Sex Hormones: The Final Layer in the Order of Healing with Dr. Rodgers

In this episode, Juanique and Dr. Rodgers unpack Step 7 in the Order of Healing—sex hormones—and explain why they should never be the starting point in your healing journey. If you’ve been struggling with low libido, weight gain, poor sleep, mood swings, or brain fog, this conversation helps you understand why those symptoms are often rooted in deeper dysfunction.

They walk through how mindset, gut health, liver function, adrenals, thyroid, and mitochondrial energy all impact your hormone balance. Juanique also shares new insights about breast implant illness and its connection to thyroid dysfunction, and they both emphasize how dangerous it is to treat hormones in isolation.

Timestamps:
02:30 – Gutsy Health Academy update: last live cohort launching in August
07:00 – Why sex hormones are the last stop in the healing process
09:00 – The cortisol-steal and how chronic stress robs your sex hormones
10:30 – Sleep and hormone production: the toxic feedback loop
13:30 – SIRS and its impact on mitochondrial energy and hormone production
16:10 – Gut health, estrogen metabolism, and why dysbiosis messes with everything
20:00 – Why bioidentical hormone therapy works for some—and fails for others
24:30 – DIM, liver detox, and estrogen clearance explained
28:00 – Adrenals, thyroid, and sex hormones: the hormone trifecta
34:00 – Breast implant illness and a new theory about thyroid dysfunction
39:00 – Hormones and relationship health: it’s not just about libido
44:00 – Juanique’s personal story: supporting her dad’s recovery with testosterone
47:00 – Preview of next episode: hormone types, detox, lifestyle tips, and pellet therapy

What You’ll Learn:

• Why sex hormone issues usually start with deeper dysfunction upstream
• How stress and cortisol disrupt sex hormone production
• The role of the gut and liver in estrogen metabolism
• How mitochondrial energy impacts your ability to produce hormones
• Why hormone replacement often fails without whole-body support
• The possible connection between breast implant illness and thyroid dysfunction
• How to safely and effectively explore bioidentical hormone therapy
• The difference between symptom treatment and true hormonal balance

Quotes:

“Hormones are the sprinkles on top of life—but if the cake underneath is collapsing, the sprinkles won’t help.”
“If your hormones are out of balance, it’s not about throwing more in—it’s about asking why they’re out of balance in the first place.”
“Breast implants might be the toxin that’s pushing your thyroid over the edge.”

Resources & Mentions:

• Gutsy Health Academy Enrollment (opens August 1st)
• Call Provo Health to book with Dr. Rodgers: 801-691-1765
• Want a second opinion on your labs or hormones? Virtual consults available
• Book mentioned: DIM for Estrogen Balance 
• Previous episodes: Thyroid Part 1 & 2, Adrenals, Mitochondria, Gut Health (listen for full Order of Healing series)

Next Episode Tease:
Next week, Juanique and Dr. Rodgers go deep into Hormones 101: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, LH, FSH, and how to support them through bioidentical therapy, lifestyle changes, and targeted supplementation.

Transcript

Dr. Rodgers (00:00)
I did hormone replacement and balanced hormones for this couple. They were about to get divorced. They went to Vegas for the weekend and ended up staying a week or two because they were able to be with each other again. And it helps us with our relationships. It helps us want to be together. Not only do the things behind the bedroom door, but it helps our relationships. And that's the importance of the sex hormones. And as you're talking about it being the sprinkles on top of life, that's a pretty good sprinkle.

Juanique (00:31)
Welcome to the Gutsy Health Podcast where science meets soul and healing becomes reality. I'm Jeanique Grover, your guide on this transformative journey to reclaiming your health, vitality, and freedom. This season, we're diving deep into the order of healing, starting with mindset and working through the layers of what it truly means to heal. Each episode is designed to empower you with tools, knowledge, and hope so you can become the self-healing advocate you were meant to be.

For more resources, free classes, and downloadable quizzes and guides, visit mygutsyhealth.com Let's rewrite the future one step, one insight, and one courageous choice at a time. Now let's get gutsy.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Gutsy Health podcast. I have Dr. Rodgers with me here today and we are talking step seven in the order of healing. And this is kind of like your Dr. Rodgers, this is your bread and butter. Like you know, sirs well, you know, infections well, you know, hormones very, very well.

Dr. Rodgers (01:35)
Yes, I've been doing hormones for 25 years.

Juanique (01:39)
We were talking about this yesterday because we were preparing for this podcast. You kept blowing my mind with certain things that we're going to save for episode two on hormones, where we're talking about like creams and bio-denticles. But I was like, my gosh, stop talking because this is so juicy and I don't want to skip it for the podcast. I'm like, we can't keep talking hormones because we're keeping all the good stuff for this conversation.

So we have some really, really fun episodes on hormones that we're going to be doing. We're probably going to do like a three part series. We're not sure. Right now it's two, but I think we're going to extend it to three because we're considering doing like solely a menopause episode. So we'll see how things unfold. Things tend to change as we talk because... Exactly. Sometimes we're like, hey, this podcast is going to be about X, but then it ends up being about X and Y.

Dr. Rodgers (02:22)
life is.

Juanique (02:29)
We're going to try and do two, but it'll most likely be three episodes on sex hormones. But before we get started, I do want to announce that the Getze Academy enrollment opens August 1st. This is going to be the last time I take a cohort through for a few years. So Getze is going to be changing a little bit. Like if you've been thinking about the Getze Academy over the past few years, honestly, now's the time to jump in. You will not have more handholding and incredible

coaches and professionals help you along your way than this cohort. We are bringing on the world renowned Brit Lefkoe. I can't stop talking about her because what she does, it's so hard to explain, but we get her for three weeks in the first month of the Getzi Academy where she's doing mindset coaching for us. And on top of the mind body, soul course, on top of Gina doing her mindfulness work with you guys every month. And so

And then obviously you get me and you get Kelly, who is the cooking coach. You get the coursework and the most commonly asked question is how much time a week do I need to dedicate to the Get's Academy? And it can be as little as one hour and as much as two hours a week. It's really not that much time. If you don't have time to watch the classes before the Zoom calls, just join the Zoom calls because we kind of summarize the classes in those Zoom calls. Come and join the community. Come meet your cohort.

come and bring your problems to the table and let your guiding experts help you along the way, help you unpack that. It's kind of like meeting with me every week as I coach you along the way. We have something really exciting coming up in the future that's gonna involve Dr. Rodgers, but I'm not gonna talk about that. Well, I'll keep like dropping hints, but you guys, I promise you like, this is a cohort that you don't wanna miss. And if you are ready to become

the driver in your healing journey. If you're ready to become a self-healing expert, if you're ready to enter your doctor's offices with so much confidence that they can't not hear you, jump into the Getzi Academy because this is everything that I have learned and I've put on paper and I want to download into your brain, into your cerebellum. So you can have the skills that I have learned over these years, the skills that I use to create Provo Health.

I want to give them to you. I want to empower more leaders in this world, self-healing leaders. And you're a self-healing leader. You lead your own healing and you lead your family's healing and your friends healing. Like it doesn't have to be a doctor. A doctor is a co-creator. They do 10 % of the work, 90 % is yours. And how do you learn that 90 %? You learn it in the Getze Academy. I created the Getze Academy because it's what was missing from

Provo Health. started Provo Health first, if you guys didn't know that. Provo Health was my first baby and I was like, something's missing here. And I realized that it was the Getze Academy. And so I created the Getze Academy because it was a necessity. It wasn't a want, it was a need in people's healing journeys. And so you guys log on to mygetzehealth.com forward slash Getze Academy when August 1st hits. Every like five days, the price changes. So the earlier you sign on, the more money you save.

So make sure you are joining as soon as you can. We can't wait to have you in this cohort. It's going to be fan freaking-tastic, if I do say so myself. So we've got a really rad journey ahead and I can't wait to be a part of it with you guys. So without further ado, Dr. Rodgers, let's talk about sex hormones. Okay. Let's do it. First, we're going to talk about why sex hormones are step seven in our order of healing.

If you haven't been listening all year long, we've been talking about each step in the order of healing. And so we're going to talk about the reason why if you are dealing with sex hormone problems, because let's be honest, the majority of women do from weight gain to hair loss, to low libido, low energy, brain fog, body fatigue, all of these are symptoms of low sex hormones. But Dr. Rodgers,

In my order of healing, which is step one, which is mindset, there is a massive reason why you can't bypass mindset when it comes to sex hormones. Why is that?

Dr. Rodgers (07:00)
Mindset is the first thing you have to have the brain going. have to have the right mindset on all of this. Hormones are kind of the last thing you need to have balanced. And if your mindset's not balanced, your hormones aren't gonna be balanced. And your way you approach hormones, especially sex hormones, is not gonna be balanced. And you can have dysfunction in a lot of different ways. Mindset's essential.

Juanique (07:28)
Here's a great metaphor. If you're trying to fix sex hormones without addressing upstream dysfunction, it's like replacing a light bulb in a house that has no electricity. The sex hormones are the light bulb, but everything upstream is the electricity. Is the electricity, like do you have wiring? Are you paying for it? Is there actual power from the power plant? Like there's so much that has to happen before we have healthy sex hormone function. Chronic stress.

Dr. Rodgers (07:51)
Absolutely.

Juanique (07:56)
equals chronic cortisol, which equals progesterone steel. We spoke about this a little bit in prior adrenal episodes, so we're going to lightly jump on it. But Dr. Rodgers, can you explain to us what the progesterone steel is?

Dr. Rodgers (08:11)
First of all, in medicine, we typically talk about the testosterone steel, but it's the same philosophy, whether it's progesterone, which is further upstream from testosterone or testosterone, which is closely there. It all has to do with DHEA. DHEA can turn into testosterone. DHEA can turn into cortisol. And progesterone is further up the stream and it works the same way. But...

If the cortisol is taking all the DHEA and all the other building blocks to make testosterone, progesterone or other hormones, all the progesterone, the testosterone, everything, you don't have it. It's gone.

Juanique (08:55)
It's kind of like a teeter totter. If you have healthy high sex hormones, that actually means you have low cortisol. If you have high cortisol, you have low sex hormones. They just kind of swing back and forth like that, or they can.

Dr. Rodgers (09:07)
But in the name, the cortisol steel, most often it's cortisol that wins that fight.

Juanique (09:13)
Well, the body is always going to prioritize survival over procreation. And those are literally the two different gears. It's like, does your body feel safe? Great, let's make sex hormone. Let's feel sexy and alive and vivacious. Are we stressed? Okay, feeling sexy goes out the window because now all of that energy, all of the hormones are literally being funneled towards survival. You can't run from a bear and procreate at the same time. Like your body is...

Dr. Rodgers (09:18)
Absolutely.

Juanique (09:42)
Like the body just doesn't know, it can't do that. Here's a mind blowing fact. One bad night of sleep can lower testosterone by 10 to 15%. How many women and men are chronically bad sleepers? And then we wonder why our hormones are not doing well.

Dr. Rodgers (10:01)
There's a flip side of that too. And that is if your testosterone is low, you have a bad night of sleep. And so it feeds on each other.

Juanique (10:10)
It's like a positive feedback loop in the most negative way. So there's two minds to this, and we're going to talk about medications later. But there's a mind of like, hey, let's do a brain map. Let's rewire your brain for sleeping, because there's literally a neurofeedback program that retrains your brain to learn to sleep better. But then on the flip side, it's like, well, let's also give you some hormone to help your brain sleep better as well.

Dr. Rodgers (10:13)
Yes.

Juanique (10:38)
about 70 % of cases that come and do neurofeedback, they notice a big difference in their brain function. And then there's this 30 % where it's not budging. That 30%, they're great candidates for hormone replacement therapy, bioidentical, right? Because they're too low on hormones that can boost energy and mitochondrial function and brain function. That's why we love to take a holistic approach of ProvoHealth where it's like, we're going to push this button. Most of the time it works. If it doesn't,

then we have to like navigate somewhere else to mitochondrial function or sex hormone function to help your brain kind of reboot itself. So sleep, sex hormones, like so important. If you're not sleeping, you're not producing sex hormones. If you're not producing healthy sex hormones, you're not sleeping. So a lot of mindset work that needs to happen in order to have the brain signal properly to itself. Cortisol, also one thing about brain signaling, cortisol suppresses the HPA axis.

inhibiting sex hormone signaling. So if you're stressed, HPA axis gets suppressed because of that cortisol. And now your sex hormone signaling is actually not being signaled. It is being diminished. All right, let's go into step two. We're going to quickly go through these. Mitochondria. Mitochondria drives the energy it takes to make hormones. It actually takes a lot of energy to make hormones. It takes a lot of energy to heal and repair. It takes a lot of energy to keep cells functioning and brains functioning. But again,

Sex hormones, you can live without sex hormones, right, Dr. Rodgers? You're not comfortable, but you can live without them, correct?

Dr. Rodgers (12:12)
No, you see people past menopause who do this all the time. Yeah, they're living, but are they?

Juanique (12:20)
Right, right. They're surviving. They're alive and they're surviving and they don't feel good. And that's the beauty of the body. The body can go into these survival mechanisms where it's like, hey, we have diminished mitochondrial energy. So we're not going to waste it on the sex hormones whose primary job is procreation. We're going to divide what little energy we have left for brain function, heart function, lung function, liver function. I mean,

liver and brain, they are very, very big energy metabolizers. They take a lot of your energy. So when it comes to sex hormones, your mitochondria are like, no, we're going to sacrifice you guys, because you're actually not crucial for survival. Yeah, you're crucial for like libido and loving your spouse and your children and people around you, right? But that's not important for survival, right? That's important for thriving.

Dr. Rodgers (12:53)
Absolutely.

Juanique (13:16)
but not survival. let's, when your body's in a survival state, sex hormones are not a priority. Right. Here's a great fact about that. The first step in making all steroid hormones happens in the mitochondria. Did you know that? So Dr. Rodgers, what does that mean for people that have SIRS and sex hormones? Because mitochondria diminishes ATP production. When they have SIRS, does that change how they produce hormones as well?

Dr. Rodgers (13:21)
It's not gonna be there.

It changes it for so many reasons. It changes it like you're talking about with the mitochondria. There's just no energy to make those hormones. The other thing, SIRS messes with the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland and it diminishes the amount of sex hormones that are made. Also, in addition to that, the cortisol steel, a lot of SIRS patients have a lot of stress and so that cortisol goes up until the adrenal gland fails.

And then there's no cortisol being made. There's no sex hormones being made. yeah, SIRS affects this quite a bit.

Juanique (14:17)
One thing that you've mentioned in past episodes, I'm going to hijack this episode quickly for SIRS and mental health, because you mentioned stress, and stress, as we know, diminishes sex hormones. But there are people that suffer with severe anxiety. And you said like severe PTSD and anxiety can actually be a SIRS symptom. Can you explain that to us? Because if there's someone there that is dealing with severe anxiety and PTSD for no reason at all, how could this be a SIRS symptom?

Dr. Rodgers (14:46)
For several reasons. The biggest is, SIRS causes leaky brain. With leaky brain, you have all kinds of brain symptoms. Anxiety, depression, brain fog, and such. But the other thing with SIRS is it turns on the PTSD gene. You can see through testing, through a test called the Genie Test, whether or not that gene is activated, and SIRS activates that gene. And so, those are two mechanisms to have.

increased anxiety and PTSD.

Juanique (15:17)
And when you have that happening in your life, you know for sure that HPA access is being diminished, that signaling for sex hormone production goes down. Like, and now you have unhappy hormone health and harmony. So, thank you for explaining.

Dr. Rodgers (15:32)
Yeah,

in fact, in SIRS, we don't fix the hormones until we get to step five, because we've got to fix so much other stuff beforehand.

Juanique (15:40)
It's towards, well, you have like 12 steps, like hormones, they are never first because they're never a root cause. They're always a symptom. Most of the time. I shouldn't say never. should never use hyperbole words. ⁓ Exactly. Insert a Justin Bieber song here. So step three in the order of healing is gut health. And gut health is immensely important for hormone health because gut microbes help to metabolize estrogen.

Dr. Rodgers (15:54)
Never say never.

Juanique (16:10)
And dysbiosis leads to estrogen dominance or poor clearing of estrogen. And that can be bad for us because if we don't have proper estrogen clearing, then that means that we start building up bad estrogens, which can lead to certain things like cancers. It's incredibly important to make sure that you have a healthy microbiome. If you have leaky gut, which creates systemic inflammation, that actually disrupts your hormone receptors.

Dr. Rodgers (16:25)
Absolutely.

Juanique (16:38)
So now your hormones are not signaling properly. You have an inflamed state which causes your hormones to metabolize down the wrong pathways leading to inflammatory estrogens versus the anti-inflammatory estrogens. And here's another great fact about that. 95 % of the body serotonin is made in the gut which also affects mood, libido and hormone balance. So please make sure again, when it comes to hormones, we're not just, if you have hormone imbalance,

and you come to Dr. Rodgers and you do a hormone consult with him and he finds out that you have gut issues and you have stress issues and you have mitochondria issues and liver issues and adrenal issues, he's probably not going to like give you massive doses of hormone. He's probably going to want to fix everything upstream first so that when he puts the hormone in your body, your body's actually metabolizing it properly. Cause can you imagine putting hormone in your body when you have dysbiosis, Dr. Rodgers, like what happens?

to people that have inflammation in their body, they have leaky gut, dysbiosis, and then you put a bunch of hormone in them. What happens?

Dr. Rodgers (17:43)
as you described that person with dysbiosis, number one, they don't feel sexy. They are not in the mood to do anything and they don't want to be around other people. So just the basics of that. And then you add the inflammation on top of that, the improper metabolism of hormones, the improper energy because energy is used elsewhere to heal the gut and not to make hormones. There's so many factors.

that the dysbiosis can contribute to lack of hormones.

Juanique (18:17)
Is this the reason why we hear cases who are like, I did bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and I felt amazing. However, my friend Jane here did bioidentical hormone and they didn't feel good. And it wasn't because of the dosing, because maybe they got the dosing right. But is it because of all of these upstream factors? Because you can't just say, hey, you have low hormone, let's replace it with more hormone because there's all these other things that influence it. Is that why some people don't do well on hormone replacement therapy?

Dr. Rodgers (18:47)
Absolutely. have found, obviously I do SIRS and if I give hormones too early in a SIRS patient, they're wasting their money. It's just not worth the time because the hormones won't work. But if they don't have the proper mindset, the adrenals, the thyroid aren't working correctly, the gut, the liver, all these things, if they're not working properly, neither will the hormones. You've got to fix the other stuff first. Like you said, our bodies are made

To live first, procreate second. And you've got to fix all those things upstream or the hormones will not balance properly.

Juanique (19:25)
Do you have a way, let's say someone is listening to this podcast and they're like, I want Dr. Rodgers to be my hormone doctor. In your intake, do you go over all of these things to make sure that their guts are check, their thyroid's in check, their adrenals are in check? Because are there patients that you're like, hey, you're actually not ready for hormone yet. However, let's work on this other area together.

Dr. Rodgers (19:49)
Yes, that is part of the intake. Now, typically for hormone intake, instead of doing a full hour, since we're focused in on our hormones, I usually take a half hour. But it's so very important to fill out the medical history, the medical symptom questionnaire, because if those are off, that's where I'm going to see this problem. And that's where I'm going to make that suggestion and say, hey, hormones are great, but you're not ready because of these things in your medical history.

are these things on your medical symptom questionnaire. And if you downplay your symptoms, and I don't see what those are, you're not gonna get better.

Juanique (20:27)
You know, what's interesting is I've even seen in my consultations when I am reviewing people's blood work with them, I've seen at least two people, I'm actually not seeing people this summer, but before I took the summer off, there were like two people in a month who were doing testosterone. Men, their liver enzymes were elevated, their homocysteine was elevated. There was like so much inflammation, but their testosterone number had improved. And I'm like, well, that's great, but...

I'm seeing all of this other dysfunction downstream where your total testosterone is great, but it's extremely high. Like they're giving you a lot to make your testosterone work for you. I don't see a lot of practitioners looking upstream for functional hormone health. Am I seeing that correctly? Because I've been really, really disappointed in how people's hormones have been handled. When I see the doses that they on, when I see their other blood work, like almost all of my clients,

I've said, hey, did they ever talk to you about your liver enzymes? They're like, no, everything looked normal. I'm like, your liver enzymes are elevated, which means you're starting to have literal damage to your liver. And they said everything's normal. Like to me, that is a train wreck waiting to happen. That is a dumpster fire.

Dr. Rodgers (21:42)
Yeah, in my experience, those people who are being treated, a lot of people doing hormones don't look upstream. They don't even look to see if the liver enzymes are elevated. They look at their testosterone and that's the only number that they look at in men. They look at testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen in women and that's it. They don't look at other things. And so many bad things can happen. And those people are not trying to balance the hormones.

Juanique (21:53)
Right.

Dr. Rodgers (22:11)
They're just trying to give doses. They're looking at the one number or the three numbers, and they're trying to maximize those. And so they'll overdose those things while the rest of the body suffers.

Juanique (22:22)
It's like they're just looking at one piece of the puzzle versus all the pieces that talk to each other all the time.

Dr. Rodgers (22:25)
Absolutely.

And in my experience doing hormones for so long, I have learned that it's about balance and you have to look at all these pieces. If you're not looking at all the pieces, you cannot balance the hormones. For example, women have a symphony of hormones going on in their bodies and every woman has a different symphony being played. And so it's not easy to just, here's the exact amount for every woman, because every woman

needs a little bit something different. And so you have to look at all these precursors. And then as you give hormones, you have to see how everything reacts to each other and balances. And it's essential to do that with hormones. And I have seen so many places around in Utah that don't do that.

Juanique (23:16)
Let's go into ⁓ liver health and hormones. This is kind of a big deal. When it comes to hormone conversion and detoxification happens in the liver, especially estrogen clearance. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because we spoke about how the gut clears estrogen, the liver obviously clears estrogen. When we're talking about clearing estrogen, what exactly is that? Is that a metabolite? Explain to us these estrogens that need to be cleared by the liver.

Dr. Rodgers (23:46)
Saying estrogen needs to be cleared by the liver is a very surfacey way of saying things. What happens in the liver, because the liver detoxifies things, it metabolizes the estrogen into certain metabolite. And then eventually those metabolites get cleared through the urine, through the gut, elsewhere, but usually the urine and the gut. There are three pathways that estrogen can be metabolized by.

Two of these pathways can lead to breast cancer, one more than the other. One of these pathways does not lead to breast cancer. So you need the liver to be metabolizing this stuff quickly, and you need these metabolites to be cleared, but you also need the estrogen to be metabolized by the proper pathway. And there are some supplements that help to do that, to encourage the estrogen to be metabolized down a safe pathway. And that supplement is called

Di-M, di-nil-methane.

Juanique (24:46)
Is everyone a candidate for a DIM?

Dr. Rodgers (24:48)
everybody, men and women all have estrogen in their body. Everybody, men and women can get breast cancer. Men only get it five to 10%. Women get it all the rest. And so yes, everybody is a good candidate to take them.

Juanique (25:02)
I've just heard some controversial things online where it didn't quite make sense to me because I'm like, either you use the DIMM or you don't. But some people are like, don't use DIMM. And I'm like, why would we not want to use DIMM to help us detox estrogens? But the way that I see estrogen, it's kind of like, for lack of a better example, like let's say you buy a candy and you have the candy wrapper. The candy is the estrogen. And so when you are eating the candy, you have trash to throw away.

Like that's the estrogen metabolite. And so that trash has to go in a trash can and then dumped outside. But if you are not clearing all of your trash in your trash can, you're just leaving it all over the house, that leads to toxin buildup and can lead to cancer. Is that a good metaphor?

Dr. Rodgers (25:48)
Well, let me adjust it just a little bit. Let's say you have a regular trash can that goes out regularly, and then you have a recycle bin. The recycle bin is for certain types of trash, but not the estrogen metabolites. And if you throw those into that recycle bin, it's more likely to go towards cancer. And the bin helps the trash or the estrogen metabolites to go into the correct bin.

Juanique (26:13)
Oh, interesting. I love that analogy. That's a great analogy. So DIMM helps with that. And here's the conundrum. What if someone doesn't have the proper trash cans and sorting, but we're just throwing a bunch of hormone in there, right? They have a liberator can't dump. They have a gut microbiome that has dysbiosis. And now you're putting a bunch of estrogen in them.

Dr. Rodgers (26:37)
and then you're likely creating breast cancer.

Juanique (26:40)
And so I'm excited to talk more about bioidentical hormone next episode. We'll go more into that, but this is why looking upstream is so important. Absolutely. It's why treating the body as a whole and not just saying, your hormones are deficient, let's just replace it with more hormone. It's like, well, let's look at everything that speaks to healthy hormone health. We can't just talk to one aspect of healthy hormones. We have to talk to all the aspects of healthy hormones. All right. If the liver is overwhelmed with toxins, hormone recycling,

occurs. So basically, just reiterating, if your liver is not being supported, you will reabsorb your toxins, your hormone that you're trying to get rid of. The liver processes over 50 % of circulating estrogen daily. So you need to have a healthy liver to have healthy estrogen detoxification and biosynthesis. So please, please, please make sure your liver is healthy. Your liver uses as almost as much ATP

and mitochondrial energy and I'll put as all of the muscles in your body as well as your brain. So your muscles, your brain and your liver use almost the same amount of energy, which is an enormous amount of energy. Like think of all your muscles all over your body that are moving your meat around. That's an enormous amount of energy, right? Like it's crazy. And your liver does something akin to all of the muscles all over your body. We're not just talking about the bicep and the liver. We're talking your quads, your hamstrings.

Dr. Rodgers (27:57)
Absolute.

Juanique (28:08)
your abs, your lats, your triceps, like all of them, all of them together is the same energy output that your liver does. Right? So your liver is kind of a big deal.

Dr. Rodgers (28:18)
Correct. And one other thing with the metabolism of estrogen. Some women or men have the genetics to metabolize estrogen safely every single time. Other people don't have those genes. In fact, most of us don't have those genes and they metabolize differently. And that's where a Dutch test or a urine metabolite test for hormone metabolism works really well. So we know how to advise people better.

on what supplements to take.

Juanique (28:49)
I love that. I do really like Dutch tests because of that reason.

Dr. Rodgers (28:53)
That's

great for that. There's nothing better.

Juanique (28:55)
Exactly. So, ⁓ I had a great story about liver health and hormones. So someone in my gutsy coaching program right now, she's been doing bioidentical hormones and she's just like, her energy is just lacking, it's slow. Like, you know, she was going to do cell core. And I was like, you know what, like, your energy deficiency sounds like liver to me. I was like, why don't you just do the liver reset? Just try the liver reset. I know it's a little intense. It's like,

detox boot camp for three weeks. And it took her a while to say yes, but she eventually did the liver reset. within seven days, was like, Jeanique, my energy has improved almost 50%. She's like, I'm a different person. I never want to go back to the way I was eating and the breakfast I was having and the coffee. She's like, I don't need my coffee. She's like, I feel so good. She's like, I don't want to stop the liver reset program. You guys, just changing liver function, just detoxifying it, just doing like...

A quick and dirty program like the liver reset can change everything for you, can do what hormones probably couldn't because now it's optimizing on the hormones that you're taking or the hormones that your body's creating. So make sure you're working on your liver when it comes to hormones. Dr. Rodgers, tell me about adrenals. This is step five in our order of healing. Tell me about, we touched on this a little bit, but we're going back to chronic HPA axis activation that is stealing sex hormones like pregnant alone. Tell me a little bit.

I actually, we don't need to go into that because we spoke about that in the beginning. Let's brush over adrenals. We know that mindset and adrenals equal healthy sex hormones. But here's a fun fact. In postmenopausal women, up to 100 % of estrogens are produced via adrenal derived androgens. So adrenals are kind of important. Is there anything you want to add to that?

Dr. Rodgers (30:42)
Yeah. Well, adrenals, they help us to get up in the morning. And if they're not functioning, the bed monster is just grabbing us in the morning or we need to drink that six pack of monster, whatever. I don't think anybody's drinking a six pack. I hope not. But you need the adrenals to get you up and you need the lack of adrenals so you can go to sleep at night. adrenals, cortisol usually shoots up after that if we're in a stressful event.

a bear is chasing us, our work, our spouse, or whatever, financial issues, and that stress builds and builds and builds. And so it's important to balance our stress and our adrenals so the rest of our body can survive. Adrenals are there to help us survive that stressful event like a bear chasing us or something like that. That's what they're supposed to do.

Hormones are not for that situation. As you said, if a bear's chasing you, it's difficult to have sex. You just can't do that. Okay, now someone's gonna probably try but don't. adrenals have to be in place. That's life sustaining. That takes care of our stress and anxiety. If you don't have those in place, like you said, it'll steal the progesterone, it'll steal other hormones. Adrenals are the...

Juanique (31:48)
You

Dr. Rodgers (32:05)
foundation, they're the base of all this. If those aren't happy, the rest of the body ain't happy.

Juanique (32:10)
There you go. So you heard it straight from the horse's mouth. Adrenals are so important. Now we're talking about adrenals, thyroid and sex hormones. They're kind of like the trifecta. You have to like, we're talking now hormone engines. The first hormone engine adrenals affect the second hormone engine, which is thyroid, affects the third hormone engine, which is sex hormones. Let's go into thyroid. And if you haven't listened to the past two podcast episodes where we talk about thyroid, please go and listen to them. In fact,

Listen to all this year's podcast because we go exactly in the order of healing. That's a lot of work. I know. Actually, then don't do it. Just listen to this podcast. Listen to our review here if you don't have the time. You're right. That is a lot of work. I'm like, hey, just like listen to the Good Tale podcast morning, noon and night.

Dr. Rodgers (32:58)
Great podcast, absolutely. Well, answering your question about thyroid, thyroid is more about day-to-day living. It's not about the stress and making sure you stay alive. It's setting your metabolism, setting your energy, that day-to-day living that you need to manage through your life. And that has to be going before you can start really having the sex hormones going. If your thyroid is too low or it's not working properly, your sex hormones will not work properly.

Juanique (33:00)
I think so.

The thyroid basically tells the engine to go fast or slow every day. Low thyroid slows down ovarian function, sperm quality, and estrogen clearing. And think of that for a second. Like we're seeing a huge dip in sperm quality and sperm production. And we're also seeing an increase in thyroid dysfunction, like sperm count and sex hormones and whatnot. It's like, well, let's look at the thyroid. Let's look at why the thyroid is dysfunctional. Let's look at

how we can support the thyroid. Here is something really mind blowing and I'm gonna talk about this a little bit down the line in the podcast once we're done with the order of healing. But I have a theory, Dr. Rodgers, hear me out. I wanna see what you think of this theory. This is the first time he's hearing it guys. So let's see how this goes. I spoke with two friends yesterday who had breast implants taken out and both of them went off all of their thyroid medication in five days after their implants.

And so I have like this time around, you know, I got an ultrasound for my thyroid. My thyroid is just, it's just struggling. Like it feels good, but it's swollen. And I'm like, I need my breast implants out. And I wonder if there is a massive thyroid dysfunction wave happening and people are not tying it back to breast implant illness. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Rodgers (34:50)
I think that's a good theory. And the thing about it is if you remember things that increase reverse T3, such as stress, lack of nutrients, but also toxins, and that's where we're looking at the breast implants as a toxin, all those things increase reverse T3, which decrease the thyroid function that decrease the metabolism. Your theory is spot on with everything that's going here.

Juanique (35:20)
Both of these people are like, my gosh, I feel so much better. My energy is coming back slowly. My brain fog is going away. Like the one friend is lowering all of her sex. She was on thyroid hormones, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, all of it. She's saying she's like every week she's decreasing something.

Dr. Rodgers (35:39)
The reason for that is the toxins were increasing the need. And so when you have that many toxins, it's harder to balance everything. And they were throwing higher and higher levels of things to try and get them balanced. My guess is she didn't feel like her symphony was balanced. My guess is she felt like things were off.

Juanique (35:59)
Yeah, it's crazy too because talking to two people in the same day and both of them unprovoked were like, I'm off my thyroid medication. And like, and that was the first thing that happened. Like that's so exciting. Within five days of implants coming out, the body starts working again. Like, isn't that crazy? And here every, a lot of women are walking around with like thyroid dysfunction. And I kind of want to whisper and be like, could be your breast implants. You know what I mean? Now,

I know this isn't a breast implant illness podcast, I need to do that. But a lot of the times we hear these stories where women are like, I was a different person the day my breast implants came out. But then there's a few women who are like, hey, I didn't get better and it's been months. My theory, and I want to see what you think that, but they could have triggered SIRS. They could have triggered something that is a lot harder to switch off versus just an autoimmune dysfunction.

What are your thoughts on that? There isn't a lot of research around SIRS and breast implant illness, but it makes sense to me that it could potentially be triggered. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Rodgers (37:07)
My thoughts are this breast implants did not trigger the SERS. They're not known to do that. And yes, a study could be made, but my guess is 20 to 25 % of the people can get SERS and they probably just had SERS to begin with. And so when you remove the implants and the SERS is there for whatever the cause, they don't get better.

Juanique (37:31)
So do you think they would get better faster though with the implants out? If they have SIRS and they have implants and they take the implants out, will they be able to get better faster now? Because now they don't have something weighing down what little immune system they had left.

Dr. Rodgers (37:46)
Okay, the question is what do the breast implants cause? And the first obvious answer is causing the liver to clog up in dealing with toxins. And so if the liver is working better, of course they're gonna improve their SIRS quality.

Juanique (38:00)
Now

we're at sex hormones, which is step seven in our order of healing. Can you do for us a quick hormone 101 class? Tell us what is estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, pregnant alone, LH, FSH? Do want me to go through that list slower?

Dr. Rodgers (38:19)
Yes, but before we get into that list, let me just give an example of why sex hormones are so important. You know, there's the obvious, what happens behind the bedroom door. So we don't need to talk about that. We all know about that. But we've all seen older couples in their 80s or so where they're happy with each other, but they can both be sitting in the same room. One is reading a newspaper, maybe doing a crossword.

The others reading a book or doing some cross stitching or knitting or something, and they won't have any exchange with each other. They don't talk with each other very much. They are individuals instead of a couple. Those sex hormones help us to want to be together. I have a story where I did hormone replacement and balanced hormones for this couple. They were about to get divorced. They went to Vegas for the weekend and ended up staying a week or two because

they were able to be with each other again. And it helps us with our relationships. It helps us want to be together. Not only do the things behind the bedroom door, but it helps our relationships. And that's the importance of the sex hormones. And as you're talking about it being the sprinkles on top of life, that's a pretty good sprinkle.

Juanique (39:37)
What you're literally describing is that hormones are neuroprotective. They're literally promoting healthy brain function.

Dr. Rodgers (39:44)
They're promoting healthy brain function, but they're also promoting good, healthy relationships.

Juanique (39:50)
like that bonding, like, you know, quality of life. It's the icing and the sprinkles on the cake. It makes everything fluffier, prettier, tastier. It's neuroprotective. It protects your bones, your skin, your vision, your neurological system. Like they're all just very protective. It makes everything better.

Dr. Rodgers (39:55)
Absolutely.

And another thing it does, we look at the adrenals to preserve life in an anxiety issue. We look at the thyroid to do the normal steady things of life, get our tasks done. But if we're looking at quality of life, quite often, it's the sex hormones.

Juanique (40:29)
I love that. I love how you just described the trifecta of the sex hormone areas. And the thing that's a little insulting is when we hit a certain age, we just naturally start to decrease that hormone production, which is why bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is so important and so needed because, know, as Tasha always says, like suffering is optional. I spoke with someone last week. She's perimenopausal.

And I'm like, hey, why aren't you doing bioidentical? She's like, well, I just hear mixed reviews on it. And I'm like, I get that because one, people don't understand the order of healing, two, they're not being dosed properly. But I convinced her, I was like, you need to do bioidentical. If you want to stop gaining weight, if you want better energy, if you want to work out at the gym a little bit harder, if you want to feel better around your cycle, like...

let's start you on bioidentical. I have a great doctor. He will see you next week. This is a family member of mine where I was like, just come and get better. And what was also interesting to Dr. Rodgers when my dad broke his hip and you saw his x-ray and you were like, hey, when he's ready, he needs testosterone. Your dad's bones are way too frail. They're osteoporosis. And I was like, yeah, you're right. I'm going to come in and have him like, he's walking now. After 12 weeks, he's finally walking.

So I think we're ready when we have pallets up and running at the clinic, he'll be one of your first patients. Because you know, my dad, I want him to live another 10 years, maybe 20, actually 20. I want him to live another 20 years and I think he can help me.

Dr. Rodgers (41:57)
Great.

Well, let's go for 30 as long as it's quality years.

Juanique (42:08)
Exactly. And that's what we want. Like he was riding his bike until he had this fall where his hip literally shattered in like 11 different places. If you don't know this, I'm going to tell you guys now, when you're over 80, your chance of survival of a broken hip or a femur is 20%. And so my dad, he survived it. Like he was part of that 20%. I don't know how many 20 % he has in him left.

like surgery, the recovery, it was brutal on him. There were a few moments where we were like, I don't know if he's going to make it. He made it. Thank heavens to hyperbarics and therapies and everything that we did at the clinic. But I don't want him to shatter his hip again when he's riding his bike because he is going to get back on his bike. I think the earlier we prevent our hormones decreasing by doing replacement, one, we need less hormone in the beginning, which means it's easier to tweak along the way. But two, like it just sustains

It sustains everything. It's again, it's neuroprotective. It helps with your mood. It helps with bonding with the people around you and just being a nice person overall. And it has all of these other health benefits, right?

Dr. Rodgers (43:16)
That's correct. And I'm going to correct your statement about less hormone. That may be true in a lot of people, but it's the right amount of hormone. Hormone is all about balance. And quite often it is a lower dose. And quite often we see too high a doses out there, but some people need a little higher dose depending on how to balance it. Another thing you're talking about is there's so much bad information about hormones. All hormones cause cancer. Not true.

There's so much bad information as you were talking about such stuff before.

Juanique (43:49)
There really is. We'll talk about that in the next episode about the bad research that has come out on it. But I wanted to go back to one, the hormone, right? Like the right amount. What I like to call a sniff of hormones. Like, because when you're starting someone, let's say they have very low sex hormones and you want to course correct. And so they need higher doses of hormone. You're not going to give them a higher dose of hormone to balance their low hormone.

you're going to give them a sniff of hormone at a time to allow their body to adjust to it. Is that correct?

Dr. Rodgers (44:21)
That's correct in some people. It depends on the people. I've learned that hormones, especially in women, are very individualized. And so some people, yeah, a sniff of hormone is exactly right. And quite often that's the correct way to do it. But other people, you may give a little bit more than a sniff because if you give them a sniff at a time, it's gonna take them years to be balanced.

Juanique (44:48)
You know, Leanne Alcapi, she's my health coach over at Provo Health. She's one of our nutritionists. She actually used to work for you, Dr. Rodgers, a few years ago before she worked for us. I remember one of the first things she said to me. She was like, man, my doctor helped me with my hormones. I didn't even know what perimenopause was. She's like, I just breezed through it. You know, and then she went to a different provider who messed up her hormones. She went back to you.

And you were like, I'm so glad you're back here because I need to fix all of this. Like, I need to fix it. And you did, like that. Like, it was so easy for you to just, like, do work your magic. And she just feels amazing. She really did breeze through perimenopause and menopause like it was nothing. That's the magic of a good doctor, someone who knows how to dose properly. I wonder if we want to keep this segment.

Let's keep this for the next episode. I love that we reviewed sex hormones and like upstream because again, treating hormones, it's not an isolation treatment. It's looking at everything. It's looking at the big picture. Next episode, we're going to go into sex hormones 101. What are the sex hormones? What do they do? Where are they made? Conversion and detoxification, which cells and organs? And then we're going to go into bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. And we're going to go into

the different lifestyle things that we can do to support hormones, bioidentical hormone therapies and treatments. And then we'll see from there about episode three, where we want to go with episode three, probably perimenopause and menopause, you know, and maybe specifically talk about pellet therapy and the controversy around it. Because people are either mad lovers and converts of pellets or they hate them.

Right? And so I want to talk about that because every time I see something controversial, Dr. Rodgers, I bring it up to you. You know, I'm like, hey, what do you think of this? And then you just tell me what you think. I'm like, oh, that makes perfect sense. So I'm excited to pick your brain about that a little bit more in future episodes. You guys, hopefully this episode or the summary of sex hormones was really enlightening for you to see that hormones don't work in isolation. It's like a symphony. Hormones are the trombone, but you have to have a piano and you have to have the violinist and you have to have

like all the percussions and the drums and all of them, like they all come together to create the music of hormones. So it's never just one instrument, it's multiple instruments making the music, the music being the hormones in symphony. So Dr. Rodgers, is there anything that you want to say as we close up this episode?

Dr. Rodgers (47:24)
No, I think you summed that up correctly. For example, the testosterone can be the tuba, the estrogen can be the flute, and all these other things. The insulin can be the percussion. You have all these hormones in the body that all need to relate to each other. And the way you described it is exactly right.

Juanique (47:44)
Awesome. All right, you guys, hopefully you learned something new today. Find us on gutsy underscore mom or on Instagram or Provo Health or at Provo Health Clinic. If you want to schedule a hormone consult with Dr. Rodgers, call Provo Health at 801-69-11765. Even if you're out of state, like you can still do a consult, you can still review labs. He can't prescribe anything for you unless you fly in.

there's tons of people that get a second opinion from him. And so he's open to help you with your second opinions, to help you coordinate or advocate with your local doctor that you are with. can help you, he can help co-advocate for you as well. For people that are local, obviously come and see him because he's amazing. So Dr. Rodgers, thank you so much for your wisdom, your time, your knowledge. We have some fun things in the pipeline for everyone that are coming from you, which I can't wait to share in the future. But

For now, we'll just have to wait and hold on that announcement. So Dr. Rodgers, thank you for being here. And listeners, we'll catch you next week.

Dr. Rodgers (48:46)
Thanks for inviting me.