Ep 31: Hormones and Weight Loss During Perimenopause with Karen Martel
I am extremely excited for today’s guest, Karen Martel, not only because of her work in women’s fat loss and hormones but her genuine passion for helping others, which comes through on her podcast and in my personal interactions with her.
Karen Martel is a Certified Hormone Specialist & Transformational Nutrition Coach and women’s weight loss expert.
She is the host of the top-rated women’s health podcast The Other Side of Weight Loss where she helps women to unlock the mysteries of female fat loss and hormone imbalance.
After struggling with her own health issues, Karen was determined to bring her knowledge to others with a bold new approach to women’s hormone health and weight management. Karen’s passion lies in helping women balance and optimize their hormones in peri- and post-menopause and breakthrough weight loss resistance.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Hormonal weight loss resistance
Hormone imbalances that cause weight gain
Sugar cravings from hormone imbalances
What happens to hormones during perimenopause
Gaining weight during peri or post-menopause
Foods or nutritional strategy to consider before therapy/supplements/medical advice
How perimenopause affects muscle growth
Safety of bioidentical hormones
When to start using bioidentical hormones
Effect of estrogen on weight gain
Seed cycling (viable strategy for estrogen dominance?)
Determine whether we are processing hormones properly
RELATED LINKS
Take the Hormone Quiz and find out which hormones could be stopping you from losing weight at this link
Subscribe to The Other Side of Weight Loss podcast
Visit Karen's website at karenmartel.com
Find Karen on Instagram
Watch the episode on video here
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Transcript
Philip Pape 00:08
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, where we discuss getting strong and healthy with strength training and sustainable nutrition. I'm your host, Philip pape, and in each episode, we examine strategies to help you achieve physical self mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent nutrition and training for sustainable results. Welcome to another episode of Wits & Weights. I'm extremely excited for today's guest, Karen Martel, not only because of her work and women's fat loss and hormones, but the genuine passion she has for helping others. And I've experienced this personally both listening to her podcast and in my personal interactions with her care Martel is a certified hormone specialist and transformational nutrition coach and women's weight loss expert. She's the host of the top rated Women's Health podcast. The other side of weight loss, make sure to subscribe, where she helps women to unlock the mysteries of female fat loss and hormone imbalance. After struggling with her own health issues, Karen was determined to bring her knowledge to others with a bold new approach to women's hormone health and weight management. Karen's passion lies in helping women balance and optimize their hormones in Peri, and post menopause and breakthrough weight loss resistance. Karen, I'm very excited to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me.
Karen Martel 01:28
I'm very excited to be here, Philip. I love your audience already, because they're very similar to my own audience.
Philip Pape 01:36
That's awesome. So they're gonna enjoy this conversation. So mine yeah, I'm gonna learn a ton talking with you. So just right off the bat, you know, energy enthusiasm attracted my attention when we connected a while back. And I'm guessing that you've helped many women with that attitude with that approach. So tell us about your background in hormones specifically and weight loss coaching for Peri and postmenopausal women. How did you get into that area? How did what inspired you to help others?
Karen Martel 02:03
Yes, so I feel like I've had like a life long journey with hormones. Like anything that could happen hormonally. I feel like it did to me. Like since a very young age, like pretty much since I hit puberty, it was like, Oh, you want endometriosis? Sure, we'll check you endometriosis. You want ovarian cysts, oh, here you go. You want horrible PMS. They're just like, from a very young age. I was very hormonal, and not in a happy way. It really hit the fan though, when I had my first baby, which I think a lot of women can really relate to this where, you know, you're ticking along. You have your first child. And then it's like, nothing goes back to the same after that. And you're going What the heck just happened to my entire system. And I was young, I was 30. While young ish. I was 33. It was two years after having my child I had lost all the baby weight. And it was it just suddenly I started packing on weight for no reason was actually only about a year and just over a year because I was just on breastfeeding. And that's it triggered something when I had finished breastfeeding. And just started packing on this weight and I suddenly have really bad insomnia and horrible PMS where I would have a migraine for you know, 10 days out of that month, like right around my period. I was super bloated. So I had a lot of digestive problems. I was getting hives on my body and like most women, what did I do at that time? I looked around and said okay, what do you do when this kind of thing happens? I went into the next best diet at the time, which was I think the zone or Atkins, something like that. So I went on to the next best diet was watching my calorie intake. I hired a personal trainer. I started working out like crazy started going to like these CrossFit workouts and like six days a week, I was pushing it hard, probably in the best shape of my life because I was working out so much and like really tough workouts and thinking this is the answer. Eat last workout more, right? This is what I've been told. This is what women still do to this day when they start gaining weight. And I just kept gaining and gaining and gaining and all the problems kept getting worse and worse. went to the doctor was put on the antidepressant the sleeping pills like she didn't even want say anything about hey, maybe it's your hormones. I mean, I'm 33 and this just kept happening and I'm looking around and all these women that I'm working out with who are shredded, doing exactly the same thing that I'm doing and I was probably eating far better than they were. And I was the heaviest I had ever been. And I was like are you kidding me? I switched all to all the diets. I was juice cleansing I was doing enemas. I was like, wow, you know, doing the Atkins the zone. I tried veganism. I did it all. So finally I was like, There's something wrong, clearly. And so I've always been a researcher and I was into hell. So I was like, I gotta dig into this farther and see what's going on. And I talked to a friend of mine who was a naturopath and I said, I think I want to test my hormones. And I said, can you test my hormones for me? And he said, Yeah, come on in. And I ended up doing what's called a saliva test for hormones, which tests what available hormone levels you have in your body. And it also tests your stress response, and like where your stress system is,
Philip Pape 05:41
you said a saliva test. This is just saliva, okay.
Karen Martel 05:43
Yep. Yeah. And so it tests your stress hormone cortisol and cortisol supposed to come up in the morning and then fall throughout the day. And when the results came back, my cortisol was flatlined. So I was down at the very bottom. At that time, it was called adrenal fatigue. Now, it's called adrenal insufficiency. And my estrogen was high. And I had very, very low progesterone, which are our sex hormones. And we can get into that. And I also had a very low DHEA, which is another adrenal hormone, a stress hormone. And that was also tanked. So there, I was highly stressed out, you know, I was the single mother, you know, no help from the Father. I was running my own business at the time, I was a massage therapist. So it was it was very physical on me, I was just go, go go, thinking, I'm not stressed out. I'm doing what every other North American woman's doing. But it clearly was affecting my body. And there, I was starving myself and working out the hardest I've ever worked out, which is exactly the wrong things that I should be doing according to that hormonal profile. And so I did this huge overhaul in my life, because it really just made me take a look and go, Oh, my gosh, I'm way more stressed out than I thought I was like, This isn't right. And so I quit working out, I started doing yoga. So I guess that's considered working out. But you know, which to just yoga, walking, you know, getting more help all of these things, was not a quick fix. I'll tell you that right now. I had to balance those hormones. I later found out I was also very hypothyroid. And so all of these things, and I kept toxic load. And I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff to this picture that I had going on. And it was like I found all these puzzle pieces, I was able to put it together. And finally my body slowly but surely lost the weight. And then, you know, once again, because Karen gets all the hormonal stuff. I started to go into an early menopause when I was in my early 40s. And so then I went from, you know, having stabilized my weight for almost 10 years feeling fantastic. At that time, I had decided as well, I was like, I can't be the only woman that's feeling this. This is going through this. There's got to be more women out there that are eating right, exercising, doing everything that everybody's telling them to do. But yet they're not losing weight, and they're maybe just gaining. So that's when I went and got my nutritionist certification, started working in weight loss and dabbling in the hormone thing. And then when I hit the early, perimenopause, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Okay, fine. I'm going to learn everything I can vote, the female hormonal system and what happens in perimenopause and menopause. And I'm going to reverse this. And I did. And I still have my regular period now, and I'm 46 years old. So it's been great. And now I'm helping women all over the worlds fix these problems as far as their hormonal weight loss resistance goes and helping them to thrive in these Peri menopausal years, which can be anywhere from 10 to 14 years. And instead of suffering through this time, I'm giving them the education that isn't out there to help them with their hormonal state as they get through this time,
Philip Pape 09:14
while care. So that's quite a story a lot to unpack. But I was the short version. Oh, no, that's okay. And I get it, you have that and then you have the 20 minute version. I want to I want to break this into phases before we dive into the hormonal weight loss resistance and the perimenopause. Because I do want the listener to realize the process you went through, you know, you you were frustrated from years of thinking you're doing the right thing. You were doing a lot of what we all do, myself included, you know, the Atkins and then it was paleo and then it was keto, and CrossFit, and move more, move more, eat less. And then you you sort of diagnosed what was going on by looking at your hormones. You didn't necessarily go and do a quick fix and try to try to attack it from the hormone perspective directly. You went and said, you know, what are my priorities that I need to straighten? out first the big things that that you know, steps and stress management, yoga, etc. And then see what happens and it sounds like you, you were able to get to a good state doing that. And I want a lot of people to be aware of of that, that that we that is could be the first step we try before we go to anything exotic. And then you said okay now in your 30s I think perimenopause is mid mid to late 30s. And then all the way till menopause, right? So which could be in your 50? So it's a wide range, then you started to have other issues that were isolated to that, once you accounted for the other thing. So kind of two different phases, right? And most of your clients are assuming more on the perimenopause side of the equation. Do you do you work? Do you work with them first on those things, and then move on to the hormones or is there a proven approach you take that kind of blends the two,
Karen Martel 10:51
it depends on where they're at. So, women don't even know that they're in perimenopause. Number one, and most of them have no clue they kind of associate perimenopause with their 50s. They don't realize that perimenopause now typically starts in our mid to late 30s, as you said, and that's just simply we start to lose ovarian function, we see we start to lose ovulation. And so the first hormone that goes is progesterone. And this is, like I said, late 30s, early 40s, we see a real dip, like 75%, in some women in progesterone, and we'll get into what that is. But if the woman is still cycling, and she's in that late 30s, early 40s, there's a lot that you should be doing and that you can do to really mitigate the hormonal loss and the effects of the hormonal loss without jumping to hormones. Now, there's obviously nuances to that, like if somebody's goes into early menopause, premature menopause, then, you know, you can try and really find out the root cause of why is this person losing her period at the age of 40. And there is the oftentimes you can find a root cause it can be from stress, it can be from long term, low carb diets, too much fasting, which is all stressors to our body, especially to the female system. So we can sometimes look and go, Okay, here's what happened, or maybe they had trauma or anything like that can can stop the cycle and stop you from ovulating. So we do look at all of those things. But typically, there's a lot that we can do in those first, that first half of perimenopause that doesn't involve hormones. Once you get to a certain age, Philip, it's really about the fact that your ovaries are no longer functioning the way they used to. And this will happen to every single woman, nobody's exempt from it. And at that point, our ovaries just stop making these hormones. And there's no supplements, no diet, no fitness, nothing that will bring that back. And so it's at that point where you don't really mess around. Like there's tons of awesome therapeutic holistic herbals, and, you know, things that you need to really manage. And this is what I help women do so much as their lifestyle and their stress management and the vitamins and minerals and herbals that can really help ease the transition. But you still need in most cases, if you're as long as you're a good candidate for them, you really, you can't like I say you can't supplement your diet your way out of the hormonal loss, and then it comes down to replacing because replacing the hormones. It actually is healthier for most of us to use hormone replacement than not, is that.
Philip Pape 13:59
Yeah, and I guess I know when I was in the testosterone world, we talk about hormone replacement, the risk being that now you sort of train your body not to produce as much testosterone is that is that not an issue because of the fact that you've just simply not producing it anyway.
Karen Martel 14:15
Exactly. And you do have to be very careful with that in the younger years if you're thinking of replacing because there's certain hormones that have what is called the negative feedback loop where you're telling it's coming from the outside source. Testosterone is one of them where it goes, oh, there's testosterone coming in. I don't need to produce anymore. thyroids. Another one. Interesting enough progesterone isn't. So when you start taking progesterone, it will not suppress ovulation and you can't make progesterone unless you ovulate. And so it doesn't you can still produce your own even though you're taking it from an outside source.
Philip Pape 14:53
I'm fascinated by this topic because I think there's a lot of physiological reasons that people hit plateaus and they struggle to lose weight, including hormones. And I think hormones are a big mystery for a lot of people. And I think you touched on hormonal weight loss resistance. Is there anything else about that concept that we need to understand?
Karen Martel 15:14
I think it's just good to understand that if you are doing everything, right, you're eating right, you're, you know, your stress management, you're sleeping, you're doing all of those really important things that I'm sure Philip talks about. And you're not losing weight 95% of the time, it will be hormonal. And so to make sure that that is looked at, we women are very hormonal, and we have to honor our hormonal system. And with this day and age, with all the toxins in our environment, and the stress factors, majority of women have some degree of hormonal imbalance, especially in their 30s 40s and 50s.
Philip Pape 15:59
And looking at not only plateaus, where, you know, women come in struggling to lose weight, but our our hormone balance is causing weight gain. And maybe that's just a counter a counter force, or other things like sugar cravings and things like that.
Karen Martel 16:15
100% like, you know, you hear these women saying, Oh, I can't control my sugar cravings, and they're doing, you know, emotional support. They're trying supplements, they're, they feel like they're doing so much trying to get control of their eating habits. And sometimes it's just a matter of because they've lost certain hormones, that it's driving the sugar addiction, or driving the anxiety or driving the depression, which then makes them eat the sugar.
Philip Pape 16:44
Yeah, no Are these have We nailed down specific hormones that cause those specific effects, like, I understand things like not female hormones, but leptin and ghrelin, for example, that go out of whack, when we're dieting that affect our appetite. So if we nail that down, well,
Karen Martel 17:01
and so estrogen as we age, we lose it typically later in our 40s, we start losing our estrogen. Estrogen has, it's got receptors in the hunger centers of our brain. So when we lose estrogen we can get so that our leptin signaling becomes off, so we get more hungry. Okay. The other thing is, estrogen helps us to be more insulin sensitive. So as you lose that, now, you're not so sensitive to that blood glucose and you become more insulin resistance, which will drive the hunger and the cravings. And then and also drive insulin resistance to get worse. So there's these kinds of behind the doors, things that can be driving these things.
Philip Pape 17:47
Yeah, it's that cascade, right? It's Yes. It's our interactive. Yeah. So lifted cast. Yeah, all of those. So I've had I've had female clients that talk about, of course, gaining weight period, and post menopause. Oftentimes, it's in the form of visceral, abdominal fat, or perceived to be so I wanted to dive into that a little bit. Yeah, what we know about that, and why that's caused, you know, other than the things like alcohol and and, and other behaviors that we know about hormone related.
Karen Martel 18:15
Yeah. Yeah. So it is the biggest complaint that you'll hear is, oh, my gosh, I just packed on 10 pounds on a solid, my stomach. Very annoying.
Philip Pape 18:26
And it's almost asymmetric. Like, you can't even imagine that that had happened. Because everything else is exactly the same. And all of a sudden, you know, the stomach is gone. Yep.
Karen Martel 18:35
Yes. And so there's a few different things that start to happen, that drive that one is that we become more insulin resistant. And we know that, you know, if you see type two diabetes, one of the markers of that, as far as physique goes is they have a big stomach. The man gets the big, hard, big belly, and the woman gets the softer but still very all the way around like no waistline look to them, which is the same as the menopause belly. So insulin resistance because the loss of fat, it's always too, let me just say, almost always, because of the estrogen loss that you gain, belly fat. It's the driving hormone of that. So we'd start losing our estrogen we become more insulin resistant, which can make it so that we gain it in our stomach. The other thing that starts to happen is cortisol can start to go up in our menopausal years. And we also know that stress, cortisol can cause weight gain in the belly, so that will contribute to it. Your body's super smart and estrogens the most vital hormone in a woman's body. It has over 400 different functions. So when you start losing your estrogen, your body is so smart. It says how can we get out estrogen if our ovaries aren't going to make it anymore, and how is that through our adrenal system and through our fat cells, and so the body goes, Okay, quick, let's put some fat on this woman's body so that we can make some estrogen. And so you'll see women like the heavier they are as they age, typically, the more estrogen they actually have sticking around in their system. Yeah, so even though they have no more ovarian function, they'll still have decent levels of estrogen in their body.
Philip Pape 20:32
So there's a logical way you put that is this is this, what they call adipocyte hyperplasia new fat cell generation, or is this just enlarging of those fat cells
Karen Martel 20:42
enlarging up the fat cells? But I'm not 100%
Philip Pape 20:45
on Yeah, no. Okay. Yeah, here I am. Yeah, so I guess it's. So we're scaring everybody with the hormones. Now let me take a step back. Talk about just quickly food and nutrition before we go down the path again, is there an optimal set of foods or a strategy nutrition strategy women should consider before they go down the path of getting freaked out about all the hormones and the hormone therapy and supplements and medical advice and all that?
Karen Martel 21:13
Yes, yeah. I always say no matter what road you choose in your perimenopausal years, diet has to be the foundation. And I was like everybody else in the world where I was to one extreme to the next. Like I said, I've tried it all. I've been there done that I've done keto I've done carnivore, I've been vegan vegetarian, you know, and get into the diet camp and the tunnel vision of this is the best I'd ever for everybody. And I quickly realized the more women I worked with that how wrong that was. And now I really base everybody's diet plan on what their hormones are doing. And there's certainly some that are better than others that I use a lot more, I've actually created my own kind of diet plan that is very flexible, I tell everyone, they have to make it their own. But because we become more insulin resistant, it is better to be lower carb as when you're in your 40s out of your cyclical years, because we're more insulin resistant and more prone to the weight gain. And so our blood because our blood glucose gets a little bit funny. It's a good idea to go more lower carb, but you want to cycle those carbs. Because too long, too low carb does a lot of damage. And I see these women on a daily basis in my practice, who have heard me on a podcast talk about it. And they're like, that's me. I did keto. And it was so great. And I lost 30 pounds. And then a year into it, I suddenly started gaining and and I didn't change anything and I can't sleep and my hair's falling out. Like I'm telling you felt almost daily, I get this. So we really see this long term effect of what these diets are doing to the female hormonal system. And, I mean, this is a whole podcast in and of itself, so I won't get too far into it. But it's just safe to say you have to be very careful. Because if you're a woman like I was when I was in my early 30s and having all those problems who I was in adrenal insufficiency, I had hypothyroidism undiagnosed hypothyroidism, I was a totally, absolutely burned out. Putting me on a ketogenic diet would have been disastrous at that time, another big stressor. Yeah, another big stressor. And we need the carbohydrates, you know, for those that those hormonal systems thyroid and adrenals really need the carbs, good carbohydrates. So then there's the person that maybe is coming up that's got insulin resistance, or type two diabetes, they might have polycystic ovarian syndrome, there might be overweight, that person could probably utilize a ketogenic diet for a period of time to reverse some of those issues. And then as soon as they can, they can start cycling in some of those good carbs. The other thing is we become more inflamed as we age, and we start losing muscle sarcopenia. So when this starts to happen, we really, really need to upper protein. There's a lot of research around this about the loss of muscle tissue and how you know, muscles a process. It's something like 80 to 90% of our glucose in our body. So if we start losing our muscles, and you talked about putting, there's another reason why you're going to put fat on you losing your muscle tissue muscles process was to process all of our blood sugar. So in that case, you want to be a little bit lower carb because your body's not handling the blood sugar as well. But at the same time, you've got to really increase that profit tene intake to make sure that you don't lose that muscle tissue that can counterbalance weight gain, like nothing else. And so you know, diet has to be the foundation, you can't just hop onto the hormones are very, some can, but most Can we come into our 40s typically not doing our greatest, you know, we tend to start gaining weight, we're highly stressed out, we're, you know, like, it's, it's not, we're not like how we were we're not as resilient as we were in our 20s. Or we could party all night. Yeah, and eat like crap and be fine. And we're not like that anymore. And so you have to be very careful. And so I always say you got to have that foundation, you got to figure out what's going to be best for you, according to your hormonal profile at that time. Because we're more inflamed, we want to do a lower inflammatory diet. So I do lean on the side of paleo. I've personally been paleo for over 10 years, it's just what works for me, I have most of my women on some form of a paleo based diet where we, you know, we do a little bit of intermittent fasting for the blood sugar, we don't overdo it, we increase our protein weekly carb cycle and we calorie cycle so that we don't plateau.
Philip Pape 26:19
Yeah, so I mean, the big message and everything you just said I love it, I agree with with all of that is individualization periodization. And you take it to that next level, by incorporating the hormonal aspect of that, and saying, Hey, for you, as an individual, because of these inputs, and these outputs, we're gonna get the best results doing this. Whereas, you know, the traditional approaches, everyone will get the best results doing this one thing, and you come from a different approach. And I like to have the same conversation that hey, if you if you enjoy keto, if it works for you, and it's imbalanced with your results, then great. That's the diet for you. Maybe you just don't like grains. And so paleo is great, you know, maybe whatever. I've heard of elimination diets being used to which are very difficult for
Karen Martel 27:07
various challenging, but they can be very helpful. And
Philip Pape 27:10
they can be you know, and I've known people personally have done that. And then when they reintroduce things, they can really identify their triggers. So I love all of that stuff. And you started to go on a little tangent about body composition and protein in muscle. And maybe we can talk about that just a little more. Because I think sometimes it's under not given enough attention with all the talk about weight loss and fat loss, especially for women who want to maybe look more toned, have a better physique, and feel better and be stronger and all the things you said about sarcopenia and even osteopenia, and health. So how does, how does perimenopause specifically affect muscle growth? You know, somebody comes in and says just you need more protein, you just strength train. Okay. But that's not the end of the story. So how does it affect that?
Karen Martel 27:58
Yeah, because a lot of women, about 50% of women start to lose their testosterone in their 40s. And we know that testosterone is extremely important for muscle growth, not just for the men. Testosterone is a woman's most abundant hormone, which nobody knows that
Philip Pape 28:19
absolute terms, you're saying in absolute
Karen Martel 28:21
terms, we have more testosterone than estrogen and progesterone. We just don't have as much as a man. But it doesn't mean it's any less important. So we get very much ignored with this from the medical system. It's like to try and find testosterone for a woman is extremely challenging.
Philip Pape 28:44
Hey, this is Philip pape, letting you know that applications are now open for one on one coaching. If you're a busy working professional who has tried dieting and exercising for years, with little in the way of results, anyone to lose fat, get lean or feel confident in your body without excessive dieting, cardio or restrictions. Just go to wits & weights.com/coaching to apply.
Karen Martel 29:08
Men there's clinics on every bloody street corner for them. Oh, you need to start oh my god, here's your
Philip Pape 29:15
Yeah.
Karen Martel 29:17
So as you lose your testosterone, you're gonna lose that muscle, right? Estrogen is is responsible for produce some of the protein synthesis in the system. So when we start to lose the estrogen that can also impact the muscle. There was an really interesting paper that just came out, like literally, I think a couple of months ago by two Australian guys, Robin Heimer. And Simpson, have you heard of them? Remind me I don't think so. They wrote a book called Eat like the animals. Okay. Fascinating. I interviewed them on my podcast. I've read their book and that they from that from their studies in that book, they studied all forms have species and he and then it replicated it in humans. And what they found was human beings will over eat carbs and fat to meet their protein threshold. So this is why we're all constantly over why it's so easy to overeat carbs and fat, because most of us aren't getting aren't eating enough protein. So now we tend to, we're eating far more calories than we need to, because we're trying to meet our protein that this protein intake that we need, as humans.
Philip Pape 30:36
Interesting is that just let me stop you there is that is that simply because you know, in the wild protein is just not as abundant, versus the other sources. And so you have to eat just more a larger quantity overall, to get all the trace proteins to add up all the amino acids from all the different sources to add up to the protein you need? Is that comes from
Karen Martel 30:55
I think so like they even they even like they studied things like grasshoppers and larva. And even in these things that were like, what do you call them? Like amoebas amoebas, like not the organisms, all these single species does this. They'll even cannibalize each other to meet their like some of these insects will cannibalize just to meet their protein intake.
Philip Pape 31:24
Interesting, because I know people make the argument that Why are gorillas jacked when they're vegetarians. And when you look at how much they have to eat every day, they get enough protein that way.
Karen Martel 31:34
100%. So the book starts out where they're talking about in a ring, a tang, who they studied the exact, they measured and weighed everything that went into the monkey's mouth. And they tracked it for like three months, and they realize that that monkey was eating the exact amount of protein every day, through fruits and vegetables.
Philip Pape 32:00
Sure, so we're drawn. So I mean, your point was, we're drawn to carbs and fats. And in the modern, in the modern world, where there are so abundant, that can not be a great thing,
Karen Martel 32:09
while they're highly palatable foods, right? Like, it's like, whoa, give me the fat and carbs together, please like a doughnut, I'm delicious. But they came up with so that they extended their research. And they've been working on this for the last couple years. And so then this is the paper that was just published, where they talk about menopausal women, and the need for protein and how it increases as we age. So as we're, you know, growing up and we're going through our adult hood, there's a certain percentage, we have to meet this threshold, or your body's trying to meet this threshold, this protein threshold, which is I can't, I want to say it's like 15, or 30% 30%, I think it's 30%. And then as you age that increases. And so, you know, you think about all the stuff that I just talked about all this blood sugar dysregulation and you're wanting to eat more, and you're stressed out, your cortisol is a mess, and you're going to be craving carbohydrates, you're going to crave those highly palatable foods, because that's what happens when you're insulin resistant, and you're stressed out or depressed or anxiety ridden because you have two hormones. So not to paint a horrible picture here. I hate being the Debbie Downer with all of this, but just to give you guys an idea of what happens, you know, inside the body, and so that if we're not meeting our protein requirements, as we age, we're going to eat even more than we
Philip Pape 33:35
used to. And you know, I don't think you're a Debbie Downer at all. I think you're highlighting facts that that are just there. You didn't You didn't make them up. They exist and we can do something about it. That's the positive messages. That's what you do every day with people. So get it getting, I guess we're not off track. This is all great stuff. But getting back to the hormones, then I know you talk about bio identical hormones, which I think is the same as natural hormone therapy, but you can correct me if I'm wrong. Are they safe? That that's the first question people might have. Are these safe? They're
Karen Martel 34:07
extremely safe. Yes, there's a lot of bad rap because of the Women's Health Initiative study. And most people don't even know why they're afraid of hormones. But that's why was from that study, even though they never even heard of it. That's where the fear has been stemming from since 2002. So it used to be that it estrogen replacement therapy, which used to come from pregnant horses. It was called primary. It was the most prescribed medication in North America. So every woman was on Premarin back in the 1950s. And on like everybody, it was number one. And then they decided to do this great big study and it was the large one of the largest studies of its kind. That's how big it was. That was billions of dollar. It was like it was insane. There was two arms of the study. One arm was Premarin used with fake progesterone, which is called progestin. And then the other arm of the study was women without a uterus and they were just on Premarin. Okay? They halted this study early two years early, because they saw, they saw a rise in breast cancer cases, not very much. It was very small, like an extra four people out of 100,000. That's how minuscule it was. They saw this increase little bit of the breast cancer, a little bit of heart attack and stroke. And so they were like, Oh, my gosh, hormones, cause breast cancer and heart attack, heart disease, every woman needs to get pulled off of these hormones and kind of word went out to the world. HRT causes breast cancer. And it's never gone back. And there has been several analysis done of that study reanalysis. And what they now see in that study that was not shared with the public was that the arm of the study where the women were on Premarin only had a decrease in breast cancer cases by 34%. Wow. So it was the progestin that caused the increase in breast cancer. And if we look at all of the studies that have now been done, and we kind of collect them together, we see now that women that replace their estrogen having decreased rate of developing breast cancer, and most can't even believe that, because cancer Oh, my God, I'm gonna, you know,
Philip Pape 36:40
it's, you're right. It's one of those scientifically misinterpreted results that has stuck for decades, I guess now, and I'd be really curious to see I'm sure that we can identify the papers or the current papers. Oh, that up? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Tons. So then, so they're safe. When would women start using them?
Karen Martel 36:59
Yeah. And don't get me wrong. There are a select group of women that shouldn't be on hormones. And this is something that you want to talk to a knowledgeable hormone practitioner and probably not your doctor. Unfortunately, doctors are not trained in bioidentical hormone therapy. So they're going to have that old view most of the time of, oh my gosh, it'll cause you give you breast cancer. But then they'll give you the birth control pill, which is full of progestins. The thing that causes
Philip Pape 37:25
we are not dispensing medical device on this show. Disclaimer.
Karen Martel 37:29
No, yeah. So we're so if you if you're going to choose the hormone route, now we have we're lucky we have the choice of doing what's called bioidentical or body identical hormones. So Premarin, we're not horses. We do not have the same estrogen as horses. And yet that still worked. And it still decreased our risk of breast cancer and osteoporosis and Alzheimer's. And it did a whole bunch of wonderful things for us. But it also had some bad to it too. It did, it does increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, because you have to take it orally. So it has to go through the first hepatic pass of the liver, which increases inflammation and it can increase your risk of heart attack and stroke past 10 years, it can increase your risk of breast cancer. So we don't need to choose that anymore. We can now do bioidentical which is, comes from either yam or soy, and is identical to what your body makes. So your body can't distinguish between what's coming in from a cream or a shot or however you're going to use it, or what your own body produces on the inside. So it's extremely safe. We know I mean, I can go on and on about the benefits of hormone replacement, but we do see a lower risk of developing all types of cancer. If you replace your hormones for at least 10 years post menopause. We see that women there was a great big study out of Arizona where they looked at 4000 Women and the results of that study showed that women that replace their estrogen for five six years or longer had a reduction in developing Alzheimer's and dementia for up to 75% which is huge for something that they say there's no cure for. But you ask a woman how she how her brain feels and menopause when she loses her estrogen and they'll say I can't formulate words. I can't remember I'm so afraid of developing Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is also one of the highest killers of women right now and it's getting more and more so. So we know that estrogen is extremely important for brain. Progesterone is very counteractive to that estrogen is a growth hormone. So we always want progesterone in there not progestin progesterone in there to counteract growth that also shows protection of the breasts. If you have breast cancer This is where there's some caveats to this, if you have breast cancer, or you have a history of breast cancer, you obviously have to be more careful, because estrogen is a growth hormone. If you've got breast cancer, it can make it multiply. But you have, you should have more fear of drinking alcohol. And eating too much sugar will cause breast cancer before your estrogen replacement in most cases. I mean, like I said, this is not a blanket thing statement. This is, in general, just
Philip Pape 40:30
having a conversation. You know, we're just trying to educate people to look into this. And I think it's great, I think, I mean, if somebody wants to start pursuing their own education about their own body and their hormones, where would they start to determine whether they're processing hormones properly? How can they do that?
Karen Martel 40:51
Great question. So I always say as soon as you can start testing your hormones. So if you're in your 30s, and you're feeling fine, now's the time to test because you really want to see what are your levels at when you feel good? It's good as a baseline. If you're past that, don't worry, it's never too late. But we want to get a really good idea of how does your body take on these hormones? Are you more estrogenic? Are you more androgenic, there's so many things that you can look at, there's also breakdown pathways of hormones that you can look at that can tell you if you may have an increased risk of breast cancer, because of which path your body chooses to break down estrogen, because some are more inflammatory and damaging than other pathways. So if you go to your doctor, your doctor will only test through blood, which will only test what's called bound hormones, and they're bound to a protein. These are not able to be used by the body, they have to get off the protein in order for the cell to use it for it to dock onto the cell. So this is again, probably a little too sciency for
Philip Pape 41:59
the free version, I mean, say versus no, yes,
Karen Martel 42:03
yeah. Oh, yes. And men can get their testosterone free levels tested through serum with no other hormones do the test three levels through serum. God forbid we help women. But you want to see what those free levels are. Because your total levels may look great when you don't have a lot of available hormones to the body. So if possible, you can do saliva, which tests free levels only. Or you can do what's called urine metabolite testing, which is the gold standard, that's going to give you your biggest picture, because it's not only going to reflect levels of free hormones, but it's going to tell you how you're processing all of these hormones, and what hair how are you metabolizing? Which pathways? Are you going down? And there's a lot that we can do with that information.
Philip Pape 42:54
Okay, so the again, you said your urine metabolite, and the saliva based test, which cannot
Karen Martel 43:01
be done through your primary care physician. Yeah, standard doctor, you need to buy that out of pocket. And you
Philip Pape 43:09
mentioned about women's health. I'm sure we could do an entire episode about the history of gaslighting and women's health, if you want to call it that. Yes, I yeah, I've done them. sympathize and empathize with that. So kind of, I guess third to last question. Sec. Asking for a friend. What do you think of the concept of seeds cycling? I think the intent is to minimize the fluctuations in hormones from cycle to cycle, but I'm not entirely sure what the purpose is. So is there a merit to this strategy?
Karen Martel 43:39
Yes. So seed cycling is actually used to help promote different hormones to help them come up, levels come up. So it's based around you, we want estrogen in the first half of the cycle. And we want more progesterone in the second half of the cycle. I actually have seen seed cycling work really well to help balance a woman's hormones and help with PMS, when they're cycling. So if you are a cyclical woman, not in menopause, this can help and remember what I said like we can't, we can't see it our way out of hormonal loss, just like we can't diet our way out of it. Same goes, right. So if you are in your 30s, and you're still got a cycle, seat Cycling is a really great way to help balance those hormones. You eat certain seeds in the first half of the cycle, and then you eat other seeds in the second half of the cycle like pumpkin and sunflower, sesame. And flash.
Philip Pape 44:41
Yeah. Yeah, pretty cool. And it's an easy, it's an easy thing to do and try it. Yes, yeah.
Karen Martel 44:47
Yeah. And there's all kinds of herbals and stuff like there's so much you can do in those early years that don't contain hormones. Right.
Philip Pape 44:54
Okay, so the penultimate question I like to ask this of all guests is well One question Did you wish I had asked and what is your answer?
Karen Martel 45:04
Oh, okay. I wish he would have asked, I'm not like dying for you to ask me a question. I don't think
Philip Pape 45:12
we covered so much. No, we
Karen Martel 45:14
really did. I mean, I can go off on so many different tangents. Okay, how about this is there light at the end of the tunnel for menopausal women because I do tend to tell you all this negative stuff, and women kind of go, Oh my gosh, like this sounds like it's horrible. And I don't want to be part of this. Like, we'll be going through this, this is all just negative. What I'll tell you right now, number one, there's, there's something that you can do. And that's what we've talked about here today. This is going to arm you with information and education so that you can go out and take action and do something about how you feel. There's so much that you can do to get through this time, low to no symptoms. I mean, I've seen women transform their lives just by replacing their hormones, where they're like, oh my gosh, I feel like I've come alive again, my libido is back, my skin's back, my hair is growing better, I feel better, I've lost weight, like, the list just goes on and on and on. This can be the best time of your life truly, honestly. I mean, we are told everywhere we look as women that we are not allowed to age, and you've got to ignore those things. Because aging can be the best thing ever, let me tell you this is when you're going to hopefully be the wisest. In your years, you're more confident with who you are, you're just like your kids have grown up or they're growing up, and they're not so needy anymore, you've kind of decided on the husband, whether he's staying or going or your wife, whatever you choose, you know, like this is when you really get to know who you are, and you start to put yourself first for the first time in your life, you put yourself first in most cases, women, you know, we try it, we get married, we get the career, we have the children, it's all about that. And then suddenly you hit your 40s 50s 60s and beyond. And it's like, oh, now I get to live for me and put myself first and it's a beautiful, amazing time. And so cherish it and make sure that you feel your best don't just survive this time, thrive during these years, and you can thrive during these years.
Philip Pape 47:29
That is a great way to end I love that don't just survive, but thrive. And I do want to give you the opportunity. Last question, Karen, after this amazing conversation. Where can listeners learn more about you and your work?
Karen Martel 47:43
Yes. So Karen martel.com is the website, you can find me on all the social accounts at Karen Martell hormones. And then of course, my podcast. I think that that's probably one of the best sources of information I talked a ton about wage and hormones and everything and everything else. It's as it's always number in the top 100 of the nutrition podcasts on iTunes, we do really, really well we've reverted top 20 Weight Loss podcasts of 2021. So it's great. And then I also on my website, you can take my free hormone quiz that tells you what your top hormone imbalances could be and which what could be stopping you from losing weight. And it comes with a nice eBook about some strategies that you can get started on right away, as well as a two week free hormone and metabolic meal plan, which is what I talked about earlier, where we cycle the carbs, we cycled the calories and you can kind of get an idea of how to eat that way. So that's all free. And you can get that over at Karen martell.com.
Philip Pape 48:49
Awesome. A lot of information. I think this for the listener the name of her podcast is the other side of weight loss, which you can go right now and download it very high quality podcast, lots of great information. And we just scratched the tip of the iceberg here. So I'll throw all that in the show notes so listeners can find you and Karen this was eye opening, very valuable conversation and I really thank you for coming on the show.
Karen Martel 49:11
Well, thank you so much for having me and I'll come back anytime Phillip.
Philip Pape 49:14
Absolutely love to have you. Thanks for listening to the show. Before you go. I have a quick favor to ask. If you enjoy the podcast. Let me know by leaving a five star review in Apple podcasts and telling others about the show. Thanks again for joining me Philip Pape in this episode of Wits & Weights. I'll see you next time and stay strong.
