E202: DUTCH Hormone Testing Deep Dive and Our Test Results with Dr. Heather Rhodes

Are PMS mood swings, hormonal acne, and painful periods wearing you down, all while doctors tell you your tests are "normal"? Your hormones might need more attention, and the Dutch test could help.

The Dutch test is an at-home urine test that reveals if your estrogen levels are imbalanced and can identify low progesterone, adrenal fatigue, or insulin resistance affecting your energy and fertility.

In this episode, Leisha and Dr. Heather Rhodes discuss Heather’s results to help you:

• Uncover hidden hormone issues and why typical supplements might not work
• Eliminate PMS by managing cortisol and blood sugar levels
• Boost fertility and energy with simple, natural solutions.

If you’re ready to balance your hormones, eliminate PMS, and get genuine answers (instead of just another "normal" test result), hit play. Your journey to pain-free periods and more energy starts now!

Heather's Dutch test results

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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've gone to the doctor and been told that your labs are completely normal, but you still feel terrible and have a lot of hormone symptoms, then this episode is for you because we're diving into my favorite hormone test, the Dutch hormone test, and we're not only talking about who it's helpful for how to know if it's for you and if you need it now for also going over some personal results so that you can see exactly what is inside of a Dutch test and decide if that is your next step.

[00:00:00] Leisha: Hey, we are going to be talking about Dutch hormone testing today. This is one of my favorite types of hormone testing because it can be done at home and not only tells you what is going on with how you're making hormones, but how you're detoxing hormones as well. I have a special guest here with me today.

Who is also a Dutch test expert, Dr. Heather Rhodes, and we are not only gonna be talking about why we love the Dutch test and what you can find out from it, but we are gonna be going over some personal results as well, so you can get an example of what this really looks like and what we do about it in real life.

[00:00:29] Heather: Yay, I'm pumped. And , the tables are turned a little bit with me actually being the client because we're gonna talk a little bit about my own Dutch results. And one of the reasons why is because. Leisha and I both are really passionate on this idea that it literally does not matter how much you know or how much you think you know when it comes to yourself.

You've gotta have other eyes, like even the best of the best. Any athlete out there, they have coaches, right? And that's because you can know everything and you can still have blind spots, or there could still be things you're not thinking of. And sometimes actually that makes you someone who needs a coach or an outside point of view more because you're so close to it.

You can't see it the way my, one of my, one of my therapists.

 It is like if , an artist is painting and they're really in the weeds, like the details of what they're painting. And then they stand back to look and see like, Hey, is what I'm doing right here? Like really fitting in with the whole picture. And that's what I think about sometimes when it comes to lab testing or what labs to do or what labs not to do.

 As well as always having somebody else get their eyes on either your strategy, your labs, whatever you're working towards, just having that second set is really important.

[00:01:57] Leisha: Absolutely. I'm gonna just talk about why I love the Dutch test so much, and this is something that I've loved for a long time, and Dr. Heather has. More recently really also started loving the Dutch test, and I know you've done them for a long time,

but I also know that I've been,

Doing, I think I've just been doing them consistently for a longer time because I've seen the value in them for a long time.

[00:02:19] Heather: , and I've been stingy with them in the sense of I have been having, with my clients, I'm like, Hey, let's do absolutely everything possible and then we'll look at labs and I still feel like I operate like that, but I am getting a little bit more generous with Dutch and HTMA mainly because of how much I'm seeing iron copper.

 Being such a deep root cause. And I think that goes back to , why is that more prevalent right now? I think it's food supply. I think it's stress. I think it's lifestyle. I think it's blue light, all that stuff. , I've really just gotten a little bit more, I used to hold off, I used to be a little stingy and be like, no, you don't sit Dutch.

Let's just keep pushing. And then now I'm kinda like, Nope, it's gonna tell us exactly where we need to go, so let's just throw that baby in there.

[00:03:05] Leisha: . If you haven't done a Dutch test before, if you haven't seen a Dutch test before, the Dutch test is. Is a urine test for hormones, which I personally love for several reasons. Number one is you do it at home. You don't have to go into an office, you don't have to be there at a certain time.

Get your blood drawn, and I love it even more because not only does it tell us how your body is making hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, but it also tells us how your body is breaking down those hormones and. Everything that I do with my clients is about how can we help you make hormones better or detox hormones better?

That's really the big picture of hormone balance for me, and this test really helps us break down where exactly is the issue so much of the time, I can look at your story, look at your symptoms, and tell you. I think it's, I think it's one, I think it's both making or detoxing hormones, but we will know for sure when we see your test results.

We're able to see estrogen, progesterone, testosterone levels. It also does a full adrenal panel, so we get to see your DHEA, your cortisol, how your body is breaking down, cortisol, your cortisol four different times throughout the day so we can really tell what signals of safety is your body getting and what is your body doing with that as far as your stress hormones are showing up, and so we can see a lot about how your body is handling your current stress, and does it align with the amount of stress that you have or is it higher or lower than it should be? As well as really looking at those detox pathways and things with the hormones. So I really love the Dutch test for all of those reasons. I think it gives us a lot of information.

And I also do like doing it in conjunction with some other testing like hair, tissue, mineral tests like Dr. Heather just mentioned, or. A gut test. I like it with all of those because it gives us an even bigger picture, but we're just talking about the Dutch today and there's so much to go into with just the Dutch.

So those are some of my favorite reasons that I like this test.

[00:04:59] Heather: And the bigger things that I'm thinking about too is number one, a lot of people will get their hormones tested in the blood, and I find that's a snapshot versus functionality. And so this is my approach. Number one, I say use free first, which is what I was just talking about. Like, Hey, let's look at your foundations.

Let's look at your cycle markers. Let's look at your BBT charts. Let's see what that's telling us. And then. If we are gathering evidence for a certain root cause or a story and you've applied a lot and we're still not seeing the movement we want, then I'm like, okay, we might need to go a level deeper.

 Some of the reasons I think a duch is helpful is because sometimes symptoms of super low estrogen, like estrogen being bottomed out, you might actually have symptoms that. Correlate with estrogen dominance, which is really crazy. So people get really confused 'cause they're like, wait a second. It seems like my hormones are bottomed out, but now I have these symptoms of high estrogen.

 The problem is if we're just kind of like basing it off of symptoms, sometimes we can. When we're looking at BBT charts, if we're assuming somebody's bottomed out, but sometimes we really do need to look and see like, Hey, is the estrogen too high or is the estrogen too low? That's one situation.

 Another situation where I really like to use the Dutch and bring it in specifically is if I can tell somebody is having a very hard time moving estrogen. It's really clear to me that estrogen just isn't moving in their body very well. The Dutch can help me decide, okay, is it not moving because of the liver?

Is it not moving because of the gut? Is it not moving because of, the gallbladder and digestion, that really helps us because now not only can we go in and start figuring out how to get it to move better, but it's going to show us where is the true root of why estrogen's not moving well. And then I always love something that's gonna put on paper what's happening with our stress hormones.

We can all know we're stressed, but. Sometimes I have clients that feel insanely stressed and their cortisol's bottomed out, which tells me, okay, they've been stressed for a long time, so our healing's gonna take a little bit longer. Sometimes I have clients whose cortisol is off the daggum chart and they're like, I'm not really that stressed.

So that tells me, okay, we need to go a little bit deeper into your lifestyle stuff, because if you're mentally not feeling that stress, then your habits are creating a lot of stress on your body, and it might not even be your habits, like we'll talk about with mine. It wasn't until. We recently moved that I started putting together the pieces of, I think I was being exposed to something that was driving some of the inflammation and cortisol patterns that we saw for me, going up.

And that's the other thing is you can not just see your adrenals, what's happening with them, but you see the function. So you're seeing when are they spiking, when are they dropping? Like it shows you this, these patterns that your body has. And the cool thing I've seen with the Dutch too is that once you see and know the patterns.

You can go in and start healing and start shifting and see things move in your client results and when your clients are like, Hey, I'm doing so great, sometimes they'll go through a hard season and be like, oh my gosh. , Or I'll get clients that had done a Dutch three years ago and I still wanna look at their Dutch because I'm like, oh, if this is your body's patterns, this is its innate blueprint of what it starts to do to keep you safe.

I'm gonna go back to that. And once you know that, you know it, right? So I'm still looking at somebody's Dutch and be like, okay, even though that was three years ago and you're in a totally different spot now, chances are your body is going back to these patterns you got out of them, but you're probably going back to them.

So I'm going to use those as my GPS when we first start off, rather than just go do a whole new Dutch again. I love it for that. It's showing you the way your body's thinking, which is so cool because you'll always be able to pull it back to that.

[00:08:32] Leisha: , I love that. And even just. Outside of a Dutch, when you take the time and investment to work with someone who can step back and see that whole picture with you, with testing, without testing, whatever that looks like. It's so helpful to actually start to understand those underlying patterns in your body and even just patterns of habits that you have. Whether it's like undereating in certain situations or overeating a certain macronutrient or something like that. It's not always about food. It's not always about it. Know one certain thing, but when we step back and we can see that whole picture of these are the reasons. That your hormones are IMB balance that you're not detoxing hormones.

This is what's causing your PMS mood swings to show up every month. This is what you're causing your painful periods. Once we can see that, then typically, we're gonna see really good results within the first couple of months. We're gonna see more energy, we're gonna see better periods, we're gonna see less PMS or no PMS. And because life is real life. You're gonna be doing great for a while and eight months, two years down the road, something happens in your life where you realize okay, maybe I haven't been, doing the things that I know were working for me to feel better. But it's so much easier at that point to just go back to what you know was working because you know what those patterns are.

 That's why I love having these tools so much is. I do agree that over time, over a long time our bodies change and sometimes with pregnancies and postpartum and things like that, we're gonna see changes, but a lot of times the patterns are going to be the same. So once we uncover those, it's I like to say essentially like I want you when you're done working with me to be your own hormone coach.

 I want you to know how to look for things. I want you to know what your body needs. And that's why this is so fun because we can really uncover a lot of that on paper for those of us who are like, okay, I needed to see it to prove to myself that actually my stress is out of control. Even though I've always been this stressed, 

[00:10:29] Heather: Okay, so kind of like jumping into a little bit, we already talked about, okay, it's gonna show you insight into your estrogen, your progesterone, or testosterone. And I even hit on it and you just did again, Leisha, but. I wanna say one of the main things that can be really helpful is we're looking at not just how much 

estrogen is there, but we can see how your estrogen specifically is being broken down. It doesn't show you that with progesterone because typically progesterone doesn't have to go through a process to be broken down and leave your body and you really don't have it all month long. It also doesn't show you that with testosterone, but it will show you how your testosterone is being made.

that's really helpful for like our PCOS girls, but something Leisha just said was. Hey, this is what's gonna help you if you have PMS if you have more like cyst and fibroids if you're struggling to get pregnant. The reason we're able to see more deeply and really target those things is because the way your estrogen is breaking down, it will be broken down into different pathways and each pathway when we can take our eyes and look at what's happening on that pathway, each pathway has almost like a different way that it's gonna show up.

For you. So if somebody is struggling with, cyst and fibroids, or has APIC PCOS picture, we're able to go deeper than just oh, she's estrogen dominant. Oh, she's holding onto her testosterone. We can actually see like, oh, okay, she's breaking down estrogen down this pathway. And when estrogen goes down that pathway in a way that's imbalanced, you're gonna see breast tenderness and clots and heavy periods.

Or maybe you still have, a decent amount of estrogen, but it's going down the other pathway and you're going to see potentially more like clots and fibroids and stuff like that. So that's something else that's really helpful and I just think Cool. That the Dutch test can do. 

[00:12:20] Leisha: we'll attach in the show notes like a sample Dutch test. So if. Any of the hormone nerds out there who are like, I wanna see what you're talking about. I will warn you if you ever do a Dutch test and try to do it on your own. It kind of looks to me , like you get into the cockpit of a rocket ship and you're like, what the heck are all these styles? So it's really not something that's easy to interpret until you've done it a lot of times. If you just wanna see what it looks like and wanna see what markers we're talking about we'll just attach like a sample test in the show notes. But I think that we can just walk through and talk about this test and what the things that we see mean and also what we would want to do about it, because I think that makes it a lot more tangible.

[00:13:01] Heather: If we were to start at the beginning, so I had my own Dutch. Done in January of this year. what are we, April? So about four months ago. ,

[00:13:12] Leisha: On this test there's essentially like a page that is a summary. We can see estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone levels. One thing I love is that we not only see is your estrogen within normal, but we can see exactly where it is in the range and we can see where it is in reference to your progesterone.

So I think having that estrogen progesterone ratio is so helpful because you can have estrogen dominance without having high estrogen. You can have estrogen dominance because you don't have enough progesterone or because your estrogen is just higher in relation to your progesterone than it should be.

 Then we know where to go with our questions. Which are, why would this be higher? What are we missing? Are we having trouble, making enough progesterone? Are we having trouble detoxing estrogen when we see these results? Most of your results are within normal limits, but when we're looking for optimal, there's always more that we can look for and we see the patterns of the markers with each other, and I think that's one of the really the most helpful factors.

[00:14:12] Heather: And I think one of the things that stands out for me when I look at my own. Own Dutch test was on this first page, just looking at it, , my testosterone was low for my age and just like in general. Then I start thinking okay, why was testosterone low? And that led me to a little bit further down in the test.

You can see what's going on with the ingredients your body uses to make testosterone? Those are your adrenal hormones, your DHEA and the way the body thinks about testosterone is it's like a savings account. A lot of people know this, and I hate to say I didn't know it for a long time in pharmacy school and stuff, is that.

 Your body makes estrogen from testosterone. So that's really important because if you have super high testosterone, but then your estrogen levels are out of balance, that's gonna point to your body wanting to keep more of your hormone ingredients. In a savings account and that shows you like, oh, the body's not feeling super safe right now.

The body is getting told that it needs to hold onto this because testosterone can actually be converted back into a stress hormone to keep you safe and alive. But once it turns into estrogen, it has to be used for estrogen. And your body really thinks of estrogen as a fertility hormone. So whether you are focused on fertility or not, your body is going to prioritize converting estrogen and progesterone in a way that is meant to.

Enhance or bring you closer to fertility. That's also something we didn't really mention, but the Dutch can show you what the age related, normal quote unquote is for each of these hormones. I have people that will get them done sometimes and they'll be like I must be in perimenopause because all my hormones are in the perimenopause range, because the Dutch will show you that.

But for me, I'm like, no. Being in that perimenopause range or postmenopausal range, if your age isn't actually you're not actually in. Menopause or you're not actually over that, like 45 is kind of the range. I like to start thinking about perimenopause. If you're before that and you're ovulating regularly and your hormones just look like they're that low, it doesn't mean you're in perimenopause.

It just means that your hormones are at that level. That's really helpful because it's showing you like, okay, I'm low and I can get it back up, and I know where the actual problem is rooting from. Like why do I look like I'm in perimenopause even if I'm not? From that, that kind of like brought me to the second part of, okay, why was my testosterone so low?

And if you look at the second part of my or the first part, like my adrenal summary, it's not looking too good. It shows that my actual, total production is okay, but my free cortisol is literally off the chart and my metabolized cortisol is really low.

 The reason that happens is because the body is actually. Trying to, it's trying to get more cortisol readily available because you're in this like acute stress situation. But if you've been in that situation for a long time, then you'll actually see this flipped where your free cortisol seems low, even though your values are off the chart.

Your metabolized cortisol is going to be higher, and so the body will do this because it's trying to activate or deactivate. So sometimes if you've been under stress for too long, it's gonna deactivate the cortisol to try to get you to slow down. It's literally saying we're not gonna give you this because we need you to slow down.

Or if it hasn't been that long and you're not at that burnout state, you're just probably where I was at this point, which was like a little bit off the chart. It's saying Hey, we aren't gonna slow you down yet, but we're burning out and it's such a good eye-opener because I'm someone who, I mean y'all, I literally have a course called Your Stress Strategy.

 I know how to get the nervous system and stress hormones back reregulated, and sometimes life does life. You know what I mean? And so this was an eye-opener for me because I was actually pretty surprised at. How high mine were off the chart. And it's interesting too because when I look at somebody's cortisol chart and see okay, are they spiking in the morning?

Are they spiking in the afternoon? Are they dipping too late at night? A lot of times you'll look at that and you'll think, oh my gosh, the problem is that I'm spiking way too high in the morning, but really the problem is actually that morning spike is coming in response to something else that's happening at a different point in the cortisol pattern.

So again, that's why it's really helpful. I have a client, if I'm suspicious of like blood sugar stuff and I start seeing this cortisol pattern, I pair that with what's going on with her blood sugar and it points to a little bit of a different story than just like. your blood sugar's out of control and you're spiking in the morning.

A lot of times I'm like, oh wait, no, this is actually telling us that your blood sugar's going wacko overnight because you're not getting enough of those long acting carbs in the evening. That's just one example of how we can use this pattern of how your body's releasing stress hormones to see a little bit more of what's going on.

I don't know if I told you this too though, Leisha, that I believe when I took this test, Ben was out of town and . I'm pretty sure I was like nervous about taking the test. I didn't sleep at all, so I knew the cortisol stuff was gonna be off a little bit. But what really confirms for me that it definitely is a problem was how low my testosterone was.

[00:19:30] Leisha: And when we see this kind of like mismatch of cortisol and some of this, we're gonna try to make it all make sense, but some of it probably won't make as much sense as we think it does until we do a test for you and we go over it and it will make sense when it's your test.

We're doing our best to make it make sense, but when we see this mismatch in cortisol, where we see the high free cortisol, which is like what you need. Right now in your day, and then we see the lower metabolized cortisol that can also point to the liver and the thyroid, which is so helpful because

a lot of times we can do some detective work and see, with the other markers on this test.

And just with the, what we know about your lifestyle and your nutrition, we can see where that's coming from. And sometimes it helps us actually relate if thyroid is an issue or if liver is an issue, or a lot of times it's both because your metabolism is dysregulated and your detox pathways are dysregulated.

So I like having that information too. And a lot of times it's just confirmation of what we already knew. But again, having that on paper is really helpful for being motivated to make a change.

[00:20:32] Heather: This is why I have started really liking pairing it with a hair mineral test, is because the hair mineral test can tell us sometimes like, Hey, even though your thyroid looks fine in the. If your minerals aren't doing certain things, it means your body can't unlock your thyroid hormone.

 If you have normal thyroid hormones in the blood and then you have your dutch chest is showing one thing, and you can pair that with your hair mineral in test, it's like, oh, that makes perfect sense that your body's doing what it needs to do. It's just that it can't talk because the thyroid's not unlocking.

And one thing Leisha has mentioned a couple times is, and that's actually exactly what we saw from mine. I think thyroid liver are very clearly problems here, and so it's really easy to go straight for the liver. But one thing that I learned in taking a course on the Dutch specifically is that you want to focus in on.

Intestines, bile and kidneys. First, you wanna really focus in on your body's ability to detox at the first phase before you go and start supporting the next phase. And the reason I wanted to mention that is because you might be listening to this and really like maybe you have no interest in a Dutch, or you've done a Dutch, and everybody's really hot and big on liver support.

At least that's what I've seen. Sometimes people will go straight into support the liver, but you have to know how to support these other areas as well. And the Dutch will show you which of those areas may need more support. So it shows you things like if your body is moving down a pathway because you have too much inflammation, it will also show you what's going on with your methylation, which is how your body, how your kidneys.

Are breaking things down how your intestines and your bile are breaking things down. I actually did a podcast on the gallbladder and how you have to fix the gallbladder and you need the thyroid to unlock the gallbladder for it to work really well before you fix the liver. And that's something we can see on either these tests together or if you're doing one of these tests.

And sometimes I even have clients that like know these things are a problem, so we put it all together before we do any testing. But I just thought that was an important. Piece to highlight? 

[00:22:38] Leisha: And we see all this from the estrogen metabolism piece on the test, which again is like truly, I think what makes it so worth the money, honestly, because

I don't know that you can get this anywhere else.

[00:22:50] Heather: no, and I feel like I, it's kinda like what we said at the beginning I'll know these patterns, I'll know Okay. It makes sense that, and I think sometimes for me, if I have overwhelming symptoms, I'll be like, oh, my estrogen just must be crazy right now. And this is actually showing me like, Hey, actually no, your estrogen doesn't go super crazy.

But there is a pathway that is mainly dominated by the liver that can allow one of the pieces of estrogen breakdown in my body to go crazy. So that actually tells me like, Hey. I know it feels like things are going crazy, but how are you supporting your liver and have you already supported those other areas before you started supporting your liver?

And because I have, for me, I mainly go straight to liver because I think, and that's the other thing, is what causes all this? I don't think it's always just. Food and nutrition and lifestyle. Just from pharmacy school and like that. My background there, your liver enzymes, it shows you which pathways that your liver breaks stuff down.

A lot of those can be set genetically. And then you also have them changing epigenetically, which means that genetically you might make a certain amount of these things that help break down estrogen. But then let's say your mom. Went through something or took medications that started to change, that your body is actually gonna change in response to that as well.

So I think that's just helpful to know is are they modifiable? Like you can change what's happening. Yes. And can there sometimes be genetic pieces that you're seeing here? Yes, absolutely. So I think that helps too because sometimes it can feel like, oh my gosh, I'm doing everything. Why does this look so bad?

And it's Hey. There's definitely things you can do and you just might be someone who genetically is a little bit more prone to go down this pathway, and that's so good to know because you get to take that weighted vest off of you and know like, okay, this is just what my body needs right now.

[00:24:50] Leisha: And I think that's such a helpful perspective with the gut, with bile flow, with the thyroid. Even lymphatic system, all of those things are also important. It's not just the liver and I think that the liver is incredibly important and if you're pushing liver detox and you're constipated, you're gonna have problems.

You just

are. And so like we at a very most basic level, we have to get your gut moving. We have to get your gut less inflamed. And it doesn't mean you can't also support the liver in the process, but we really have to think about. How things are moving out of the body and how well they're moving in the moment. Because even some of these pathways can just show us like, oh, you're just reabsorbing estrogen in your gut, and so maybe we don't need to take, three special estrogen supplements. Maybe we just need to get your gut moving. And once your gut starts moving, then everything else can start working better.

So we always try to take the most simple approach, but the more information we have, the more we can personalize that, which is. Again, just what we see on this test and what we love to be able to break down with you.

[00:25:57] Heather: Looking at mine real quick and then we'll get Leisha's kind of expert opinion on how she would treat me. Is DHEA is a little bit low, testosterone's a little bit low? I prefer a pathway that shows my body does have a little more inflammation than would be ideal. My estrogens are almost . Mid range across the board, except for one of them, it's called E one.

That one's a little borderline high. So I'll look at these initially and decide when I'm working with a client, like if E two is really high, I typically think that they're getting estrogen from an outside source. Like their products or their personal care items or their makeup or maybe like bath and body work stuff or, anything like that.

And then if the E three is really high and the other markers really aren't, that's where I'm starting to think. Gut stuff, gut reabsorption or liver backup, gut sibo, like all of that stuff starts to come into play. I'm putting it together with their other pictures. That's what I look at when I first look at those initial estrogen levels.

And then we look at how everything's broken down. And so for me, my body's doing great. When it comes to pushing things down the favorable pathway, so you have a protective pathway, which is where your body breaks down estrogen into a form that's actually really great. It's easy to get out of the body.

Everybody's like, please send me down this road. , It's a paved highway that gets estrogen out, and that's what we want. Then you have this dirt, gravel road. That's really creepy and nobody wants to go down it because it is an estrogen pathway that can lead to proliferation and DNA damage of estrogenic tissue.

 those are really big words. What that means is you can get the places in your body where estrogen is replicating. Sometimes it can replicate too quickly and you need to focus a lot on antioxidants and shifting estrogen off of that road. Just to keep a little bit more balance. You'll have a lot of symptoms if your body's going down this, this is your four oh pathway.

And that's usually what I see a little bit more with endo cyst, fibroids progesterone resistance, so like silent progesterone. your progesterone levels could look great, but if you have a lot of estrogen down there, your body might not be hearing it. And then we have our 16 oh pathway, which mine is definitely.

Clogged up. And I would say that's more like a country road. It's not like a scary road you don't wanna be on, but it's definitely not the highway that's gonna get the estrogen out. And when somebody's experiencing more of that, you're gonna see a little bit more of that PCOS picture. we can see patterns with like care growth, hair loss, acne which is interesting because even for me, like I see some of that with the skin stuff, even though my testosterone's low.

So that's a little bit of a. Conundrum. If I was just like instagramming my symptoms, I would assume oh, my testosterone must be crazy, but it's really not. And that was really helpful to see there. 

[00:28:54] Leisha: And I think sometimes honestly, I'll even see people who have. Symptoms that would lead me to believe they have high estrogen and their estrogen is low, but their detox pathways are really not optimal.

Or they're only making these really strong types of estrogen. They're reabsorbing a lot of estrogen. That is when it's really helpful. I would say it's quite a bit less often that it's like a surprising result like that. But it does happen. And then it really helps us guide, what we're seeing. 

[00:29:21] Heather: I was just gonna say, when I see clients who's like estrogen is bottomed out, I see the most symptoms at ovulation. It's like when they get a rise in estrogen, they have. A lot of estrogen dominant symptoms. if you're noticing like, whoa, I have crazy symptoms around ovulation or around your period I see that a lot with my bottomed up girls.

[00:29:41] Leisha: I wanted to make sure that we hit on before we wrap up. What you saw when you put your test results in chat, GPT, and we just need to talk

about why you cannot trust chat GPT as your hormone coach. Because while it may get some things right, if you don't know which things are wrong, you could really be headed down the wrong path.

[00:30:02] Heather: I was actually laughing because I started fighting GPT about my results. So Chad, GPT is something my husband was actually telling me that everybody at his work is using it for all these different things. And I was like, let me just see you can actually take a screenshot of your Dutch test and put it in there.

And so I was like, let me just see like what it says. And. It was like dead wrong. It was like, oh, she's overloaded on the four oh H pathway. And I was literally responding like, no, I'm not. Why are you saying that? And then it was like, oh, now that I looked at it again, maybe not, let's go with this plan. It created this whole entire plan off of the Dutch that was saying like testosterone was high, inflammation was low.

It had the wrong pathway listed, and it was mapping out supplements and stuff. And some of the things it was suggesting, I was like, oh, okay. I could see that being a viable option. But then a lot of things I was like, are you looking at the same test I'm looking at? That is not what this result is saying.

And then once I told it that it was like, okay, let's take that out. And it just scratch that out of the plan. That's what I was talking to Leisha about, Hey, I think people might be using ChatGPT. I've been an expert in like the mirror or the Anita groups to go in and answer people's questions and I'll see them say oh, I put my chart, my BBT chart in the ChatGPT and it told me this stuff.

And I'm like, what? That's not accurate. , That's what actually even led us to this is like, Hey, I think we need to clarify for people because it's really dangerous. And what I did notice is, coming in with the knowledge I was able to have and to prompt it and ask specific questions like why would you recommend this over this?

What are you doing with this? Why would you dose this like this? It was giving doses that I felt weren't accurate.

[00:31:47] Leisha: To me, that's a whole other level of trust to be taking, supplement or even medication dosing information from ai. yes, it's very smart, but also , there's no personal accountability there. , It's all learning. It's so important for me. I would never have someone come to me, hand me their Dutch test and I would tell them what it means. I'm gonna ask you

literally a million questions about your stress, about your life, about your food, about your childhood. I'm gonna ask you so many questions, and then I'm gonna really take that information and think about it with your Dutch test.

And I'm not just gonna take everything at face value because. That's just not how our bodies work. When you plug that into chat GPT, even if it's oh, do you get enough sleep? Or, some little question like that, it's not going to be accurate and it's not gonna be looking at the big picture.

So I'd be

really careful about that. Even with the BBT chart. And you know what? It may be, it could tell you when you ovulated and when you didn't. It may be able to tell you that, but also maybe not because we use KA lot and it has a little bit of I dunno if you'd call it AI or not, but it has a little bit of technology that says it tries to tell you when you ovulated.

And so much of the time it's really not right.

It's not. 

Just understanding these algorithms have limitations is so important. Whether we're talking about BBT tracking or talking about just like, Hey, give me a hormone friendly meal plan, or what should I do to make my periods better? It totally depends on whether you are, a picture of estrogen dominance. It's just like a clear, you just make too much estrogen or you have detox issues, or you're not making enough progesterone, or you're making barely any estrogen and your symptoms are just showing up because your body's not using it well.

There's so many different pieces there

that we can't just spit out a basic. Answer for a question like that and have it work.

[00:33:39] Heather: And that's what I was really playing around with it . When I was doing it, , I was like, okay, if I was a client, if I was somebody who , just wanted to use this, what would I do? What would I say? What would I ask? And that's why even like I say, I got in an argument with it.

'cause I was like, what study did you use to come up with this? Why are you doing this? Tell me what physiological process in the body you're relying on for this information. And it really wasn't answering me, it was just like. Okay, we'll change it. Okay, let's go here. It was just a really interesting experience and I think that, just summarizing it all, I think that we can really come to a place.

Where with the AI conversation, I think that's already almost been done in healthcare. Healthcare became standardized. Everybody gets told the same thing. Everybody gets walked through a protocol based off of research years ago. But that's why traditional healthcare is not working, and so it's really the same principle of ai. that's why things being individualized is so important. And I think with that individualization. You have layers you can take. just wrapping up everything we talked about today, we have like your first layer, which is looking at your symptoms, looking at what your body's telling you, knowing and understanding how your body works, knowing and understanding your patterns.

And you get to go as deep with that as you want to. And I think with every layer. You're wanting to go deeper, you can really see different ways to bring healing or experience healing or address things that are deeper root causes. That's what I felt was the most helpful about the Dutch was really seeing this like sobering look at, okay, this is where you're at, this is where you can focus on the things you're doing at this level are great, and here's how you can get a little bit more targeted and get a little bit more support on board.

[00:35:27] Leisha: Absolutely. I think all of that is so true and I think also, I'm just gonna say this with ai, sometimes , we're gonna get information from it that actually will be helpful. And I really think that even. Energetically, like having someone work with you on your hormones and almost an experience of having someone mother you and help take care of you and nurture you can be so healing to your nervous system where you are not trying to figure it out on your own.

And if you're using ai, it's still on you, right? it may

spit out a plan for you, but you have to decide, is this gonna work for me? Is it not? Does this make sense? Maybe should I do it this way? How much are you really gonna trust that? And when you're able to get personalized results with a Dutch test or HTMA or any of the things we've talked about, you have an expert who's looking at it with you, with Heather and I if we are the expert and we're a little unsure, we're gonna go to another expert.

 we're not gonna leave stones unturned and just make something up, we're gonna look for more answers, but. All of that takes that pressure off of you where you can take a deep breath and we can start to work on regulating your nervous system and work on regulating your stress and sometimes just taking something like that off your plate where you are not the one constantly trying to figure out your own problems.

That's why when Heather got this Dutch test, she sent it to me two seconds after she got it and she's like, what the heck is going on? Even though you can clearly tell she knows what's going on with her test, but when it's your own test, it's just when you're taking care of yourself or even your family. As much as you have, the sovereignty and the intuition to be the one doing that, it is so helpful sometimes to just be able to find someone that you trust to work with you and not to just tell you what to do or take over or anything like that. That's not what we're talking about here, but you find someone to partner with who you can trust to help guide you. It truly. It is just like an energetic shift where sometimes you have the safety to heal, even just with making that decision and being able to say this is a season, I'm gonna focus on that, and I'm getting someone to help me. And I have a time limit on it because that's what it takes a lot of times.

If you're doing it on your own, I speak from experience here. Even if I technically know the things, if I'm doing it on my own, it's so easy to not do it. Even just from that aspect, I think that's why having the the big picture and then also the support and someone to guide you can be so helpful.

[00:37:56] Heather: And I think it's so easy to do it from like a stressful place, 

I also just think it was important to add, 'cause you said this, and I know it's true, that yes, we go to other experts, but I know in both of our practices, when we have clients that like. We're stuck on, we pray over our clients we are, like asking the Lord to show us, to show them to open things up or to show us if something's missing.

And I just think that's important to note because that's something that will never be replaced on any scale of an expert, whether it's AI or the best practitioner you have out there.

[00:38:32] Leisha: And I also will say I fully believe that God brings my clients to me. Yes, I have a podcast. Yes, I do some marketing, but also I think that he brings people who are ready to find it and who you know, are ready to work with me. That's even why I am not, I don't feel like I'm very aggressive with any of that because. I really believe that the Lord's gonna bring the right people to me at the right time. He's always provided for my family, and I don't wanna be going out and like finding clients who are not meant to be working with me.

Because the worst case scenario for me is that I can't help you. I don't want to just have a client that I can't help because not only, does that feel bad for both of us, but it also, can essentially make the path to healing longer if it's not the right fit.

I absolutely believe that. And yeah, I do pray over my clients and pray like, what are we missing here sometimes? And I think that really is important and it's important to know.

[00:39:28] Heather: Yeah, so good.

[00:39:30] Leisha: Okay. We're gonna wrap this up and we'd love to hear your feedback questions on the Dutch test or other tests, and we will see you next time.