Get Your Mojo Back Without “Pink” Viagra

womentowomen on June 21, 2015

Sexual desire is considered to be a life force in many cultures and feeling sexy and desired is a powerful part of being a woman. Fluctuating hormones during perimenopause and declining estrogen after menopause, however, can leave us wondering why we are feeling less interested in sex than we used to be.

I often see patients who are struggling with their libidos; changing sexual desire is one of the most common complaints women share with us at Women to Women. Many women come to us with physical symptoms that impact their interest in intimacy or diminish their pleasure, while others are experiencing emotional shifts or unresolved relationship issues that may make sex less appealing with their partners.

We often see that women who have not dealt with emotions from their past, be it from childhood or within their relationships, will find that these unresolved issues emerge and express, sometimes in new or surprising ways. Whether they are totally clear to you or completely catch you off guard, one thing is for sure: these emotions will not be denied and they will call to you for deeper exploration. Left unresolved, research shows that they will very likely impact your health as well as your sexuality.

Women, many of whom have enjoyed a healthy sex life until this point, often come to the clinic distraught and desperate to get their “mojo” back. They may even lament the fact that there is not a female Viagra, thinking perhaps that popping a pill would make their symptoms go away and make everything ok. (Ask any man on Viagra who experiences its high cost and the declining efficacy over time and he will tell you it’s not his preferred solution.)

While we’d all like a magic bullet, we know from working with our patients at Women to Women that there are no quick fixes. Desire can be restored but the most helpful thing to start with is diet and lifestyle changes, nutritional supplementation, and exploration of the relationship and emotional connection of the patient to her partner.

When you develop a symptom such as painful sex, diminished desire, or even surprising feelings and emotional reactions toward your partner, it is your body’s way of getting your attention and showing you what is really going on. Taking a pill to ignore the message may be convenient, but long-term, it’s much more effective to figure out the cause and treat it. In fact, that’s the only way to ensure your optimal health — and that of your relationship. Don’t get me wrong there are times that testosterone levels are low and adding testosterone can make a big difference for some women.

The New Female Viagra — How Flibanserin Works

As a health care practitioner who has been helping women to experience the best sex of their lives after menopause for over three decades now, I’ve been fascinated by conversations in the news recently about this new drug being called the “female Viagra” that pharmaceutical companies claim may potentially improve a woman’s libido.

After two rounds of rejection due to concerns about side effects and effectiveness, the drug has now been passed on to the FDA for potential approval later this summer.

Despite the current media attention, it’s not the first time pharmaceutical companies have tried to create a “Viagra for women.” In fact, that’s the approach taken previously by copying how Viagra works to increase blood flow to the genitals in men and trying to do the same for women.

This new drug, however, which was originally created as an anti-depressant, works on the largest female sexual organ instead: the brain. Researchers claim it increases dopamine and norepinephrine, the “excitatory factors for sex” and decreases serotonin, which can diminish libido.

The drug, flibanserin, is far from proven, demonstrating very mixed results, and it carries a number of side effects including nausea, dizziness and sleeplessness.

But that doesn’t seem to deter women who are clamoring for its approval.

One woman supporting the approval has claimed that her relationship with her spouse is better than ever but that her sexual desire has disappeared, leaving her husband to question whether or not they should get a divorce. She says that she’d risk any side effects “gladly.” She seems pretty clear on how far she will go for her relationship!

The way I see it, it’s just not that clear. There are so many ways to be loving and intimate in a relationship. Does desire need to be amped up in order to have a sexual relationship? She says that she has tried counseling and it has helped… but not enough. Is there is an emotional connection that might be missing on some level? Has she explored and treated the cause of her physical symptoms or is she reaching for a quick fix? It makes me wonder. Many physical issues may be at the root of the problem including adrenal dysfunction.

The Great Flibanserin Debate – Why It’s About More Than Sex

The debate about approval of this new drug, flibanersin, has become divisive and has turned into a much broader discussion around gender, sex and society; it’s one that we at Women to Women want to weigh in on.

The National Organization for Women, or NOW, feels that approval has not been forthcoming because there is a sexual bias against providing something to women to enhance sexual pleasure. They’ve gone on the record as saying that as a culture, men’s sexual health is extremely important but that women’s is not. There may be some truth to this as there may well be a sexual double standard in today’s society, but we think the reason approval has been a challenge thus far is so much more complex than that. And I am all for women having a libido, and enhancing their sexual enjoyment.

Other women’s groups are arguing that the primary considerations of drug approval should be safety and efficacy. The National Women’s Health Network, for example, has come out and said that the drug doesn’t work well, has some noted safety concerns, and has not been fully studied. They feel it’s about waiting to get a drug that really works — and is safe.

While we are not sure any drug can accomplish that when it comes to sexual desire because it’s not something that can be fixed with a pill, we definitely agree that if a drug is approved, it should be thoroughly studied first and should be proven to be effective — and safe – both over the long-term and in conjunction with other medications. This new drug does not meet those criteria.

Others are arguing that the campaign for the drug oversimplifies female sexuality and we couldn’t agree more: There is so much more to sexuality than the stress hormones dopamine and norepinephrine!

Some women (and men) who experience a waning libido at midlife don’t see it as a problem — at least not one worth taking a drug for. At Women to Women, we don’t think you should accept low sex drive as a new norm: we know it can be restored and that with some time and effort, you can experience the best intimacy of your life after menopause. So why settle? But we do agree a drug is not the answer.

And then there are those, and we are among them, who raise concerns that the pharmaceutical industry has a desire to take every circumstance and transition in life and turn it into a disease that needs a pill to fix it. This not only prevents looking at the true source of the problem, it creates a mentality that normal life transitions such as menopause are diseases.

The pharmaceutical industry then focuses on the convenience of popping a pill to problem solve instead of practicing what is now being called precision medicine: getting really precise about the root case and its effect and then treating the whole problem. Menopause is NOT a disease and a pill is NOT the answer: adjusting stress hormone levels artificially with a drug is NOT the answer to hormonal shifts that may just need some transitional support.

So while the debate in the news rages on about whether or not approval is warranted, whether the drug, flibanserin is effective and safe, or whether disapproving it is “sexist” because there is a bias against women’s sexuality as being a significant health concern, we find ourselves scratching our heads that someone could be willing to undertake drug risks without trying to understand what is going on within the body to cause this reaction in the first place.

How to Get Your Mojo Back

After more than three decades supporting women’s health and healing, we know that there are answers. When your body is out of alignment, it needs extra support. A high quality multivitamin along with an omega 3 supplement supports hormonal balance and symptom relief among our patients; even those who eat healthy diets of fresh local food find they need additional support during the menopause transition.

Diet and lifestyle changes such as stress relief, a good night’s sleep, exercise and movement, and a healthy balance of fresh fruits and vegetables along with high quality proteins and fats can further support this rebalance and accelerate relief, especially when combined with high quality nutritional supplementation.

We also recommend a probiotic supplement to restore the balance of healthy bacteria in your digestive system; it may not seem obvious that your digestion is connected to your hormones, but your ‘second brain’ plays a role in supporting all healthy body functions.

We also believe that it’s important to explore the emotions you are experiencing and use the transition time of perimenopause to examine your feelings, process them and to “speak your truth. “ Menopause is a time of release and clearing: it’s time to let go. Studies have shown that holding onto unresolved and unexpressed emotions will lead to the presence of physical concerns down the road and for many women, this catches up to them at menopause.

With a little time, attention and support, including some hormonal support if needed, you can experience a significant improvement in your health and wellness, restore that hormonal balance, and finally feel like yourself again… All without an untested drug that has numerous side effects.

At Women to Women, we have helped thousands of women alleviate their physical and emotional symptoms, restore a healthy sex drive and create the best intimacy of their lives. We can help you too.

To learn more about changes in sexuality around menopause, read our articles here.

To purchase our menopause support products, including multivitamin and omega 3 support, click here.

Chemicals in Our Cosmetics: It’s Not Pretty

womentowomen on June 13, 2015

As women, we all want to look and feel our best. We know the confidence that comes from within when we have a great hair day, our skin is clear and bright, and we feel beautiful. I see so many women at Women to Women struggling with hormonal imbalance or adrenal fatigue and my patients often tell me that it’s hard to look great when you are not feeling great.

That’s why we work together to get at the root cause of the symptoms and to actually treat them rather than just cover them up. To look and feel great, you need to be physically symptom-free so your hair, skin and body can radiate good health and you also need a healthy mood and emotional state as well.

At Women to Women, we work with our patients to resolve and clear the emotional and mood-based symptoms of hormonal balance as well as the physical ones. We also believe it’s important to remove emotional blocks and barriers and resolve any buried emotions; they may be hidden but often surface during menstruation or menopause as a gift from our body to us to heal them.

We know first-hand that women can restore their inner and outer beauty with good nutrition and lifestyle choices and some transitional supplementation support. Our Personal Products have helped thousands of women to do just that and we’ve witnessed many extraordinary transformations. Getting there, however, is a process that takes a little time and support.

During that time, we may need a little help and many of my patients turn to cosmetics and beauty products to help them look better. Unfortunately, the beauty industry is largely unregulated and many of the ingredients used in these products contain chemicals that can disrupt your hormones even further, make things worse, and lead to a number of health concerns over time including metabolic syndrome and even cancer.

That’s a high price to pay! But there are other options. Let’s look at what you need to know about chemicals in our cosmetics and why it’s important to make better choices.

Women are Exposed to 168 Chemicals A Day

A recent study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) revealed that women use on average 12 personal care or cosmetic products a day and that those products contain as many as 168 different chemicals. While they may be in low doses, studies have shown that ongoing low-dose exposure and the cumulative effect it has over time can be as damaging or even more damaging than a single large dose exposure. And we are talking about 168 different chemicals: how they interact with each other has not been studied.

More concerning is that teenagers use an average of 17 products a day, putting their potential exposure on their developing minds and bodies at over 200 different chemicals.  If you’re wondering about your man, men use fewer products, but still get exposure to about 85 chemicals a day. Given that this exposure occurs over a lifetime, this is cause for concern.

We are now more focused on eating better foods and choosing organic, but the truth is that applying chemicals to skin enhances the likelihood of absorption into the blood: what we put on our bodies matters even more than what we are eating. (Just rub a piece of garlic on the bottom of your foot and see how long it takes until you taste garlic in your mouth!)

In fact, when EWG looked at the presence of chemicals inside the bodies of teenagers, they found 16 different hormone-altering chemicals, including phthalates and parabens. Just what a teenager needs: more hormone disruption!

One of the problems is that in the US, there is very little regulation of beauty and personal care products. Unlike in Europe where over a thousand of ingredients have been banned from personal care products, in the U.S., the FDA only prohibits eleven chemicals/chemical groups from use in products.  Instead, the industry is self-regulated by a review board, which in its 30-year history has only restricted 11 items from use, and even then, its decisions are not binding.

In addition, there are little to no labeling requirements for cosmetics and personal care products: companies can use the terms, “natural,” “hypoallergenic” and even “organic” with little regulation. In fact, organic personal care products may contain as little as 10% organic ingredients and may still contain harmful petrochemicals even though they claim to be organic.

We’ve known for some time that these chemicals can disrupt our body’s natural processes and interfere with our hormones, causing a number of health concerns. At our practice, we see the impact they can have on women’s menstrual cycles, including more severe PMS and menopausal symptoms. Now a new study concludes that exposure to beauty products can actually trigger early menopause.

Chemical Exposure Can Lead to Early Menopause

One of the most comprehensive studies ever done on menopause and endocrine disruptors shows that exposure to chemicals such as dioxins from pesticides, phthalates from fragrances, plastics, cosmetics and hairspray, and polychlorinated biphenyls can result in menopause as many as four years earlier.

The study took blood and urine samples from women over a ten-year period and analyzed them for chemicals such as pesticides and other endocrine disruptors. They also asked the women questions about health nutrition and menopausal status every two years. In total, the researchers found 111 chemicals present in their blood and urine and they showed that the women with the highest levels of the chemicals entered menopause on average between 2 and 4 years earlier than the women who had lower levels.

The study concluded it wasn’t simply exposure to the chemicals that triggered the body’s response; it was increasing exposure over time that led to the impaired ovarian function. When they looked at all women over 30, those with the highest levels of exposure in their blood and urine were 6 times more likely to be menopausal than the women with lower exposure levels.

While more studies will be needed before we can conclude with certainty that one causes the other, the link between the two has now been proven. Previous studies have already linked endocrine disruptors to disturbances and imbalances in reproductive hormones such as estrogen, so following that disruption through to its next logical impact, early menopause, makes sense. In time, I think we’ll also see verification of a comparable impact on the age that young girls reach puberty.

What is especially concerning is that it is very difficult for women to reduce their exposure to all of these toxins. Many of the environmental chemicals have half-lives that take decades for them to break down; even if they have been banned in the US in the 1970’s as PCB’s were, they remain in the air, soil and water. In addition, several of these substances are still in use in other countries and make their way into our air and food supply.

But many of them, however, are well within our control. There are things that we all can – and should – do to reduce our exposure including going “green” in our household products and choosing organic in our food and beauty product purchases.

Given that it is the exposure over time that adds up and makes a difference, every little choice that we can make to avoid adding to our toxic load may be one that keeps our hormones and our bodies functioning optimally over time.

Here are a few ways to avoid chemical exposure in your daily life:

  • Avoid plastics, especially in food packaging
  • Minimize microwaving and only do so in glass containers
  • Avoid handling cash register receipts
  • Choose organic health and beauty cosmetics and products that don’t contain pesticides and other chemicals. There are some great ones out there but you’ll have to read the labels.  Especially try to avoid “fragrance” or “parfum” which contains phthalates, and look to avoid parabens. The Environmental Working Group has a list that can guide you.
  • Try using natural remedies and products. Coconut oil is a great moisturizer for skin, nails, lips and hair.
  • Eat organic fruits and vegetables, grass-fed meat and wild caught fish. Minimize packaged, processed foods.
  • Take a high quality multivitamin such as the one we offer to keep your body and your immune system strong.
  • We now know that digestive microbes impact our overall health so we recommend that every woman take a probiotic supplement as well. You can learn more about probiotics in our article here.

There are a lot more things that we can do; at Women to Women, we’ve been talking about the harms of exposure to these products for decades. We have much more information on endocrine disruptors to share with you in our library at www.womentowomen.com.

To learn more about our hormonal balance support products and our nutritional supplementation in order to minimize the impact of chemical exposures, click here.

The Great Fluoride Myth

womentowomen on June 6, 2015

One of the great things about being a health practitioner for more than three decades is that I get to see exciting new research and development emerge –- and also witness the medical and scientific communities retract mistakes and give credence to things that were dismissed years ago. (Remember when butter was “bad” and margarine was “good” for you? We now know that margarine contains trans fats that can contribute to heart disease and that butter can be a healthy part of a balanced diet but it took quite some time to undo all the biased research. )

Understanding toxicity: the idea that chemicals can have a negative impact on our body functions was something much of the scientific world did not want to admit for many years. But now, more and more research is being done to show the effects of drugs, chemicals and endocrine disruptors on our bodies — and to identify all of the many health conditions they can cause or exacerbate. At Women to Women, we’re thrilled to see this because we’ve been talking about this for decades.

One chemical that has been getting a lot of media attention lately is fluoride. Fluoride was first added to the water supply in Michigan after World War II when it was heard that in some areas of the world that had higher natural fluoride levels in their water, people had better dental health. Soon after, many communities jumped on the bandwagon. Despite the fact that manufactured fluoride should never be swallowed (just read the poison warning label on a tube of toothpaste) somehow it was believed that adding it to water and drinking it would improve our dental health, and it actually did seem to decrease dental caries. But years ago the literature was compelling enough that I worked hard when my children were young to not have them have fluoride treatments when they went to the dentist.

Today it’s estimated that about 70% of Americans have fluoridated water. (Elsewhere in the world this practice is not prevalent and in fact countries that have naturally high fluoride levels in their water are taking steps to remove fluoride found naturally in water and bring the levels down.)

Here in Maine, we have some communities on well water but most all of the towns around add fluoride to the water. My patients often ask me if they should be concerned about fluoride and whether to filter their water or buy bottled water instead.

Let’s talk about fluoride, the surprising new announcement the Department of Health and Human Services made recently, and what you need to know about water and dental health.

What is Fluoride?

Fluoride is a chemical ion of the element fluoride, the 13th most abundant mineral on the earth’s crust. It has one extra electron, giving it a negative charge and it is found naturally in water, soil, foods and other minerals. Fluoride is also synthesized in labs and put into water, toothpaste, mouthwash, and chemical products and it is found in foods that are processed using fluoridated water.

As with vitamins and minerals, we know that when they are lab-created, they are not as readily absorbed as when they are found naturally. In the case of fluoride, while it may not be harmful, and in fact may even be beneficial in small doses from natural sources, in its lab created form, it can cause harm in the body because the body sees it not as a natural substance but as a toxin.

Fluoride and Your Thyroid

In its natural form, fluoride is found in seawater at about 1.3 parts per million (or ppm) and in natural water, fluoride levels are typically .01 to .3 ppm. Some places such as China can have areas where the fluoride levels in natural water are high enough that it has been traced to health conditions and efforts are being made to remove it from the water.

That’s so different from here, where we are adding a lab-created chemical to our water in the name of better health. Recently we shared with you some shocking results from a British study about fluoride’s impact on the thyroid. This study looked at different areas in England, some of which fluoridated and some of which did not.

The study found that the rates of hypothyroidism, which is an underactive thyroid, were double in the areas where fluoride was put in the water versus the non-fluoridated areas. We are seeing hypothyroidism rates increase dramatically in the U.S., so it may well be connected to our water practices. It was great to see a study prove what we at Women to Women have suspected for some time.

In addition, the study found that whenever the concentration of fluoride was above 0.3 ppm, the rates of hypothyroidism were as much as 30% higher. We just saw that the high end of natural fluoride levels is exactly that same level, but that is for natural fluoride. What could much higher levels of synthetic fluoride do?

EPA Announces Fluoride Rates Are Too High

Until now, the acceptable rate of (synthetic) fluoridation levels in US water has been agreed to fall within the range of 0.7 and 1.2 ppm even though health concerns were noted in the study above 0.3. (And to be clear that is a range of samplings, there is no way to know what the level is in the water that comes from your tap, as it will vary.)

To put it in perspective, studies have shown that in a healthy 154-pound person, 3.5 mg of fluoride was found to disrupt thyroid function. If water fluoridation is allowed up to 1.2 ppm and you drink water regularly, you can easily exceed that rate. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the average American ingests 3 mgs a day but that many of us consume more than 6 mg a day! That’s almost doubt the level that was proven to impair thyroid function.

Even more concerning is that if you are iodine deficient, as many of us are, as little as .07 mg a day could damage thyroid function. That could be a glass or two of water a day! So it was good news that the Department of Health and Human Services just announced that it is now changing the maximum level to 0.7: at least it is the beginning of acknowledging that there is a problem.

At Women to Women, we’ve been concerned about this for some time, as we know too much fluoride can impact not just the thyroid but also many other body functions. We wish the announcement came because they were connecting the dots to all of the health concerns associated with excess fluoride.

But instead the announcement was made because the CDC has revealed that 40% of Americans have dental fluorosis, a condition that changes the appearance of your tooth enamel. It can cause chalky-like lines, pitting and staining on your teeth. That means that 2 out of 5 of us are experiencing permanent damage to our teeth from the chemical that was supposed to keep them healthy. But many say the unsightly stains and blotches on your teeth are not the biggest concern.

If your teeth are seeing the damage then most likely, fluoride is having an impact in other areas of your body as well. That’s because once fluoride is swallowed, it accumulates in your body’s bones and tissues. Teeth fluorosis may also mean you have skeletal fluorosis; it is very hard to tell apart from arthritis and can result in fatigue, muscle weakness, gastrointestinal disorders and ultimately stiff joints, calcification of tendons and ribs and osteoporosis.

Despite the good intentions around fluoride, neither the CDC nor the World Health Organization have been able to identify any differences in tooth decay and dental health between countries that fluoridate versus countries that do not follow that practice. Beyond the less than stellar dental results and the direct link to thyroid dysfunction, fluoride has also been identified as an endocrine disruptor that can lead to reproductive problems and cancers as well as many other health concerns.

So with little good and a host of concerns, I find myself asking why do we continue?

I suspect some day we will look back and call this one of the great medical experiments that did not result in good. There is already so much fluoride in foods processed with fluoride-rich waters that we can be taking in more than we should without even realizing it, let alone what is found in water, toothpaste and other dental products.

So what can we do about too much fluoride?

We can’t avoid it completely but we can be aware of its presence and try to reduce exposure to it.

  • Avoid bottled water as it often contains hidden fluoride as well as BPA and other concerns.

  • If you have fluoridated tap water, look into a filter that is proven to remove fluoride.

  • Be extra careful not to swallow any toothpaste or dental rinse.

  • Eat more iodine-rich foods such as sea vegetables, saltwater fish and other seafood, or iodized sea salt to offset the impact to your thyroid.

  • Get your thyroid tested. This is especially true for women during perimenopause, but if you’ve been exposed to fluoridated water all your life or you are seeing any dental spotting or staining, you should definitely get your thyroid tested.

  • Take a high quality multi-vitamin to support your body’s healthy response to exposure and elimination of toxins.

We cannot change the world but we can change our response to it. If you are experiencing perimenopausal or PMS symptoms and struggle to feel good, it may be your thyroid or it may be your body’s need to rebalance from toxic exposures so that your hormones can realign. We’ve helped thousands of women to reclaim their health and feel like themselves again. We can help you too.

For more information on a healthy thyroid read our article here

To purchase a high quality multivitamin or our thyroid support product click here

The Hype about Probiotics: Is Yogurt Really the Answer?

womentowomen on May 28, 2015

One of the things I love about being a health practitioner is that I get to help people make sense of things that are confusing for them. I just love the feeling when that missing puzzle piece is uncovered and it all just clicks for my patients. Often my patients at Women to Women (and sometimes even other practitioners!) will come to me with questions about something they have heard or read about. There is so much conflicting information out there and one of the amazing things about living in today’s world is new discoveries are being made about health and nutrition all the time. Some days I can hardly keep up!

Sometimes a woman will come to me confused about a new headline that says this food is now bad or good for you. Or maybe it’s a new product and they are not sure if it is something they should pay attention to or just a passing fad (remember the pet rock?). While it happens often, it always surprises me when a woman comes to me asking about probiotics.

Probiotics have been on the front pages of newspaper and magazines for the last 5 years and probably every one of us has seen the yogurt ad featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, touting the benefits of eating probiotic yogurt for digestive health. At Women to Women we have been talking about probiotics for decades now so we’ll be the first to say probiotics are not a passing fad. But many people still aren’t sure whether they should be taking probiotics or simply eating more yogurt.

Let’s talk about probiotics: what they are, why they can help, and the best way to use them.

What are probiotics?

Probiotics actually comes from the words “pro,” which means promoting, and “biotics” which means life. Probiotics promote life: literally the opposite of anti-biotics, which we take to kill bacteria that can cause disease. Probiotics are actually healthy microorganisms that live in our digestive tract; we need them to help break down and absorb the nutrients in our food.

We have trillions of these bacteria, often called beneficial flora or good bacteria. These healthy bacteria are necessary for a strong immune system, the creation of vitamins, and healthy digestion.

When our good bacteria are healthy, we are healthy. But when we get sick, these necessary bacteria can be killed or damaged, upsetting the perfect and delicate balance that exists between good bacteria and bad bacteria in our guts. When our good to bad bacteria ratio gets out of balance, disease and illness becomes more likely. That’s because our gut is considered our second brain; while it doesn’t do any thinking, we now know that the gut runs the show as far as a healthy body is concerned.

So how does our bacteria get out of balance?

There are several ways this can happen and usually my patients have experienced at least one of them. First, antibiotics can kill off healthy bacteria while they are attacking the bad ones. While antibiotics are one of the greatest inventions for our health and survival, if you take a course of antibiotics, you should know that the balance between good and bad bacteria will also be affected. Taking a probiotic for a couple months after antibiotics will help restore a healthy balance in your digestive tract and keep your body and your digestive tract functioning optimally.

Another way your bacteria can be thrown off balance is if you experience a flu or a food-borne illness that results in vomiting and/or diarrhea. In this case, you’ve definitely imbalanced your flora and a round of probiotics afterwards will likely also be necessary to restore a healthy balance in your gut and your body.

I know here in New England during our cold snowy winter last year many people experienced a stomach flu that went around. Now that spring is finally here, I like to tell my patients that it’s time to plant new healthy bacteria in our stomachs along with spring flowers in our gardens!

You may also experience a flora imbalance if you have experienced an intestinal disease or illness such as celiac disease, crohn’s disease or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). If you currently experience digestive concerns including cramping, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, or gas, consider taking a probiotic to help restore a healthy balance as well.

In addition, if you have chronic headaches/migraines, urinary tract infections, yeast infections, lactose intolerance, bad breath, fatigue or irritability or worsening allergies, asthma, PMS or perimenopausal symptoms, you may wish to consider a round of probiotics to restore your digestive health.

Even if you do not experience any symptoms, if your diet is full of fast foods or other nutrient empty calories, you will definitely want to replenish your good bacteria. A recent study showed that eating at McDonald’s for 10 days resulted in the loss of 1400 types of gut bacteria, or almost 40% of the test subject’s total bacteria varieties! To make things worse, when he returned to a healthy normal diet, the bacteria that were lost did not return!

If you’re like many of my patients, you are saying “Yes, that’s me” to one of the above. If you’ve experienced any of those symptoms or situations, you may be wondering how to restore that perfect balance between good and bad bacteria so important to our health.

What do I need to know about taking Probiotics?

In my three decades at Women to Women, I’ve come to see first-hand that most of us could benefit from taking a good probiotic. So how do you find a good one?

There are many different strains of bacterias but most researchers agree that the benefits of two primary strains are significant: lactobacilli and bifidobacteria. That’s why our biotic product at Women to Women contains a 50/50 combination of at least 15 billion L. acidophilus and B. lactis Bi-07 bacterias.

It’s also important that the biotic you take be dairy and gluten free, as these two ingredients cause digestive concerns for many of us. Even if you are not allergic to dairy or gluten, you may be sensitive to these ingredients without even realizing it and your bacterial balance may be impacted as a result of that sensitivity.

I always say to my patients “Why would you want to take more of something you may be sensitive to as a hidden ingredient in a product you are taking to try to help restore the balance that a hidden food sensitivity may disrupt?” That just wouldn’t make any sense.

It’s important to read the labels on your probiotic carefully as recent newspaper headlines have revealed that many probiotic supplements actually contain gluten!

If you’d like to get more probiotics in your diet naturally, try some fermented foods such as kefir, sauerkraut, miso, tempeh, and kombucha. Most of us don’t eat these foods on a regular basis and they are probiotic powerhouses. (Though for some of us with digestive issues, these foods may be too much and could increase irritation, so go slowly.)

As for yogurt, like other foods that probiotics are sometimes added to, it is not as effective as the naturally fermented foods above: adding cultures to food after the fact makes them less available for absorption than when they occur naturally. And if a yogurt is pasteurized, as store-bought yogurt is, the pasteurization process will kill off the bacteria; that’s the whole point of pasteurization. So in addition to any bad bacteria, good bacterias will be destroyed as well.

Unless you make your own yogurt, and eat a lot of it, you’re better off taking a probiotic supplement than eating yogurt every day (not to mention that many yogurts on the market today have more sugar than a soda!).

If you’ve had a stomach flu or food illness or taken an antibiotic, even if you have no digestive concerns now, you should take a probiotic for at least one month. If you have or are currently experiencing digestive concerns or entrenched premenopausal symptoms, such as gas, bloating, cramping, constipation, diarrhea, fuzzy thinking, allergies or asthma, or skin problems, a probiotic can make a big difference.

With a high quality probiotic, you should see and feel a difference within the first few weeks of use; most of my patients report feeling much better after the first two weeks.

Even if you have no symptoms, if your diet is not ideal or consists of nutrient empty calories such as fast foods, you should also consider taking a probiotic.

If you are experiencing digestive symptoms, you don’t have to suffer. We’ve helped thousands of women restore a healthy bacterial balance and heal their digestive tracts. We can help you too.

To learn more about probiotics, read our in depth article here.

To order our powerful dairy and gluten free probiotic, click here.

Hormone Disrupting Foods In Your Kitchen Now

womentowomen on May 23, 2015

Whenever I see a patient who is experiencing life-disrupting symptoms, one of the first things we talk about is her diet. At Women to Women, we have learned over the years that the old adage you are what you eat is so very true, especially during the transition before and after menopause.

When I ask my patients about their diets and begin to suggest some changes, sometimes women will tell me it’s too hard. But even small changes can make a big difference, and once they get started, they soon realize it’s not nearly as hard as they think.

Eating plenty of healthy proteins such as grass fed beef, bison, and wild caught fish, organic fruits and vegetables, and healthy fats such as grass-fed butter, coconut oil, avocados, and olive oil always makes my patients feel better. That’s because these “real” foods provide the nutrients a body needs to stay healthy, heal, and keep hormones in balance.

If you are experiencing especially uncomfortable symptoms, it may well be your diet is severely imbalanced; usually I find that it’s one of three main concerns. First, you may be eating too much sugar, which we talked about recently in a prior newsletter. Too much sugar will prevent estrogen, progesterone and testosterone from being balanced because balancing insulin will take precedence.

Or you may be eating too many packaged and processed foods that (in addition to sugar) contain unhealthy vegetable oils and artificial ingredients. These food choices are not only not providing the nutritional support your body needs, they are introducing other ingredients such as chemicals and substances that will impair healthy body function and hormone balance.

Or perhaps you have bought into the low-fat diet myth and you’re not eating enough good healthy fat, something the body (and especially the brain) needs to function optimally and stay in balance.

At Women to Women, we know that there is more to being symptom-free than just your diet, but we can’t overestimate how much of a role our food choices play. Every once in awhile, though, we’ll see a woman who is doing a good job eating healthy whole foods and still finds herself struggling with hormonal balance. That may be because many of the foods we eat contain ingredients that can disrupt our hormones and some of them may come as a surprise to you.

 

Chicken

Media headlines have told us not to eat red meat (something that has been misunderstood and misinterpreted; we’ll talk about this more soon). Many women have turned to chicken instead, thinking it’s a healthier protein choice. In fact, the biggest concern about the animal foods we eat is what those animals themselves are eating: when we eat animals and animal products, we take in whatever they have eaten or been exposed to because it remains in their fat cells. (That’s why animals eating a natural diet such as grass-fed beef, bison, pastured pork and wild caught fish make the best choices.)

A chicken’s natural diet is grass and bugs, a combination of healthy protein and grass that has soaked up the vitamin D and energy of the sun. It is extremely difficult to find a chicken or turkey that has been allowed to eat its original diet these days, unless you go to a small local farm and they sell it to you directly. Even organic chicken and turkey is raised on feed.

The problem is that the feed chickens receive contains soy which is laden with estrogen-like substances and is likely genetically modified, corn that is not food grade and contains GMOs, cereals often including wheat and GMOs, and processed oils such as canola oil. Poultry farms are not looking for high quality feed ingredients; they are looking for the cheapest possible protein and fat sources they can find.

Heavy use of soy means that you are ingesting high doses of estrogen, which can be especially disruptive to your hormone cycles. In addition, most chicken is raised on antibiotics in order to resist disease in the close quarters of a chicken farm. If you eat chicken or turkey, it is important that you choose organic.

Even free-range organic chicken (that just means they have some outdoor exposure), receives feed but at least the organic version is fed a vegetarian diet (not a chicken’s natural diet, but without animal waste products) that is without genetically modified ingredients (to the extent we know; most soy and corn today is genetically modified and not always identified as such) or toxic synthetic pesticides.

USDA organic chicken can also only receive antibiotics during their first day of life or if they fall ill, not on an ongoing basis as traditional factory farm chickens do.

If you eat a lot of chicken (or eggs), choose organic but look to reintroduce more grass-fed meat, bison and fish into your diet as well.

 

Soy

I just mentioned the fact that soy is a very common ingredient in chicken feed today and soy contains phytoestrogens which can mimic real estrogen: these substances may sit on the receptor sites of our cells, which were designed to take in estrogen, blocking the needed estrogen from entering and leaving it to wander around through the blood instead.

These estrogen-like substances can also impact the thyroid, which controls our hormones and may lead to suppressed thyroid function. Heavy soy consumption has also been shown to impact fat gain, muscle loss, infertility, mood swings and sexual dysfunction. Unfermented soy products such as tempeh and miso are fine, but tofu and soymilk products should be avoided. Try nuts and nut milks such as almond milk and raw milk and grass-fed cheeses instead.

 

Dairy

While we all need vitamin D to stay healthy, the best way to get it isn’t from dairy: it’s naturally from small doses of skin exposure to sunlight instead. (Fat-free dairy won’t enable vitamin D, which requires fat to be processed, to be absorbed anyway.) In order to maximize dairy output, cows are kept pregnant, resulting in high levels of estrogen that can not only wreak havoc on your hormones, but cause early puberty for your daughter, breast development for your son, and belly fat concerns for your husband. As with soy, higher levels of reproductive cancers are also found among heavy dairy consumers.

Americans consume enormous amounts of dairy products, especially cheese, so we can all look to cut back. If you must consume dairy, be sure it is organic or preferably grass-fed. Most European cheese comes from grass-fed cows so there are lots of inexpensive choices. Nut milks such as almond milk also make delicious substitutes.

 

Licorice

If you love licorice or licorice-derived products such as fennel, Pernod, and anise, you should know that licorice has estrogenic properties so high they are even stronger than contraceptives (but please do not use licorice as birth control!) In fact, licorice is currently being evaluated for possible anti-testosterone drug purposes. So if you have a licorice addiction and you are experiencing symptoms of hormonal imbalance, you might want to cut back on your habit and see what happens.

At Women to Women, we’ve been helping thousands of women to restore their hormonal balance over the last 3 decades. We’ve seen first-hand how important diet and nutritional supplementation are to relieving your uncomfortable symptoms and enabling you to finally feel like yourself again. That’s why in addition to good eating habits, we recommend every woman take a high quality multi-vitamin to ensure she gets the support her body needs during times of transition or imbalance.

We also suggest a high-quality omega 3 supplement to ensure your body (and your brain) receives the healthy fat required for optimal functioning; it’s hard to get the nutrition we need from our food supply today and healthy fat options are not easy (or cheap) to find.

The good news is that with some diet and lifestyle changes, coupled with high-quality nutritional support, your body can heal and you can alleviate your symptoms. We have helped so many women to finally feel good again. We can help you too.

To read our article on healthy diet click here.

Check out our hormonal balance product system here to get on the fast track to feeling good again.

Why Sleep Matters

womentowomen on May 15, 2015

Every time I see a patient at Women to Women and ask about what is going on in her life, I always hear a long list of responsibilities and priorities: women today have very full plates! Whenever I ask a patient about her sleep and whether she gets enough, it seems that almost every woman I speak with wishes that she could get more.

Some women may struggle to fall asleep or to sleep through the night because of hormonal imbalance, stress, or adrenal fatigue, while others just cannot seem to schedule in more than 6-7 hours of sleep time due to kids and jobs and all their many obligations.

We all know that sleep is important for good health and most of us probably feel like we should be getting more. But with all of life’s responsibilities and our many different priorities as women, sleep doesn’t often land at the top of our lists. But it should. Let’s look at why.

Can I get by with 6 Hours of Sleep?

Every once in awhile when life gets crazy, our sleep gets sacrificed and we have to get by on less. We may tell ourselves it’s ok because it’s just for a little while until…. But I recently came across a fascinating sleep study that shows that even just a few days of not enough sleep wreaks havoc on your mental and physical performance and your health.

In the study, researchers divided the participants into four groups: one group slept for 8 hours a night, one for 6 hours, one for 4 hours, and one poor group had to stay awake for 3 days without any sleep at all! The groups who slept for 4, 6, or 8 hours were required to maintain those same sleep hours for two weeks and along the way they were given mental and physical performance tests.

The lucky group who got to sleep a full 8 hours had consistent performance: whatever their performance level was at the beginning of the test, it remained the same throughout the entire two week period. But the groups who slept for either 4 or 6 hours experienced cognitive decreases, motor skill declines and attention lapses that grew steadily worse as the two-week trial progressed.

Everyone expected that the 4-hour a night group would be much worse off than the 6-hour a night sleepers. But one surprise was that while the 4-hour a night sleepers did do slightly worse, there was not as large a difference between the 4-hour and the 6-hour groups as you might expect.

After only one week, one quarter of the 6-hour sleepers began falling asleep randomly during the day. But even more surprising was that after two weeks, the 6-hour a night sleepers performed at the same level as if they had stayed awake for 48 hours straight!

That means that if you sleep for only 6 hours a night, after two weeks, your body will be performing as if you had pulled two all-nighters back to back! If you ever pulled an all-nighter in college at exam time, you know how you felt the next day: pretty awful and totally exhausted. Imagine doing that two nights in a row and still going to work, running your household, and taking care of your family!

But what was really fascinating to me was that the people in the study who experienced the cognitive, motor skill and attention declines were totally unaware of them. When they graded themselves, they did feel a slight decline for a couple days but then after that, they felt that their performance leveled out. In reality, they were continuing to decline each day and they were completely unaware of it!

This just goes to show that we may try to fool ourselves by saying we’re fine and just having an extra cup of coffee or an afternoon treat to keep our energy going but the reality is that our bodies are not performing optimally because they are sleep deprived. Getting less than enough sleep will reduce both your mental and physical performance after only a few days so while we can all have an off night, it’s important not to let it go on for too long.

How much sleep is enough?

While that study showed that 8 hours of sleep was adequate but 6 was not, it did not break down the sleep time in between. Not all of us can get 8 hours every night so I wanted to know what to tell my patients for whom 8 hours is simply not possible or even not preferable for them. Thankfully, a number of other studies have also looked at this question and have found that while the exact number is different for each of us, generally 7 or 7 ½ hours is the minimum amount of sleep required nightly to avoid performance disruption.

We need that time because when we sleep, we go through several different cycles, which together take about 90 minutes to complete. Two of them are particularly important for our health: deep sleep or slow-wave sleep and REM or rapid eye movement sleep. When we are in slow wave sleep, the body heals and repairs, the immune system does its work and pituitary gland releases growth hormone for muscle and tissue repair. We need this phase for physical wellness.

That’s why many elite athletes state that they sleep 11-12 hours a night; their bodies need the additional slow wave sleep time to repair and restore. In fact, one study at an elite college required basketball team members to increase their sleep from 8 hours up to 10 hours a night. They found that free throw shooting, three-point shooting and sprinting times all increased when the athletes slept longer. So if you place high physical demands on your body, whether you’re an athlete or just a busy constantly on the go mom, more sleep may be required for you to recover.

The other part of the sleep cycle that’s really important is REM sleep. During REM sleep your brain goes into dream state and clears out unnecessary information, reorganizes information, and your memory and learning are improved and distilled as you connect the day’s experiences with previous memories and experiences. Your brain requires REM sleep to perform at peak levels and memory, cognitive function and mental performance all suffer when we don’t get enough REM sleep.

In fact, research has shown that without adequate sleep, the body begins to die: mental and physical performance suffer; the immune system cannot function properly; and the likelihood of infections, weight gain, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, mental health concerns and ultimately, death, increases.

The problem is that when we get older, especially at the busy perimenopausal time of our lives, we often tend to sleep less; precisely at the time we need more sleep to restore, repair and heal. One study showed that the typical 80-year-old gets 62% less slow wave sleep than a 20-year old. While more sleep facilitates healing, less sleep can accelerate aging, so extra sleep is also a great anti-aging strategy as well.

We all need to make sleep a priority and most researchers agree that we need between 7-9 hours a night. The exact number will vary by individual and you can experiment and see when you feel best. Even one week of less than enough sleep will result in significant declines so getting adequate rest regularly is a key component to feeling good, reducing your symptoms, and enabling your body’s own innate healing.

What if I Can’t Sleep?

I often have patients at Women to Women come to me saying I know I need to sleep more, but I just can’t. What should I do? Despite our best efforts and intentions, we will all experience a sleep disruption on occasion. The good news is that short-term, we can compensate for that when it occurs: our bodies will simply make up for a shortage the next night.

If you do experience a night of unrest for whatever reason, even if you only got a couple hours of sleep, don’t stress about it: sleeping for 10-12 the following night will bring you right back into sync. The key is not to let it go on for multiple nights and to get right back on track the next night.

If you have trouble sleeping, make a sleep schedule and stick to it, sleep in a dark room that is nice and cool, turn off the TV and the computer before bed and read, and avoid sugar in the evening: these tips will help you sleep through the night and allow your body to heal. Healthy nutritious food and supportive multi-vitamin supplementation can also help your body fall and stay asleep and support the many processes the body performs during sleep to stay healthy.

If you are experiencing mental symptoms such as fuzzy thinking, memory lapses, anxiety, depression, mood swings, irritability or panic attacks, you may need more REM sleep. If you are experiencing physical symptoms such as weight gain, hot flashes, or fatigue, you likely need more slow wave sleep. Either way, your symptoms are tied to your sleep cycles and more sleep will support your body in healing, just as not enough sleep can make your symptoms worse.

Making sleep a priority in your life will improve your mood and your energy, and increase your mental and physical performance, your ability to overcome challenges and your overall happiness and well-being. It will also prevent and reduce many symptoms of hormonal imbalance.

You don’t need to lie awake all night tossing and turning: You can get a good night’s sleep. We’ve helped thousands of women just like you to sleep through the night. We can help you too. Try taking an over the counter magnesium supplement a half hour before bed: calcium and magnesium should be consumed in a 1:1 ratio and many of the women I see have more calcium-heavy diets.

New research is also showing that insomnia is often connected to stress levels. If you are wired and can’t sleep or if you feel that you have a lot of stress in your life, check out our adrenal product system for sleeplessness. It’s helped wired or stressed women finally sleep peacefully.

If you have trouble sleeping but don’t feel adrenal fatigue due to stress is the cause, our Sleep Support Product can give you the added support to relax and get a good night’s sleep. It can be taken along with any of our other products as an added sleep support aid.   You can find it here.

Should I Get My Thyroid Checked?

womentowomen on April 25, 2015

Almost twenty years ago, the American College of Physicians, a pretty conservative organization, stunned the medical community by issuing a guideline that women over 50 should have their thyroids tested at least once every five years. At that time, most physicians thought that they could diagnose thyroid problems themselves and that testing guidelines were unnecessary.

At Women to Women, however, we weren’t stunned: we were excited! We knew first-hand how challenging it can be to identify and treat thyroid concerns without testing. The reality is that even all these years later and with the testing guideline in place, many practitioners still fail to diagnose thyroid concerns. That’s because over or under active thyroid problems can be hard to pin down and the symptoms may also resemble those of many other conditions, including aging.

In fact, Time Magazine recently reported that hypothyroidism, or underactive thyroid, is one of the top 15 leading conditions doctors most often get wrong.

At Women to Women, we have helped thousands of women to restore healthy thyroid function and we know how an under or overactive thyroid can wreak havoc on your life, your weight, your health, and your mood: It’s not just a part of getting older and you don’t have to live with it!

For the longest time, no one seemed to pay the thyroid much attention. Some of my patients would come to the clinic thinking that their symptoms were menopausal, some felt it was just a part of getting older, and others simply blamed them on stress. But now, with all the media exposure, more and more women come to see me wondering if they should have their thyroid checked. Let’s talk about your thyroid gland and what you need to look for if you are wondering about your thyroid health.

What is your Thyroid?

Your thyroid looks like a mini bow tie and it wraps around your windpipe at the base of your throat. Its primary function is to regulate your body temperature: it’s your own internal thermostat. The thyroid takes orders primarily from the pituitary gland (via the hormone TSH) to produce thyroid hormones T3 (triiodthyronine) and T4 (thyroxine). These thyroid hormones also regulate our metabolism, impact our bowel function and affect our energy levels and mood.

The most common thyroid concern is hypothyroidism, which occurs when you fail to produce enough thyroid hormones. This will make your metabolism slow down and leave you feeling sluggish and lacking energy.

The opposite concern can occur when the thyroid works too hard, resulting in hyperthyroidism. In this case you will feel like you’re all revved up: your hands may tremble, your heart race, and you cannot fall asleep.

If this sounds like you, you should definitely consult with your practitioner about getting your thyroid tested. However, many people do not experience symptoms at all; it is estimated that as many as 1 in 5 people may have sub-optimal thyroid function and do not even know it. So what should you look for? Here are some of the common thyroid symptoms I see in my patients at Women to Women.

Common Thyroid Symptoms

Feeling Tired, Sluggish or Low Energy

We all go through times of stress or busyness that can disrupt our sleep or leave us feeling burned out, but if you find yourself hooked on caffeine to get through the day, constantly dragging or in need or a lot of sleep (more than 9 hours on a daily basis), you may have an underactive thyroid.

Stomach/Digestion Concerns

You might be wondering what your thyroid has to do with your stomach, but your thyroid actually plays a role in bowel function. If you feel bloated, constipated or have that heavy feeling in your stomach, your thyroid may not be functioning optimally and hypothyroidism should be ruled out. Conversely, if you experience excessive diarrhea, your thyroid may be overactive and hyperthyroidism should be considered.

Hair and Skin Changes

While we all lose hair on a daily basis, if your hair loss becomes more frequent or heavy, if hair becomes dry or brittle and breaks off easily, your thyroid may be impaired. In addition, hypothyroidism can show up in your skin making it become dry and scaly. Often there is also an unusual loss of hair in the outer edge of the eyebrow that may occur when your thyroid is underperforming. When your thyroid is overactive, your skin may become thin and very fragile and your hair loss even more severe.

Mood Changes

Because the thyroid also regulates your mood, mood changes, especially if they come on suddenly or severely, may be a sign of thyroid dysfunction. Depression, anxiety, and even sudden panic attacks, especially if they do not respond to traditional anti-depressant treatments, whether pharmaceutical or natural, are common symptoms of thyroid impairment. Generally, depression is associated with hypothyroidism while panic attacks may be a sign of hyperthyroidism.

Fertility issues, Miscarriages and Menstrual Cycle Changes


Whenever one hormone is disrupted, there is often a disruption to other hormones up or down stream. If you are still menstruating, then heavy, more frequent or more painful periods can be a sign of hypothyroidism. Shorter, lighter or more infrequent menstruation may accompany hyperthyroidism.

Because of menstrual cycle disruptions, infertility may also be a concern. If you are trying to conceive, thyroid testing may be helpful, especially if you do not have consistent menstrual cycles. In fact, some infertility specialists recommend thyroid testing to all patients. In addition, impaired thyroid function can lead to miscarriages, so if you are experiencing difficulty carrying to term, thyroid testing is suggested.

Memory

Memory and concentration can be impacted by either overactive or underactive thyroid function. In particular, hypothyroidism is commonly known to impair memory. While it may start out small in the early stages like simply misplacing your car keys, over time memory loss, fuzzy thinking or trouble concentrating can become more disruptive.

These are just a few of the more common symptoms; there are many more listed on our website. You’ll notice that these common thyroid symptoms also are common menopausal complaints and general aging concerns as well, which is why it can be hard to determine whether your symptoms are a result of hormonal imbalance, thyroid or adrenal concerns, or a combination without testing.

Fluoridated Water and Thyroid

If you drink a lot of water, you’ll want to know that a British study made headlines recently when it reported results that hypothyroidism rates were higher in areas with higher fluoride concentrations. When the parts per million of fluoride concentration was above 0.3, hypothyroidism rates were much as 30% higher. In addition, when comparing one area of England that fluoridates to another that does not, scientists found that hypothyroidism rates were double in the fluoridated areas as compared to the non-fluoridated region.

In a healthy 154-pound adult, 3.5 mg of fluoride was found to disrupt thyroid function. If you are already iodine deficient, even small amounts of fluoride can wreak havoc: as little as 0.7 mg a day could lead to thyroid dysfunction. According to the EPA, the average American ingests 3 mg a day, but many of us consume as much as 6 mg a day or more.

If you consume a lot of fluoridated water and/or do not consume iodine-rich foods such as sea vegetables, saltwater fish and other seafood, or iodized sea salt, you should definitely think about a thyroid test. A study almost twenty years ago estimated that one in seven women is iodine deficient, though I think that number may well be much higher now given our diets today.

Thyroid Cancer

Thyroid cancer has doubled in incidence since the 1970’s and it is now the fastest-growing cancer among women. That said, to keep it in perspective, the incidence rates of thyroid cancer overall are still relatively small compared to many other cancers, such as breast cancer. Some scientists even question how much of the incidence rate increase is simply due to better diagnostics enabling more cancers to be detected.

Nevertheless, there does appear to be an increase in thyroid cancer rates that does concern researchers. They attribute the increase to changes in our diets, increasing exposure to chemicals such as fluoride, chloride and bromide and higher exposure to environmental and medical radiation.

Thyroid Testing

Because so many of the symptoms of an impaired thyroid can also be attributed to menopause or simply getting older and since not everyone experiences symptoms at all, testing is really the best way to know if your thyroid is functioning properly.

Many practitioners will suggest a TSH test and a T3 and T4 level test but there are several more tests that can be helpful in getting the true picture of your thyroid health. Speak with your practitioner about a full thyroid workup including all of the following tests:

• TSH
• Free T3 and Free T4
• Anti-TPO
• Anti-thyroglobulin
• Reverse T3
• Total T3
• Micronutrient analysis (intracellular)
• Basal Body Temperature

Restoring Thyroid Health

If your thyroid is not functioning properly, it is important to provide it the nutrition and lifestyle support it requires for optimal function. A stressed, overworked, or sluggish thyroid will require additional nutritional support to repair and rebalance beyond what can typically be found in today’s food supply.

We have had great success helping to restore optimal thyroid health in our patients at Women to Women with out Thyroid Product System. Thousands of women have experienced symptom relief and renewed thyroid health with our products and support. We can help you too.

To purchase our Thyroid Product System, click here.

PMS Doesn’t Exist!

womentowomen on April 9, 2015

PMS doesn’t exist!

That’s what I heard from a speaker recently who was giving a TED-X talk. Describing PMS as a myth, she went as far as to say that the PMS label is an excuse for women to behave in a way that would otherwise not be acceptable. And that for all we know, men and dogs can have it too!

I couldn’t believe she was minimizing the physical, mental and emotional distress PMS can cause for women that I’ve seen firsthand in my clinic at Women to Women.

She went on to say that by chalking up emotions to a PMS excuse, women don’t have to deal with them and that doesn’t serve us long-term. And that’s when I finally agreed with her. Sweeping emotions under the rug or saying they are just hormonal episodes means we don’t have to look deeply into them, and at Women to Women, we think every symptom is a call from our body to us to pay attention, including our emotional ones.

In fact, for decades now we have been talking about PMS as an opportunity for women to use that time each month to really deal with unresolved emotional issues. In one previous newsletter, we shared the idea that PMS can serve as a “window of time during which you have the ability and the strength to speak the truth – if you will simply face it.”

As a psychologist, in her talk, she was trying to raise attention to the fact that PMS is not a mental health diagnosis. It’s true that the mental health community doesn’t really have a definition of PMS and so you could argue that we all experience symptoms at times of what is commonly referred to as PMS, even men and dogs!

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM, which mental health practitioners use as their reference guide, the only approved diagnosis is for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). Dysphoria is a feeling of agitation or unease and to receive a diagnosis, a woman must experience at least 5 of 11 possible symptoms in the week before her period begins, they must improve when menstruation occurs, and the symptoms must be gone the week after menstruation ceases.

At least one of the symptoms must come from a list of four: irritability, anxiety, depression or marked mood swings. The other symptoms can be much more broad such as changes in sleep or appetite, or feeling out of control. We have articles and information about dozens of PMS symptoms that we’ve seen in our clinic on our website.

As a practitioner who has worked with thousands and thousands of women, I can tell you with certainty that despite the lack of a clear approved mental health diagnosis, PMS is real and it is debilitating for many women. The good news is that you don’t have to suffer: we’ve had great success in alleviating symptoms with our dietary and lifestyle guidelines and our nutritional support systems.

It’s important to feel good about yourself and your body, not just for a better quality of life now, but also for a great life down the road. That’s because another thing that we’ve been talking to women about for decades is that PMS is often a preview of coming attractions, so to speak, for perimenopause and menopause.

I always love it when new research comes out supporting what we’ve known about for years and recently a study from Helsinki Finland connected PMS complaints to a lower quality of life after menopause. Researchers tracked 120 postmenopausal women asking about their PMS experiences and the symptoms they currently identified after menopause. About 90% of the women reported having had PMS, with about half of those women saying it interfered with their home, work or social life, and about 40% rating their PMS as moderate to severe.

The researchers were hoping to connect hot flashes to PMS severity, but they could not. They did, however, discover that other postmenopausal symptoms such as depression, poor sleep, feeling less attractive, and memory and concentration were strongly linked to the severity of the women’s PMS symptoms.

This does not come as a surprise, given that we know that symptoms are signs to us to pay attention and if they are unresolved and not addressed, they may continue and even worsen over time.

That’s why it’s so important to consider your PMS symptoms as a wake up call to you to pay attention now: an invitation to look at your emotional health as well as your physical health and take action to make it better. Ignoring your symptoms not only means that you’ll be uncomfortable every month, it may mean that health concerns could continue long past your periods. Why not begin the healing process now?

While we continue to learn more about PMS, one thing is certain: PMS symptoms are a sign that a woman’s body is out of balance. The good news is that sound nutrition and healthy lifestyle choices can go a long way toward relieving symptoms. When you combine it with the nutritional support in our PMS system, you give your body the help it needs to repair, restore, and rebalance — and to eliminate those disrupting symptoms.

You don’t need to suffer through another month of feeling uncomfortable, out of control or just not yourself. Our PMS system has helped thousands of women. We can help you too.

To learn more about PMS or take our quiz, click here.

Surprising Sources of Stress

womentowomen on April 3, 2015

I remember when Time Magazine called stress the “Epidemic of the 80’s” in its cover story back in 1983. I was so excited to see that Time Magazine, a popular and accepted news source, was talking about something the medical profession rarely recognized back then.

With more than 30 years of wisdom since, not much has changed in many ways: stress continues to plague us and contribute to a myriad of health challenges and I see it in my patients every day. In fact, many of them tell me that life in the 80’s seems calm in comparison to the busy pace of life now.

However, there is some good news: more and more practitioners are recognizing the importance of adrenal health and its connection to stress. Adrenal fatigue as a significant health condition has only been introduced into the main stream recently, and even now, many doctors don’t recognize or understand it, but at least the movement has started.

At Women to Women, we’ve been talking about and treating adrenal fatigue for decades. When I ask my patients to describe something stressful, most of my patients can produce a personal example pretty quickly: being stuck in traffic and being late to a child’s recital or game, missing a flight connection, having an enormously long to-do list to prepare for an event or a holiday, or a tight deadline at work for a big project coming due. What many of us don’t realize is that it’s not so much the one time situation as it is the little stresses of every day life can do damage to our health; it is the cumulative and repetitive stressors over time that do the most harm.

Now a new study reveals the surprising fact that most people are more stressed at home than at work. I’d like to talk more about why that may be and share with you some sources of stress I see with my patients at Women to Women every day. Many of these surprising stress sources are things that most people don’t even consider or recognize as having an impact on their health but these stressors can do significant harm to your health and hormonal balance over time. Maybe some of these will be familiar to you, too.

Stress is Higher at Home Than Work

Last week I shared that while I was traveling to and from the Institute of Functional Medicine, where I was facilitating workshops and training new practitioners, I had the chance to catch up on some reading. One of the headlines that caught my eye was a study done by researchers at Penn State that revealed people have much lower stress levels at work than at home.

What made the study especially interesting to me was that more than simply asking people how they felt and determining stress levels purely anecdotally, the researchers also measured the cortisol levels of the participants at home and at work. (Cortisol is a biological marker of stress; more on that later.) We’ve always heard that work is the source of so much of our stress and home is where we re-charge, but this new finding reflects what many of my patients have told me for years: home is not a stress-free haven.

Rather, home can actually cause stress, especially for women. Before we delve deeper into some of the reasons why, one of the really interesting conclusions of the study was that women (as well as men) reported significantly lower levels of stress at work than at home and this included parents, although the decrease was not quite as big for parents as for non-parents. But something really shocking came out beyond having less stress at work. Women (unlike men) reported that not only was stress lower but their happiness levels were higher at work than at home: many found work to be renewing!

This conclusion supports numerous other studies published over the years that show that people who work have better mental and physical health than those who do not. In fact, mothers who work full-time outside the home through their twenties and thirties have better health at age 45 (an age at which stress can wreak havoc on hormonal balance heading into menopause) than mothers who worked part-time, had periods of unemployment, or who chose to be stay-at-home moms.

Perhaps because they have to deal with so much, the full-time working moms are forced to find better ways to manage their stress levels and wellness, whether it’s hiring help around the house, or making sure they hit the gym or get that massage. Or perhaps, because they have an outlet or a place to escape the frenzy of home, somewhere they can make a valuable contribution and be recognized for something other than being chef, maid and chauffeur, those chores and labels don’t cause the same emotional stresses that can impact health over time.

Regardless, it does not mean that full-time working mothers have stress-free lives. But they do seem to have lower stress levels than other women overall and the research shows that that full-time workingwomen do experience better health. (Though clearly, if you hate your job, that will change things significantly and may cause stress and health concerns, not prevent them.) Beyond the overall health and wellness impacts of full-time work, I had to wonder, and you may too, why it is that work is seen as a place of renewal and home is seen as chaotic and stressful for women?

My patients have given me some other surprising sources of stress that may help shed some light on why home can be a source of stress for many men and especially women today. As I considered what they have shared with me, I found other experts recognized the same concerns as potential sources of stress that my patients have shared. Let’s see if any of them resonate with you.

Surprising Sources of Stress

Your Partner/Significant Other

When we first merge our lives with someone, it can be stressful adjusting to so much that is new. Then we settle in and as time goes on and life evolves, money, parenting and life choices can bring on stress as well. If you don’t see eye to eye with your partner on any big issue, whether it’s money, kids, intimacy, shared workload or how you spend your time, being at home will be stressful!

In addition to struggling with a particular issue, not having alignment on some foundational relationship basics such as communication styles, intimacy preferences, how you show affection, love, appreciation and support for one another, and how much time is spent together as a couple, can wreak havoc on a relationship as well. Relationship challenges or differing styles can cause stress and may create distance and an emotional gap that in and of itself can create stress as well.

I believe relationships are so important to our overall health and well being that I am working on a new and exciting project, coming this summer. I’m excited to be bringing you a whole new series of websites providing a new way of learning about the differences between men and women and how together we can create a great intimate partnerships. I can’t wait to help you create better health through better partnerships!

(Watch for more information, coming soon.)

Multi-tasking

For so long we’ve been taught that we should multi-task and as women, let’s face it, we do it because we can! But new studies show that not only are people more successful and accomplish more when they focus on one thing instead of trying to do several at once, but they are less stressed. One particular study measured heart-rate variability as a reflection of mental stress and found that people who answer emails during the day as they work instead of setting aside time each day to respond to all their mail at once experience more stress. (More on email as a stressor below)

Digital Devices and Social Media

When Time Magazine talked about stress in the 1980’s, we weren’t walking around with smart phones and tablets in our pockets and bags or lying in bed at night texting or checking Facebook. We wonder why we are stressed when we never take time to unplug and reconnect with nature, family and friends! How many times have you seen families (or done this yourself) out to dinner or watching TV, all on their own devices simultaneously?

Whenever we read or see a message, email or post that is stressful or unfortunate, we take on some of that stress ourselves. Subconsciously, we may think or worry that it could happen to us and a post or a comment impacts us much in the same way that watching the violence and negativity on nightly news may. Research also shows that negative body image and longer periods of post-break up pain are just two of the downsides associated with social media use.

Apart from exposure to negative or stressful messages, using technology before bed can also interfere with sleep and excessive technology use can reduce your availability for connection and intimacy with your partner and family.

We also lose the warmth that comes with a direct interaction that is not transferred through an email or text exchange as well as tone and context; that’s why it’s never a good idea to discuss anything important, particularly with your partner, over email or text.

And while setting aside an hour for email while you’re on vacation is definitely better than checking your phone every 5 minutes, it’s hard to remove all the information, requests, ideas, problems, and tasks from your head and not have them creep into your thoughts while you should be playing and relaxing with your family or friends. This distraction will take hold at home if you check mail after leaving work or before bed as well.

Housework

For some people housework and creating order in the home is relaxing. For others, it is exactly the opposite and is a huge source of stress. Even if you do enjoy it, if you feel that you don’t get enough help and support from others in getting it done, or you have to face a messy or disorganized environment on occasion, it can become a source of stress for you as well. Dividing up the workload in a manner that everyone feels comfortable with and feeling supported in your role is key. This can be challenging for many couples and families to accomplish, however, and may be a source of significant stress in the home.

These are just a few of the sources of stress that impact us at home and may play a big role in why work can feel like an escape at times. When I ask my patients for examples of big and stressful things, however, as I shared with your earlier, these are not the things they name first. Any one of these can become a big and divisive issue, but even if it is not the biggest challenge you face, each of these smaller stressors can bring steady and unrelenting stress into your daily life that can lead to relationship challenges, less happiness, and health concerns such as hormonal imbalance and adrenal fatigue.

Stress and Adrenal Fatigue

When we are in a dangerous or stressful situation, our adrenal glands, which sit on top of our kidneys, release adrenaline to make us more alert and focused, and cortisol, to convert protein to energy and release our stored sugars, glycogen, so we can respond quickly. The adrenal response will prepare us to fight or flee by releasing energy, sharpening our senses, and slowing our digestion. Once the threat is removed, adrenaline rapidly vanishes and cortisol slowly returns to normal again.

When stress is ongoing or daily and not a once in a while occurrence, the adrenal glands focus the resources required (including estrogen) to make cortisol, resulting in hormonal imbalance. In addition, too much cortisol can damage healthy tissues. When the adrenals become totally burned out from this repetitive process, adrenal exhaustion and serious health concerns may result.

But before they are fully exhausted, the adrenals will function at limited capacity, resulting in hormonal imbalance and adrenal fatigue. In this case, you may experience symptoms such as weight gain, depression, cravings, insomnia, fuzzy thinking, and mood swings.

While I see this often in my practice, the good news is that Women to Women’s foundational nutrition and lifestyle recommendations can help stressed out women get back on track and restore their adrenal health. Our adrenal health system products also play a key role in restoring hormonal balance and providing adrenal support by delivering foundational nutritional support that is just not available from today’s food supply.

Our products and programs have been helping thousands of women to restore hormonal balance and repair adrenal fatigue for more than three decades. Together we can help you reduce your symptoms, restore your health, and finally feel like yourself again.

If you experience any of the stressors in this article or any other sources of stress on an ongoing basis, if you feel tired or worn out, have trouble sleeping or are wired, if you feel stressed more than occasionally, or if you would describe your life, or home or work environment as stressful, that stress can significantly impact your health over time. In fact, you may already have hormonal imbalance and and adrenal fatigue.

Stress doesn’t have to wear you down and wipe you out or leave you wired and unable to sleep. You can feel better. We can help. To learn more about adrenal fatigue click here.

To purchase our adrenal support system or one of our adrenal support products, click here.

Will My Hot Flash Lead to a Heart Attack?

womentowomen on March 27, 2015

Last week I was in Tucson, facilitating workshops at the Institute of Functional Medicine. It is such an honor to be asked to facilitate and assist in training so many brilliant minds and amazing health professionals.

I love working with like-minded professionals and I get excited about sharing my knowledge, passion and energy with my peers. I know I’ll return to the clinic re-charged. One of the benefits of traveling (and having my plane delayed for mechanical reasons) is that I had the chance to get caught up on reading a number of new research studies that I’ll be sharing more about with you over the coming weeks.

I always love it when I see studies come forward that make the connections that we have seen in our patients at Women to Women and have been talking about with you in our newsletters for years. I’m a Functional Medicine practitioner and what that means is that we know that everything is connected; Functional Medicine practitioners understand that if we can learn more about what is happening “upstream,” we can begin to prevent and cure the symptoms and conditions that ultimately occur “downstream.” So I love to see research that helps us to “connect the dots.”

While I try to stay up to date on all the latest studies, I always pay extra close attention to research that confirms what we believe about the connection between symptoms of hormonal imbalance and other health concerns. That’s because we usually find that the “downstream” symptom has an “upstream” cause. One study recently connected the dots between hot flashes and heart health and I’d like to sum up the major conclusions and share what it really means for YOU.

The study, which was conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, found that women who have hot flashes at younger ages, and who have them more frequently, might have a greater risk of heart disease.

Specifically, the research showed that when a woman experiences her first hot flash at age 42 or younger, her endothelial function (which is tied to heart attack risk and is considered an indicator of heart health) is significantly poorer than in women who had their first hot flash at an older age.

In addition, the more hot flashes the women in the age group of 52 and younger had in a 24-hour period, the less healthy their endothelial function was and the greater their heart attack risk.

While we know that this is not conclusive and further study is warranted, it is an interesting connection and one that makes sense to us since we know that hormonal imbalance is something that does not occur in isolation. We know that insulin resistance plays a role in heart health and also leads to menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes so that is just one way that these two may be connected. It will be exciting to see if more research can probe the link and make the insulin connection in the future.

As we wait for further information, however, one thing these results do suggest is that women at younger ages experiencing hot flashes should be more vigilant of their heart health.

One way you can take better care of your heart is to engage in regular exercise, especially exercise that raises the heart rate. Exercise is known to force blood vessels to dilate and to help them remain healthy, improving the poor endothelial function that the study found which was so concerning; women in this group should be even more conscious of ensuring they remain active and exercise regularly as they age.

We have talked about the burst form of high intensity interval training with you before, as this is the form of exercise that we always recommend. Exercising for too long a period of time actually can increase oxidative stress.

In addition, managing other factors such as weight, blood pressure, and diet, especially glucose levels are important for long-term heart health; as we’ve seen and shared with you, correlations have been proven between internal inflammation, blood sugar levels, and heart attacks.

At Women to Women, we think it’s important for all of us, but especially women with frequent hot flashes and flashes occurring at younger ages, to take preventive action with respect to heart health. But we also know that it is equally, if not more, important to try to prevent or eliminate hot flashes before they do damage to the endothelium and ultimately, the heart.

To bring hormones back into balance, we work with our patients to focus on what they eat and how they live: we know that a good night’s sleep, reducing stress, regular exercise, and a healthy whole food diet, which includes being aware of the overall carbohydrate content and quality, will go a long way toward restoring wellness.

In our nutritional guidelines, we recommend high-quality proteins such as grass fed meat and wild caught fish, fresh fruits and vegetables (organic if you can) and minimizing packaged and processed foods. If organic is not possible all the time, at least buy organic when consuming the toxic 12 fruits and vegetables. (Link to our article.)

We see so many patients in our clinic who tell us that it is extremely difficult today to eat all the nutrients needed for hormonal balance during perimenopause, even if they do try to eat a healthy and balanced diet. Numerous studies show us that the nutritional content of food today is diminished due to farming practices, long transportation times, and our desire for perfectly beautiful produce.

So in addition to eating well, the body may require more support, especially if you experience a lot of stress in your life. We have found that we can reduce or eliminate hot flashes with our patients by supporting the body’s hormonal balance with a pharmaceutical grade multi-vitamin and omega-3 supplement.

We actually went out and created our own to ensure it had the ingredients and the purity we knew women needed to restore balance and feel well. Our patients have had great success with them for over 3 decades and we take them too!

In our clinic, these two products help virtually all patients we see to reduce symptoms, whatever they may be, and to feel like themselves again: whether they suffer from hot flashes or not!

If hot flashes or other menopausal symptoms are causing discomfort, we also recommend a third product that is formulated specifically to alleviate symptoms of hormonal imbalance. Our proprietary and proven Menopausal Support System can reduce or eliminate annoying symptoms, including potentially heart-unhealthy hot flashes, so you can feel like yourself again.

This week, to celebrate spring (which is hopefully coming to Maine soon!), we are offering 10% off any of our proven Menopausal Support System products. Use coupon code springsale at checkout. If you’d like to learn more, click here.

To learn more about heart health, hot flashes or how to manage your blood sugar levels, see our library at www.womentowomen.com/health-library/