Healthy Hormones From Puberty to Perimenopause w/ Brooke Welsh

0:00Welcome to the Just Ingredients podcast. I'm Cara Lynn, and here we dive deep into the journey of healing and wellness. If you're ready to learn, feel empowered, and take charge of your health, you're in the right place. Welcome back to the show, everyone. Today, I'm super excited for our guest because she is a women's health practitioner, and I have so many women listeners that have so many questions, and so she's going to go through a lot of your questions for you. And so welcome to the show. It's Brooke Welsh. That's correct. Thanks. Glad to be here. Well, thank you so much. Will you just tell my audience a little bit about yourself?

0:39Because I know you worked in labor and delivery, worked with OBGYNs, but now you have your own clinic. So I'm curious what led you to open your own clinic. Correct. I was a labor and delivery nurse for eight years and then went on and pursued a nurse practitioner licensure in women's health. I love women's health. I love working with women straight out the gate. worked in an infertility world for about five years. Loved that. Kind of shipped it over to family medicine for about a year, year and a half, and then worked OBGYN. I started my own place because I got sick of somebody telling me how to practice medicine and that everybody fit into a box.

1:13I tried to fight a few fights with the company that I was working for, which is local, and it's kind of like David versus Goliath. So did they want you to stick like in a traditional medicine box and you wanted to add maybe a few alternative things in there? Yes, that and just looking at blood work differently with different patients through different ages or not following exact protocols. Like I'd have young women that would have a breast lump and we'd want to do an ultrasound and they required a mammogram and I didn't want them exposed to that radiation at such a young age. So tried to fight that fight and didn't work out.

1:48So I was banging my head on a wall. So you finally opened your own clinic to help women the best that you know how to. Correct. Well, I love that. Okay, so I thought it'd be fun today because I have listeners who have teenagers at home, girls that are maybe going to start puberty, things like that. But then I've got people in their 40s, 50s, all different ages of moms out there and women out there. So I thought it'd be sort of fun to just go through the ages of kids, daughters, sons, husbands, moms of different hormonal issues that they might be experiencing or dealing with. But before we begin that, I want to start at the very basics and just explain what hormones are.

2:31The best way to nail a hormone down and explain it is it's a chemical messenger, a hormone. And we have tons of hormones in our body, but they run around and tell your tissues what to do. And I hear about hormonal imbalances all the time lately. So is it more prevalent today or we just have social media so it sounds like it's more prevalent? I think it's probably a combination of both. But genuinely, I think, I mean, over the last 30 years, we've seen a huge shift in how we're processing hormones and things that are blocking them. And it's nice that we actually have a little bit more awareness of it and that I think COVID was rough on us as a society, but like it made everybody question, which is kind of amazing.

3:12So now we have a lot of patients that instead of just following exactly what their doctor says to do, I'm going to ask why and why is this applying to me and what side effects should I have and where should this come out on a positive side for me? Oh, I love that. And I love that they're asking, like, why do I feel crappy? The doctors say the labs are fine, but I don't feel good. So what else is going on? Okay, so what do you think is making these hormonal imbalances more prevalent today? Is it just that we have a bunch of endocrine disruptors out there? We do. I think there are a lot of endocrine disruptors.

3:49And when you talk endocrine disruptors, basically what that is, is on a cell, when a hormone comes in to work on the cell, it's got to kind of plug in to almost fit through a doorway in order to get into the cell to work. Does that make sense? So you've got something kind of standing in the way, right? So it's trying to fit, you know, a square peg into a round hole and it cannot get into the cell to work appropriately. Maybe some of it can get in, but not all of it. So when you talk endocrine disruptors, we're looking at a huge part of that is diet, right? The quality of the food that we're dealing with now, we're dealing with higher cortisol levels constantly.

4:24Instead of the up and down and up and down and up and down that cortisol should be doing in our systems, we just run high consistently. Right. So there are quite a few things that are blocking, yeah, that hormone from working. Hormones, like you said, are chemical messengers. So they're going to go tell the cells what to do. And if we have an endocrine disruptor blocking the doorway for the hormone to get in to the cell, then the cell doesn't know what to go do properly. Right. Yeah. It only gets part of its message in instead of the whole thing. Something that drives me crazy with endocrine disruptors, or I should say products that drive me crazy, are all the smelly lotions, bath soaps, shampoos, conditioners, the makeup, everything.

5:03Because I'm like, these teenagers are just rubbing all of these endocrine disruptors into their body and don't even realize it. So it's like not even their fault. Right. Yeah. And we're doing that at young ages. Do you think beauty products are one of the biggest culprits for these younger girls or teenagers? my opinion on that I feel like is more the food. Oh really? Yeah because I mean like you think about it right so like they've come out and said okay we'll use deodorant that doesn't have aluminum in it right like full disclosure I've used aluminum deodorant for I don't know how many years tried switching I did not smell good it did not work it did not work and I've tested my aluminum levels and they're insanely low so I think it number one depends on the person but I think it has more to do with like actually what we're ingesting.

5:49Interesting. So I have a question about this. Do you think it's that they're not getting their nutrients or you think it's things like the pesticides, herbicides that's on our food? I think it's probably a combination of the two. In all honesty, if you think about the pesticides and herbicides that we're putting onto the food, right, it's kind of blocking that. And then it's damaging the soil. And we don't do crop rotation like we used to do. I mean, you know, growing up in high school, you learn about all the history and how that crop rotate and farmers would kind of work that all out. But we don't do that anymore.

6:20So it's definitely changing the quality of food that's coming out of the ground, even when you're trying to eat really clean and really healthy. I'm curious then. So someone had told me a while ago that her daughter started her period at eight years old and she just freaked out, took her to the pediatrician. And as soon as she changed the daughter's diet, got her off of conventional dairy, conventional meats, things like that. it actually stopped and didn't come back until she was in eighth grade. And so have you seen that before? That's just a weird story. No, for sure. We're seeing average age of starting periods is about nine years old now.

6:57Oh my goodness. It's really, that's so young, which when we were growing up, it was like 12 or 13. Well, yeah, you were like in like seventh, eighth grade. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And a lot of that has to do with, we have a really high omega-6 fatty, right, diet here in the United States. And that's playing a big role. A lot of your hormones are metabolized in your fat cells. So it is one of your main metabolizing sites. So when you overfill that, right, the body's trying to adjust. So those omega-6 are contributing to people starting earlier. Yeah. Okay. Well, this is interesting because non-conventional dairy, like organic dairy, grass-fed, the grass-fed meats, they're higher in omega-3s than the conventional.

7:41Yes, that's your balance. Oh, I never put that together. Yeah, so I'm trying to think if it was. I did a training once from, oh, Michael Lewis, Dr. Michael Lewis. He's a neurology expert, runs a clinic out on the East Coast. From his teachings, he's kind of an omega expert in trying to heal the brain with like omega-3s, right? And we're born with a one-to-one, omega-3 to omega-6 diet, right? We're born that way through breast milk, right? And then as we get older, that gap kind of widens, right? So on average, the average American has a 1 to 26. So 1 omega-3 to 26 omega-6s. Wow. Really high fat diet.

8:20Yeah, and I was reading the other day, it should be like 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 or even maybe 1 to 4. But then, yeah, I was reading that it was my, the one that I read said 1 to 20. But 26, that's crazy. And so we're just getting not enough salmon in our diet and not enough of the grass-fed meats, things like that, and eating. So we should just say, like, it's a lot of that ultra-processed food out there, the packaged food that is full of those omega-6s, the fast food with the seed oils, they have the omega-6s, things like that. Okay, so let's talk about different ages in the home and what moms should maybe expect.

9:01I was going to start with young girls and ask you what age should they expect, but you just answered that, which I'm still floored that you said nine years old because I have a 12-year-old daughter, and I'm like, nine years old? That is so young. That would have been three years ago. So for those that have not had a daughter go through puberty yet, are there signs that a mom can look for to know that it might be happening soon or not really? Yes, there are. Mostly, I think most moms notice the mood shifts, right? You'll notice little breast buds starting. They'll deposit fat in different areas.

9:35But that usually, honestly, the mood shift thing starts about a year to two years before they even start their period. Oh, interesting. So good luck to everyone. Good luck to those with teenage girls. Okay, but why are the mood shifts happening? It's just the brain trying to figure out how to initiate the hormones, how to balance the hormones. The thing that's in charge of that is the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. And the communication between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland can kind of go back and forth and back and forth. And it's just really learning how to mature up. And for a girl, that can last until they're 21.

10:09Oh, interesting. Right. So is there anything as moms that we can do to help with this? Diet, exercise, and great sleep are the biggest keys on both your girls and your boys. Keep them active. Try to cut back on processed foods, like high fatty diets. Try to keep that low, right? And especially a little plug on PCOS, right? If you have like more of a genetic tendency for PCOS, moms had it, other sisters have had it, then try to keep that little one, especially at a younger age, 7, 8, 9, 10, on a lower fat diet. Oh, lower fat diet? Well, lower bad fat diet. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. Okay. We don't want to demonize healthy fats, though.

10:50Yeah, you still want, you know, peanut butter, avocado, like the good healthy fats. But yeah. Okay. And the processed sugars at a minimum if you can. I can attest to this because I have a 12-year-old and on like Friday nights if she's at a friend's house and they're just eating junk or whatever, Saturdays, I'm like, what did you eat last night? Like, this is ridiculous. Your mood is like, oh, you know, where during the week when I'm feeding her and packing her lunches and she's having our breakfast and our dinners, I feel like she does pretty good. And then the weekend comes and I'm like, wow.

11:25Yeah, my 13 year old boy is the same way. He's got some bad ADHD, does the same thing. Behavior is totally different when he's taking in a ton of carbs or he's tried to eat out or something like that over the weekend. Yeah. Yeah, it's just moms out there, if you have kids with just mood issues, things like that, really watch what they're eating. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about daughters that have now hit puberty, like maybe till, I don't know, 18, 19 when they're in the house. I had a daughter. She's now moved out. But during that age time, I was blown away with her friends' monthly cycles. They were so bad, they would skip school, or they bled so heavy they had to come home from school, or it just seemed like everybody, every friend of hers was like this.

12:13And so are you seeing girls with worse and worse cycles than what it used to be? Yes, and traditionally the fix for that when you go into an OB-GYN, because I think that's your natural first step, is I'll just take you into my OB, she's amazing or he's amazing, and we'll get it fixed. And their immediate fix is birth control pills, which is not a great option. That is happening because the body is still learning how to cycle. Is that why they're so like painful or heavy or like they've got to be in bed? Is it is purely the body trying to figure it out? Some of that is genetics. Right. But yeah, that's coming down on a cellular level.

12:51Like the body's trying to figure out how to process the hormones the right way. It does get exacerbated or they'll become more intense when they do have like higher carb, bad fats, when their diet's not great, which is hard on a teenager. I was going to say, I felt like my daughter's friends, it was all diet based. What a bit of it is. I mean, they're eating, they're drinking like energy drinks and Diet Cokes and skipping breakfast and then just going out for fast food for lunch. And I'm like, wow, you guys aren't even getting enough, you know, omega threes or magnesium or things that could help.

13:25Yeah. So all my kids, even from a really young age, I put them on magnesium at night and they're all on omega threes. they're also on vitamin D, right? And that is a big thing here in like Utah, that we have really low vitamin D. And that is helping your cells. It's an initiator vitamin. So it's helping start cellular processes, one of which is hormone production. So it's, it's kind of all the things combined together. There's genetics, the brain is still learning how to process hormones. So when you add additional really high sugar diet, right? Hormones are metabolized in your fat cells. So if that fat cell gets filled up with sugar, the cells are very intelligent.

14:03So they're going to prioritize what's going to keep me alive over what's going to make me feel good, right? And sugar for a cell is a fuel source. So it needs the sugar. It's going to snag onto that first. And then your hormones get kind of pushed on the back burner. Does that make sense? Interesting. Yeah. So it's almost harder for the brain to learn how to use the hormones and how to cycle the hormones if you're consuming a ton of junk. Makes sense. Yeah. So we know why omega-3s would help because we've talked about the fats, but I'm curious why magnesium helps. Magnesium is an enzymatic starter, right?

14:39So your vitamin D is your cellular starter. And within that cell, you have different enzymes that are going from cell to cell, trying to help things turn on and off. And that's magnesium. So magnesium is super important. And interestingly enough, I think, Statistically speaking, I think 90 % of the United States is really low in magnesium. Which is crazy. I know. I was reading the other day that over 800 processes in the body need magnesium. Yeah. So if we're low in magnesium, well, no wonder why we've got some issues. Right. Yeah. Okay. So let's go back to the hormonal birth control. I don't love that they're just doing that.

15:15To me, it's slapping a Band-Aid on a problem rather than figuring out the root cause. Totally agree. Totally agree. But it's what we have and it's what we've always done. Does that make sense? So when you go through school, I went to school up at the U. I'm taught from somebody who's been in practice for so many years, right? They were taught from somebody who's been in practice for so many years. And full disclosure, insurance really constrains how much time your physician can spend with you, which is one of the big reasons why I left, right? I think I figured when I was working with the company I was working with, and I tried to fight this a little bit, but I was given about six to eight minutes per patient.

15:54Oh, wow. So it's easy when you have a problem and I can give the same fix to every person. But it's not a fix. It's a Band-Aid. No. And then it can cause other issues down the road. It actually can make things a lot worse. Right. And why can it make it worse? Well, you're kind of putting birth control on the hypothalamus, on the brain, your hormone control center, is almost like a mute button, right? So you're muting that in a time when it's trying to learn how to work the right way. So like you take your toddler and that kiddo is trying to learn how to speak. I'm trying to learn these different words and you're just shushing them all the time.

16:34Does that make sense? Yeah. So you can't shush it. It's not going to learn how to process hormones the right way. Birth control doubles down in the fact that it can do. It's one of your main causes of damaging your gut wall. Oh boy. Right. And then so much is connected to the gut. Inflammation, your mood, immune system, so many things. Okay, so let's help these moms out. They've got a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old girl, painful period, wanting to stay home from school because they're so painful. They come to you. Where do you start with them or what advice do you give them? Diet and exercise are huge.

17:11Prioritizing sleep is a big deal. Making sure vitamin D levels, magnesium are on board. My teenagers will not eat fish. It's not going to happen. So we give them an omega-3 every day, right? So making sure they have basic good vitamins right in their system. And this is variable on the person. So you have to talk with your provider on this one, right? But I like a supplemental approach, especially on someone younger. In OBGYN, we have this protocol where if you want to reset the hypothalamus, right, and kind of take over from what it's doing, you give a hormone. You have like a birth control for a couple of months.

17:45It actually works really pretty well where you'll reset the hypothalamus, take the birth control away, and then things should hopefully kick back into a good rhythm, good cycle. I don't like that approach. I actually like more of a supplemental approach. So there's a good supplement that I really like called DIM. Technically, when you Google it, most of the information you're going to find is that it's an estrogen blocker. It's not. It's an estrogen balancer. It's actually what we call an aromatase inhibitor. So it's made to prevent your body from turning hormones into other hormones. So I'll use a DIM for a couple of months, like a low-dose one, depending on how much the teen weighs, right?

18:21And then take it away and see if you can reset that cycle again. Well, that's interesting. So we sell a DIM, but we've never sold it as like a reset for younger people. Yeah, I'll do like a lower dose, like 100 milligram, 150 milligram. And it's tricky to find. We usually advertise it as for those that have like too much estrogen to help them clear some of that estrogen. You can. Yeah, it's definitely a great use for it. I'll use it on a lot of my endometriosis women. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so hopefully that advice will help some moms out there. But I want to move on to sons in the house, the boys in the house.

18:58We're hearing a lot on social media how testosterone levels are declining, how they've declined so much recently. And I've seen on social media people saying that a 70-year-old's testosterone level in the 80s is comparable to what ours is today for a 20-year-old. Sounds about right. Which is crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. And so does that mean these levels are dropping as young as a 15-year-old, 16-year-old, 17-year-old? They're already declining? Or they never rise in the first place. So what's contributing to the testosterone never rising? it's supposed so for boys they start puberty i'll kind of go back to the beginning and maybe this will answer it a little bit better um and a little bit more in depth but boys should start puberty about a year or two after girls do right so if on average a girl's starting around nine which really should be like 10 or 11 boys are typically starting about 10 or 11 right and then their testosterone should go up by like 300 goes 30 times higher than what it's ever been throughout their entire lives, right?

20:00So if these critical times when they're 10, 11, 12, and testosterone should really start rising as they're going into puberty, they're not active, and they're consuming a ton of junk food, right? And they never sleep. These are preventers on keeping the brain from actually processing and producing the hormones the way they're supposed to do. And then when they do produce the hormones, if they're, you know, again, crappy diet, something along those signs not sleeping not active you know glued to a tv screen all the time then that that that is being blocked that doorway is not all the way open to accept that hormone to come in and tell the cell whatever it is the brain the muscles whatever to do your job here's your role okay so can we break this down a little bit and why does sleep affect this sleep is your body's reset right so you're kind of go, go, go, go, go through the day is how you should be working.

20:59That's not how most people now are working, but you should be go, go, go through the day. And then at night, your body, all of your cells get essentially like, I just need a rest. We've got to charge my battery, basically. So the cells and the hormones can work effectively the next day. Right. Okay. So then what does exercise have to do with this? Exercise is the biggest thing is circulation, right but for boys specifically when muscles get torn down they're going to release lactic acid right and that triggers the brain to release more hormone which for a boy is testosterone so if you have a boy that sits in front of the tv and plays video games all day long right he's not doing anything in helping his brain make more hormones he's not sending that signal so everything in the body is a cycle and it all wants to stay really balanced out.

21:50But everything is kind of dependent on another cell telling it to do its job. So at 10, 11, 12, obviously they're not at the gym, but they could be outside playing. They could be on a sports team. Right. Any of the things. Right. And then at 16, 17, 18, if they're done playing team sports or whatever, go to the gym. Go to the Jim. Okay. So let's say now 20 year olds. I have a bunch of 20 year old boys that work for me. I mean, in their 20s, I should say. So the same culprits that's causing this testosterone? Yeah. From young ages. Right. Diet though, again. Not great in your 20s. Not great in your 20s.

22:30Yeah. Can we address sodas and energy drinks? Do we think this is playing a role in boys' testosterone? I do. I do. Most sodas energy drinks have a decent amount of caffeine in them. And there's a lot of research that backs the fact that caffeine is a damager to the gut wall. So most of my patients, if I pull them off of caffeine, it's a lot easier to manage their hormones. If the caffeine is damaging their gut wall, how though is that affecting the hormones? When the gut wall gets damaged, it then releases endotoxin, which is technically a protective bacteria for the gut wall called lipopolysaccharide.

23:08Lipopolysaccharide's job is to cause inflammation and tear things down. So when we damage the gut wall, inside the gut wall you have these really tight junctions. The tissues are all kind of stacked up, right? And when they're open and they're cracked, that lipopolysaccharide that's supposed to aid in helping you break down your food can leak through that gut wall and circulate throughout your system, and it will bind to whatever cell it finds. So if it finds a hypothalamic cell, it's going to tear down how that hypothalamus is going to function. So it acts as an endocrine disruptor. It can. So any foods out there that are, I say, knocking at the gut wall is what I say, because eventually they like poke through and then become this endotoxin.

23:50Any of those then can mess with your hormones. Correct. Yeah. That is so interesting because I've had doctors on here, a lot of doctors on here talking about the leaky gut, you know, which is what we call it on social media and things, but they never talk about the leaky gut being contributors to endocrine disruptors. Oh, 100%. The gut is kind of your brain. It's just they're so closely linked together that in my practice, I kind of fix the gut first and then move up from there. So I will run into excessive barriers in trying to balance somebody's hormone or balance their thyroid or whatever it is we're trying to do, as long as their gut is unhealthy.

24:33I know high fructose corn syrup can contribute to leaky gut. Also, artificial dyes have been shown to do that. Some gluten has shown to do that. I mean, there's lots of different things out there. So all of those things can affect your hormones. Correct. Yeah, a lot of doctors don't Talk about that. Yeah. Lipopolysaccharide is kind of a rabbit hole. You could go down, full disclosure. But it is a really damaging inflammatory cell. It's very beneficial when it stays in the place that it's supposed to be in, which is the gut. Then when it leaks outside of the gut, it is very damaging. And typically, inflammation cells, lipopolysaccharide, interleukin-6, TNF-alpha, these are all really common inflammation cells, right, that tear things down.

25:19They kind of work in a pack. Okay, so interesting. So I'm going to say to all those 20-year-old boys, but it's got to apply to the 30-year-old too. It can apply to any age, really. Really, yeah. That if they have leaky gut, they're going to have things that are going to help them have lower testosterone in life. Right. Not processed for girls. It's going to be not processing estrogen the right way, not dumping it out, right? Which is where you see more hormone imbalances as well, right? So yeah, the gut's a big deal. Okay, so I was just going to ask for girls what it is then because I think most Americans, I'm going to go find a stat, deal with leaky gut.

25:56Oh, correct. Yeah. Because of the food that we have. Like so many foods had artificial dyes. So much food used to have high fructose corn syrup. A lot of that is being changed into other things. But even too much sugar can play a role. And I mean, when you look at the data on leaky gut, the things that cause it, birth control is up there. I have personally, like in my career, written tens of thousands of prescriptions of birth control. I feel like there's a time and a place for everything. So I'm not completely anti-birth control. So keep that in mind. Right. But on someone whose brain is learning how to cycle and regulate hormones, I think it's you don't want to put a mute button on them.