00:00:00 Leisha
Hey friend, welcome back to the podcast. Today we're doing a Q&A on some of the most common hormone questions that we both get in our practices. We're talking about estrogen dominance, estrogen detox, progesterone production, and what to eat for happy hormones. So I have Dr. Heather Rhodes here with me because we both love to get into the deep details of all things hormones and I'm excited to get started today.
00:00:29 Heather
Yay, I'm pumped to be here too, Leisha.
00:00:32 Leisha
I'm just gonna dive into the first question and I'll let you start this answer. Number one question that I get is some variation on, I have a really busy life, I don't have a lot of time.
00:00:43 Leisha
How do I have enough time to balance my hormones? And I think that this question, in my opinion, ranges from how do I actually have time to eat food, but also really more of the how do I have enough time to pinpoint what I actually need to do and then do it is the bigger question.
00:01:00 Heather
Yeah, and I think the part of what I even hear in that question, oh my gosh, there's so much that I'm back there. But a part of it is if you already have
00:01:09 Heather
the mindset of you don't have enough time, that is your focus, that's what your brain is offering to you, then number one, you're probably not gonna have enough time, right? You're gonna have that reality because that's what your brain is looking for evidence of. And also, it could be that's the reason your hormones are a little lacking. Because if you are so tightly scheduled or there's a lot of people that have a lot of access to you or a lot of demand on your time,
00:01:38 Heather
That's also part of an issue that can create hormone imbalances. But there's still that reality too of maybe it's not that you've cut out anything extra and you still just are taking care of a lot of people or you have a lot on your plate, you're in a really busy season. And I think during that time, it doesn't take any more of your actual time to support and balance your hormone.
00:02:03 Heather
Because the truth is, the way you and I coach people and the way our methods are structured to allow people to see results with our hormones is to actually take what they're already doing day in and day out and just make shifts to those things. So you're already eating. You're already making decisions about what to eat. You're already potentially moving your body, whether you're moving it in a productive way or not. That doesn't necessarily mean that you already have time for exercise. But I actually find that for a lot of my clients,
00:02:32 Heather
If they are in a season where they're that busy, they don't have time to work out, then I'm like, okay, don't work out. Don't add that to your plate right now. So sometimes that question of how do I have enough time, you actually don't need more time to balance your hormones. You probably just need more intentionality behind the things that you're already doing. And I find that when that's the case, you actually start finding way more time. It feels like you don't have enough time to, I don't know, decide what you're going to eat beforehand or prep your meals. But then it's like,
00:03:00 Heather
when you are making 15 million decisions all day and like every moment is a new decision because you didn't have time to rethink it, then you've actually wasted so much time because your brain is foggy and you're not sharp and you don't, like you're spending extra time three times a day to even make the decision about what to do next. So I find that for a lot of my clients, they don't need extra time and they end up finding extra time when they start making shifts to be more intentional. And I also think too that
00:03:29 Heather
For a lot of women, when they're feeling like I don't have enough time to balance my hormones, it's because they're reading a lot of information and they're getting a lot of noise coming in, telling them they need to do all of these things, they need to check all these boxes in order to balance their hormones. And my concern is how much time are you spending researching those things or scrolling to find those answers when they may or may not even be applicable to you?
00:03:56 Heather
And so then it's adding more pressure because you're like down these rabbit holes and then you feel all this pressure, you gotta do all these things. And all of those things might not even move the needle for you. But just getting more specific and intentional and clear about what you're already doing could move the needle for you 10 times faster.
00:04:10 Leisha
Absolutely agree. Because when we start to look into things with our clients, it is always those basics that I start with. Always, I think always is a word that I typically don't like to use, but I think it's true here. There's always room for improvement.
00:04:24 Leisha
in those really basic things that you're doing to nourish your body. And most of the time, that's where the needle moves the most. So it isn't getting fancier. It's actually scaling back a little bit and getting more simple and getting more focused. And a lot of times that does come with someone being able to look in from the outside and help you. But either way, it needs to be just being able to like pull back what you're doing. And then you do create more time where you're maybe not doing the things that are
00:04:51 Leisha
stressing you out more, like trying to find all the answers and you were able to focus on getting your blood sugar balanced, for example.
00:05:00 Heather
Yeah, I had a client who actually said she was seeing incredible results after just a couple weeks of working together. And she was like, I'm just so shocked at how much of this is the basics. And she's like, I just didn't realize that I just needed to go back and do the basics. And I talked to her and was like, it's not necessarily that you needed to go back and do the basics. You were already doing the basics. You just weren't really good at them.
00:05:21 Heather
Think about any sport. Anybody who excels in something is because they have a really strong foundation. And I think about even real estate nowadays, if you've looked or shop for a house lately, you've probably looked at a ton of homes that can be very flashy and very new. They're going up quick and they're in very crowded neighborhoods and you're watching these developers just push stuff out versus a house that might be more simple, but it's custom and it's got really great ingredients, really great structures and they use top quality.
00:05:51 Heather
of appliances or top quality floor plans or the builders like took their time and did it right. That house is probably going to last longer. Potentially it's going to serve your family a little bit better because it's customized. It's got your unique stamp on it. And I just think you're always going to win with going deeper and getting really good at the foundations before
00:06:13 Heather
trying to do what's really flashy. And that is really hard nowadays because I think especially the way the algorithm and like Instagram, Facebook kind of work, which is where a lot of people are getting their information nowadays. What is like flashy and I want to say cheat in a way, they're not like a lot of people aren't charging you cheap numbers, but it's almost this very flashy, very attracting algorithm loves it. And there's not a lot of substance once you get into it.
00:06:38 Leisha
Definitely. Next question.
00:06:40 Leisha
is what foods increase progesterone? This is a little bit of a trick question because this is a very like clickbait kind of thing. It's let's just do this cute little poster reel that's like these foods increase progesterone. But there is so much to the story when it comes to progesterone that it can't be that simple.
00:07:03 Heather
The answer is there's no foods that increase progesterone. And that's actually a really good
00:07:08 Heather
point to what I was just making about what the algorithm is potentially feeding you, because things like that get a lot of clicks because they feel very like, let me just grab that, walk by, get a little taste of this. And it kind of satisfies that dopamine hit you're actually looking for. But then as soon as you get that hit, it's gone right away. When I see posts like this, I get so frustrated. And I know I've probably put some out maybe at some point, but I really am like, no. Nowadays, and Instagram would love for me to, right,
00:07:36 Heather
shorter things or maybe make more bite-sized content. But I think what you actually deserve to know as a consumer, as a woman who truly is like, hey, I want these things fixed. I'm ready to do what it takes, is that there are no foods out there that you're just going to start eating that are going to boost your progesterone or change your estrogen or fix your stress hormones. You can have 3 buckets of ashwagandha A day. And if your stress isn't managed from your daily habits and your mindset and your routines, then let's not
00:08:06 Heather
going to get you where you need to be. And I say that because we might get a little, I don't know, pushback, because some people might be like, I started cycle thinking, I felt better, or I started taking ashwagandha and I felt better. And I think there is a reality to some things can support you, but are they supporting you just because you're having more of those foods? Or are they supporting you because maybe you started stabilizing your blood sugar when you also started cycle thinking? Or maybe your thoughts started to change when you started taking a pound of ashwagandha A day. That's important just to keep in mind, but
00:08:33 Heather
When it comes to increasing progesterone in general, the reason you can't start eating certain foods and your progesterone increase is because that disregards the process that your body uses to make more progesterone. And the reason your progesterone is low is always going to be the place to start when it comes to figuring out, well, how do I make more progesterone? And different people have different reasons that their progesterone is low. Some people's progesterone is low because their hormones are bottomed out completely.
00:09:03 Heather
And their hormones could be bottomed out completely for a couple of different reasons. It could be because if they're too stressed, it could be because their body doesn't feel safe, it could be because they're undereating and over exercising or they're not nourished at all. They could be eating plenty of calories, but not enough of the nutrients. And then some people aren't making enough progesterone because they're potentially marital deficient or they're just pounding protein and not keeping their blood sugar unstable. So it really
00:09:29 Heather
in my opinion, is so tricky because can nutrition support progesterone? Yes, absolutely. But it is not going to be because you started eating sweet potatoes.
00:09:39 Leisha
Again, it's just that kind of like missing the forest for the trees. Could you potentially eat more sweet potatoes and have better progesterone levels? Yes, if you're the exact person who is actually just eating too much protein and not enough
00:09:53 Leisha
good quality carbs along with it and you weren't getting enough nutrients and you really were consistent with those sweet potatoes and that's what you needed, potentially it could help. But I don't know the actual percent. But you started talking and I was about to be like, no.
00:10:06 Heather
But I see what you're saying. You're right. Such a low percent.
00:10:08 Leisha
It's going to be 1 little tiny population over here. And just because someone saw that work for themselves, that doesn't mean the sweet potatoes are the answer. Understanding your body
00:10:18 Leisha
is going to make a huge difference. And even just knowing how to track your cycle and understanding your cycle and knowing if you actually have low progesterone or if you just think you had low progesterone and it's something else is going on. And do you have low progesterone and low estrogen or do you have low progesterone and high estrogen? Those are two completely different stories. Are you ovulating early? Are you ovulating late? Those are all different stories. There has to be more information. And I think that's really our point with this question. And I would say
00:10:44 Leisha
Nutrition is going to be a huge piece of it and creating that safety in your body so that your brain can say it's okay to make enough progesterone. I think that's huge, but it's not going to be like these three foods are going to fix it for everyone. There's just no real life to that.
00:11:00 Heather
And that fits into a lot of that mindset with the question above too. If you feel like the only way to get your hormones right and make more progesterone is to go start eating a bunch of foods you don't eat and follow a specific meal plan and
00:11:11 Heather
overhaul everything in your pantry, then yeah, it's not gonna feel like you have enough time. It's not even sustainable. It's probably not gonna work. That's where that, again, custom strategy. Why is your progesterone low? What are you already doing and how can you take what you're doing and just make some tweaks to it so that you're actually making more progesterone? And then understand not what foods to be eating, but how do you take the foods you already like any and just use that as your baseline, as your framework.
00:11:35 Heather
to start adding things or moving your timing around or increasing quantity of certain pieces or swapping one ingredient to then see progesterone change.
00:11:44 Leisha
I agree. Next question is similar and that is estrogen dominance. This is the other one that a lot of us think we have or do have. And essentially, what do we do about estrogen dominance?
00:11:56 Leisha
This is going to be similar in that we have to have a little more of the whole picture. I can't just answer that question straight off the street because it's okay, but what are your factors that would be causing you to have estrogen dominance? My perspective is that you need two things to have balanced hormones and one of those is you have to make the hormones well and the other is that you have to detox the hormones well. With estrogen dominance, if you're making, you might be making the right amount of estrogen and then your detox pathways are compromised, you're not getting it out of the body.
00:12:23 Leisha
You could be making too much and not detoxing it. You could be making too much and your detox pathways are fine, but you're just making too much. So there's three different ways that you can even have estrogen dominance in just that specific way, but then it also has to do with your progesterone. So it's not just going to be, do you have X number of estrogen that's too high? It's like, how is your estrogen in relation to your progesterone? There's so many nuances just in even the diagnosis or term of estrogen dominance.
00:12:52 Leisha
It's really common to have symptoms that could line up with that, but we are going to be looking at different things based on what your estrogen layers are involved in your estrogen dominance, even beyond which one of those cases applies to you, then we're going to look at the layers.
00:13:09 Heather
And one thing I see with estrogen dominance a lot is a lot of times it's self-diagnosed. So you look at the symptoms and you're like, oh my gosh, I definitely have estrogen dominance. I'm always somebody who's struggled with weight or struggled with blood sugar. I have PCOS.
00:13:22 Heather
And that's actually a narrative that's also even bought into by providers. I had a client this morning who was on a estrogen blocker. And I was like, why are you on this? And she was like, well, my doctor said I have PCOS, so I need to be on it. I was like, whoa, you don't just start taking those without knowing what's actually going on. Because same thing, you can have estrogen dominant symptoms where it seems like, oh, my estrogen is really high in its activity. I'm having a lot of symptoms of estrogen activity.
00:13:51 Heather
And that could be because you're not ovulating at all. So yes, the only hormone that's there is estrogen, but that could be happening in the presence of actually really low estrogen levels. It could be that your estrogen levels are very low, but it's the only hormone that's there. I also see people who struggle with symptoms of estrogen dominance. I see this most often in women that actually have truly low levels of estrogen, but when their estrogen peaks,
00:14:19 Heather
and then falls, it is not being broken down correctly. So they have these really big fluctuations. It's a lot of what Alicia was saying with the makeup and the breakdown. And then one thing that wasn't mentioned there is sometimes you can have symptoms of high estrogen activity because you have estrogen mimickers that are coming in from the outside. So you could be making a good amount.
00:14:41 Heather
and your body's having a hard time breaking it down because it's too busy breaking down or detoxing from other things that look like estrogen in the body that's coming into your body through exposures or a lot of times we see this in personal care products and sometimes the different types of food containers you're using, plastics, just exposures to different things in general. A lot of women work in hair salons, I see this a lot. And so just again, understanding where my estrogen levels at because there's going to be a different picture
00:15:11 Heather
for you if you're having these symptoms because you have no estrogen, because you have low estrogen, because you have high estrogen, or because you have high outside estrogen. Those are four places, probably 5, because it could also happen if you're not ovulating. And then that's why you can't just go take an estrogen blocker. And that's why if you just decide I'm estrogen dominant and you start following all the tips for that, you could actually do worse than your root cause because now you're blocking something that you're potentially already low in. And what you need to do instead is help your body break it down.
00:15:38 Heather
or help your body support it or remove an outside source or start ovulating. Ovulate, that is going to fix it. So very similar, but I think that's really important because Googling estrogen dominance can be so confusing. And I see a lot of people that are like, I have all the symptoms for high estrogen, but then I also have all the symptoms for low. What's happening here? And again, it's because they don't really know the root. So they're just figuring out where they're identifying.
00:16:02 Leisha
That's where, again, like the kind of straight across the board advice.
00:16:06 Leisha
sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. And you could be that small percent that it's okay, all the things lined up perfectly for me, that what I learned on Instagram is going to work and you have results and you feel better. And if that's you, perfect, that's great. And if it's not you, that doesn't mean something's wrong with you. It just means you're not getting the whole picture and you have estrogen dominance. So step one, two, three, we'll fix estrogen dominance. There's more to the story.
00:16:34 Leisha
in most cases.
00:16:37 Heather
And once the route, then you can have step one, two, three, fix it.
00:16:42 Leisha
But you got to know where you're starting out. That wraps everything up really well. When you are able to take the time that it takes to assess what's going on in your life, look at the bigger picture, whether that's with help or without help, and then start to really understand how your body is working and what it's telling you, I think a huge mindset shift is
00:17:03 Leisha
seeing symptoms that you're having as your body talking to you and signaling you in a non-negative way. And then just saying, okay, what does this mean? What am I noticing throughout this phase of my cycle? And what does that actually mean for my body? What needs to change? That perspective shift of my body is working with me and it's trying to tell me something versus my body hates me is
00:17:27 Leisha
incredibly big in being able to start seeing results. And when you're able to ask those questions and just be like, okay, I think really this is one step that I can take forward, then you take that step and you work on that for a while and then you move on to the next thing.
00:17:40 Heather
And with the right practitioner, that is not gonna be a lot of time. It's not gonna be a lot of stress. It's not gonna be you diving into this system and this system. The right practitioner can look and be like, I want you to make these four changes and let's see where you're at in a month. And literally 8 weeks later, you could be completely different.
00:17:56 Heather
That's encouraging too. It can feel so overwhelming and your brain is probably offering to you that it's going to be a lot more time and a lot more energy and a lot more effort than it might actually be. I know that's a piece of feedback I get consistently. I did not realize it could be this easy.
00:18:10 Leisha
There's these small changes you can make that actually are life changing and they feel like they're too easy to make a difference. That can be our takeaway for today. If you're making it, if it feels really hard, then
00:18:22 Leisha
Being able to peel back some of the layers is gonna be important to be able to go back to the things that are actually going to make the change. If you are listening to this and you're like, I want my question answered, you can always text us at the show and send your questions. And if you want my eyes on your hormones and want to know exactly what you need to do next to move the needle for less PMS and better periods,
00:18:45 Leisha
email me hello at leishadrews.com with the word audit and I will do a free mini audit for you to tell you what your next steps are.
