37: What You Need To Know About Hormones & Using Testing To Take Control Of Your Health with Jackie Bowker

Jackie Bowker  00:01

Years ago, when they had the ranges for blood tests, the range was full of healthy people, they might test 10,000 people to get the ranges on a laboratory test so that when you go to the doctor, and the doctor gives you a blood test, and they say your ions normal, then you’re sitting in that range full of Healthy People. Fast forward to today. And that sample of 10,000 people is actually full of sick people now. So you need to make sure that when the doctor says Normal, you find out what is my actual result. So this is about you being in control. You are the CEO of your own health, you are empowered to know what’s going on with your body. And only then can you really understand why you’d been told to do something. Hi, there. Welcome to the feel better. Now podcast. I’m your host, Jackie Bowker. And if you’ve arrived here, no, there is something in here to spark yourself to create a better future, in your health, in your career, in your relationships for both yourself. And for those around you just one small action step at a time. With so much love and gratitude to be your guide, let’s get started. Jackie,

01:22

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Jackie Bowker  01:24

one of my favorite things to talk about his hormones. And guess what? It must be yours as well. We polled our audience and we asked you what you want to hear about. And there were so many people that put their hand up for hormones, hormones, one vote hands down. So today’s episode, I am going to talk about testing for hormones, and how important it is to understand what’s going on with your hormones. And then what to do about it. You know, I always find it interesting that we are 99% genetically the same yet we all look different, we all sound different. And guess what, when we test ourselves, all our hormones patent differently. And that makes a lot of sense, because some people can be experiencing PCOS or night sweats or weight gain or facial hair. So you know no matter what your symptom, that what’s important is understanding what is going on. And then once you understand more about what’s going on, we can make a simple plan for you to get from where you are now. So maybe that’s not feeling so great to your transformation. So to be feeling your best, so that you can really deliver on your purpose and put your very best gifts out into the world. My job is to help you find your next breakthrough. I really like working with people who are committed to their health who are committed to understanding more about what’s going on for them. If I can help you connect the dots to get from where you are now to that transformation that makes me so excited. I feel like it’s the job of a really good coach or guide as well. So to help you realize that you don’t need to be dependent on us, you don’t need to I’m not the guru, here you are, my job is to help you make some connections and make you more aware of your infinite limitless potential. And that you can take these simple action steps that take radical action, but they can be small, they don’t have to take a lot of time. They don’t have to cost a lot of money. But when you do them consistently, they add up and six months will go by and you’ll blink and you will have achieved so much. So getting back to hormones. One of my favorite clients is so passionate about the testing that we did for her hormones. She’s always saying to me, Jackie, I want you to post this video that you made me from my hormones and show everyone because I feel so passionately about showing women. And it’s not just women, it’s men, what is going on for them. And therefore we can make a plan for getting you back to feeling amazing. Why that’s important in hormones is that I feel this is one of the areas that our healthcare system has really failed us. Because there are different ways that we can test hormones. There’s blood, which we call serum, there’s saliva, and there’s also urine. And all three give us different information. But yet a lot of people don’t realize that there are other ways than just going to the doctor and asking to measure hormones. Because sometimes in blood, there is not enough data to understand really what’s going on. And therefore what to do about it. One of my favorite ways to test hormones is via the urine. The reason for that is that we can see so much more of what’s going on in urine that we see 1000 times more hormones than we can see in blood. So there’s a wealth more information there. We can see so much of what’s going on with our estrogen and progesterone, all of our androgens. And one of the things I love the most is our stress hormone. So not only do we see what’s happening with our cortisol across different points in the day and the night. But we also see melatonin. So when we can see all of that and what’s going on, we can see the difference between person A and person B, for example, my beautiful client, when we tested her, I had no idea that when her test results came back, she literally was not outputting. Any cortisol, we had a complete flatline. And so when we look at that what was happening was, her brain was doing the right job, and her adrenals were saying that I’m tired, I’m not I’m not going to do anything here. This client presented with extreme fatigue, and she wanted to lose some weight in urine, we can see what’s happening with her estrogen, her progesterone, her DHEA her testosterone, her cortisol, and that is so important to make a plan for how to get her energy back how to have that weight fall off, and how to have her operating at her best how to have a sleeping restoratively through the night. And most importantly, what I am passionate about is that she is in the peri menopausal age range. perimenopause is an age range. I’m 44 years old, and I’m sitting in perimenopause at the moment, I want to make sure that I am symptom free, and that my hormones are as balanced as they possibly can be. So that when I move into the menopausal age range, I need to make sure I am operating at my best. And I’m as healthy as possible that my weight is really managed and that my symptoms are really manage weight being a symptom that your body’s unhappy and needing some support. Because if I move into the menopausal age range, and I am carrying weight, it’s only going to make it harder for me to get it off once I’m in there. So I’m doing my absolute best now to be as healthy as possible. Now getting back to this pie that has weight to lose, that isn’t sleeping well. And that is so tired, she’s flawed all the time, let’s break down her results. When we look at her estrogen. The beauty of looking at it in urine is that we can see how estrogen is cleared in the body. That is really important. One of the things I’m so passionate about in this test is the way that estrogen clears through the body, we can see the ratios of estrogen, so we’ve got good estrogen that we really want to protect. And we’ve got another form of estrogen that’s quite dangerous, where it’s been linked to increased risk of breast cancer. So I always always always like having a look at what’s going on with a woman’s and a man’s estrogen. So that we can make sure that we have healthy amount of good estrogen, and that we clear out any estrogen that we don’t want to say. So this particular client, she didn’t have enough of the really good quality estrogen. And so it was great to see that because we put a plan in place to make sure that we had more of that estrogen, and that we were clearing the estrogen that is not supportive out of the body, then we moved on to be able to look at her adrenal hormones. So we could see that her adrenals were not pumping out any cortisol. So that was a great reason for her not having any energy, and we can take the right steps to be able to rectify that. Now had we not seen that and have we not had that enough data. In fact, we could be trading the wrong thing. I could be working with the brain when I’m supposed to be working with the thyroid. So it’s really, really important that clinicians are looking at the right data to be able to make informed choices and that you know that what’s available to you. Now it’s important to note this test is through a private lab, so they are an investment but for me, they are worth so much more because they save time and they save money because we can make a plan that makes more sense based on the data that we’re seeing. This test is also wonderful for anyone with PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome. Anyone in perimenopause and menopause, and it’s great for males as well for anybody with polycystic ovarian syndrome. So PCOS you might know that as symptoms for this excess facial hair or acne, infertility, thinning hair on the scalp, this test is great to look at our androgens, so they are our DHEA testosterone. And really it’s about in urine, we can actually see what happens as the hormones make other hormones and then the hormones are cleared out of the body. And so helping us see that data allows us again to make a plan to resolve the symptoms of PCOS. So it’s always always about looking at what are the symptoms that are presenting? And then what do we want instead? What’s the transformation so we don’t want to be tired and we don’t want to have facial hair. We don’t want to have night sweats. We want to be able to have restorative sleep we want to be able to have boundless energy and focus. We don’t want brain fog. So how are we going to get from where we are And now to the transformation for me, it’s about looking at data and the urine test is a wealth of data about hormones and all their what we call metabolites so all the hormones and how they break down in the body. I absolutely love this test for so many reasons because it helps us make a simple, actionable plan that in the end, I feel saves you so much time and saves you money. I love herbs like Chasteberry and wild yam and black cohosh and maca and Tribulus. They’re all great to help the body make more hormones, but when to use watch is dependent on what’s actually going on for you. I love working with the brain and helping the brain rebalance and using adrenal adaptogens like Ashwagandha or holy basil. I love herbs to make testosterone like Tribulus and maca. I love herbs to make the body make more progesterone like Chasteberry. I like herbs or food to help the body make more estrogen like wild yam or black cohosh, and that helps reduce the night sweats at night. But at the end of the day, these symptoms can relate to so many intricate things. When we’re looking at estrogen, we need to know is this patient producing too much estrogen, or is this patient not producing enough estrogen is the ratio of estrogen and progesterone imbalance. I see so much estrogen dominance. This is an area I am so passionate about. Because when you’re estrogen dominant, that is a surefire path to inflammation. And inflammation is the leading cause of disease. So I love looking at the hormones in urine, because it’s a really great way to make a plan for how to reduce the estrogen dominance and estrogen dominance is an imbalance in estrogen to progesterone, you can have not enough estrogen and not enough progesterone, that can be estrogen dominance, you can have too much estrogen and not enough progesterone, that’s an estrogen dominance. So there is so many things that we can do about estrogen dominance to clear the history and out of the system, a great food to do that is broccoli a great supplement to clear estrogen to to shunt estrogen down the right pathway, and not the pathway that increases the risk of breast cancer down the body is called dim. But do we need to use them or don’t we need to use them? Well, it’s really good to look at your hormones in urine to see where that is indicated. Because we want to support the body how it wants to be supported, we don’t we just want to guess I love to use the phrase WEA test, don’t guess. And it’s just so important, the more data you can afford to have the better. When we’re only using blood, we can get so much information about the body in blood tests. I absolutely love blood chemistry. And I really encourage and teach my clients how to know what to look for in their blood, how to know that what he’s described as normal on a lab test is not necessarily good is not necessarily the amount that you need in your body to be making you feel amazing. And the reason for that is because years ago, when they had the ranges for blood tests, the range was full of healthy people, you know, they might test 10,000 people to get the ranges on a laboratory test so that when you go to the doctor, and the doctor gives you a blood test, and they say your ions normal, then you’re sitting in that range full of Healthy People. Fast forward to today. And that sample of 10,000 people is actually full of sick people now. So you need to make sure that when the doctor says Normal, you find out what is my actual result. So this is about you being in control, you are the CEO of your own health, you are empowered to know what’s going on with your body. And only then can you really understand why you’re being told to do something is such a great example in blood tests. Because the range that we see in the laboratory tests that your doctor may say you’re normal, but you’re still thinking I don’t feel great. So how can I be normal? And how can everything be okay, you might be sitting right at the very, very, very, very bottom of the laboratory range, which is, as we say, now full of sick people. So you want to be in different places, depending on what that marker is. So we’ve actually diverted to a conversation about iron. But in iron being in particular in women, it is really important that you have adequate stores of iron in the body, especially if you’re menstruating because every month you’re losing a big store of iron. In fact, I found that so fascinating in functional nutrition when I found that men have a two year store of iron, and women have like a few months store of iron. So it’s so important that we have enough iron in our body but we don’t want too much like we don’t want to be racing off and having an infusion because that’s another whole story. That’s another whole inflammation story of us giving the body something in a way that is not natural. So getting back to are hormones with estrogen? Is the body pumping out enough? Too much or not enough? We don’t know until we have a look? Is the body pumping out the right form of estrogen that we really need to protect? Or do we have any risk of breast cancer? Because if we do, wouldn’t you want to know about it? I certainly wouldn’t. And for the, it’s about $400. For this, this particular hormone testing neuron that I use in my clinic for a private lab, there’s lots of different forms. But this is the one that I find gives you such a complete panel, because you’re looking at the estrogens and progesterone and all the androgens and the stress hormones, which we don’t get in blood. For me, it was worth spending that because when I looked at my own results, I was so far off the Richter scale of estrogenic. And I was pumping out almost no cortisol that the lab actually said to me, how are you even functioning? Like how are you even walking around. And guess what women do that because we operate a lot of time on sheer will. And I don’t want that for you. So to summarize, I really, really always say, I really want you to know as much about your body as possible, I am so passionate about helping you understand what’s going on. Because once you understand, you can be really empowered to take control of that. And to do something about it. I hope this has inspired you to learn more about your body than ever before. Because with symptoms that I see in my clinic, you can extrapolate that to the symptoms that are present in the rest of the world. And it’s just an ongoing sea of people really struggling with their energy, with their inflammation with feeling puffy with feeling exhausted, feeling the adipose tissue around their brow with not fitting not being able to do up their pants at the end of the day. And all of this is rooted in your body, just putting his hand up to say, hey, I need some support here, something that you’re doing, I’m not really happy with. And I always say one of my favorite mentors, JJ virgin always taught me, you can’t see the picture of you standing in the frame. I think it’s really important that whoever it is, you have a great team of health providers around you that are helping you see what you can’t see. And then helping you make a simple plan to get you from where you are now to where you want to be to that transformation and why so that you can share your very special gifts that only you have and really operate at your very best because you deserve it. You’re so worth it. What is it worth to you to feel amazing, when I couldn’t get out of bed for almost two years like I would have paid anything for someone to come along and hold my hand and give me a plan to get me better again. And that’s what people running podcasts like this and functional medicine is all about. We have people that are so passionate about helping you dig helping you get to the root cause of what’s really going on for you helping you collect more data about yourself. So I can’t wait to see you next week and chat more about other things that are going to make you feel even more amazing. I will see you next week. Bye bye. If you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate yourself because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career in your relationships. And I am so proud of you. And if you want more of the feel better now so tune in every Monday for new episodes and join our community on Instagram at Jackie Belka for all the behind the scenes action and more. Hey, why don’t you sign up for a chance to have your question answered at feel better institute.com/sign up that feel better institute.com/sign up but most of all, please keep reaching to feel better because the world needs you to feel good so you can share that very special gift that only you have. So with that said, See you soon here’s to feeling better. Now. Jackie