't do research on this necessarily again in the Western world, but this is present all over Eastern medicine, ayurveda, all of that. This is a thing where a lot of women have been doing this for thousands of years, like seed cycling. They just don't do a lot of studies on it now. But to more specifically answer your question, like, what do I see with this? How does that help? I see the best results in incorporating this with the other recommendations like oh, from a Dutch test, you know, seeing some of that and then incorporating these things to help regulate your system, because you're changing what you're doing on a daily, weekly basis to help support your hormonal shift and change throughout the month.

Speaker 2: 40:04

I've had, I've gals that you know. I had a gal, she, she had twin boys. They were 18 months old and since she gave birth she was like my cycle is 1920 days long, I get my period every 19 or 20 days and I'm going bananas. I cannot handle this. And so we just started incorporating gently, because she's like I'm still nursing, I'm having all these other things I can't do x, y and z for supplementation. Totally fine, let's just start utilizing warming, cooling and try to lengthen or match a pattern to your hormones with that. And it was. You know doesn't happen right away, it takes a little time, but she was, you know, after the second month she was like I have had a a 28, 27, 28 day cycle like fairly regular, and she was not a complicated case overall, necessarily, but um, and this is just from changing up the warm and cooling foods, or is this the the whole approach?

Speaker 2: 40:57

this was. This was part of the whole approach, because some of her other recommendations, like you know um, you know, if someone's still nursing, you're limited on some of the recommendations that you can give them. So we were very few, you know, supplementation recommendations, but otherwise it was mainly like really hammering on the warming and cooling and helping support her system that way.

Speaker 1: 41:19

Interesting.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Yeah, and incorporating seed cycling and doing all of that stuff too.

Speaker 1: 41:24

Let's talk a little bit about seed cycling, because I'm not sure everyone knows exactly what that is.

Speaker 2: 41:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So seed cycling is just altering your seeds throughout the month, very, very similar to the warming and the cooling. So cooling days one through 14. And again, there's some different styles of this, but the most popular one I will say is the one I recommend, because that's where, clinically, I get the most results from it. Days one through 14, it's pumpkin and flax seed Just one tablespoon of each every day. Raw ground. I recommend grinding them Otherwise-.

Speaker 1: 41:57

Raw pumpkin and flax seed ground one tablespoon daily during the first two weeks of the menstrual cycle, Yep, and then Day one being bleeding. For those who yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:08

And then days 15 through 28,. You just switched the seeds. Same process one tablespoon raw ground, sesame and sunflower, and if you're allergic to sesame or something like that.

Speaker 2: 42:17

Just leave that one out, that's fine. But just one tablespoon of each ground and you can incorporate it into a smoothie, a shake, salad, whatever you know. I make protein balls with them that way Another great way to help with everything. And when you look at the micronutrients in those seeds, what's really cool is that pumpkin and flax they help with certain. You know pathways in phase one, phase two, estrogen detoxification, and then you get to the sesame sunflower and it helps with completely different things in that hormone processing. So throughout the month you're hitting all these pathways like a good scope of it, but it's just altering kind of what your focus is on at different times of the month.

Speaker 1: 43:02

Interesting. So pumpkin and flax first part of the menstrual cycle, sesame and sunflower in the second part, and that is interesting, right that you're applying some of these nutrients we talked about that are having an effect. What about exercise during these times? What kind of exercise do you recommend, and do you change up your exercise recommendations for women during the menstrual cycle?

Speaker 2: 43:27

Yeah, this was something that I'll just be honest, was really hard for me personally.

Speaker 1: 43:35

As the recovering athlete.

Speaker 2: 43:36

Yes, as the recovering, like if I'm not working out for two hours straight, if I'm not changing my shirt because it's so sweaty, it's not worth it. You know, yeah, ridiculous anyway, um, the you know after, uh, you know, days five ish or so, when estrogen starts to rise, estrogen helps, you know, build lean muscle faster and recovery and all that stuff. So, incorporating more strength training, incorporating more, you know, you can do higher intensity and have a faster recovery, right? So doing more of that overall. And then the second part, essentially and here's the thing where people will talk about do more endurance or do more yoga or do which for sure you can the hard thing for me again is that I'm like, oh, if I'm training for something, how am I going to do that? How am I going to change that up?

Speaker 2: 44:32

If I, or if for women who love to go to a class oh, I love to do a kickboxing class, oh, I go to orange theory, or I go to you know whatever bootcamp, great, you know then it's more altering, not necessarily what you're doing, but maybe you know you can push your weights more weeks one and two and you lighten up on the weights a little bit but work on a little bit more of the endurance piece of it but also give yourself a little bit more recovery time.

Speaker 2: 45:00

So, for example, for myself right now, I make sure that I do a creatine weeks three and four before I do any type of strength training workout and then I'm getting branched chain amino acids in to help support that recovery and I will give myself a little bit more of a break in between sets. You know, and it makes a difference in my performance. You know, and I will be honest, like, mentally, I struggle a little bit with the whole. Like you know, you've already taken a 30 second break. Get back on it. And I'm be honest, mentally I struggle a little bit with the whole. You've already taken a 30-second break. Get back on it, da-da-da-da-da, and I'm like nope, you can take a 45-second break.

Speaker 2: 45:36

Just give yourself a little beat and then get back into it and I can feel the difference in my muscle strength and how well I can finish out a workout in weeks three and four versus one or two. Yeah, um, to make it, I want to say I don't want to make it just as effective, but it feels like I I mean especially week two step into a workout. I feel like I can kick butt and it's easy to push through whatever. And then you step into week three and I'm like what happened?

Speaker 1: 46:11

I'm so out of shape, yeah, and the way and the way I look at this and you can, kind of you know, give any of your thoughts on this. The way I I've always looked at this is that, just so the lists you, those of you listening understand is the research on this is anything but clear and that and usually when you see that in the research, it's because women each woman is so different. But in general, what what Dr Westy is essentially saying is that you essentially have estrogen at its highest the week before and after ovulation and essentially estrogen is very much like male testosterone allows women to uh, recover faster, push harder, and allows women to recover faster, push harder, they're more motivated. It does a lot of different things helps you train harder and you can handle more stress. And so the way I look at that is that when we're looking at exercise, you can break it down into duration long workouts, very intense workouts or very frequent workouts. They do best when estrogen is around. You know, when estrogen is dominant because you can train harder and recover faster. And as soon as estrogen begins to fall away and progesterone is more dominant and or estrogen is low, which would be premenstrually and menstrually what happens is decrease the intensity, decrease the frequency, decrease the duration of your workouts, and if you're doing the same thing, that would just mean, rather than doing, you know, let's say, barry's bootcamp five days per week, you know you're doing it three days per week and you're doing a little bit more walking, or maybe you're adding in some yin yoga and stuff like that. That's kind of how I look at that, but of course, you know, I always get asked this question, beth, and I wonder how you do too, and women go. Do I have to do this? And the truth is no, I don't think that you have to. I'd be curious what you think. But I do think that many women um find this to be very powerful in just even with their mood. You know, premenstrually and menstrually can be a time where a lot of women do not want and feel like they can train as hard, and this can be a nice way to sort of balance things out, kind of living that more athletic female lifestyle, you know, in that high estrogen time, and living more of like the Parisian lifestyle eating less and just walking and not doing a lot of crazy intense stuff in the low estrogen times, and I think this is very beneficial. Which then brings us to.

Speaker 1: 51:18

The thing I want to cover with you before we break because I know you have a book on this too is what happens at menopause and how to manage that transition. Because perimenopause, from my perspective, looks a lot like a continuous premenstrual syndrome. You got progesterone falling and estrogen being pretty volatile and there's a lot of even PMS type symptoms during this time, right. And then, of course, menopause estrogen and progesterone both are low, and those two, those are two different hormonal states.

Speaker 1: 51:48

Now, just so people are clear on this, diagnostically speaking, menopause is a diagnosis which is, essentially, you haven't had menses for a year and you have an FSH to correspond with this, of 30 or greater typically. But when I'm talking about menopause, I'm not using it as a diagnostic term, I'm more using it as a hormonal state. So post-menopausal, you're going to have low estrogen, low progesterone. Perimenopausal, you're going to have low progesterone and at times high estrogen and at other times low estrogen. And this transition also, you know, lends itself well to doing things a bit differently. So I'm curious how you manage this transition and what you do differently with women.

Speaker 2: 52:31

Yeah. So I think the hardest thing for a lot of women when they enter that perimenopause space is that you know you just don't have that sufficient counterbalance. You know, throughout that short period of time of a month, you know estrogen and progesterone right, those counterbalance each other really beautifully. If you're processing them well, then you get into perimenopause and they don't counterbalance. So if you're not processing really really well when you enter that space, what I typically see is that it's a tough time, it is a rough ride through that until getting into full blown menopause. And and a lot of this again that I'm going to talk about is from an Eastern medicine perspective, that it is a natural phase for women to go in.

Speaker 2: 53:18

In my book, the Female Fat Solution, I have a whole section that talks about the different bodies that women go through in their life and I call it the seven bodies of Eve, just for you know, to represent, like, like you had said originally at the beginning, that men kind of have two bodies in their life Right, and for women, like we go through all these different bodies and menopause is one of them and how to really work with that shift and change and to understand first and foremost that your, your body's functioning differently, you're living in a different meat suit.

Speaker 2: 53:53

So all the things that you did before that worked and that were really great, they're not going to work now. Because your now, because you're living in a different body, and that if your body can function well and process internally really, really well, then you're going to have a better outcome or be able to take advantage of the different hormones that are dominant now, the different hormones that are, you know, dominant, dominant. You know now, and without that elevated estrogen and progesterone flux going on, you're really looking at androgens. You know it's very it's not as the same amount of androgen that men have, right, but it's something you want to have, something you don't want to be totally depleted and burnt out by the time you get to menopause that your body has a hard time creating enough cortisol and androgen to even get you through your day.

Speaker 1: 54:42

So you know I don't even know if I answered your question now originally- yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, I think the, I think the the take home here is that there are big changes that women need to be aware of and that this natural cycle that women will have in their younger days begins to change. I'll offer some of my feedback on this too. The way I look at it is, I tend to think of this as just to give a metaphor think of Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc has her suit of armor, which is more protective than the shield. I call that estrogen. Right. It's because estrogen is protective against cortisol and protective makes the body more insulin sensitive. Now the shield, progesterone, is also protective against stress, but not as much as estrogen would be. And of course, you have the sword, which represents testosterone.

Speaker 1: 55:32

So at perimenopause, women lose the shield, which means they are more now stress sensitive and stress reactive, which means, from my perspective, you begin to needing to ease up a little bit on this extreme dieting, like eating too much and not exercising becomes more of a stress, and exercising too much and not eating enough becomes more of a stress. But to me, this is a stress management time for women. Now, as soon as progesterone and estrogen fall away, now she loses her suit of armor too right. So she has no shield, she has no suit of armor, she's even more stress reactive and now she's more insulin resistant, which from my perspective means you better take as much care as you can, doing lots of the stress management type of stuff. And also, maybe, instead of just looking at calories, maybe you want to look at controlling carbohydrates as the means by which you're controlling your calorie intake.

Speaker 1: 56:28

And then, of course, this doesn't happen with all women, from my perspective, on my reading of things and my clinical experience, but for a sizable amount of women there does become and there's an argument to be made. This happens in all women. They become a little bit more testosterone dominant, even though testosterone falls as well. Now imagine Joan of Arc no suit of armor, no shield, still has the sword, but it's a quarter of the length, it's broken, but it's still there. So the testosterone androgen is a little bit more dominant in women and from that perspective to me at that point weight training can really benefit. So to me, with perimenopause it's stress management, at menopause it's stress management with carb reduction and at postmenopause it's adding in weight training, and that one, two, three seems to have done really well for me in my clinical experience, but I don't know if you would agree or disagree with that or have anything to add.

Speaker 2: 57:19

No, a hundred percent. Yes, a hundred percent. That's exactly what it is. And one of the things too, and I know um, I'm not sure if you're familiar with, uh, stacy Sims some of her work?

Speaker 2: 57:28

Yeah, cause she talks about the same thing as well. And again, that's the exact same thing I've seen clinically over and over again, especially entering menopause, with the just physical ability to process carbohydrates, the enzymes in your stomach change. It's not that, oh, I'm doing something wrong that I can't eat these carbs or shoot. What's wrong with me with all of this stuff? Well, if you're too stressed out and not taking care of your cortisol levels, you're going to crave those carbs and then you don't have the enzymes to break them down or process them very well and it's just adding gas to the fire from that point.

Speaker 1: 58:03

Yeah, and, by the way, for you listeners, what Dr Westy just said has actually been shown in research. It's actually been shown that even thin. So this is a really interesting study by Apple et al a couple of years back that basically looked at thin women with apple body shapes and the way to describe this is thinner women with waist to hip ratios that are higher than normal. So these are women who are thin in their extremities but heavy in the middle, and what they showed is that these women release more cortisol to stress challenges and that they tend to store more fat around the middle and they also tend to be overcompensators with food, and this may happen. This may be. We don't know exactly. You know how this is.

Speaker 1: 58:47

Of course, it's not the case for all women. It's never the case for everyone, but if you're someone who knows that stress causes you to overeat, right, you may be one of these stress reactive women, and as you get into perimenopause and menopause, this becomes more of the norm that women become more stress reactive, which is why you see this shift in belly fat. And I oftentimes get this question with hormone replacement therapy Does hormone replacement therapy reverse this? The research actually shows hormone replacement therapy does reverse, have some mitigating effect on fat storage around the middle, but it doesn't actually result in weight loss. In fact, it may actually promote a little bit of weight gain, but it does keep the hourglass shape. And the only reason I bring that up is that HRT, even bioidentical, seems to have this effect, and so there's no getting away from the lifestyle things you need to do, even if you're doing HRT, and I don't know how. What you would think about that, beth, if you agree or not.

Speaker 2: 59:44

I love how you said there's no getting away from it, right? Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, there is no getting away from it. I think a lot of times you know, just try, like, oh, I should take this and then it's going to solve all my problems. Um, just try like, oh, I should take this and then it's going to solve all my problems.

Speaker 2: 1:00:01

Xyz, oh man, you live in a different body when you're, when your hormones change and again, for the female body specifically, it is a very different journey throughout our lives.

Speaker 2: 1:00:07

You know, I mean like a like a 30 year span of time, 20 year span of time, you can live in so many different bodies, yeah Right, and it can go from working on your fertility to having a kid, to postpartum, to try and get your body back, and that, to that, to that. Then you enter perimenopause and menopause and for some women that they're having kids later in life, in their late 30s, early 40s, then they're just jumping right from postpartum into perimenopause. That is rough, and so I love how you've said this several times, and the last time you just said it, I just you said, like of course, this isn't for everybody, like this is not everybody's case. That's the other thing I feel like women get really derailed on is that you'll hear a story or you'll have a friend or your sister or somebody you know that has this hormonal story, and so you'll try to do the same things that they did and it won't work for you.

Speaker 1: 1:00:59

A hundred percent Right yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:01:00

And and you and you said this just so beautifully like it is different for everybody, like when we're talking about some of these cases, or what can happen, what can happen typically, or see this, or that you might be having something totally different. Go on, yeah, which is so frustrating.

Speaker 1: 1:01:19

Yeah, it really is, but I do think it goes back to what I say is the number one rule. In all of health and fitness, there's only one rule in my opinion, that is, do what works for you. Don't try to look at what other people are doing. Stop, you know, really learn to study yourself which is where it can be really useful to you. Know, talk to people like me, talk to people like you who have a vast amount of clinical experience with different women, and come at this from clinically different ways, because you know, the Jade Tito approach is going to work a little bit different for people and different people will vibe with it versus the Beth Westy approach, versus other approaches.

Speaker 1: 1:01:53

So I always like to tell people it's about being a metabolic detective, right, it's like you know. Absorb what is useful, discard what is not. You know, make sure you keep what is uniquely your own and really become a student of how your body is functioning. Now I know you have you to tell them. You know, because I find this whole idea of you know, these different foods, the Eastern approach that you take, I think, is very interesting. I can imagine that many, many people would benefit from this approach and it's probably not something that they have tried in their metabolic detective work yet, and you're giving you know, a free resources for them. So how how can they learn more about this and get into your, your world?

Speaker 2: 1:02:41

Yeah, so I have just on my website, which is drbreathwestedcom, a free recipes for your cycle cookbook and if you're like, oh what if I'm in perimenopause or menopause, like, it explains in there to how you can get started with some of that. But they're just like healthy, high protein, you know, simple recipes, things that you can make for your whole family too. Cause again, that's a question I get a lot of the time where, if I'm eating for my cycle, what about my husband, what about my kids or whatever?

Speaker 1: 1:03:10

Yeah, they'll do fine on that Right.

Speaker 2: 1:03:12

Yeah, yes, right, I like, I'm, I, I've got, I've got three kids. I have a boy and two girls, and so it's it's easy to incorporate these things for your whole family and again, some of it is just as simple as adding more spice to what you're eating specifically, or not putting spice on it. You know, I like, I use the example of tacos, right, because I've got, I've got kids and everybody wants to talk.

Speaker 2: 1:03:37

I didn't want the cheese on top, I wanted it on the bottom. This time you can build it yourself however you want, kiddo, okay. So it's an easy thing to do, like, in the cooling phase, chicken tacos and I'll use a lot more cilantro and add no spice, right? And then in the warming phase, we'll use venison. My husband hunts a lot, so he's, you know, have deer in the freezer, and so we'll use that and I'll add a ton of peppers spice to that to help bring that warming component into it. Again, an easy thing that you can do, just being aware of where your hormones are at.

Speaker 1: 1:04:20

Yeah, I love that. And also Dr Westy has two books for you all too, what the female fat solution and the menopause solution as well female menopause solution on her site and you can follow her at drbethwesty on Instagram, which I do, and we just kind of did a podcast flip. I've really enjoyed getting to know your you know sort of your approach and learning from you, and so I appreciate that. Is there anything else that you want to make sure any final words you have for anyone who's interested in this space?

Speaker 2: 1:04:52

Yeah, I just I want to say thank you to like. I really enjoyed having you on my podcast. It was fun, and the one thing I really love is that I feel like we have the same message. So the way you talk about it is a little bit different, or the acronyms that you have for what you're describing is different than, kind of, maybe, what I say, but I feel like it's the same message and I think it's so important that the more people can understand that message overall and connect with that and work with it, it becomes more of a mainstream versus an outlier of what people are doing. But I think that, yeah, it's a hundred percent.

Speaker 1: 1:05:29

And one of the things I'll say that is uh, I think most of my listeners know this, but from my perspective, it's weird, being a man who does you know in this space, and I'm so appreciative of you know, you allowing me to, you know, be in this discussion with you for sure, and I've really very happy that you and I have connected and just just want to say thank you so much for your work, and I do think of what's really cool about what you say, right Is that because everyone's different, they're all going to vibe in different ways and so, from my perspective, I really want to highlight different practitioners who are doing things in slightly different ways, because I know that my approach and just the fact that I'm a man and we all are just different, so some people want to hear that, some people don't, some people are more into the Eastern philosophy we all have our things and that's what's beautiful about this, and I would say for the listeners that you want to pay attention to that.

Speaker 1: 1:06:23

You know, pay attention to the people you vibe with and, you know, with your metabolic detective work. I just happen to think that Dr Westy is one of those people. You could benefit immensely from learning from her approach, and some of you are going to find tremendous results there, and so you know I really appreciate your work and thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 2: 1:06:44

Yeah, well, thank you for having me. This is great.

Speaker 1: 1:06:47

Yeah, it's been great. Just hang on the line real quick because I want to make sure this all uploads. But for all of you, thanks for hanging out and we will see you on the next show.