E197: Are These Common Hormone Balance Supplements Helping Your PMS & Period Symptoms or Making Estrogen & Progesterone Imbalances Worse? with Dr. Heather Rhodes

Have you ever tried a "hormone-balancing" supplement for issues like PMS, painful periods, or estrogen dominance, only to find that nothing changed, or possibly even got worse? Trust me, you're not alone; Dr. Heather Rhodes and I witness this all the time in our practice.

Here's the honest truth: Many popular supplements like DIM, Vitex, and even iron can backfire if you're using them wrong. In this episode, we're breaking down:

• Why DIM can actually CRASH your estrogen levels, and when it might truly help 
• The major pitfalls of "progesterone-boosting" Vitex
• The specific group of women who should consider Myo-Inositol (hint: if you have PCOS, this is a game changer)
• How iron supplements could be making heavy periods even worse  
• Why adaptogens like ashwagandha often fail to provide long-term relief from fatigue

If you’re tired of throwing your money at supplements that don’t deliver results, or worse, create new issues, Dr. Heather and I are here to help you navigate the chaos. Hit play to discover what genuinely works for hormonal acne, irregular cycles, and post-birth control recovery, all without the frustration of guesswork.

NEED HELP FIXING YOUR HORMONES? CHECK OUT MY RESOURCES:
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CONNECT WITH Dr HEATHER RHODES:
Website
IG: @drheatherrhodes

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Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

[00:00:00] Leisha: If you are tired of wasting your time and your money on a bunch of hormone balancing supplements that you don't even know if they're actually working and they're just filling up your cabinet and draining your pocketbook, then this episode is for you today because we are gonna talk about the five supplements we see advertised and women taking most often for hormone balance that actually may not be fixing your problems unless you have specific symptoms, and we'll let you know what those are.

Today I have my trustee cohost, Dr. Heather Rhodes here with me, and we are talking about five supplements specifically. We see women taking all the time for hormone balance and that are advertised all the time for hormone balance that really are not going to help you in every case, and it's really important that you understand what they do if it specifically applies to you and what's going on with your hormones, or if it's just going to be another supplement in your supplement graveyard.

 We're gonna dive into. All of those supplements this episode, so that you can make sure you are not wasting your money and your time on another supplement that isn't actually going to solve your problems. So we are gonna get into that. But welcome Heather. Thank you for being here with us. 

[00:01:09] Dr. Heather: Yay. I'm excited.

This is a good topic. 

[00:01:11] Leisha: Yes it is. Okay, so let's just dive right in. Let's give the people what they want right away, not mess around. I actually hit on in my estrogen episode a couple weeks ago, I talked a little bit about DIM at the end of the episode, but we have a real life pharmacist here today, so let's have you talk about dim.

Let's have you talk about it, talk about what it does and what people think it does and why it's not always the answer for estrogen dominance. 

[00:01:40] Dr. Heather: Yeah. I love that. I think that one of the most important things just keep in mind as you're listening to this, is that this is based off of my experience, Leisha's experience, the research we've been exposed to, the research we've found. 

I just think that's helpful. 'cause sometimes it's, I read that this does this and that does that, and that does that, and so we're just summarizing, okay. Based off of our experience. This is what we see. This is what we notice, and DIM is specifically a compound that is found in, it's found naturally in cruciferous vegetables, but , it's put into a supplement Now that's actually a really popular supplement.

[00:02:22] Dr. Heather: One of the biggest things I think people don't necessarily recognize though, is that typically when you're looking at dim supplementation, you're looking at really high. I guess it just depends on your dosing for dim, but I think of it like, okay, you could eat six cups of broccoli to get this amount of dim, but what would that do to the gut?

So you're just gonna take it as a supplement Anyways, the goal here is that the product itself is supporting estrogen detoxification, so it actually should be helping your body to break down estrogen. And you kinda have to know a little bit about how estrogen breaks down to understand how it works. But your estrogen's gonna break down into three different, what we call metabolites.

So you have an estrogen molecule, and there's three different pieces of it as it starts to get broken down in preparation to leave the body. And we like to look at with those three types of estrogen, what pathways is your body using to get rid of them. And certain pathway can create certain byproducts.

So it would be really. I'm trying to think. If you were like at a restaurant and you knew you were gonna make like biscuits that morning, you're gonna have some discard of the dough, right? If I make 20 biscuits, I'm gonna have, I don't know, 15 grams of dough leftover, right? We're just using numbers here.

 With that. When your body breaks down estrogen and non term pathways, you can have some leftovers, like one pathway. You're gonna see if the body is overloaded and most of your estrogen is going down that pathway, you might see some more like PCOS type symptoms. So you might see like oiler skin oil, your hair breakouts, mood swings, acne.

There's another pathway that estrogen will go down, and that pathway actually is a little bit more what we would call carcinogenic. Which doesn't mean that like it's causing cancer itself, but when that pathway gets overloaded, it can create some, what we call like free radicals that can actually start to bind with your DNA and cause DNA proliferation of estrogenic tissues, which means that your tissues that respond to estrogen can start replicating really quickly.

So we start to see things like fibroids, endometriosis, cyst come from that pathway, and then you have a healthy pathway, which is just, hey. It's being broken down effectively. It's going through both phases of metabolism, and it's preparing to get out of the body in a really nice way. Each of these pathways require different, what we call co-factors to be able to work.

So for your estrogens to be able to be broken down each pathway, there's certain workers that must be present. When you don't have enough workers on one pathway, then the body's gonna naturally shift it to the other pathway. This is where things like DIM can come in because the thought is like, Hey, if somebody has a lot going down, this less favorable pathway, we can throw dim on board.

And that's just gonna shift everything to a better pathway. It April's gotten this rep of it can fix things like PMS and breast tenderness and. Just like any estrogen dominant symptoms, let's just throw dim at it. DIM has actually also been considered, and I see it a lot in estrogen blockers.

So when people try to block your estrogen. Totally. The reason I find this as problematic, so let me start with the reason it can be beneficial is because it can actually resolve a lot of those symptoms. But where that can be problematic is if you're having estrogen dominant symptoms. It doesn't necessarily mean your estrogen levels are way too high, and we need to lower the levels themselves.

 I've seen where clients have had symptoms of estrogen dominance, they've had symptoms of their estrogen going down the wrong pathway, and then they take dim and it bottoms out all of their estrogen completely in the fertility space. I see this happen a lot because the real issue. Is that they're not getting pregnant.

They have symptoms of estrogen dominance. They're not making enough progesterone. But what happens instead is they go and they present with these symptoms and somebody's, oh, estrogen dominance, you should take dim. It helps a lot of people get pregnant. It'll fix your PMS, and then you'll feel like your hormones are great.

It fixes it because it bottoms it out. So it's, if I have a leak in my house and I go and turn the water off the whole water system outside, then you're not gonna see the leak anymore. Does that mean it's fixed? No, it's definitely still there. That's my hit or miss with dim. I see it overused and overdosed a lot.

 Some of the things I recommend sometimes are fines to combat that because I've seen both where I've needed clients to come off it completely in order to restore their natural estrogen production. And then we do a lot of like lifestyle things to figure out, hey, what co-factors are missing?

That's causing your body to shift your estrogen down this less favorable pathway. And can we flood your body with what it needs to actually support it going down the better pathways instead? And I've seen clients that when they stop taking the dim, they're like, Hey, my symptoms are just crazy. This is wild.

So I will sometimes recommend or chat through alternative ways to use it. The first thing is I would never recommend DIM without having a Dutch test done first. And then I also think that sometimes with supplements, we think that we get them and we just have to take them either at the serving amount they're prescribed at or every single day.  

But sometimes I've seen clients do really great with one or two doses of dim a week, or one or two doses during their peak, during a certain phase of their cycle. I think that's really important and you can use dosing strategies like that while you're also trying to hit. That like root cause situation.

And sometimes people have high estrogen, not because their body's making too much, but because they're being exposed to too much. So if you throw dim on top of that, you really have a situation where you're not actually getting better. And we haven't really fixed the root and potentially your bottoming out your good healthy estrogen, but you're still getting those symptoms.

And so then people will just start increasing the dosing and increasing and it's, no, just stop doing that, please. 

[00:08:01] Leisha: Yeah, and I think this is such a good point because it's so easy to try to make something sound controversial or I feel like people just pendulum swing so much where it's dim is good or dim is bad, or supplements for hormones are good or bad.

Heather and I are not on either side of that fence. Like we, there has to be more context and I love that's how you brought that conversation to this is essentially like my take with DIM is so similar that. If you're doing it yourself, you think it is the answer to estrogen problems, and it can be so easy to overdose it, that's not gonna be ideal, especially if it's the only thing you're doing.

Now, if you're doing it along with a Dutch test and you know what your estrogen pathways look like and you're looking at where you're being exposed and you're looking at, what your body's making, you're looking at how else you're detoxing estrogen, this is where DIM can be helpful, but I absolutely agree.

It has to be dosed appropriately for the person, and it has to be an appropriate length of time too. A lot of times with my clients, I'm using supplements as a bridge and it's let's work on getting this river a little bit less crazy and let's bridge over these symptoms for a little while until we get that.

Detox pathway supported better, or we get the ingredients in that we need to be able to make this estrogen better. We get the extra estrogens out of your life. There's so many pieces there that we have to look at when it comes to using a supplement like dim. So we just really, I think the biggest thing is want to caution against overuse and using it too long and using it as a one size fits all fix for a problem.

That is definitely more complex. And just to be clear, a lot of times people are using DIM for specific symptoms, like painful periods like PMS, like hormonal acne, breast tenderness, all of these things that can be because of too much estrogen, but they can also be because of not enough progesterone with your estrogen.

And if you just use dim, you might have no hormones left and that's not where you wanna be either. 

[00:10:06] Dr. Heather: I have a couple thoughts on that too. I think that a lot of people too might accidentally be taking dim. If you are taking like a PMS support or a gummy for breast tenderness or a gummy for hormone balance, or even, I haven't checked the mix-ins, but I know there's a lot of different ones out there.

You wanna look to see if DIMS in it. It might be on there as DIM for dim, or it might be on there as dimethyl methyl methane. DUL methane. And so you might wanna look for that as well because you could be taking it and not really know you're taking it. And I'll tell you, I see this a lot of times with clients I work with.

I don't have a lot of clients come to me and they're just like randomly taking like dim or I three or anything like that. I see it happen more so when clients have gone to naturopaths and the naturopaths have been like, oh, you're testing, you have so much estrogen or your high estrogen, your estrogen pathways, and I see it where naturopaths are using it all the time with a Dutch, but using it so incorrectly and then bottoming the clients out and never repeating the Dutch or.

The clients are like, oh, I feel so great now. And then , they're like trying to get pregnant or trying to get pregnant again, or have something else going on later, and it's almost like it's been forgotten that they're taking this thing that only makes them feel better because they've turned off their estrogen completely.

 I actually find that this can be a bigger conversation with any supplement around the type of practitioner you're working with. If you're working with someone who's functional or who uses muscle resistance testing or who's doing labs and is more naturopathic, but. Everything that happens to you ends up being, or every test ends up resulting in a list of 15 supplements.

We have a problem there. Supplements should never be like the strategy. They should literally be like the smallest piece of the changes you're making because the test revealed something that then you asked the question, why is that happening? You identified why it's happening and you're bringing in the support to stop it from happening.

And I don't see that happen. Anywhere. I don't see it in the functional space. I don't see it in the MRT space, the chiropractic space. There's so little of the why of what are the patterns, the habits, the shifts that got you here, and you need to change those. While we might like what Leisha is saying, calm the river down a little bit with some supplements   

[00:12:21] Leisha: or a supplement one, and I think that there's gonna be a recurring pattern as we're talking about these other supplements too.

But let's get into, okay, so DIM, I think, is. Arguably almost the most popular or one of the most popular, but I would actually give it a tie in my opinion, with Vitex or Chase Tree for hormone balance. Now, with that being said, like Heather said, you might accidentally be taking both because they are in so many of what I call the happy flow supplements, right?

All the ones that are like happy hormones, or it can be for menopause. It can be for, like she said, breast tenderness. I actually saw one the other day that was for breast growth. And it had all of these same things in it, which is interesting. Just check your supplements.

Just check. Because it's good to know what you're actually taking. Let's talk about Vitex or Chase Tree. This one is used more for not having enough progesterone, and , that's another thing that I think so many listeners and so many women are aware of is not having enough progesterone, which is why we have the queen of progesterone here with us.

[00:13:22] Dr. Heather: I was like, wait, Leisha, that is not actually what it does. And I think that is a huge thing Exactly. To like highlight, like people are like, oh, it helps boost progesterone. No, it doesn't. No it doesn't. No it doesn't. No, it doesn't.

Okay. What Vitex can actually help with is strengthening the connection from your brain to your ovaries. So when somebody's not making enough progesterone, we have to see are they ovulating first. If you're not ovulating. Vitex can sometimes be helpful. Is it the first one I go to if you're not ovulating?

No, not at all. If you are ovulating, I rarely ever use Vitex because there's a reason you're not making enough progesterone and it's probably not because the signal from your brain to your ovaries to ovulate isn't strong enough and there's a lot of things you can do to strengthen that signal that aren't going to have some of the other effects I'll say.

That Vitex can. I just think that's so important because people, I don't know, I just get iffy when people start talking about boost your progesterone. No, it doesn't. What Vitex can do is strengthen that connection between your brain to your ovaries. My question is, why is that connection off? What are you shutting down?

Because there's probably a deeper like mind, body, spirit part going on there. Does femininity not feel safe to you? Are you trying to control too much around your body? Are you doing macros. So your body's learning like, oh, she doesn't listen to us when we tell her we're full or when we're hungry, or she's trying to fit us in this box.

Are you disconnected from your body because you don't trust it? Those are some of the deeper things as they're wounding in, like your motherhood, your womb, those are some of the deeper things we wanna think about with that connection being like thrown off a little bit. What it does do is it can interact mildly with your pituitary gland, which is the part of your brain that interacts with your ovaries to make more lh, which is your luteinizing hormone.

And that can happen, but it's only gonna happen in the best way. When you already have good egg support, good egg blood flow, good nutrients, 'cause if your eggs aren't where they need to be and you're not making enough progesterone length, those eggs themselves aren't helping to get your estrogen levels high enough to actually release one of them to cause that LH to show up naturally.

Then just by increasing your lh, you're gonna have a release of an egg that's not the best quality, and your body is intentionally not releasing that egg and keeping that LH lower. Because it knows that it's not the best quality. So it's like, Hey, we don't want that to go become a baby until it gets the nutrients and the blood flow and the resources it needs.

The next thing is, if you have PCOS and your LH is constantly surging, we wanna figure out why and not just throw Vitex on it, or you're gonna get more of that surging, which again, could actually worsen the true root of what's going on there. 

So that's my spiel on Vitex. There's one situation where I would say, okay, maybe we can use it. Actually, let me rephrase that. If I were working with a client, there's two situations where I would think about it, but it wouldn't be my go-to. One is if they have hypothalmic amenorrhea, so they just don't have periods for undereating and over exercising, it can be supportive while they're making other changes.

It's not my first one to go to. I wanna figure out with that. HPA is blood sugar being stabilized. Blood sugar I think is almost always like better. I almost always lean more towards a specific product that has myone acetol in it, which we'll talk about next. But if somebody has high prolactin levels and we're not quite sure why, and it's mild.

That is where I do think Vitex can come in and shine a little bit, especially if they have had children before and we just can't seem to get it down the way we need it to. Then I would say, okay, we can play around with some viex here while doing other things. So that's my spiel on that. What do you got, Leisha?  

[00:17:06] Leisha: I definitely agree. It's not one that I go to because I have the exact same question with both. Estrogen dominance and low progesterone, and these situations where it's easy to throw a supplement at it, that seems to be something that may make you feel better a little bit for a little while.

My question is always why I don't think I've ever gotten out of that like toddler phase of like, why, but why is this happening, but why is it happening to me? But why is it happening to your body? I wanna know. What is going on in your lifestyle that allows your body to not feel safe, to ovulate effectively, to give your eggs those nutrients that they need to give the signals appropriately for ovulation.

I absolutely agree with that and so much of the time. I know taking a supplement sometimes can feel like the easiest thing, but it's not the same. There's not even like close to the same effect. As being able to assess what's actually happening in your brain and body. And that can be more simple than it sounds like.

A lot of times. Sometimes with both Heather and I, we focus on things that are simple to start with and that are pretty like common sense a lot of times. But we're not taught common sense when it comes to our hormones. We're not taught anything when it comes to our hormones. So if you have hormone issues and you're just like, oh, I thought Dim and Vitex were the way to fix it without birth control.

I don't have any judgment for that because that is what the internet says to do, right? I think that just realizing that your hormones are always giving you signals and they're talking to you, and if we can start to understand what they're saying better, then we're so much less likely to just slap these bandaids on that are not actually gonna fix what's going on under the surface.

[00:18:48] Dr. Heather: Yeah, so good.   

[00:18:50] Leisha: Okay, so the next one we wanna talk about is Myo-Inositol. It can also be called just Anatol. And this is a supplement that is actually A B vitamin B eight, and it is used primarily for insulin support, blood sugar support over ovarian support. Specifically in PCOS. This can be a really helpful supplement in a lot of ways.

Again, it's not for everyone because nothing is for everyone, but this is one that we actually do really like, and Heather especially, so I'm gonna let her talk about it. 

[00:19:23] Dr. Heather: I really like may own o atol and I like it with the ratio of the 40 to one myo and D chiro. Those are just the two different, gosh, the word is called isomers.

It's just like how a compound. When you have something that's like a hundred percent of one thing, it's actually 50% of one chemical structure and 50% of another chemical structure. That's just like chemistry. Okay? But this takes the best and puts 'em in the best ratio. The reason I like it is because the way that it supports ovaries, so it specifically goes in and helps with the conversion of testosterone into estrogen in the ovaries.

 I say I like it before a really specific client. If I have a client who is not ovulating until day, like 20, 30, 40, 50, yeah, I'm putting the pieces in place to figure out like, Hey, why does your body not feel safe? Let's regulate your blood sugar. Let's do all that stuff. But sometimes it can take a while for that insulin response in the ovaries to shift or change.

Sometimes I think people, honestly, I don't know if it's just like genetics environment, whatever, just patterns of how long your body has potentially had dysregulation and insulin, especially within the ovaries and the ovaries, shifting that testosterone into estrogen. I just tend to see that it's pretty safe.

It's a B vitamin actually, and so that can even have to do a lot with people that have MT HFR stuff, like their B vitamin conversion and all of that. It's just off, I feel a little bit more generous with this. Anytime I have a client that's the case, I almost immediately put them on a specific supplement that has this, my Acetol V chiro in it.

I think that the one I use just has the Myo, but it also has NAC Q Kerman, OQ 10. I think maybe one other thing, and I see it work. Freaking wonders. Now obviously that's for my clients that are in the context of my program, so we're already focused on fixing and boosting and all of that.  

But it is really helpful again to bridge that gap. And I actually, for a lot of them, will keep them on it for a little bit longer. 'cause those ingredients, again, they're supplemental, but they're really great things you don't get a ton of in your diet and they're so huge for fertility. If I can get a product.

It's gonna have antioxidants and anti-inflammation and egg quality support and we're gonna address B vitamins. If there's someone who's like a little bit more of that P-C-O-S-M-T-H-F-R profile, then I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that , there's only about three to four, maybe there's six total supplements.

I would start somebody on from the beginning before I really get in the weeds with them. But if I can tell on my first call or two that. Hey, this is like the picture of what's going on. There's about four to six supplements that I will pick, usually two to three to start them with, and that product is almost always one of them if they present with that very specific picture.

So it's not for everybody. I wouldn't just throw it on anybody. I'm really looking at the clients that have this very specific profile and that I'm seeing that picture show up really well. 

[00:22:24] Leisha: . Yeah, and I would agree this is definitely one that I rarely ever use, dim or chase tree, and this is one that I do use.

 Okay. So the next supplement that we wanna talk about, I think this one is extremely common in hormone balance, is iron supplementation. And this one is controversial in a lot of ways because so many women have what they would consider to be anemia. And there is real anemia, absolutely, where you actually just have low iron in your blood.

But when we start to peel back the layers, it turns out that there is so much more to the picture when it comes to iron and that there are so many other nutrients in the body that affect iron regulation essentially. When I have clients come to me or people message me and they just say, I have really heavy period, so I have to take iron to replenish.

I completely understand why that makes sense and why. It probably can make you feel better in a lot of cases, but when we ask the why, there are so many layers. Of what can be going on under the surface when it comes to iron dysregulation. It can be, because one of the number one causes, in my opinion, is gut dysregulation where we are not absorbing well, and then we have mineral imbalances because of inflammation and absorption issues and stress issues in the body that are going to cause hormone issues, like estrogen issues anyway, just like downstream.

But then when we have those estrogen issues. Then they typically can cause some of that heavier bleeding and then we start to have iron issues too. So something to know, and we probably really need to do a deep dive episode on this sometime in the future. So I'm gonna keep this fairly brief, but something to know is that estrogen and iron work in synergy.

And when you're taking more iron and your body doesn't necessarily have the best regulation system to process that iron, a lot of times that iron can be stored in the tissue like in your cells. In excess. And since iron and estrogen work together, a lot of times that leads to more estrogen being stored in the cells as well, especially in fat cells.

So this can go hand in hand with having some extra weight some of the time, whether, and that's like that estrogen based weight gain, which is like sometimes around your belly, around your hips and thighs, and. Even without the weight gain, just estrogen and iron working together and being stored in the cells, sometimes it's really not going where we think it's going, where it's just gonna make the iron higher in your blood.

 So we've got this like underlying. Iron issue where you almost have too much iron stored in the body, but it's not showing up where we think it needs to show up. So then we continue to take iron. Now there are so many other minerals that factor into this. Copper is a big one, and if we don't have enough bioavailable copper to balance out iron and keep the cells in your blood loaded with iron and oxygen like they need to be, then that can be a big factor.

You need to have enough. Bioavailable vitamin A, you need to have enough magnesium. Zinc plays a role as well, again, this is a big conversation around minerals, but if you really struggle with iron regulation and you've struggled with anemia long-term and you're taking iron or you're just like starting to take iron, or you think maybe just iron will help your hormones and your energy, I really would just caution if especially, and this is of course, none of this is medical advice.

But I would just caution that you maybe just look at what are you actually getting food-wise for iron. Is there a way that you can increase mineral rich foods in your diet that also contain iron? Organ meats are a really big go-to It needs to be in moderation, of course, but there are other foods as well that are going to be high in.

Iron, but they're also gonna be high in vitamin A and they're also gonna be high in copper. So your body can get a balance of those nutrients at once like it was meant to versus just iron or just copper or just vitamin A. Like we really need to be looking at this from a more of a whole food perspective.

 A lot of times the other thing about iron is that it can cause constipation and it can cause gut issues like gut irritation and if you already likely had gut issues. They triggered this whole picture with estrogen and iron and all of the things, then that's just going to even more slow down your detox pathways.

 I just think that if you're struggling with iron issues, being able to actually get someone to look at iron as a big picture. We do a full Monte iron panel when we look at iron, and that's gonna look at that, the vitamin A and the zinc and the copper and all of those things. And then we can determine, and you know what?

I have clients who come to me and they're like. I am bleeding out at a free cycle. I think I need to get an iron infusion. I am always going to work with them where they are. And I say bleeding out. That really probably came across as more harsh than I meant to do. But I'm talking like this is serious.

And those cases like you need a doctor, you might need a hematologist, you might need iron infusions. And we also need to look at these other pictures with your minerals, with your gut. And sometimes working alongside that, we can start to fix the problem from a different angle so you don't stay stuck with where you are.

But I'm not at all telling you if you have super heavy periods and you're taking iron and it's keeping you from having shortness of breath and dizziness, don't just throw it out the window. Just know that there's more to the picture. So hopefully you don't have to stay stuck where you are. 

[00:27:52] Dr. Heather: I second all of that.

I just think that, I don't know, I have a hard time that your period is the reason like you're losing so much blood from your period and that's why your iron's low. I think your iron is showing up low already, I don't think the blood loss from your period is causing the low iron, but I do think the estrogen is following the stored iron.

The iron goes to your uterus intentionally to be recycled. But if you don't have the components there for it to be recycled, then it stays and hangs out there, which is where we get INO and really heavy, really crampy periods. 

 There's an interaction here with low iron Ingo, estrogen movement, and parasites. And heavy metals. So that's a different story, but it's also in there. And one thing Leisha said that I just wanna highlight too is if your iron's low and we're looking at your diet, I'm not looking at your diet, thinking about where is she getting iron.

I'm looking at your diet and thinking, where are you getting active? A, where are you getting magnesium? Where are you getting, like what your body needs? How much sunlight are you getting for active D? Vitamin D and a rich foods. And then because most of us, the iron's adequate in our diet for most people.

Now, if you're a vegetarian and like you don't eat any mean and like that type of thing, okay, yeah, you might be a little bit different. But I think those are just some important pieces and yeah, I think the best way to fix this is that root cause approach, which is gonna look a little bit more at replenishing the accessories and just seeing do we have something going on that your body is intentionally trying to block off.

With estrogenic tissue.   

[00:29:26] Leisha: And coming back to that, many of us, most of us grew up taking some sort of multivitamin, like a Flintstone vitamin or a gum vitamin or a prenatal or whatever that had iron in it. And we need a really small amount of iron compared to what we think we need or what most of those multivitamins have.

A lot of them have 20 to 30 milligrams of iron. . Especially in women, we're really good at recycling iron in our bodies, and so sometimes taking too much iron over the years can be like the start of the problem because then it puts iron out of balance with copper and zinc and magnesium and those type of things.

So I agree. It's not always that we need to increase it in the diet. However, in the case of heavy periods. I agree as well. It's not always that the period is causing it. A lot of times it's the estrogen and the iron that are already overloaded and stored. Yeah. And then, yeah we'll have to do a whole thing on parasites with that.

Because when there are pathogens in the body, they feed off of iron and thrive off of iron, and sometimes your body is hiding that iron to keep you safe, essentially. So that can be a root cause. I don't think the only root cause of those heavy periods in the first place. And then you're just stuck in the cycle.

So I totally agree. 

[00:30:39] Dr. Heather: And there's one more thing I just think is really important to say, and we can skip the last supplement if we need to, but around iron is that if you start taking, I see this in the fertility space a lot. People are like Geral, Geral, geral, which is like a liquid, highly absorbable form of iron.

A lot of times people will start taking it and feel really good. They're like, my energy's up. I feel so great. My moods are good, my skin cleared up. Like yada. That is temporary. The iron is there and it's moving , but the system itself isn't fixed, so it's actually causing your spleen to run at this crazy high speed.

You're getting this energy, but you're also setting yourself up for a very quick burnout and collapse there as well. I just think that's important to know because some people might listen and be like, would I feel so great when I take iron or Iron helped me so much? Or even for some people, Iron helped me get pregnant, and that could have actually been the case that I doubt if that happened.

It was necessarily iron as much as it was that energy source really like increasing the potential energy in the body, which actually was fueled differently. In that situation. So I think that's, yeah, a caveat there.   

[00:31:45] Leisha: We obviously have a lot more we could say on iron, but let's do really quickly go over the last supplement.

 We said ashwagandha. Yeah. With that being said, my, my take on this is a little more broad to almost adaptogenic herbs in general. Not because they're all the same, but because there is a specific type of woman who we both know very well. Who wants to continue to live their busy and stressful life and just take a supplement and hope it'll fix everything with their stress.

, so this is me sometimes this is you. Sometimes this is all of us, right? . And Ashwagandha specifically is one of the more common stress support supplements. Do I think it can be helpful for stress? I do. I think it can, and I think that it can sometimes make us feel like we're doing something for ourselves.

When there's much more going on under the surface and it's okay, I'm supporting my adrenal glands. So almost like I don't need to slow down. I don't need to sleep. I don't need to stop drinking so much coffee. I don't need to address some of the actual root causes of stress in my emotions. So that's where I think that Ashwagandha, Rhodiola, Bacopa, there's a lot of them that I'm not gonna embarrass myself by saying the names of, but there are a lot of stress support.

Adaptogens that can be helpful in the right case and in an acute stress situation, but I think that really the big issue that I see with it is when we just take it all the time and we think that's going to be enough to support our adrenals within a really stressful life when we're still not getting enough nourishment, we're not getting enough minerals, sleep, all the things I've already mentioned.  

[00:33:30] Dr. Heather: I agree. And I see, again, it's adaptogenic, but I see its effect as being really marginal. I also think a lot of the research around Ashwaganda is really looking at the whole herb and they're looking more at like herbal tinctures and just like dosing. That's not the same as an Astro Banda supplement you're gonna find at TJ Maxx or Whole Foods, or I think about some of the women I know in my life that are like.

I'm taking the stress like this is supposed to help my cortisol, this is supposed to help my cortisol. And it's, yeah, and it typically, they don't see results and they don't feel like it works and it's okay. We're missing something there. So I think there's a couple issues. I think one is the potency, the dosing, the sourcing, because I do think it can be really powerful.

But to have that power, those things have to be adequate and in place. And I see people that take it long-term, high dose forever, and don't really see any differences in their cortisol because they're still doing things every day that drive your cortisol. 

[00:34:29] Leisha: You can take ashwagandha and then still be in the same stressful lifestyle, still be doing blue light at night, still not sleeping enough, still never getting any time outside.

That's not going to fix it. And I do think that it can only be. Helpful in a way that's tangible when it's alongside those other lifestyle factors. And like I said, more in an acute stress situation where it's honestly, some of this stresses is not something that's going to change right now, but I'm working on getting there and I'm gonna take something to support my body on top of the things that actually take care of my body.

[00:35:05] Dr. Heather: And can I just tell you too, even us having this conversation right here. My phone is like listening and showing me ads for a million hormone elixir, this cortisol crusher, and I'm like, oh my gosh. It makes sense that you guys are out there on the front lines, battling the billion dollar industry, convincing you that they have something your body needs.

And I think that's the other thing too, with every supplement we just said, no one's body is out there messed up because they have a deficiency in. Ashwagandha. A deficiency in dim so we've really gotta go back to , how is your body designed? How is it created?

What does it need to go back to that original blueprint and. If you need to use something on the way to support it, let's do it. But let's have a plan for it. 

[00:35:49] Leisha: and I think too, you said TJ Maxx, and this just came up for me. Everything that we have said is valid, but if you're just out at TJ Maxx and like a gummy supplement that is $8 and you think it's gonna fix your problems.

It's not And I'm not saying that the more expensive ones are always better. I truly try to choose the most affordable quality supplements when I'm buying them for myself or choosing them for my clients. You do have to be a little bit reasonable about what you're buying.

Same thing with Instagram ads. And I am a sucker for a good Instagram ad. I went on there yesterday. And bought something that was not even on my mind, and I'm like, hold on, what am I doing? But just paying attention and maybe taking that pause if you see something that you think is gonna help you supplement wise and doing a little bit more, I wanna say research, but almost just like giving yourself a minute and thinking about, okay, if this is a problem that I have, it's my stress, it's my sleep.

Do I really need the adaptogenic hot chocolate, or do I need. To give myself 30 minutes before bed to wind down. Just assessing your habits when you're choosing supplements too, and just thinking about is this really going to help or not? Because I know I am gonna guess that most of you listening could raise your hand and be like, I have a supplement graveyard in my cabinet of all these things that I thought were gonna work and they didn't, or I never really took them, and we don't need to.

We don't need to be doing that. It's just not worth it. 

[00:37:14] Dr. Heather: Did you buy the hot chocolate? 

[00:37:15] Leisha: No. 

[00:37:16] Dr. Heather: Oh, I thought that might have been just you bought. 

[00:37:19] Leisha: No, you know me well, 

and that definitely would have been within the scope of something that I would buy, and that's why I have that example. But that was not the case this time.  

Alright ladies, we are wrapping up for this time and we will see you next time.