156: Hormones, Rage & Brain Fog: The Truth About Perimenopause with Dr. Carrie Jones

So one day she loves you and the next day she's going to stick the fork in your eye because it's a roller coaster she can't control. It's a very common universal, I mean, I've probably read tens of thousands of comments at this point of women who can completely can identify with this. And then what happens is they blame themselves. They're like, well, I must be wrong. There's something wrong with me. Historia, hysterical. What are these things came from? It's a women were put in insane in silence. When honestly what they probably needed was some love, some patience, some grace and some hormones and better men and well, and in some cases. By listening to the coherence code podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition, either in yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to the coherence code podcast. Where we explore how the mind and body work together. So you can move from stress and intercom conflict to clarity, calm and alignment. My name is Lauren Brown. I'm a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical therapist. And through my work, I've seen that healing happens when we remove what gets in the way and allow the body and the nervous system to do what they're designed to do to heal. So most women don't come in saying, hey, I think I'm in Pyramenapause. They come in saying, you know what? I don't feel like myself. And today we're going to be talking about what's really going on in that phase and why it often gets missed. To help us unpack it, I'm joined today by Dr. Carrie Jones. Dr. Jones is a naturopathic physician who specializes in women's hormones and Pyramenapause. She's widely known for her expertise in hormone testing. Having served as a medical director of precision analytical, that's the lab behind the Dutch test. She's also completed advanced training and residency focused on women's health and endocrinology, holds a master public health and has taught and lectured internationally, including at the conference, the Intermediate Fertility Symposium that I get to host. What I really appreciate about Carrie is how she actually takes what can feel like a black box, such as hormones or Pyramenapause and make it actually understandable and actual. Carrie, welcome to the coherence code podcast. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to see you and of course thrilled to be here. It's good to have you back. For our listeners, Carrie has spoken at the Intermediate Fertility Symposium on healthy seminars. She did a few things. So I know what a wealth of information she is and she's a woman who I think is probably Pyramenapause. She's not only clinically trained as knowledge, but she's going to talk from experience. I'm guessing. Yes, most definitely. So let's have a fight here. To start off, what is happening in the Pyramenapause? People think we have to differentiate Menopause versus Pyramenapause. And then most people think, Oh, I'm having like, I don't feel like myself, but I can't, it can't be related to Menopause because I'm not having hot flashes and nights wet. So can you just introduce Pyramenapause? Because that's where I see the majority of my patients actually. It's funny that you said that a lot of women don't come in and go, I think I'm Pyramenapause. I was making the joke the other day of women will hear Midlife like, oh, you're in the Midlife. And I was like, no, that's my mom. My mom is Midlife. Oh wait, wait, no, I am Midlife dang it. That is so Pyramenapause is the transitional period. It's about a six to 10 year transitional period that can hit late 30s, depending on the woman into the 40s and early 50s. And when I say transitional, I mean, it's like a reverse puberty. So we all remember puberty. We'd go through all these changes for years until, you know, for women, they get their period, then eventually, hopefully, it'll get regular and that's like when all the reproductive stuff and the growth stuff and the development stuff turns on. And Pyramenapause, we're backing out of that. So it's not an overnight sensation. It is truly a year's process where the brain unwinds the fertility aspect. Our hormones start to shift, our ovaries, and a sense start to close down. And because of that, we get a lot of symptoms, just like we had a, we can have a lot of symptoms through puberty. Now up into the point, a woman has her last period for the last time. Once she has gone 12 consecutive months with no period, that's the doorway of menopause. So it's definitely a different definition. Pary menopause is the transition leading up. She absolutely usually still has her period regular for a while. Then it gets your regular. Then she starts skipping long periods of time. Eventually that 12 months hits. And then she's like, congratulations, you get a crown, a certificate, the next phase. You are considered menopausal. And in a lot of cases, we call them post-menopausal. No longer reproductive, no longer having periods. Overeas aren't doing what they used to do. Thanks for that definition. And you know, remind me of this, like, it's not a medical condition. It is a natural physician phase. Chinese medicine says it perfectly. In the way you talked about a reverse puberty, I think it's how you use it. Yeah, yeah. They say that puberty is the first spring. And menopause is the second spring in women, right? And so the energy, a resource that went to just date to reproduce is now redirected to the heart center. So you can be the matriarch for your community. And also it's a survival mechanism in the body. As we age, we need our resources to help us stay healthy in an old age. So we don't want to use resources for reproducing. So it's also just wisdom in the body. It's kind of cruel, though nature, right? Because I was just thinking, as you said, the reverse puberty, often in that family, when the, if they have a daughter, often they are in that stage of going through their puberty, their teenagers, when the mother is going through pyramid, so in a heterosexual couple or any couple, that must be a crazy household sometimes. And I hear it all the time. I have a lot of women that I consult with or in apprenticeships or, you know, former patients who were like, oh my gosh, my daughter's 13 or oh my gosh, my daughter is 15 and like she's, she's definitely going through it. And as pharaoh mones do, I have had paramedic pausal women say, yeah, was skipping my period for a while. But then my 13 year old got her period and now my periods came back. And I'm like, yeah, that can, that can happen. It's not going to be forever, but you are going through your own springs for sure. Well, I want to talk about kind of the symptoms that can show up because, you know, we often see women coming to our practice where they're on, they'll be put on antidepressants, maybe in the birth control pill, they'll be put on NSAIDs, anti-inflammatories, allergy medications. There's lots of things going on. And when we say with them, we realize, oh, this is part of the pyramid of pausal phase and we don't need to treat it necessarily that way. Can you share kind of the most common, most popular signs and symptoms that, so people, so the women can start thinking, oh, this is what's going on. And I would love for you to tie in the biology, like what's happening in the hormones behind these signs and symptoms that you're seeing and noticing in research, we divide it into the stages of parimenopause. So we have early stage and late stage early stages when cycles may change by they call it, say, say seven days, I would argue most women notice their cycles change by three or four days to start. So they might have been a 28 year old, another 25 day girl. And eventually they may get to a 21 day girl or, you know, 35 day girl, but that's how they define early in early the hormone that changes first is progesterone. And progesterone is calming and she's soothing, she's relaxing, she makes really easy periods. But if it starts to decline, then women start to say like, I don't sleep anymore. Like all of a sudden they wake up at 3 a.m. or, geez, I thought I had my anxiety under control, but I'm feeling really quite anxious or they'll go more extreme. They'll go the rage. The rage is getting me if that, you know, if my partner clanks his spoon one more time, I'm going to just punch him in the face and fly off the handle with the opposite. They'll get depressed. So they're like, I don't know what's wrong with me. I have a great life. I have a great job. I have great kids, you know, everything's great. The world may not be great, but like everything in their immediate is doing pretty well. And they're like, I'm just so sad. I'm so depressed. There's a lot of fatigue that can happen that the hormone changes can really affect menstrual cycles. So some women will say it's really heavy. I'm in a lot of clots out of nowhere like all of a sudden I have cramps. I'll get women that say true puberty. They're like, I'm getting acne. Like, what is this? Why am I getting acne? So progesterone changes first. Then estrogen starts to change and it will swing up and will swing down because it's a little bit chaotic for a while and eventually everything drops low. And when that estrogen starts swinging, this is when women start to say, um, now not only am I not sleeping, but I'm also getting hot flashes at night or I'm waking up hot or I'm having full-blown night sweats or I'm having them in the day or my joint pain is getting bad. I have this right hip pain that I just can't get comfortable. I stretch. I foam roll. I don't understand. Or they're like shoulder pain, frozen shoulder, big toe pain. Like, he's random pains that they're thinking, what did I do? I must have injured myself. I must have done it while running. Must be age and it turns out hormones are very involved. Dryness, a lot of women notice dry ears. So they'll get itchy, scratchy ears. They'll get dry eyes. Dry skin, dry hair, dry vaginal symptoms. So painful. We call it genital urinary syndrome of menopause. So pain with sex, pain in general, changes in the skin, the atrophy or thinning of the skin, urinary tract infections. And there's over a hundred documented signs and symptoms. So I could definitely go on. You know, there's some weird ones like the like phantom smells that can happen and worsening tinnitus or ringing in the ears. I'll hear like, you know, nervous system changes. so like zapping, like they'll have all of a sudden, though, I get these weird zaps, sensations on my legs or in my arms out of nowhere. But it's a progression. So what I hear is that women will start out with a set of symptoms, maybe in their early 40s. And by mid or late 40s, if they're still sort of trying to cycle, they're like, oh, yes, I've progressed. I've graduated into these new symptoms. Or somebody may listen and go, I don't have any joint pain. Whereas somebody else will be like, I have a ton of joint pain. These changes in estrogen and progesterone impact all 12 systems of the body. So one of the big keynotes I like to hit home is that your experience may not be the experience of your best friend or your sister or your neighbor. They may have a bunch of cardiovascular symptoms, like heart palpitations, heart irregularity. Their blood pressure might go up. And you don't have any of that. But you have all the gastroenterologists, the gastro symptoms, like all of a sudden, you're bloated all the time. And all of a sudden, now you've heartburned out of nowhere in constipation and some hot flashes. And the answer is we want to make sure it's nothing else. But as I said, it impacts all 12 systems of the body. - Joy, oh, Joy. - Yeah. - The people go, is there any upside? I'm like, yes, there's a ton of upside. - That's what. - But I want to kind of repeat some of these. 'Cause, you know, like the increase in histamine, like the itchy ears and the runny nose is a common thing. And often they'll start to treat symptoms. Like so they got an antidepressant because you said they're waking up at 3 a.m. So they're feeling anxious or you're pressed. So they go on an antidepressant. They go on a sleep aid because they're waking up at 3 a.m. They're on some anti-inflammatories because they're having joint pain and achiness. And then the day we're chasing symptoms, but we're not going after the underlying cause. - Right, right. - And so we're gonna get into the testing and then the underlying cause, which is related to the hormones. But, you know, I think of my wife, and I can talk about my wife on my podcast 'cause she doesn't listen to it. (laughing) - That's awesome. - But yeah, she was like for the ages, like we need a new mattress, flip the mattress 'cause of that hip, right? - Yes. - Okay, get the hip comfortable, right? Women come in just the descriptions. And I saw that the documentary, M-Factor 2, you know, before the pause. And one of the doctors used the turn of the acronym, NFLMS, not feeling like myself. Yeah. - Yeah. - That is most common. I got to share a story with you. I was out for a dinner with the boys. We do this once a month. And this one was about 10 of us. And we're eating, having a good time. Actually, interesting stat, all 10 of us are have been in with our partners for at least over two decades. Like, we got a verse of divorce. That's a cool stat, eight, nine, two, four. - That's a very cool stat, yeah. - So one of the guys said, "I'm having trouble in my relationship. I can't do anything right." Like, she constantly mad at me when I chew. Whenever I do, I can't even, the kids are like late teenagers, right? So I'm when they're in their 20s. Even them are scared to be in a house with her. Like, I think I get to get out of this relationship. She's not the person I married. - Yeah. - And I didn't say anything yet, but I was like, right away, I was like, you know, this is what I see in my practice. But another guy goes with his mouth full chewing. And you understand, the group is scientists, entrepreneurs, doctors, right? So doctors. None of them knew except for the one guy who is a dentist, but it was because his wife had already gone through pairing menopause and was already two years or three years into menopause. With his mouth chewing, he goes, it's menopause. Anybody's wanting those? Yeah, I thought I had to leave my relationship too. I had three and a half bad years. Like, it was bad. And now that she's in menopause, all those hormones have calmed down and our relationship is perfect. Because don't divorce her, you just gotta wait it out. Tickle. (laughing) So, and then I tuned in a bit about, there's actually things that she can do right now. So she doesn't have to experience all these science and symptoms and rage. So anyways, I thought. Yes. And I'm laughing as a woman. I'm almost 50 and still pairing menopausal. And I have to explain these things to my husband all the time. And not only explaining him, but like, re-remind myself, you know, like, okay, his chewing is not that bad. You know, like he's not that annoying. I don't need to rage against the machine for whatever he's doing. But I hear this all the time. There's a hilarious social media. He's like a comedian on social media. And he was explaining how when women go through menopause, it's not the words out of your mouth. It's the tone. And breathing and chewing and using your spoon and fork are considered tone. So if you're breathing too loud or chewing too loud or you're clanking your spoon, like you, you've hit the tune, the tone wrong. And she's gonna fly off the handle and correct you. And I was just hysterical because there were thousands of comments of women who were like, I come completely relate. I'm sending this to my partner, like, absolutely. I do find in this time, you know, women, women have been caretakers historically, right? They're always the caretakers. They juggle all the balls. They make all the things happen. Not that, especially if they have a male partner, that's what I'm referring to. Not that maybe men aren't great husbands or fathers or what have you. But when women view the world differently and take things on differently, she historically, then men do. When these hormones shift, you know, when we get into puberty, let me back up. When we're young and get into puberty, I had a neuroscientist say to me, we wire up to be a mother. Not everybody gets the best wiring. I realize that. But we wire up to do things like if you get pregnant to try to do what's best for the baby. When the baby's born, like, when the baby cries, what does that mean? Attend the needs of the baby. Like, pull the family together, be the matriarch of the family. When you go through parrymenopause, you don't need that wiring in the brain anymore. Because biologically, the point of parrymenopause is to back you out of your reproductive years. You're no longer gonna be able to get pregnant at a certain point here. So why would we need the wiring for all that maternalness? Why would we need the wiring for listening for a baby cry or things like that? It doesn't mean we still don't have part of it in menopause, but the backing out of it's very wild. And so it impacts all of our brain hormones. It impacts even our hormones like oxytocin, which is our love in our bonding hormone. So women don't have that like, oh, that's cute when he choose like that. That's cute when he's constantly clearing his throat. It's fine. It's not a big deal. We don't have, we lose that buffer temporarily for a couple of years. And because the buffer is gone, it's usually irritation and rage and contempt that comes through because we've always had this great buffer through our various brain hormones and this stability of our other hormones, estrogen progesterone for years to come. Now, just as the Ordenis friend said, once she's on the other side, and even if these hormones are low, they're steady state. So I'm not saying that being low is great either, being like very menopausal low level, but this steady state is the important. She doesn't feel like she's on an out of control roller coaster. So one day she loves you. And the next day she's gonna stick the fork in your eye because it's a roller coaster she can't control. It's a very common universal, when I read the Reddit boards, when I read the Facebook groups, when I read social media comments, like, I mean, I probably read tens of thousands of comments at this point of women who can completely can identify with this. I'm in hysteria, hysterical. It's one of these things came from. It's a women were put in insane in silence, when honestly what they probably needed was some love, some patience, some grace, and some hormones. - And better men. - Well, in some cases, that's the other thing I wanted to say about the divorce statistic. In some cases, just as your dentist friend said, maybe wait a couple years, it'll be better and be also step up and be a good man. But on the other hand, I do have a lot of women that go, I'm tired of holding it all together. And he's not the partner I want or need or deserve, and I'm gonna stand up for myself and be more authentic. And I am gonna get divorced for myself. And so we do see divorce rates go up for both reasons. She's tired of putting up with him as a child or him and not as the partner she's hoping for, and in vice versa, but also her hormones are all over the place. - The filter's gone. So I think men can do better. I can do better, men can do better. And what's happening in Pyramenopause is that filter of patience and kindness is gone. And now the guys are noticing how we're not stepping up to the game. And our culture is our culture, right? And so I guess if we put everybody into Pyramenopause, maybe men will have to, we'll learn to step up, right? (laughing) - Right, exactly. That and just, yeah. - They will be treating this. (laughing) - Right, but also why aren't they stepping up from the beginning? - So then it becomes about boundaries and truths and things of that. - Carrie and I got a new treatment plan. We're gonna talk about all the treatment that the women can do, but now we gotta talk, we also have to add another module of the guys. - Yes. - Then the men too, how to be a good man. - Yes. - Starting from a young age, absolutely. - Yeah, yeah, that's also, like you said, it's not all the women. Maybe men need to step up a bit more, agreed. We talked about the symptoms. We're gonna talk about how to look into this. So there's kind of two camps and I'm curious where you're at. And because of your background with testing, the Dutch test, I'm curious how you do this. And I just wanna share the two camps. There's one camp that will do testing, like trying to test your sex hormones. So they'll look at the progesterone and estrogen, right? A serum blood test. Or even maybe a Dutch test. That's not how my clinic does it. We, because of what you said, these hormones are going up and down so much in perimenopause, particularly, estrogen's really erratic and progesterone can be, but mostly under decline. We go by where are you age-wise and what are your symptoms? We will test other things 'cause we're looking at cardiovascular health, metabolic health, vitamin D, thyroid. We'll look at other things. I'm curious of the big picture, but we tend us not to run a Dutch test if we think somebody's perimenopause, nor a serum blood test. Again, in general, there's always a, a specific case for somebody individually. And we've just started to change it. I want to chat with you about this, the ad home test. For example, in our clinic, a lot of our patients use MIRRA. We recommend MIRRA. It's at ad home test where it's a urine test where we get a daily progesterone, estrogen, LH and FSH. And I want to know because a one snapshot to me is really not that useful. - Right. - But we're just getting really good at, and I want to learn more from you about using these ad home tests 'cause I think that can give me some information. That's my thinking. I'm curious what you teach, and how do you see this? And then we'll unpack more about all these tests. - Oh, for sure. So the menopause guidelines, as you said earlier, like parimenopause, it's not a disease state, it's a natural state. And so there's no test the diagnosis. Do you have parimenopause? Like again, it's age and symptoms just as you said. So the menopause society said, why test? Don't test estrogen, estrogen, it's all over the place. So what I tell when I teach, what I say is, if she's in really enough parimenopause and she still has regular cycles, and you want to know what her estrogen and progesterone are doing, and specifically maybe more advanced, you want to do a Dutch and get the metabolites. Like where does estrogen going? Where is testosterone going? Cortisol, then absolutely go ahead and do it. When she's in the frows of parimenopause, and it is a wild roller coaster, we have no control over, I agree with your clinic, you and your clinic, I don't test the estrogen and progesterone. I absolutely test everything else, thyroid and glucose and insulin and cardiometabolic, and you know, vitamin D and cortisol, like things because those can also go haywire and get worse in parimenopause, but they're not necessarily cycle days specific. So I don't look at estrogen progesterone. Once she is post-menopausal, or let's say once she's, she's like, well, I have an at a period in like eight months. So she's not at the 12 month mark, but she is eight months in, and let's say she's considering hormones or wants to see what's going on. I'm like, yeah, you have an at a period in eight months. If you would like to do an estrogen and progesterone in a Dutch test or a blood test, I'm totally fine with that. If you wanna see it, like, I know what it's gonna be, it's gonna be low, but here we go. I like you. I have been using the mirror test myself. I got into it a year ago. I saw the ads online, and they were promoting fertility, and I was like, hold on, I would love to know what my hormones are doing day to day, because I am in the throat as a parimenopause. So I bought a test, started testing it, and I was like, low and behold, some months I ovulate, some months not so great, some months, you know, like, I could see this up and down. I could see things like related to migraines I would get or symptoms I would get. And so he reached out to the company, and I was like, why aren't you talking about parimenopause? And they were like, that's a brilliant idea. We should really get into that more. And so I'm really glad because a lot of my colleagues, a lot of my friends who were still cycling, but kind of, you know, parimenopausal, you get to see day to day. So I jokingly say you see the entire forest instead of one tree. When you get your blood draw, that's one tree. Your estrogen on Wednesday at 8 a.m. is this number. Is it the same at 815? Is it the same on Thursday? I have no idea. We don't know. All I know is the one day. So I really am loving the broader scope that I can see of somebody's whole cycle. I just consulted on a case parimenopausal woman, 48 years old. She was getting headaches and what felt like yeast infections through her cycle, but her cycles were really weird in your regular. She actually did a mirror. So her doctor sent me the mirror and was like, what do you see? I was like, look at her estrogen. It's up. It's down. It's left. It's right. I said, nope, these massive swings play a big role in the vaginal microbiome. And it plays a big role in serotonin in the brain and a nerve we have called the trigeminal nerve and migraines that can be associated with it. So no wonder she's so symptomatic. Look at this wild ride she's on. And it was really validated for the patient to go, I'm not crazy. I knew it was hormones. It does help with that validation. Let you know if you're ovulating. And it has that AI part. AI part. So all the women are putting into this. And it learns about you over two to three cycles. And like you said, I love that tree analogy. So you're seeing the forest because you're getting to look at it daily versus one day in the month. Yes. Because what can happen is you see you probably saw this all the time. You sent a woman to get blood work done. Let's say she's in the second half of her cycle, the luteal phase. And she gets her blood work and her progesterone looks great. It's like the number you want it to be in in the blood work on that one day. But she says to you, Lauren, I'm having horribly heavy periods. I don't sleep. I'm anxious. I feel terrible. Are you sure my progesterone is good? Like I know it's that one day is good. Then you do something like a mirror and you're like, nope, you literally are good one day. Like the one day it spikes up and then it crashes back down. And of course, I see that all the time in Perry, Mount Apaz. It's like they get enough umph to make progesterone for a day or two. And then it just crashes right back down. So it's misleading. The lab is not wrong. They were at a good level that one day, but it didn't mean it lasted. And that's why she says, I feel terrible. What do you mean? It looks good in the lab work. And like you, we've had it for a little over a year, maybe two years now. And we started with fertility using the mirror. And we don't test the serum, the sex hormones usually for our paramanopausal patients. But because of the mirror, we're like, oh, maybe we need to think about this again, because this is different. It's just looking at it daily versus once. So now we can get some information. And as you shared, patients can look at this because they have it and they share their dashboard with us. They can start to say, it's just nice to know that there's not something seriously wrong. We keep talking about the brain. One of the common symptoms we also hear is the brain fog. That's another common. They just feel not sharp in that fatigue in the brain. All this stuff related to the hormonal changes. So to unpack the testing a bit more, I just want to share here what you're doing. So we're looking for over a health. And so we often will look at a thyroid panel. Yes. See what their B vitamins are doing, vitamin D levels, because of the risk of cardiovascular risk for women in this stage with the hormones. We'll look at their cholesterol, the triglycerides. Is that something you'd look? And then cortisol can be all over the place. And that can impact weight gain and sleep cycles. And blood sugars can change as well. So they'll often do the blood sugar, the blood glucose. We'll look at cortisol. Are you doing that? Is that kind of like a, because that's our holistic approach. Our goal is not just to test the bare minimum to see, or you're not going to die. Our women have a lot of mythality. Like they're like, OK, what systems are out of balance? How can we help these systems? So, do I have any testing or? I do. I do add in insulin. I see a lot of women at this age become more insulin-resistant. So metabolic syndrome, they're getting the weight around the center, which one could be cortisol, two might be thyroid, glucose, estrogen-related, but that insulin. And then because I'm starting to see a lot of women, cardiovascular, they can't feel. They don't feel the blood pressure go up. They don't feel their cholesterol go up. Their triglycerides go up. They often don't feel their blood sugar start creeping into the hundreds. At least in the US, our above 100 is not good. And so I had been looking even deeper sometimes at these lipids. If somebody's cholesterol is starting to look not great, especially if it's somebody I've seen for a while. And I'm like, man, you've had good cholesterol, good cholesterol, good cholesterol. Oh no. Then I will do a deeper, more advanced cholesterol panel and look at depolapoprotein B and LP Little A in the particle size. And I'll do CRP, which is an inflammatory marker. A lot of women are like, I feel puffy. I'm suddenly inflamed. Things hurt. I'm like, well, let's see what's going on. And the reason it's not to just create a bunch of labs for nothing or like spend a bunch of money, they're all trackable and they tell me something. So that as we work on a plan for you, I want to make sure these are going down. We often talk in men's and women's health. We call them the forehorsement or the forehorsed women of the apocalypse. It's the four things we want to avoid or minimize as best as cancer, but possible. The first one is cancer. The second is the cardiometabolic, because heart disease is the number one killer of people. Then we have the third is neurodegenerative, so think dimension Alzheimer's. And then the fourth is fragility. So osteoporosis, osteopenia, you fracture and break a hip. You know, God forbid a femur, something happens to the bone, you're unstable. And so these are the four things for a longevity purpose and we can track them in blood. Dexascan, we also do that. Then you get your osteoporosis to be bad, you and our clinic. Which I think is great because in the US, the Dexascan isn't until like 60 or 65. And before like everybody's already awesome. You know, like it's too late then. I wish we could start, we could do it at 40. Yeah, if you do it at 40, then we can monitor and see because you know, not all six year olds are equal. So how are they changing over that decade or two? Yes, yes. So right now it seems like we're going to talk hormones that. So the hormones are fluctuating. And so the Chinese medicine idea this and my idea is hormones are not the reasons. They're not the cause. If they were the problem, then every single woman would have symptoms and every single woman could have the same symptoms. But what we know is that not all women have symptoms you're impairment, and those that do don't have the same symptoms. So the hormones are fluctuating, but in Chinese medicine, how we look at this is that the window of tolerance has changed. And your resilience has diminished and your ability to adapt to change has diminished. So now when the hormones are changing, that's a stress, internal stress on the body. And those that have resilience and still the ability to adapt don't notice anything. Because the body is underground. But those that have had a lot, either they came in, you know, they're genetic, how they came in intergenerationaly for how sex. drugs and rock roll, how they lift the life. Yes. They make it's a message to the body that resilient to adaptability. In Chinese medicine, kind of the kidney system and the liver system, not talking the Western here. Now hormones have made a comeback. So we really got to unpack this part. A, hormones 2001 World Health Initiative don't take it. Then I know you're trained and as my natural paths and our clinic are part of that menopause society, they've re looked at the research, they criticize the research, they looked at the types of hormones, whether they're bio-denocul or not, synthetic, and it's made a comeback. We love to do extremes. So now it's like everybody should be on estrogen. But at the water. Right? So I'd like to hear your thoughts. Because in our clinic, we do hormones in British Columbia. Progesterone estrogen are now covered by the problem for women. Hey. And so in our clinic, we do holistic. So we're looking at the diet, the lifestyle, we'll use supplements and other things, acupuncture, and herbs. We'll do all that. And we'll also use hormone therapy. We don't want anybody to suffer. We don't deny anybody hormones. But we're not like, oh, you're 43, you're going to take estrogen. However, some docs and some movies out there say, everybody should do it. And they're quoting data that it'll help prevent Alzheimer's, it'll help prevent cancer, it's a cardiovascular disease. So can I, because I don't think you're paid by a drug company. I am not paid by a single drug company. I just kind of, we're still learning, because it's kind of fairly new that the black box has been removed. And now it's awesome that this treatment medallys back to being available to women, because there's been a couple of decades where women have suffered unnecessarily. Yeah. So I just want to hear more about what we call HRT now, MHT, Menopause Hormone Therapy. And can you go into, I think, dosage matters and I think the type of hormone matters. And where you are matters. And as a team. I still call it HRT. I understand why they call it Menopause Hormone Therapy, but I'm not menopausal yet. For me, it doesn't resonate to say, if I take MHT, I'm like, well, I'm not there yet. I still cycle regularly. So-- I think it was a rebrand. I think it's a rebrand, the day after the year. It has a bad name, right? It has a bad connotation. When I was a first going into second year medical school when the WHO came out. And I was very lucky. My attending, my mentor said, I mean, we'll be careful. But I'm not going to stop prescribing hormones. So I feel that I have had-- I mean, I graduated in 2005. I've been licensed for 21 years. So with her oversight in those early years, I have a lot of hormone experience in prescribing that I think a lot of other doctors just stopped completely. Other than the birth control pill and the IUD, they just stopped completely and didn't until very recently. So having two decades of experience prescribing for women of using progesterone and estradiol, and even testosterone and everything, I always thought I think hormones are quite helpful. In my observation, probably in yours as well, I treated my patients the same way you did. I found that the women who came into parimenopause balanced healthy, doing really well, taking care of themselves, stresses into-- like, all the things did better with their parimenopausal symptoms. They weren't necessarily immune, because something like 87% of women are going to get at least one symptom. But they may only have a handful of symptoms. I was talking to a doctor the other day who's 47. She just got her-- she hit her 12 months. She was like, woo-hoo, I'm in a puzzle. I'm 47 years old. And I said, what did you feel? And she goes, nothing. I had to look at my app and realize, oh my gosh, I'm now, but she lives the life, very healthy, manages stress, all the things. And I realized that everybody has that luxury, but I did notice that. So then I noticed if you didn't have that coming into it, if you could get that help, if you could go see a clinic like yours, and you could do all the rail round at the foundations of medicine. And if you chose to add in hormones, they worked better. Because what I'm seeing now is-- and I'm a comment reader. I love to read the comment section of everything. And what I see now is I'm really grateful women have the opportunity to use hormones, which as they didn't have before before. It was like the devil and cost cancer. So there's all these pop-up telehealth companies. There's all sorts of clinics now that are getting trained. But then women are like, OK, some things are better, but some things aren't. Or it didn't work at all for me. Or I'm still having all these side effects. And I thought hormones were the holy grail. Why isn't it working for me? And I'm like, as hormones, the only thing you're doing. Are you doing anything for your foundations of how to exercise, diet, and stress, and sleep, and movement, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? Are you getting any other support? No, I'm just put my patch on, and I take my progesterone. And I don't feel like a rock star. I'm like, I know. I wish we could teach more broadly that it truly is its systems approach. Astrogen and progesterone play in the entire system. So if the system is inflamed, if the system is high blood sugar, if the system is mad, if the system is in pain, if the system is in fight or flight and stressed out, hormones might actually make it worse. So I wanted to start there because I would imagine you and your team have the same observations for women. Some women do great, like knock it out of the park with hormones. But I just keep seeing women that are like-- I'm do not. Ah, I thought this was a magic pill. I'm like, no, no, we're not. No. You still have to be-- You still have to participate in your health. And the way you share this is actually important thing to highlight. Some women go on it and they feel worse. So it's not like everybody's going to feel better. So that's just a case. And just some people do not do well hormones. And some of those women know they didn't feel well on the birth control pill or Medicaid at UD and they don't feel well on MHT-HRT, whatever you want to call it. Part I want to add, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the hormones, is when I was sharing about the resilience and adaptability, it's because of the fluctuating hormones. That's a stress on the body. It's a change. When you give somebody hormone therapy, you're kind of balancing the night. So it's not so up and down and big decline, like in the progesterone and estrogen. However, the reason we want to do, like you're sharing the diet and the lifestyle and stress reduction and movement. And we want to take care of if there's metabolic inflammation or other things are off, it's because we're thinking long term. So yes, if we give you hormone therapy, there's a great chance you're going to have awesome symptom management. However, the underlying cause of you being depleted, the resilience, these other systems out of balance and not being able to pivot and adapt, will likely show up again in your 60s or 70s when you're that much older. And now you don't have the capacity or the adaptability to deal with this. And now we see disease and older age. Our goal is that you die healthy, right? The nivald age. You don't, you know, who wants to live from 65 to 85 sick? So the idea is healthy. So when we recommend we're going to do hormone therapy and we want to do these other things, is because we know the hormone therapy is going to do symptom management, but it's not going to address underlying cause. And women will say that too. That's how we think about it. Right? Like women will say that. They'll say these things got better. Like I was listening to a woman tell her story. She had 5,000 comments where she was like, I don't feel like myself. I'm super depressed. I'm rage. I'm angry. It's all very mental emotional for her. And she said, and I'm on estrogen and progesterone. You know, 5,000 comments later, lots of women are like, same girl, same girl, same girl. But a lot of women in the comments, a lot of women were like, I think it's a feedback to you to make changes in your life. It doesn't mean you're not paramedicol, it doesn't mean the change in hormones aren't affecting you. Glager on hormones, but also like, are you living the life that you really want? Are you like, how is your stress? Are you happy? Like, you know, just just just checking in with your authentic self of sometimes we just push and push and push and then we get into the 40s and in paramedicol, is like, I don't really care about that. Like I'm going to change and with these hormones and I'm going to shift you to this new stage. And so if you don't make changes, it's going to feel worse. And I don't mean this to, I'm not saying this to blame women, but more of like a mirror of like, we mentioned way in the beginning, is there any good part about parimenopause? And I'm like, yes, I think, I think as you call it the second spring, I think as women are coming through the second spring in this next phase of them, like, who do you want to be? What are you going to accept? What boundaries are you going to put into place? What things, hobbies, habits, hobbies and habits are going to bring you joy and are you going to start doing? Because I think as women start identifying, addressing that, then some of these, especially mental emotional type symptoms, also improve. It's still part of the foundations. Absolutely. It's like that wake up call. And the second spring in Chinese medicine, there's the physical, like, there's this, what's happening. But remember, Chinese medicine is mind-body spiritual. The spiritual is exactly what you said. It is a transformation. You are transforming caterpillar to butterfly. There's a new woman emerging. And every hot flash is like this burning off of old karma. [LAUGHTER] And it is a signal to shift. So if you're having symptoms, like you said-- so I'm glad you said it, because if I'm an explainer, I'm a dead man. So Carrie said that this is that opportunity to look in at your life, your hobbies. Do I want to say married to this guy? Like, am I going to allow him to treat me this way, right? Yes. Yes. Lots of changes. So it is a-- there's physical changes and spiritual changes. Yes. I love that. Yes. No. As you said, though, the dose and the route also count. So sometimes in the United States anyway, and especially in this metapos Society, they're really pushing the patch for estrogen, and then the capsule for progesterone, though. overnight, micro-nice progesterone. As if that's the only way, like that's what we start with. There are tons of other options, but sometimes we forget. So some time I've had a lot of women say to me, I tried hormones that didn't work for me. And I'm like, "What would you try?" And I'm like, "Why tried the patch?" And I swallowed the progesterone and I hated it. And I'm like, could be the dose. There are different doses. Could be the route. Doing a patch, maybe not the right route for you. You may react to the adhesive. You may your skin tissue, maybe of a skin type that you don't absorb very well that route when you use the patch. The oral progesterone route, maybe it's the wrong dose. Maybe you're sensitive to peanut oil, not in Canada, but in the United States, we still put peanut oil in ours unless you get it compounded. So I tell women, you know, you have lots of options, right? And they had no idea. Like you realize there's gels, there's creams, there's vaginal, there's injections. There's like, there's sublingual, like, just guys the limit, what do you want? Like we could definitely rotate this. And I think that's really helpful for women to understand that it's not fixed. It's not like this patch and this pill, and that's all you get. - And at our team meetings with my naturopaths, who are also part of that menopause society like you, they share that the dosage, like birth control pill dosages is a much higher dose than menopause hormone therapy, like the lower dose. And yeah, it depends if there's a lot of issues vaginally, then often they'll be using vaginal applications. Some women have asked, can I put it on my face, funny enough? And I said, I'm gonna talk to my naturopaths scope and they go, A, dosage matters. So talk to your health provider, everybody. But she goes, yeah, just like it will puff up parts of the body, it will, some of the wrinkles and stuff will shift as well. Now we're gonna see women all putting that just up. - Right, yeah. I heard on a podcast. (laughing) - So talk to you. So the hormones now, the study got it wrong, is my understanding then. - So the study looked at, just so everyone knows, the women's health initiative, the study were saying, looked at synthetic estrogen and synthetic progesterone, which is called a progestin. They're not the same. But what they did is they looked at that, when those two were combined, that's what stopped the presses, hormones cause cancer, there's an increased risk. And it was that progestin that actually only slightly increased the risk of breast cancer. It wasn't a massive, you know, it wasn't like thousands and thousands of women develop breast cancer, it was a very small increase. There was a second part of the study, that was this synthetic estrogen only. So women had had a hysterectomy. - I wanna just say one thing, when you say small increase in cancer, just for the listeners, 'cause people, I don't want cancer, from the medical perspective, it was insignificant. So all studies, there's-- - They actually put that in the study, insignificant. - Yeah, so there's always things that changed, but it meaning that it's not necessarily caused by this, and insignificant. I just wanna clarify that. - And actually, there's a wonderful graphic out of the UK. It's their NICE, they're nice, I don't know what they call it, department or whatever. But they show like, if you're on a progestin, it'll bump up your risk, a tiny bit. If you're on just estrogen, your risk bumps down. If you're on the birth control pill, it bumps up a little bit. And if you drink alcohol, of course, it bumps up even more. And if you are obese or overweight, it bumps up the most. So I know women are like, oh my gosh, you can't do hormones that cause this cancer. I'm like, actually, hormones are probably the least of your concerns. If you are overweight or obese, that inflammatory visceral adipose increases sort of the all cause cancer, but breast cancer in particular, more so than going on hormones. And it's a nice visual pun intended, 'cause they're called nice, for women to go, oh crap. Okay, here I was thinking that going on any kind of hormone would just like blow up my risk factor. And in fact, it doesn't, the media went wild with it when it shouldn't have. - And then as we share on the hormones, I wanna go into natural approaches here. - Yeah. - But the hormones, they were using synthetic, and it was actually the progesterone synthetic that they think may have been causing the issues, not the estrogen. Now we're using biodinocoolestrogen and biodinocool progesterone, and these have been determined to be safe. - Safe, it's not that they're risk-free, because we do know that, you know, every, I mean, women have hormonal symptoms in their body from their own hormones, but definitely much, much, much safer. In that, what I was saying is there was a second part of the study that was the synthetic estrogen only. So the women had had a history to me. They didn't need the progestin. They just did the estrogen part, and they had a reduced incidence of breast cancer. But that didn't make publication until a lot later. That didn't make the news until a lot, like very recently, actually, that if you didn't do the progestin, like you actually had a decreased risk of breast cancer. And like I said, it's so unfortunate how that whole study was played out. If you know the behind the scenes of the study and the pressure and the, it's just awful. It's just awful what it did to women, 'cause of course, immediately in 2001, 2002, women halted their hormones, and then what did it do for their other risks, their heart risk, their bone risk, right? Brain risk, like mood, they're just vaginal health. Like other things I think about, I'm like, how women have gone without this support. If they wanted it for decades at this point. - Going into the natural approaches. So we've discussed so far that there's a variety of symptoms related to changes in hormones, and that you're not crazy, but there's a change going on, and there's some testing we can do. We talked about at home testing, like the MIRROR system, and we talked about other testing, 'cause we're looking at it holistically, 'cause all these systems can be off. We wanna make these systems well, even if you're using hormone therapy. So not only do you have symptom management, but you start to have better health so you can live well longer into your life. And now I wanna talk about approaches, like how do we bring that resilience, that adaptability? How do we work on the system? So I'll share a quick case just 'cause she's in my mind, 'cause I just started this week. She came to me, I saw her a couple of years ago, Pairing Manipol, she's in her 50s now, she was having crazy heavy bleeding, which we were able to acupuncture herbal. Again, a couple of years ago, so we weren't doing hormone therapy yet, we were still scared of it, right? She came back recently, and her last period was maybe three or four months ago, her cycles have stayed well, as in they're not heavy and 8, 10, 14 days of bleeding. But she was having four per hour hot flashes nights, what's four per hour. I suggest she gets into see our naturopathic doctors because she may be a candidate for hormone therapy. They have a wait list. I said, I will start with acupuncture nerves. I always like to do this because I'm working on that, remember the kidney liver system? Basically, we're on the autonomic nervous system a lot, right? Because if the autonomic nervous system gets into a nice place, it affects the hormonal, the endocrine, the immune system, obviously the nervous system. And so we did acupuncture two, sometimes three times a week over two weeks, and I put on a Chinese herbal formula. At the end of the second week, she was having four a day, not four an hour. - Amazing. - And she'll stay on the earth for three, six months, and I encourage you to still see the naturopaths because this may be another part of the program given you the hormone therapy, 'cause she's not a menopause yet, but she's pretty close. - Yeah. - Right? She's having three periods a year maybe. And so that's kind of our approach here. I wanted to hear from you about kind of the supplements that women would be taking or what's most common. Let's think about, we got brain fog, we got sore muscles, we got mood. I want to think of those kind of symptoms. Hot flashes, nights, but it's obviously, but kind of want to know your favorites or most common ones that you think generally you would be recommending. And, canary's not your doctor. - I was just gonna say that. - So we're gonna talk in general, and I've got your doctor. Even if we are your doctor, we don't realize you're listening to this right now. - Right. - So you do need to speak to your healthcare provider, please, we're giving you general information. - And we're also probably gonna list, like banter and list off a lot of our favorites. It doesn't mean you need to write them all down and take all of them because there's a lot of really cool things out there, we like personalized medicine. So I do use a lot of adeptogenic herbs. I do like, you know, use bench and nervous system, stress response. I find using things like ashwaganda, rodeola, you know, western herbs, elutherococcus, holy basil, which is more Indian, chattavari. Those are some of my favorites when people say, I can't handle stress or I'm tired. You know, I sort of pick and choose depending. I do a lot of sleep herbs, skull cap, passion flower, even like, you know, chamomile or lavender. I'll use cortisol calming support, phosphatidal searing, which is a part of our cell wall, but also very helpful for, so I use brain support, like L-fanning. I will use 5-HDP. If somebody's not on an anti-depressant type medication, I'll use a spice saffron. There's some cool research on saffron and mood and things like ADHD and depression. I see quite a bit. I will use mushrooms, so I'll use like, line's main cord accepts, especially for, you know, the brain fog and brain support. I use creatine when people are working out. I like carnitine. Carnitine is a shuttler of fatty acids, so it helps your body burn fatty acids better. Unfortunately, when we break down and make fatty acids, estrogen helps funnel that into the factory that breaks it down. You don't have a lot of estrogen. You can have issues with that, and then it'll just store right back as fat tissue and carnitine, which we naturally have in our body, but, you know, and we get from food, but sometimes not enough, so we might add that. I like gut health support, so I will do digestive enzymes, I'll do prebiotics, probiotics, and short-chain fatty acids like butyrate and pasteurized acromancea, and what else do I use for the mitochondria? There's a number of things that we can do. So you can see like, as I'm going through, I blood sugar support we can use, you know, like burberine and alpha-lipoic acid, we have inflammation support we can use, like chrospheratrol and curcumin, or turmeric, so you can see that we have a wide variety and a lot of this has been studied. Sometimes, you know, I'll get pushed back from people who go, that's not in the literature. I'm like, actually a lot of it is now. A lot of companies have jumped on some of these herbs because they're so potent and we do have some literature on them. - And you're supporting the systems. Like you mentioned the blood sugar, so you get the burbrine, right? If there's inflammation, if there's mitochondria health, so it's not, don't take all of them. And so you see your healthcare provider. You know, some of those herbs like the Skullcat, Passionflower, Softflower, they're Chinese herbs also, right? And so they're herbal tea, I like this, 'cause we can have 10, 15, 20 herbs, but it's in the tea, so you're not popping 20 different pills. - Yeah. - Like form them. But that's where you want individualized medicine, where there's some testing. That's why we look at the thyroid, the vitamin D. You know, we look at all inflammatory markers. We look at things and then we see which system is really needing the support and we go there versus giving you everything. - We're like, let's just correct what's out of balance and then everything else will usually fall into place. - Yeah, I mean, we can, even there's support for the heart, there's support for the liver, for the bile that could, antioxidant status, what's it, like I even melatonin, we mentioned sleep, but melatonin is a very potent antioxidant in the body. And it's like I said way earlier, it's heavily concentrated in the ovaries. And so even something like that, which is most of these herbs and nutrients are very multidisciplinary in nature. They're not a one-trick pony, they do a lot in the body. - Okay, nice. Kerry, we're gonna wrap up here 'cause you're a busy person. And I wanna say, first of all, thanks for joining me today. It was so good to reconnect with you. I wanna let people find out how they can find you. And also with the mirror, healthy seminars my other company, Miris sponsors a lot of our community lectures, which is great. So if you're a practitioner, you go there, they can get you a device and stuff through the healthy seminars group because they're a sponsor for health providers to test it out. And also, Miris provides me in the clinic, we can get coupons out. So I have a coupon for our listeners of your interest. It will put it in the show notes, but it's number two, Lauren Brown for 20% off. That gets you 20% off your mirror supplies and your system. So check that out again, I'll put it in the show note. So big thank you to Miris. Again, letting you guys know, I used it in my practice for a while and I got introduced to it. And then they started sponsoring healthy seminars and I reached out to them 'cause I knew I was interviewing you and they said I can extend that coupon to everybody. So check that out in the show notes. And Carrie, where can we find more about you? Because I know you have a podcast and you're really doing a lot of educational outreach and you got so much more information to share than what we were able to do just in this hour. Although I thought we covered a lot. - We covered a lot. I'm very impressed with everything we did talk about. So absolutely, you can find everything that I do is on my website, which is drcarryjones.com. And even on there, I have my free eBooks, for example, if you go to drcarryjones.com/labs, all the labs that we talked about, thyroid, cardiovascular, nutrients. If you're like, well, this is so much, I was taking notes, but not that fast. I have it for you, of course, in an eBook. You can find me on social media on Instagram at dr.carryjones. My podcast is Hello Hormones with dr.carryjones. I have a YouTube channel, which of course is at drcarryjones. And basically my whole goal is free education as much as possible. So through social, my newsletter, my eBooks, YouTube and my podcast, I am just trying whatever way you consume media, I want to help you. I even have a sub stack because I want to make sure women have, we didn't get this education growing up. We didn't get it young. We didn't get it in the last 10 years. We haven't really had it in the last five years at large. And so now that it's become much more accessible, like I just really want to help women understand their body and understand their hormones. - Perfect, so that's carryjones.com, right? - dr.dr.carryjones.com. - drcarryjones.com and there you'll find, you'll have links to our sub stack for YouTube, - I guess. - for podcasts, - I guess. - all the information. Check that out. And then the mirror, check out the show notes, if you're interested in the mirror for testing. And on IQ balance, we have a the longevity diet, which is an anti-inflammatory, low glycemic index diet, which you can download for free, 'cause diet and lifestyle movement are big part of it, so you can get the diet part through there as well. Dr. Carryjones, it was great to be with you again. And thank you for sharing all this information. - Oh my gosh, thank you for having me on. - Thank you for spending this time with us on the coherence code podcast. I'm Dr. Lauren Brown, and I will see you next week for another conversation with coherence and healing. If this conversation resonated with you, please like, subscribe, or follow the show, and also share it with someone who might benefit from it as well. Remember to take a moment to breathe, reflect and stay connected. Welcome to the coherence code podcast.