Why We Lose Libido As We Age

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Show Summary: “Women have such delicate hormones. They experience shifts at different times that make them feel that their body is at war against them.”

 

Women are natural nurturers. They are great at multitasking, particularly in taking care of their children, working, and doing household chores. But as they age, they experience different issues in their bodies, such as weight gain, loss of libido, and loss of energy.

 

These issues cause mood changes, difficulty to stay in shape, and usually have crazy cravings. And it doesn't only happen with moms, even in single and younger women, which is quite alarming, especially for the younger generation.

 

In this episode, Juanique and Gina discuss the other possible reasons why you don't feel like yourself because of these shifts in your body, their personal experiences and how you can prevent it from happening. Listen as they talk about the program they created for you to heal yourself using the tools they have in the roadmap.

 

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Exceptional Highlight:

 

• There can be a time and a place for cardio, but from a hormone balance perspective, keeping it short and doing things like Yoga, Pilates, strength training might be a lot better.
• If your hormones are all over the place, you should take an honest look at your stress. If you're stressed, that's going to take priority, and all your other hormones will drop.
• Sleeping resets everything; it brings inflammation down.

 

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Show Highlights: 

 

Why do we gain weight and lose our libido as we age?

 

Gina 2:14

 

• I think for me, it was a combination of trying to heal my body from birth control, being under so much stress. I remember waking up in the morning, and I don't even feel like myself anymore. I don't feel positive anymore. And I was using caffeine and coffee to get me into a good mood.

 

How our hormones and organs work together

 

Gina 11:05

 

• The main ones that I'm thinking about are your sex hormones. You have your estrogen or progesterone, your testosterone. These hormones are like a symphony. Your estrogen, that's what's going to drive you for reproduction, that's what's going to support you to have sex & have a baby; that very juicy hormone there. Your testosterone is more like your metabolism.

 

What happens to your cortisol level when you're not sleeping?

 

Juanique 27:22

 

• When you're not sleeping well, you will have a higher cortisol level in the morning.

 

Gina  27:45

 

• There's a research study where they deprived mice of sleep, and I can't remember how long it took. But after a certain amount of time, they all get diabetes.

 

What’s inside the Gutsy Health Membership?

 

Juanique 46:17

 

• Gina and I have put together inside The Gutsy Health Membership these incredible units that deep dive into the dysfunctions, and we give you tools to help you become the expert in your own healing.
• Every month, each member is emailed a discount code to use on Provo health or Honestly Essential, so you get 10% off of everything all the time.

 

Transcript (DOWNLOAD)

 

 

This is a Gutsy Health Podcast with Juanique and Tristin Roney.

 

Juanique Roney

You guys, welcome back to the Gutsy Health Podcast. I have my co-host, Gina Worful with me. Welcome, Gina.

 

Gina Worful

Hey everybody.

 

Juanique Roney

Today, we're going to be talking about hormones and how women kind of just lose their groove. Why is it that as we age, we gain weight, we lose our libido, we just don't feel like ourselves. We kind of morph into what I feel like, feels like a troll, you know? And it's like where did my excitement for life go? Where's my momentum? This is what a lot of women complain about and have issues with, and when I did my poll on Instagram, this is what you guys wanted to talk about. So we're going to freestyle and go with it. Right?

 

Gina Worful

I don't know about you, Jaunique, but I think I've seen so many women who would come in and they're like, I just  see that healthy eating plan. It seem like if you could just give me a healthy eating plan, I'll be great, and they keep talking. And then and I'm like I don't feel like myself anymore, and I don't know why I can't sleep at night, and I just like I don't know where this belly fat came from. I never had anymore. Where the heck did my libido go? And what is happening to me? And you can just see it like building up almost ready to cry, and I think that that's the most common thing that I think women in particular are like, what the heck happened? Where did I lose this juicy spark? Where did it go? And I think so often it comes back to hormones. And so I think that this will be something that resonates with so many people.

 

Juanique Roney

So many people. You know, and that's so true because it does, something happens, something shifts in our bodies, and I'm seeing it in younger and younger people where this is happening. I mean, even 20 year olds that are dealing with really severe health issues, and I'm curious, where do you think it starts? Where did things go wrong?

 

Gina Worful

Gosh, you know, I think like as women, we have such delicate hormones that I think people experience shifts at different times. What I hear the most is a lot of women who are like once I had kids like nothing was the same, thing shifted. I don't have kids yet, but I notice that for me, like when I hit a peak time of stress in my life, that shifted so much of my body's physiology. And then all of a sudden I went from feeling great in my body and like everything is working like it should to like when I hit that peak state of stress, it felt like my body was at war against me. It was so hard to actually feel like I could stay in shape and to not have these crazy cravings and to be able to sleep well at night, and I actually lost my menstrual cycle for like a year.

 

Juanique Roney

Wow.

 

Gina Worful

And my hormones was so wonky and all over the place, and we could definitely talk about, you know, birth control. I was coming off of birth control, so that screwed up my hormones. But I think for me it was like a combination of trying to heal my body from birth control, being in so much stress. I remember waking up in the morning being like, what is this body like? I don't even feel like myself anymore. I don't feel positive anymore, and I was actually using caffeine and coffee to try to get me into a good mood. I was trying to use that to boost my mood and give me that spark back, because I used to have this excitement, this spark.

 

Juanique Roney

Yeah.

 

Gina Worful

Very different attitude towards life that I was really struggling, and I think the source of it was my hormones were all over the place, and now that my hormones are back on track, everything has changed.

 

Juanique Roney

Like you're a different person, completely different. Isn't it amazing like hormones are like they're almost like our life force, and you used the word earlier as you were starting our delicate hormones, because they really are. They're really sensitive and they're really delicate and they need this really sweet, juicy environment in order to thrive. And when we don't have that sweet, juicy environment, I always use the example of if a boat is sinking and you have all this stuff in the boat, you want the boat to sink slower so you start throwing things off of the boat and you're throwing like the nonessentials, right? Well, when your body boat is sinking, you're throwing up the nonessentials like hormones. You don't need hormones to survive, so you throw them off.  Your body is going to keep the things to keep you alive. You don't need hormones to keep you alive. You can be alive and miserable. You can be alive and tired, you know, so the body will like the hormones are like the first sacrificial lambs, oh, we don't have resources for you anymore. Goodbye, hormones. We still need to send juices to the heart and the brain and the gut, you know.

 

Gina Worful

I know. Well, that's why so many people are like, how do I get these hormones up? What do I do to get these hormones back? And they're not looking at like is their body in a survival stress?

 

Juanique Roney

Yes.

 

Gina Worful

If you're in survival, your body's not going to want to make hormones that support reproduction. If you're not in a safe place to wear, let's say you would die because a baby is too much stress that your body is to be healthy enough and safe enough to be able to carry a baby.

 

Juanique Roney

Yeah.

 

Gina Worful

So if you're stressed in a survival state, your body is going to just completely drop those juicy hormones that make you want to reproduce.

 

Juanique Roney

Right. You're talking about sympathetic. I taught a class yesterday and I spoke a lot about sympathetic dominance, how our bodies are in the sympathetic, dominant state where we're in fight or flight all the time, and when you're in fight or flight all the time, your body doesn't know that you're stressed at work or you're stressed with children. Your body and your brain is like, we're running from a bear, let's run. It's not going to prioritize sexy time. It's not going to be like, oh, let's run from a bear and connect with our partner and make babies. It doesn't do that. You're either connecting with your partner, making babies, or you're running from a bear. And the majority of us, like our bodies, feel like they're running from a bear all the time, and we're not we're just sitting in front of a computer reading news articles and magazines about really traumatic events around the globe, and our bodies are like, oh, my gosh, this is terrible. We're running from a bear.

 

Gina Worful

And I think that's a great point, too, how you just said, and you're sitting there reading a news article, reading all these things, because there are so many women I talked to who are like, oh, no, I'm actually really happy. I have a great family. I have a great my life. I have great friends. I actually have a really great life. I'm really happy. I don't think that you're talking about me, and when they look at just you wake up in the morning, have you gotten eight hours of sleep? If not, those stress hormones are going to be wrapped up. You know, are you checking your phone and emails? Are you getting the kids off to school? Now,thinking about those to do's heading off to work? Even if you're doing other things, it's like got to do this got to do that got the groceries, got a plan things. That is triggering that fight or flight system. So sometimes you don't think that we're in that survival state, but then we measure the stress hormones and they're through the roof, even if you're happy, but you're just really busy and have a demanding life.

 

Juanique Roney

Right. So hormones need one of two things. They need us to be in a parasympathetic state that is the rest and digest state. That's super crucial that we are not overstressed, we're not overburdened. We don't have that feeling of running from the bear all the time but we also need nutrition too. And I want to show those because I was doing some training of my coaches this weekend and we're talking about patterns to look for in our intake form. I ask, did you have menstrual irregularities, PMS as a teenager? And one of them asked why do you ask that? And for me, if you started having hormonal issues and these are issues, guys like painful menses when you're 12, that's a problem. Right? That tells me that your hormones are actually not in balance. So if you started having hormonal imbalances in your early teens, it means the foundation for your hormones was not set up properly. Think of it like a Jenga tower. You know, when a Jenga towers really, really stable, it has all its blocks. There's very little holes.  You haven't pulled out a lot of those Jenga pieces. OK, really stable. You blow on it. It's not going to blow over. It's solid. Well, if we're not eating the right nutrition, if we don't have the right stress, if we haven't created a firm Jenga Tower Foundation and we have a lot of Jenga blocks that have been pulled out, that tower is supersensitive. It's going to blow over. It's going to be like you just look at it and it starts to lean, right? Well, that like whole ish Jenga tower, that's PMS in your teens. That's menstrual irregularities. That right there nutritionally is not a foundation that is going to withstand stress later on in life. Do you see what I did there?

 

Gina Worful

Yep, I got you.

 

Juanique Roney

If we have a very, very, very sensitive Jenga tower and then you have a baby in your 20s, that Jenga tower just completely collapsed. Right?

 

Gina Worful

And I also think a good thing to know is that birth control, if it makes your symptoms go away, that doesn't mean it corrected your hormones.

 

Juanique Roney

Yes.

 

Gina Worful

So a lot of people are like, no, I don't have hormones issues. Once they started birth control, it fixed everything.

 

Juanique Roney

Oh, my gosh.

 

Gina Worful

It's a good thing to know that if you had hormonal issues need to birth control, it masked the hormone problem and it masked your symptoms but didn't actually fix the problem.

 

Juanique Roney

Do you want to go a little bit into birth control? Is there anything else you want to say? Or should we just have a separate podcast on birth control? Because, holy cow, birth control, you guys, not your friend. It's not your friend. I don't want to be judgmental, but if you have to be on birth control for something, there is something fundamentally wrong that needs to be seen to.

 

Gina Worful

Or if you've been on birth control for a long time or if you were on birth control for a long time, you just really may be the type of person who really needs some hormone support, so if you started taking birth control to fix some of the symptoms, bad PMS, bad cramping, if you did that to fix those symptoms, you actually might need more hormone support than someone who never did. Or if you got off of birth control, you actually might need extra support for your thyroid, for your hormones. They might be really wonky. So we'll probably need to go into birth control on it's a whole other thing, but it's a good thing to know that it can really mess up your hormones, and you might need extra healing to be able to get back on track.

 

Juanique Roney

Exactly. So let's circle back to because we keep saying hormones. Which hormones are we talking about specifically, Gina? Do you want to go into that and how they all kind of talk to each other like all these organ systems?

 

Gina Worful

Well, the main ones that I'm thinking here is your sex hormones, like we have your estrogen, your Progesterone, your testosterone. I like to think of all these hormones as like a symphony. So like your estrogen, that's what's going to that's what's going to drive you for reproduction. That's what's going to support being able to have sex, have a baby, that very juicy hormone there. Your testosterone is more like your metabolism. That's where we get our strength, our focus, attention, and your progesterone is like your calming hormone. That's like the nice soothing that's like the motherly hormone. That's the one that keeps you calm, keeps you from getting anxiety. It helps you sleep at night, and they're all  really important to stay in balance, and then there's also your thyroid. I like to think of that as being like your body's thermostat. It's making sure that everything is like on track in harmony. So your metabolism is in harmony with your body, your digestion, your circulation your thinking. Everything is. Keep your eyes keeping homeostasis. And then your cortisol. A lot of people have heard of that hormone. That's like the body's fight or flight hormone. So those are kind of like your main basic, I think, hormones that all work together, that cortisol is responsible for your attention. So we always hear high cortisol is really bad. Well, we want normal cortisol. We don't want it too high. We don't want it too low. We want to just. It's like the Goldilocks. If it's too high, we get a lot of anxiety. We were in that fight or flight state, like you said. If it's too low, then we're very tired. We don't have enough focus. So we want, like, just the right amount and they're all working together. Anything, any other things or thoughts that you explanations you want to throw in Juqnique?

 

Juanique Roney

I always think of hormones as like the four legs of a chair and the fourth, so you mentioned thyroid sex hormones and like the adrenal, the cortisol. My fourth one that I like to throw in there is blood sugar. So like the pancreatic hormones, because the insulin and glucagon, they directly correlate and interact with especially cortisol, but also the thyroid and sex hormones to some degree, and so when you have like these sugar spikes and these sugar dips and these sugar spikes in these sugar dips, it not only drives cortisol, but it also increases inflammation, and inflammation is very, very antagonistic towards all of the other hormones. Remember how we said the hormones are sweet and gentle? These sugar spikes and dips do not make a sweet and gentle environment? And so it's almost like you're creating this inflammation is just burning up your hormones, and now we have these really unhealthy hormonal patterns and pathways happening and that are leading to the wrong ratios of hormones, because all these hormones, they have to be in these really beautiful synchronistic like ratios, but if you upset the apple cart, if you have a inflamed stage, if you have high cortisol, these ratios are going to start shifting and changing and driving different disorders like inflammation, weight gain, certain cancers even. So we have to have the right environment and these hormones all contribute to that environment, especially insulin and glucagon.

 

Gina Worful

And I think a lot of the issues that people are having that they're now accepting as just a normal part of life, but if you're feeling this range of intense emotions and you're like, why am I so weepy?  I can't sleep at night or why do I have this stubborn weight loss? It does not want to just fudge. A lot of these things are just signs that something is off and it can be a lot easier when you get him back in harmony.

 

Gina Worful

Exactly. So what would be your step one? Let's say someone comes to you and they're weepy. They can't lose weight. They want to lose weight. They have no sex drive. They're tired, tired, but wired. What would be your number one thing for them to check off their box?

 

Gina Worful

Well, a couple things. One thing that you and I was talking about is it so many people want like what is that one pill? What is that one herb or that thing that's going to like that? I heard that story is what's going to bring up my Progesterone and that'll fix everything, but let's talk about the foundations of hormone balance. So no one foundation of hormone balance, you've got to be sleeping.

 

Juanique Roney

Right, yes.

 

Gina Worful

Your hormones can't get in balance if you're not sleeping. So and of course, it's kind of like chicken or the egg because you need enough hormones to be able to go to sleep and then you need enough sleep to be able to properly keep your hormones in balance. But but if you know that, like, you're cutting corners on your sleep, you're staying up late at night, you're not practicing good sleep habits, your cortisol is going to be revved up the next day and everything else is going to drop. And then the next step I like to take is how are you eating? Is your eating keeping your blood sugar stable? And so you were talking about like how blood sugar swings, how important that is and how that affects everything else. And so I really like to take a look at are they keeping their blood sugar stable throughout the day? And I think one of the most common things that I see is a lot of women are fasting for a long time and it's putting their body in too much of a stress state, and then when they eat, they eat  carbs, like fruit and are just making up their blood sugar, and it's not to say that nobody can eat a piece of fruit, but for some people who have these high stress hormones and they need blood sugar stability is a priority and may not actually be the best snack or the best way to go.

 

Juanique Roney

What would be a good snack like vegetables, healthy fats, proteins, like start with that in the morning, preferably. What is your opinion on women and fasting? Because I actually have a bone to pick with the fasting community and I've mentioned this a few times. We're fasting is taught to us a lot by men that work out a ton,  and I always complain and I'm like, they have one hormonal cycle and it repeats every single day. We have that same hormonal cycle and a sex hormonal cycle that makes us feel like crazy people. So we have two hormonal cycles. Implementing a fasting protocol can work for some women, but not all of us. And so we have these men that are telling us, oh, you just need to beef up and  fast, and it's like, no.

 

Gina Worful

Discipline.

 

Juanique Roney

Right. Discipline. When you go through a menstrual cycle, then you can lecture me on how to fast. But, you know, the thing is, like a lot of us women we can't do that because of these two different hormonal cycles that are different throughout the month. And so we're going to maybe certain times of the month fasting feels great and other times, fasting is going to tank you and you're going to feel terrible and you're going to run to chocolate cake..

 

Gina Worful

I think it's all about knowing yourself and really not just taking what is the next latest and greatest trend, but knowing yourself, because for some people who are very resilient to stress and their hormones are in a good balance, maybe they can handle some fasting, but what I commonly see is women who are so frustrated that they just want to lose weight so bad and their stress hormones are so high and then they're fasting, and if you think it just makes them so fasting is another think of like what would put you in a survival state. So that's going to rev up our instincts to say, OK, we need our stress hormone cortisol to be higher and cortisol is responsible for putting sugar into your bloodstream and storing belly fat.

 

Juanique Roney

Yeah.

 

Gina Worful

So while fasting might work well for somebody who has really great hormonal balance and a stress hormones are high, I think one of the most common things that I see, it's one of the first steps that I take when somebody is like, I have this stubborn belly fat and I've been fasting, what's going on? I check their stress hormones and I'm like, oh, OK, this is interesting. You have really high cortisol in the morning and you're fasting and a lot of time doing caffeine, and that's like dumping gasoline on a fire that you're just revving up your cortisol, you're revving up your blood sugar, and then all those hormones like your thyroid that do allow you to lose weight are really dialed back because your body is like in the survival state and want to have them shift their focus and do things to reassure their body that they're safe. We do a little bit of breakfast. They're constantly doing things that are actually reassuring that their body, that they're safe. Now the body shifts its physiology to actually lose weight because it's safe to do that.

 

Juanique Roney

Right. I love that, because it's safe to do that now. Another thing that people often don't realize is we think that it's calories in, calories out. Right?

 

Gina Worful

Right.

 

Juanique Roney

So we're going to restrict calories, which actually puts you in a sympathetic dominant state again. So now you're stressed, which means cortisol is going up. You're hitting the gym, so you're adding more stress, and a lot of the time exercising should be like you stress it should have hormesis effect. But when we are in the sympathetic dominant state, we're hitting the gym hard. We're just driving up that cortisol more and more and more, our bodies don't feel safe, now we're storing things, and really what we should be doing is actually backing off and being lighter and doing less things. So let me go back to the calorie thing. So calories in and calories out. I'm just going to restrict my calories and I'm going to hit the gym. OK, more stress because you're restricting calories, more stress because you're hitting the gym and now your body's pooped but then when people start to count macros, they totally forget about micros. And this is really important, guys, because you're micronutrients. These are so important, and we get a bunch a bunch of these micronutrients, these vitamins in these minerals from fruits and vegetables and certain healthy oils and proteins. So these micronutrients give our body the fuel necessary to actually handle our hormones properly because our hormones, if you guys don't know this, I'm going to teach you. Your hormones have to go down certain pathways for them to turn from hormone to hormone B to make you lose weight, and a lot of times it's a lot of pathways. So hormone A needs to go down pathway A, B, C, D, E, F, G to get to Z so that you can start utilizing your adipose tissue, your fat tissue as calories. How does it go down these pathways? It needs micronutrients, right? We need the vitamins. We need the minerals. We need these cofactors for our hormones to convert, to have these enzymes necessary for us to use our fat. So if you're restricting calories and you're counting the calories, you're counting your macros, but all your macros are like cookies and bread and butter and there's no nutritional density in there. You're going to keep driving your weight up because you don't have the resources necessary to give your body the ability and the enzymes to break down your fat for calories.

 

Gina Worful

I think that that's such a great point in that low cholesterol fad phase.

 

Juanique Roney

Oh, gosh.

 

Gina Worful

Created a lot of hormone issues for women, because when you look at the process of making hormones, it actually starts with cholesterol.

 

Juanique Roney

Cholesterol is the backbone to sex hormones. You guys did you know that? So everyone's like saturated fat is bad for you. You guys well, no. It's saturated fats are really good for you. You know, cholesterol is really great for you. We did a whole podcast episode last year about about fat and about cholesterol. Oh, big fat lies or something like that. I think we called it big fat lies.

 

Gina Worful

I like that.

 

Juanique Roney

That was Justin's idea. He comes up with other good ideas.

 

Gina Worful

That's great.

 

Juanique Roney

And you guys,  fat can stabilize blood sugar. It can keep you satiated for longer. It gives you nutrition needed for healthy hormones, and then same thing goes with like vegetables, cruciferous, vegetables, specifically. Your hormones love cruciferous vegetables. Your sex hormones love it and your liver loves the fiber from it so it can help you detox estrogen. We're actually detoxing estrogen every day. So if we're not eating fiber to detoxify because fiber, you guys is necessary for the liver to dump its toxins into the fiber so you can poop it out. If we're not eating high amounts of fiber, we're not detoxing. The estrogen is necessary and then we're just storing it and we're recycling it, and now we're in this like estrogen dominance and now we're gaining weight and now our hormones are messed up and now we have inflammation and now we're driving, you know, estrogen dominant cancers. So you guys, can you see how important it is to to get rid of this idea that a calorie is just a calorie, just a calorie? No, it's not about the macros anymore. It's actually it's really about the micronutrients. It's about the micronutrients, like driving healthy hormone ratios and helping your body detoxify those hormones that it doesn't need anymore. Do you have anything else to say about that, Gina?

 

Gina Worful

I think that is spot on.

 

Juanique Roney

Amazing. What else if people are having an issue, losing weight, gaining energy, what else would you recommend?

 

Gina Worful

Well, I think that the number one place that you really need to start is by looking at those stress hormones, and maybe we should talk a little bit about the HPA access.

 

Juanique Roney

Let's do it.

 

Gina Worful

Talk about how that influences everything else. OK, so we had somebody in Instagram's like talk about H{A access.

 

Juanique Roney

We will explain to people what HPA actually stands for.

 

Gina Worful

Yeah, it's our whole system, the hypothalamus, pituitary adrenal and sometimes I don't know if you've heard some people throw in the HPA thyroid gonad and that just kind of pulls it all together, all of those hormone systems and how everything's tied together. But the H is the hypothalamus.

 

Juanique Roney

And that's the brain.

 

Gina Worful

That's up in the brain.

 

Juanique Roney

Yeah. As you talk, I'm going to start simplifying it because these are a lot of buzzwords that you're using right now. So the hypothalamus is brain like the control center. Keep going.

 

Gina Worful

Yeah. So now think it right, so think of up in the brain, that's where we're first starting. And so this is really important because everybody's like, oh my gosh, cortisol, the adrenals, the adrenals, the adrenals. But like, what's actually upstream from that that's the most important is the hypothalamus. So your hypothalamus is like taking in this information and it's like scanning surveilling where is there an alarm for our body security system? And so maybe all of a sudden somebody's upset you and your hypothalamus gets this information and then that's going to send a signal to your pituitary gland and then your pituitary.

 

Juanique Roney

Which is in your brain, too.

 

Gina Worful

Right yeah. Thank you. So we're still in the brain and then the pituitary sends a signal all the way down to your adrenals, which are there, kind of like the size of dice, like two little things that said right above the kidneys. So it starts up in the brain with the hypothalamus, the pituitary and then down to the adrenals, and by the time you're adrenals, get that signal, their job is to release that stress hormone cortisol. And when that happens, your body's entire physiology shifts. So you shift from this calm you're happy, you have willpower. You've got a good digestion going. You go from good metabolism. Your body is like in this really safe, thriving state. And then it shifts to what you're talking about, that sympathetic mode where your body shifts into survival mode. Now, all of a sudden, once cortisol is released, think about anything that puts you in like that survival state. So maybe your heart starts racing, blood pressure goes up. You really get like zoned in on what you're doing, but you don't really have really good clear thinking. You're just kind of like you're down to your basic functions for survival. And so a lot of people notice that their willpower goes down because the body is like we need food for survival. So you're like craving sugar and carbs and in your body is actually kicking out sugar into your bloodstream. So it's interesting that I see is sometimes people go on a low carb diet and they still have high blood sugar because their cortisol is just dump sugar into their bloodstream.

 

Juanique Roney

Can I talk about that as well?

 

Gina Worful

Yeah.

 

Juanique Roney

When you're not sleeping well, you will have a higher cortisol level in the morning. So when you go to bed late. So how many of us go to bed late? Or we're studying up late or something. If you go to bed late, your cortisol is going to be a little bit elevated in the morning. Do that over months, potentially years, and that cortisol is going to keep hiking up, up, up, up, up.

 

Gina Worful

I love you said that because there's actually a research study where they deprive mice of sleep and I can't remember how long it takes, but after a certain amount of time, they all get diabetes.

 

Gina Worful

Oh, my gosh. Are you serious? That is really intense.

 

Gina Worful

I will be interesting to look back at the details of that research study, but you deprive them of sleep and they get diabetes.

 

Juanique Roney

But I'm not surprised at all by that, actually, because that's just the mechanism. The body is under immense amounts of stress. We don't recognize how much healing happens when we're sleeping. Sleeping is so important, you guys. It resets everything. It brings inflammation down, healing happens. I think something like 70 to 80 percent of your healing happens when you're sleeping. So if we're not sleeping, we're not healing and repairing. If we're not healing and repairing, we have more inflammation down the line. If we have more inflammation, cortisol goes up and it's just this big, vicious cycle where it's just this positive feedback loop of like badness. There's my very technical term for you.

 

Gina Worful

You get a positive feedback loop of badness.

 

Juanique Roney

We're going to name the podcast that positive feedback of badness.

 

Gina Worful

So it's pretty good.

 

Juanique Roney

Thanks. So, you guys, we really need to figure out how we can sleep, how we can get our stress response down, because if you're not sleeping, it's because you are in that sympathetic, dominant state. I want to share something. So I was actually talking about weight loss on my stories and I was saying I ask people how many of you have a hard time losing weight? And over I think 1500 people voted and it was eighty. Let me get this right. Eighty eight percent of people voted that they have a hard time losing weight, and then further along in my stories, I asked, how many of you eat eight servings of vegetables a day? It was twelve percent. It was the complete inverse. Isn't that amazing that there was such a strong correlation between and maybe it wasn't the exact same people voting the same way, but I just found those numbers really symbolic and fascinating that 88 percent of people are having a hard time getting eight servings of fruits and vegetables or eight servings of vegetables a day into their diet. And vegetables are so, so crucial for having healthy hormone function, healthy brain function. You know, when we are in a stress response,  e actually need these antioxidants to help us do the damage control while we're in the stress response. And so stress management sleep like getting the vegetables in. It really does make a difference and a lot of people think like eight servings of vegetables. Oh, my gosh, that's so daunting. No, that's about as servings, about half a cup. So we're looking at like four cups of veggies. You can do half of that in a green smoothie a day. That's it. That's easy, and then you can do the other half at dinner and then you can maybe snack on some carrots and cucumbers and celery throughout the day. It's actually really simple. And if you're going to just make one change, I always tell people, just do one green smoothie a day. That's it. You know, maybe that green smoothie will turn into green smoothie and vegetable snacks and maybe that green smoothie and the veggie snacks will turn into green smoothie, veggie snacks and some grilled veggies for dinner on the side.

 

Gina Worful

Are going to do just a green smoothie class, like just one to one.

 

Juanique Roney

Oh, I should. Oh my gosh, that's such a good idea. There's actually a hand out in the part A membership of things to add to your green smoothie, but I think a video and a demonstration is actually a really great idea. And I actually posted in my IGTV why some people actually react really badly to green smoothies? Well, it's because of digestion issues, oxalis, you know. So, yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm going to add that to the membership. Thank you.

 

Gina Worful

So what's your when people do have sensitivities or issues to it, do you have an alternative for them or is it just it's not for you?

 

Juanique Roney

So what I normally tell them to do is steam their greens and start with one green at a time because spinach superhigh oxalis, and some people react really bad to Oxlade. Some people just don't do well with them. So steam some kale and throw it in steam some chard even though it's pretty high, throw it in. Steam the greens first and do more fruits than greens for now and then as your body adapts and gets used to like digesting that fiber, then you can change the ratio. So let's say your ratio was like forty percent greens, 60 percent fruits. Well then we can change it to fifty and fifty and then we can change it over time to sixty percent greens forty percent fruits, because we have to have a digestive tract that has been primed and trained to digest these foods, you can't just like do it overnight. And so when we start priming and training the GI tract and you're microbial species, whatever microbes you have down there that help you break down fiber, once you start training them and feeding them and growing them, then you can give them more and more and more and more and more. So it just takes some training and time and patience.

 

Gina Worful

I also love that you said how it's going to feed those microbes, because I think a lot of people underestimate how important a healthy gut is to have hormone balance.

 

Juanique Roney

Yes. Yes, 100 percent. Well, and here's the thing, too, is we know that the microbiome actually communicates with hormones. We know that we don't have a ton of literature on the exact mechanism as to how, but we know when you have a healthy microbial balance, it will directly correlate to healthy hormonal balances too.

 

Gina Worful

And with the thyroid, too, so a lot of our thyroid hormones,  we have this T for. So our thyroid makes that thyroid hormone T for it. It's not to get to that active form--

 

Juanique Roney

T three.

 

Gina Worful

T three, and a lot of that actually happens in the gut.

 

Juanique Roney

In the gut.

 

Gina Worful

Realize that they need a healthy gut to be able to train bio-fuels form,  the T four to the T three and then what will blocks that transformation is our stress hormone cortisol.

 

Juanique Roney

Oh I didn't know that. What? Oh my gosh.

 

Gina Worful

Cortisol can block that conversion of T four and T three.

 

Juanique Roney

Well do you know what else cortisol blocks? It blocks a pathway for serotonin and dopamine. They actually use the same pathway. So if the pathway is being consumed by cortisol--

 

Gina Worful

I didn't know that, interesting.

 

Juanique Roney

I learned this from Dr. Ann Barter and one of our other podcast episodes. She says, if that pathway is being used by cortisol, you are not utilizing serotonin and dopamine, which are your motivational hormones and your happy hormones.

 

Gina Worful

That makes sense.

 

Juanique Roney

Isn't that amazing? Cortisol is not our friend when it's in excess, you guys, it's not.

 

Gina Worful

It's kind of that one thing that affects everything.

 

Juanique Roney

Yes. Oh, my gosh. One hundred percent. So what else do you think we should have people really be mindful of when it comes to their hormone health?

 

Gina Worful

So kind of circling back around to where we started? I think that if your hormones are all over the place and you don't know where to start, no one is taking an honest look at your stress, and because that stress hormone cortisol. Think of that is, like we said, your emergency where that's like your body's emergency hormone. So if you're stressed, that's going to take priority and all your other hormones are going to drop.

 

Juanique Roney

Right.

 

Gina Worful

So instead of trying to correct all the other ones, progesterone and estrogen and testosterone in your thyroid hormones, those a lot of the time will naturally come back up when you normalize cortisol. So I think that's a really great place to start is look in your stress hormones, because if those are high, it's so hard to get everything else back in balance.

 

Juanique Roney

I was going to talk about exercising because I know earlier I spoke about exercising. But finish what you were going to say and then let's transition back to exercising.

 

Gina Worful

Well, I was just going to say that some of the other key things are there's some key things to like a hormone diet that is really good for hormones. And one of the things that you touched on was getting in those fibers, getting any good veggies, things for a healthy gut. And I think one thing that really people underestimate that is so powerful that I love is the cruciferous veggies.

 

Juanique Roney

Yeah, cruciferous..

 

Gina Worful

Those cruciferous veggies, those compounds that they have in there are so helpful for detoxing hormones properly and keeping them in balance.

 

Juanique Roney

100 percent. I do want to talk about exercise, though, because I know we said don't you ever exercise. But there is a difference between cardio and weight lifting because cardio, you guys is actually really, really hard on the body that is already stressed. So if you find that you are exercising and you're getting more tired and your recovery time is getting longer and longer and longer, you're probably stressing out your adrenals. You're probably upping that cortisol and creating more inflammation. So what I want to recommend to people is actually doing more weight training,  and again, don't like push it too hard, don't push it too soft, but like weight training, which doesn't require that intense cardio output's can be just as effective, if not more so down the line. And exercising is really important to actually help with blood sugar metabolism. Remember how we said the blood sugar ups and downs, exercising can help, like just level that out even more and help control that a little bit better, and I actually did this when I had Grave's disease. You guys, Grave's Disease is hypothyroidism to the nth degree. Like you are so revved up, like you don't know what's happening and I felt like I was going to have a heart attack like almost every day. But what I would do is I take these really light weights and I would just use some like bicep curls, and I would do like very few squats because I almost had to burn off that cortisol.  Gina, do you know what is happening on a molecular level when people are exercising and burning off cortisol, burning off that stress? Do you know how to explain that to people?

 

Gina Worful

No

 

Juanique Roney

No. OK, I don't either. When you are exercising, it is helping to level down that immense amount of cortisol spikes. So but again, doing it within reason. Too much exercise spikes cortisol, too little exercise doesn't do anything, right amount it'll help bring that cortisol down because I found the days where I was exercising when I just felt like I was so amped up and so revved up, just doing a little bit of exercising just help me to burn off that cortisol really level out my mood, level out my symptoms. When I tried to run on Grave's Disease, I would get sick the next day and strep throat almost every single time. And it was literally like a quarter mile. That was it. Now I would run a quarter mile, come back. I thought I was dying. And the next day I'd wake up with strep throat and that happened to me three times. And disclaimer, I've actually never had strep throat until I got Graves disease, never in my life.

 

Gina Worful

I think that I also this is something that's so common that I see people who are trying to lose weight. Their stress hormones are high and they're doing like an hour on the treadmill, you know, where there's a lot of people who are training for these long races, like a half marathon or a marathon and they're like, I didn't lose a pound.

 

Juanique Roney

Right. Right. In fact, you're probably setting yourself up for bigger failure down the line where you actually going to gain weight because you are overstressing your body and your joints and your hormones.

 

Gina Worful

And that's where it's easy to underestimate the power of Pilates and yoga. We're just moving our body and we are still building muscle and we're burning calories and we're doing thing, but we're not stressing out our body so much. Our body is actually safe to lose weight.

 

Juanique Roney

Yeah.

 

Gina Worful

So there can be a time and a place for cardio, but from a hormonal balance perspective, keeping it short and really doing things like the yoga, the Pilates, the strength training might be a lot better.

 

Juanique Roney

And just for this time, remember, it's not forever, you guys times and seasons for everything. One last thing I want to add before we kind of wrap this up is how you go about your healing process, because a lot of .People feel really like they feel super abandoned by their bodies and betrayed when these kinds of things happen. And I was talking with a client today about like her body breaking down in her while she was running. She mentioned she's like I just felt so betrayed and I was so angry at my body, and I said, maybe your body was just calling for connection because you were being so militant about. I have to run 10 miles, and your body was saying, actually, I don't like running 10 miles, can we just not drill, drill, drill and blast the music? And can we just connect again? Can we come back into balance? Can you stop beating me into submission? You guys, oftentimes when our bodies have broken down on us because they don't love you, it's because you're not listening to them. And the truth of the matter is this, we haven't been listening for a really long time. That is a hard pill to swallow, and I'm not talking like months, I'm talking years, decades even where we just stopped listening to our bodies and the language that they and the words that they've been trying to tell us through symptoms. Our bodies want to connect with us, they want to work for us and we don't appreciate them, and then we say, hey, you need to do more. You need to do more. That's a really unhealthy relationship. So when they do start to break down, just recognize it's a call for connection and healing and not punishment.

 

Gina Worful

Yeah, it's like it's like your hormones are the language of your body, telling you when some things off. And I think that that's a really great point, that if you have a hormone imbalance, really check in and ask have I been giving my body the TLC that it needs or have I had to put Supermom hat on and save the world and save the  family and do all the things that my body hasn't been getting what it needs. So my hormones actually have to express it through all these symptoms just to get my attention that like we need some self care.

 

Juanique Roney

Yes, a hundred percent. And that's really the truth of this all. You guys we're  stressed. We're not sleeping our hormones aren't balanced because we haven't been taking care of ourselves.

 

Gina Worful

Yeah and I think that so many people come with such frustration and anger and sometimes hate for fat that's on their belly, and they're like, I am so angry and I hate my body. And a really great way to look at it is like, what is your body trying to protect you from? Where are you stressed or why are you holding on to fat for protection? What do you need to protect your body from? And then we give our bodies the love and the safety. Then it feels safe to actually release some of that weight.

 

Juanique Roney

Yeah, go ahead.

 

Gina Worful

One last thing before we do wrap up that, I think that we can't talk about hormones without at least just mentioning this could be a podcast for another day, but just to keep in mind how important your environment is and endocrine disruptors.

 

Juanique Roney

Yes, like chemicals, toxins, cleaners, the biggest ones you guys are, what would you say, cleaning products--

 

Gina Worful

Plastic.

 

Juanique Roney

Plastics, beauty products, hair products. Those are zino estrogens, and so they mimic hormone. They disrupt hormone. They hurt your liver. Your liver is so important, you guys, especially when it comes to hormones. All the hormones, have to actually go through the liver and get bio synthesized in order to be like happy hormones. If you are bombarding your body with toxins and chemicals and all that, there's going to be hormonal disruption, there's going to be liver dysfunction, and that's just a double whammy for not happy hormones. So that is definitely a topic that could stand alone, really. And unfortunately, we do live in a world where we just have so much chemical bombardment that it's overwhelming even from food to clothes to water to beauty products, cleaning products. So you guys, I hope this was helpful. Let's recap. Stress management, right? Sleeping.

 

Gina Worful

Stress management, sleep.

 

Juanique Roney

Stress management, sleep, eating eight servings of vegetables a day and fruits. Getting healthy fats like those saturated fats because cholesterol is the backbone to hormone, you know, eating healthy proteins, exercising, not over exercising. Being really conscientious of your micronutrients, not your macronutrients. Loving yourself back into healing, connecting with your body, recognizing that this is not your body punishing you is your body calling you back and trying to heal with you. It's never been against you, and then last but not least, the endocrine disruptors, all the chemicals get them gone. Don't even give them to your neighbor. And here's the thing too, with those, you don't even have to throw them out and restart, use them up and then replace them with cleaner stuff, and oftentimes the cleaner stuff's actually cheaper.

 

Gina Worful

Yeah.

 

Juanique Roney

Anyways, guys, thanks for listening. Hopefully this was helpful. Oh, Gina, you were teaching. OK, for all the listeners who are listening the day this podcast comes out, Gina, do you want to tell them about the free class that you're teaching Wednesday?

 

Gina Worful

Yeah. So we're going to dove into all about the adrenals. So if you are like, OK,  I want to find that place to start for my hormone balance. I want to start with balancing out my cortisol, my adrenals. We're going to just get to know your adrenals really well, how they change your body, knowing what is dysfunction look like. So we're going do you like a real, real good class that you're comfortable with your adrenals in your cortisol.

 

Juanique Roney

Exactly. And that's going to be April 21st, 6:00 p.m. Mountain Daylight Savings Time, and the link for that will be Gutsy.ch/classes. So this week, I taught on gut and we had almost 100 of you watching. So it was really awesome with such good energy. We're super excited to see you guys on Wednesday. So when this releases tomorrow, 6:00 p.m. Mountain Daylight Savings Time, come and learn about your adrenals, you guys. Lots of people don't even know they exist, and we really should know about them because they're super important, even though they are really tiny the size of dice, like you said. You guys, thank you so much. Also, you guys, if you want to dive really deep into hormones and let's say you've got like the stress down and you've got the mind set down and all that, and there's just a disconnec and you need a little bit more help, help with detoxification, help with repairing your liver, because you're in massive adrenal fatigue. You need help bringing your adrenals back to life to help with all the other hormones. Gina and I have put together in the Gutsy health membership these units where we deep dive into the dysfunctions and we give you tools to help you and the other tools for like supplements and foods and lifestyle things. We help you become the expert in all of these sections. So if you go back to the Order of Healing roadmap, you'll learn about gut and how that relates to everything liver and how that relates to everything, adrenals, hormones. Right Gina? Gina, you guys is such a genius and she's helping me put these classes together. So what else do you want to say about that?

 

Gina Worful

Yeah, I think we're just going to do a real deep dive if you want more help knowing, like, OK, how do I eat for this hormonal balance? Give me more resources. Give me the tools that the walk through step by step.  If this made sense to you, but you really actually want the step by step walkthrough. That's what we're creating for.

 

Juanique Roney

Exactly, and that's going to also include herbs that are helpful, certain herbs, certain supplements that can help you, just expedite your healing process. Right now, you guys, to sign up for the Gutsy health membership, just go to Gutsy.ch/membership. Oh, my gosh, it's such a screaming deal because not only do you get the membership, but you get the meal planners, you get exclusive discounts. Every month, each member is emailed a discount code to Provo Health and to Honestly Essential. So you get ten percent off of everything all the time. Plus we do these like bonus up discounts that are like 15 percent, 20 percent. So you're saving tons of money on supplements. You're getting the meal planners like I said. There are even specific meal plans in there. So if you're like yesterday we were on a Zoome call and someone said, oh, histamine intolerance. And I said, actually, there's a histamine menu plan. If you are in the membership, download the histamine menu plan. There's three weeks of it.

 

 

So there's just so many tools to help you help yourself so you don't have to spend hours and hours and months and months and like thousands of dollars trying to figure it out on your own, like you're literally dying.

 We got you. We got the tools, we got the classes, we have the zoom classes, the zoom calls, the question and answers there where you talk with myself and Gina and you come and bring your questions like we're here to help you become your best expert in your body.

 If you want more, you want to deep dove. You want to become the expert. Join the membership at Gutsy, Gutsy for its large membership. That's it, you guys. Bye.

 

 

  

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