Balance Hormones Naturally with Dr. Tami Meraglia

Released Friday, 5th February 2016

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Balance Hormones Naturally with Dr. Tami Meraglia

Friday, 5th February 2016

Good episode? Give it some love!

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In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Tami Meraglia explains how you can balance hormones naturally to lose weight and up your energy (including the use of a superhero pose).

Dr. Tami is a double board certified physician in Aesthetic Medicine, and Integrative & Natural Medicine. She is also on the faculty of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine and lectures around the world on Aesthetics and bio-identical hormones for men and women.

In her hit book The Hormone Secret: Discover Effortless Weight Loss and Renewed Energy in Just 30 Days, she talks about the impacts of testosterone deficiency and how it makes us fat, fatigued and no fun.

Main Questions Asked:

Does testosterone have any impact at all for women?
With most hormonal imbalances, we could see those at any period of our adult life. Is that true with testosterone as well?
When it comes to testing testosterone levels, what’s the best way to get that checked?
Are bio-identical hormones safe?
If someone implements changes today to balance hormones naturally, how long does it take to start seeing changes in the hormones?
If you’re really diligent making changes, after what period of time do you think a woman should start thinking about finding a great doctor and see if they really need bio-identical hormones?

Key Points made by Dr. Tami:

So many of our hormone imbalances and deficiencies show up in ways that we don’t really connect them with hormones.
Estrogen is a hormone that makes us women. If you have an estrogen deficiency, some of the more common things you might be experiencing are hot flashes, night sweats, painful intercourse, dry vaginal area, and less commonly thought of as an estrogen deficiency, is brain fog
When our skin starts to go south, it has a lot to do with the quality and quantity of estrogen that we have in our elastin and collagen.
Progesterone is the peaceful hormone. It’s been called the “valium that bathes the female mind”. It helps you sleep through the night.
There are so many hormones that work together in symphony but testosterone is the one that gets left out all the time. We don’t need a lot as women but it has an outsized role in how we look, feel, and function.
What we seek in testosterone providing women is energy and the muscle to fat ratio. It’s one of the best things for your bones. It’s so great for so many parts. We even have testosterone receptors in our brain.
Hormones take a precipitous fall starting in our late 30s and 40s.
Your adrenal glands become the factory of these hormones after your age of fertility which starts to happen in your late 30s.
The adrenal glands are required to produce all of the hormones that have to deal with stress but they’re also required to produce all of the hormones that bless your life and they can’t do both.
One way to balance hormones naturally is by using food and supplements.
If you have access to a blood test, that’s great, but if not, you can take a quiz and there are symptoms that will help make it more likely that you have a testosterone deficiency than not. That’s the first level.
We now have the capabilities of a blood spot test. There’s also a serum test.
Patients are getting their total testosterone tested. We really want to know what your free testosterone is. Why? I don’t care how much testosterone you have. I care about how much testosterone you have that’s going to do work for you. It’s only the free testosterone that can bind to the receptor and do any good.
You can also test it in the saliva. The urine is a good option if you’re looking for the testosterone metabolites.
You really need to be under the care of a physician who’s checking your levels and the metabolites and the whole story if you’re going to have a prescription for bio-identical hormones.
Prescription testosterone is really good for your bones. Luckily, the majority of us can actually boost and reboot our own biology and get our own body to produce more on its own.
If you have the opportunity to do a liver cleanse, that’s great because first of all, your liver is required to activate a lot of your hormones so we want it to be working optimally. Cleaning out the filter, your liver, once or twice a year is essential and an effective way to help balance hormones naturally.
If you’re over the age of 35, you’ve got to get your adrenals to be the focus. So what you eat and when you eat are equally important. You need to start your day with protein. You also need an afternoon snack. One of my favorites is hummus and cut up veggies. The other thing is you want to make sure you’re not going more than 3 to 4 hours without eating.
Your adrenals are required to help keep your blood sugar stable. They perceive a drop in your blood sugar as a life or death emergency. They go into this whole production of other things rather than your hormones.
There are some things you can do with your lifestyle. You can help balance hormones naturally by getting enough sleep. You need to get to bed by 10:00 because your cortisol levels are a part of what wake you up in the morning. There are 5 stages of sleep and you need to visit all of them for a sufficient amount of time in order to wake up refreshed and ready for the day.
Our cortisol starts going up at about 3:00 am and bringing us back to the surface so we can wake up in the morning.
Two herbs will help your body produce testosterone. One of them is maca. The second one is ashwagandha.
My favorite thing for women to do when their body is wanting to produce more testosterone – there’s a study out of Harvard that shows that if you stood with your hands on your hips like Wonder Woman for 2 minutes or longer, your testosterone levels went up 20% to 30%.
Physiology tells us that your cells live about 3 months. So if you want to see a difference, you have to wait until the old cells that have all of the old functioning and old information – they gotta die! Then a whole new set of cells that have the ashwagandha and maca and great nutritional information – all of that has to be around for them to get populated. Realistically, 3 to 6 months before you begin to see it.
We have 2 populations. One is women that feel so horrible. We give bio-identical hormones right up front to take the pressure off the adrenal glands and then we fix the adrenal glands and wean off the bio-identical hormones. They feel better right away so they have the energy to do the nutrition and take the supplements and they’re able to do the program to get themselves better.
The other population is they’ve tried this for 6 to 9 months and got some improvements but still don’t feel great. You might not be able to produce enough to meet your needs. Go get it checked out. If you don’t look, how can you know?