227. Menopause: Symptoms, Hormones, Tests & Solutions with Sage Workinger-Brecka & Gary Brecka

22:22And I wasn't clearing it.

22:23Gary Brecka:And you were not clearing it. In fact, if you look on some of these tests, you will actually see the COMT gene mutation, which so many OBGYNs overlook. It's called COMT. We affectionately call it COMT, but it stands for catecholomethyltransferase. These are catecholamines in the brain. Catecholamines are the four neurotransmitters that are involved in the fight or flight response. They're norepinephrine, epinephrine, ephedrone, and dopamine. One of those we call adrenaline as well. and so think of hormones like adrenaline, dopamine, dopamine the main driver of behavior, you know, adrenaline is what happens when we're hopped up, you know, epinephrine, norepinephrine.

23:03Gary Brecka:So these are the same cascade of neurotransmitters that are involved in a fight or flight response. So if you have this gene mutation, which ladies listen up, not the vast majority, but about 42 to 44 % of you have this gene mutation in addition to the MTHFR gene mutation, but when you have this gene mutation you have a tendency to go to bed tired but when you go to sleep your mind keeps you awake so you lay there and you ruminate on the dumbest little thoughts you just have these most innocuous little thoughts did I get everything on my grocery list did my belt match my shoes, did I return that email it makes it worse if you're a type A mom like I am so then you're worrying about everybody's problems she has show tunes going through her head there's a lot that goes through my brain And that doesn't make its way out of my mouth, which you should be grateful for.

23:53Okay.

23:54Gary Brecka:I'm sorry.

23:58Gary Brecka:So these catecholamines, when they rise, they also trigger anxiety. This is why anxiety very often doesn't have a specific trigger, meaning you can't always point to the trigger that causes it. This is why the vast majority of people that suffer from anxiety have had it on and off throughout their entire lifetime. so they had it as a child but didn't know how to explain it and as an adult they realized it was anxiety. This is also why anti-anxiety medications don't work for the vast majority of people because it makes them feel like a zombie. You're tranquilizing this response in the body rather than using methylated vitamins to help you break these neurotransmitters down.

24:37Gary Brecka:So when you look on a hormone test, you'll see that CompT, in addition to regulating these neurotransmitters that create this fight or flight response, lead to anxiety, lead to waking thoughts at night, and also lead you to consider any scenario as the worst case scenario. So if you've got trouble at work, it's the worst possible outcome. If you've got trouble at home, it's the worst possible outcome. If you've got friction with a family member, it's the total end. And that is because those are fight or flight neurotransmitters. Those are worst case scenario neurotransmitters. They're ancestrally meant to protect us, right?

25:13Gary Brecka:They're instant on. Somebody's standing in front of you with a knife, you don't have a lot of time to warm up. Eyes have to dilate, hearing has to be more acute, heart rate has to increase, extremities have to flood with blood. Those same reactions can happen without a trigger. And so people that are listening to this that have those kinds of feelings, just know that you're not crazy. That is a rise in catecholamines, can be mitigated with the right methylated multivitamins. And this also helps, this very same gene mutation helps to clear estrogen. It sends estrogen down what we call the E2 pathway, which is a way of eliminating it.

25:47Gary Brecka:And if you're not doing that well, you can become estrogen dominant. Now, Sage, and I'm not just saying this because you're sitting here, but she's very fit, very muscular, very low body fat, and on the thin side, she's very lean. So, you know... When I was estrogen dominant, I had a tire around my belly. Yeah, and she started to develop this little tire. Women think they're getting fat, but they're not. They're getting water retensive. and the estrogen band is that band right below your belly button moving laterally around to your flanks and back behind you. Like if you put your hands in your back jeans pocket and lifted your hands up, your palms would cover this other problem.

26:24You'd just feel like bloated and off.

26:26Gary Brecka:Yeah. It wasn't a huge difference and it was really just that I noticed it, but I know it can be a lot worse for women too. And just so you know, we were doing all the things. All the things. Red light therapy, sauna, cold plunging. We have a hyperbaric chamber. She was getting in on a regular basis. We have pulse electromagnetic field. We sleep in EMF 10. She eats extremely clean. Like Sage's diet is so clean. I am. You said today that I have one of the best diets and I do. I think that's why I didn't suffer so much with the three-day water fast because I don't think I had all the detox symptoms that a lot of people get with the headaches and the poor sleep and all of that.

27:05I actually felt pretty good and alive because I eat very healthy. I always tell people I don't eat like an asshole because I don't eat fried food, processed food, fast food. I eat very healthy whole foods. So I think that that helps even when other things are going wrong. I was doing a lot of the right things, but it was a struggle because I wasn't, you know, fixing it and I couldn't understand why.

27:30Gary Brecka:Yeah. So being the best biohacker in the world, I said we need to really take a deep dive here. Let's get a full picture of the hormones. Let's look at everything and not just take a snapshot. So not just take a blood test. So we did this Dutch test. We, she did this blood test, Dutch test. And I had to pee on a stick five different times throughout the day. Which frustrated her and made her mad. Because I'm such a perfectionist. Maybe now will be a good time to apologize for that. I don't think I ever got an apology. There's so many instructions with it. I'm going to just tell you this right now.

28:06If you're like particular like I am, it's, you know, I like it all laid out. I like it at the right time. You have to set alarms. Yes, I'm a perfectionist. So that was a lot. But then I also had my blood work done within like a month of each other. Gene tests we already knew about. And the mold test was last year. So a lot of testing to figure this all out.

28:27Gary Brecka:Yeah, so I'm trying to shortcut this for a lot of women that are on here. I know, exactly. Because not everybody can afford all of these things. Yeah, but getting that test was a game changer. When it came back, it explained everything. So let's head back to the whiteboard, and let's take a look at what we learned from this test. So this is Sage's Dutch test, and this is a 24-hour urine test. I think this is the gold standard for women's hormones, especially if you are perimenopause, premenopause, or postmenopausal, and you want to get an accurate picture of your hormones. The reason why is this doesn't just take a snapshot in time.

29:00Gary Brecka:It looks at the ratio of hormones, And listen up, women. The ratio of hormones is as important as your levels because at some times during the day, they can be at different levels. So when you just take a blood test and you just get a quick snapshot, you don't really get the true picture. And then it's hard to prescribe hormone therapy because you don't have the full profile. So before I explain what's going on here and before we go into this test, understand that estrogen is a category of hormones. So women have something called E1, and they have something called E2, and they have something called E3.

29:38Gary Brecka:So there is estrone, E-S-T-R-O-N-E, estradiol.

29:51Gary Brecka:Yeah, estrone, estradiol. I'm going to tell you number three here in a second, but it's this It's estradiol that I want to focus on here for a minute. And the third one is estriol. Okay, so the importance in understanding that there's three different variants, if you will, of estrogen is that they are active at three different times, meaning some are more prevalent postmenopausal, which would be E1. It's a very weak estrogen. Some are more potent during your menstrual cycle when you're still a menstruating female. That would be E2. In fact, E2 is 10 times more potent than E1 and 100 times more potent than E3.

30:33Gary Brecka:These are still important, but estradiol, the most potent estrogenic hormone, is 100 times more potent than estriol and 10 times more potent than estrione. The reason why that's important is like this is the master hormone, And this is very high in premenopausal women, and then it tanks in menopause. Okay, so when this hormone tanks, let me tell you what this hormone is responsible for. This estrogen hormone is responsible for mood. It's responsible for skin elasticity. It is very linked to your emotional state. It's linked to your libido. It's also linked to your menstrual cycle. So why does your menstrual cycle stop when estradiol tanks?

31:19Gary Brecka:because this is the main potent hormone for your menstrual cycle. Why does your mood get thrown off? Why do you have emotional outbursts? You're happy one second, you want to kill somebody the next. That's because this is a very, very powerful form of estrogen. Why does your skin look like all of a sudden you started aging? And why does the elasticity of your skin change? Why does libido just leave the building? Because this is the main driver of all four of those things. Okay, so when we look at the Dutch test, Let me erase this for a minute. I'm just going to walk you through this. When we look at the Dutch test, you see this is the summary of the testing.

31:57Gary Brecka:And thankfully, Sage has just been very willing to be vulnerable about this. Now, the good news is we fixed all of this. But she's been very willing to be vulnerable about this. And I'm going to show you guys a follow-up test when we get one done because she's on hormone therapy now. And almost all of these consequences have been mitigated. So you see this little arrow right here that's pointing to this little purple square. This purple square represents postmenopausal. It is pointing directly at the postmenopausal area. It's not in the green range where it would normally be if she was still having a normal menstrual cycle.

32:32Gary Brecka:The same with progesterone, which, by the way, helps women sleep. It can also help men sleep. So what I would suspect is that mood would be off, skin elasticity would be off, the menstrual cycle would have ended or be very, very off. I mean, massive gaps in timing because this hormone, which is between 10 times and 100 times more powerful than the other estrogens, is floored out and in the postmenopausal range. So if you see this, you have a perfect explanation for why you're feeling the way that you do. The thing about progesterone is when progesterone floors out, you have a difficult time falling asleep and staying asleep.

33:10Gary Brecka:This is why sometimes progesterone can be a magic pill for men and women, usually in younger ages, that are having a difficult time sleeping. The other thing that I want to point out here, and I'm going to explain this later in the test, is that we have a waking hormone called cortisol. And if we look at waking in the morning versus nighttime, a normal pattern for cortisol, as you may know, and this is one of the reasons why I think that you should be getting morning light is that cortisol is rising in the morning. Cortisol is our waking hormone. It's responsive to light. That's why first light in the morning, getting sunlight in your eyes in the morning is such a good thing.

33:52Gary Brecka:It actually starts to fall in the morning into the afternoon. This is why you feel more energy later in the morning because you feel that energy in the morning and you feel lack of energy throughout the day because the cortisol is falling. This is very normal. And then as you go into your nighttime sleep pattern, it falls off to a low. This is when melatonin starts to rise. So actually look at Sage's cortisol cycle. So do you see here how cortisol is barely rising? This means it's really hard to wake up in the morning. So this is one of the catastrophes that also happens in menopause. Why? Because cortisol is made from another hormone called pregnenolone.

34:35Gary Brecka:It also makes aldosterone, but it's made from pregnenolone. So when you go into post-menopause, your estrogens start to drop. The most powerful estrogen gets floored out. The mood changes. The skin elasticity changes. Libido leaves the building and you feel like a crazy person, right? And your menstrual cycle is all jacked up if you even have a menstrual cycle. So that explains those four things. If we don't have cortisol rising in the morning and falling later in the morning. This is waking, this is morning, this is afternoon. So by mid-morning, it's peaked, and then it starts to fall off during the day.

35:14Gary Brecka:But look at this low rise in cortisol. She has no cortisol. I'm going to show you why, because her pregnenolone, the precursor to make this hormone, was also floored out, which is why if you're going to do hormone replacement therapy, talk to your OBGYN and about replacing the entire suite of hormones, including pregnenolone, testosterone, progesterone, E1, E2, and E3. The other thing is, look at what's happening in the afternoon as cortisol should be tanking, look at the direction of her cortisol. So her stress hormone is rising when the circadian cycle should normally be tanking, right? And then it barely goes down and matches her normal cycle.

35:57Gary Brecka:So we're out of the hormone. We've run out of the hormone cortisol, which makes it very, very difficult to wake up in the morning. Look at the 24-hour free cortisol. Look where that's pointing. It's completely deficient. Look at her ability to clear cortisol. Very deficient. That's a solid F, right? On a 0 to 100 scale, 30 % is a solid F. So we're not clearing cortisol. We're not producing cortisol. It's actually rising for a prolonged period of time when it actually should, a bit about this point, start to fall off so that she's in a normal circadian cycle. So now your circadian rhythm is off.

36:34Gary Brecka:You're trying to wake up in the morning without a waking hormone. You're trying to go to bed at night without a sleeping hormone. Your mood is off. Your energy is off. Your menstrual cycle is completely out of balance. Your skin elasticity is decreasing. libido has left the building, and this seems like a major catastrophe. All of this is linked mainly to these two hormones. Let me show you something going on on the next page. I won't bore you with all of this. These are the different phases. You're welcome to look at those. So look here. This is what I meant about a precursor, okay? So remember, these purple blocks are postmenopausal.

37:10Gary Brecka:So when you see these things pointing to these purple blocks, that is the postmenopausal block. This is the postmenopausal range, right? So you see that all of these hormones are in this postmenopausal range. Look at this. See this postmenopausal range here? The important point that I want to make now is that there is a hormone called pregnenolone. Pregnenolone is this precursor. Look at this. D-H-E-A, also low in her. Progesterone. what kind of sleep can you expect to have when your progesterone is like this? So it's literally like an evil wizard. I mean, it takes your libido away, makes your skin less elastic, throws your menstrual cycle off, throws your mood and emotional state off, and throws your sleep into the toilet because the progesterone is also off.

38:02Gary Brecka:Now, progesterone is going to become two other hormones. It's not important. I don't want to get too deep into the hormone therapy here, but you see if this is in the postmenopausal range, So are its sub-constituents. Then we look at what DHEA becomes. Well, DHEA comes over and helps to make the android hormones that are precursors for testosterone. This has not yet fallen. It also makes testosterone, which becomes free testosterone. So if we look at this cascade of events, her E1, which is a relatively weak estrogen, is floored out. The most powerful estrogen in the body has become postmenopausal.

38:36Gary Brecka:This actually increases in postmenopause. Her most powerful estrogen hormone is floored out, and even her E3 is off. So all of these hormones are floored out. It is no wonder you feel the way you do. This is why I love this test, because it gives your doctor a chance to actually replace all of these hormones. Look at the metabolized cortisol. Look at this, guys. There's no way. And then guess what happens? All of this happening at one time throws women into fight or flight. You're stressed out because libido's gone. You're looking in the mirror and you're like, wait, all of a sudden I'm aging faster.

39:11Gary Brecka:I can't wake up in the morning. I feel like a lead balloon. I have no motivation. My mood is completely off. You get something called flat affect or mood numbness where the peaks and valleys of mood disappear so you don't get really, really, really happy. You don't get really, really, really pissed off. You're just kind of, eh, very melancholy. There's no positive aggression towards life. There's no positive aggression towards working out. and stress causes the brain to release ACTH, which stimulates the adrenal glands to make hormones, including DHEA and cortisol. So stress aggravates this even more and mainly the stress hits during the day when your cortisol should be low.

39:50Gary Brecka:So you see that even though she doesn't have a lot of cortisol, the stress is actually causing it to rise when it should be falling. So this is why it can wreck your metabolism. This is why women feel so off and they feel like a crazy person and they have brain fog. Like they literally can't complete a coherent thought. This is not them breaking down. This is their hormones going in the tank. And we don't have to suffer like this. Women, you do not have to suffer with the consequences of menopause. We know how to treat this now. And this is the gold standard test. So DHEA production, thankfully, is still in the normal range.

40:25Gary Brecka:It's post-menopausal, but it hasn't completely flattened itself out. Look at this. Waking in the morning. So what do we want more of? Cortisol. What do we want less of? Melatonin. So melatonin upon waking, we want melatonin in the cycle from here to here. The lower the melatonin, the easier it is to wake up. Cortisol rises in the morning, melatonin falls. Look at her melatonin off the charts. So no cortisol, no waking hormone, plethora, an excess of melatonin. So it's no wonder she feels like a lead balloon or she used to feel like a lead balloon getting out of bed in the morning. This is not them being lazy.

41:11Gary Brecka:This is not them not being motivated. They literally do not have the hormones to accomplish a normal day. They wake up more exhausted than they went to bed. And it is hard to even get out of bed and find motivation because the motivation is gone, because the mood and emotion is off. and the ability to actually just get up and conduct your day is even harder because you are literally being drugged by your own body. Your melatonin is through the roof. I mean, this is off the charts, right? This actually cannot register any more waking melatonin. So it's like taking your sleep medication in the morning and taking your Adderall right before bed, right?

41:50Gary Brecka:So take an amphetamine, try to sleep, and then by the time you fall asleep, you wake up in the morning, take sleep medication. That's kind of how it feels. Your body is drugging you because the hormonal cycle is so off. The DHEA production is also in the postmenopausal range. So this is what you'll see on this Dutch test. This is why I love this test. This is why I think every woman who's going through menopause should do a test like this. Hopefully you have an OBGYN that can read this test. And then what you do is you do the prescription based on these levels because you have a 24-hour urine test.

42:21Gary Brecka:So the next thing we're gonna do is talk about exactly what hormones she's on because Sage not only had the mood the emotional the poor waking cycle just absolutely felt like she couldn't get out of first gear and some nights she was getting good sleep but not getting good rest and This is because the hormone cycle was so off So in addition to that when you go in and you replace these hormones You don't just replace the hormones you replace the precursors like pregnenolone It's better to do your testosterone in the morning and do your estrogen in the evening. That's more in tune with your circadian cycle.

42:56Gary Brecka:So usually you will split your hormone doses into two types, and I'm going to show you exactly the doses that she's on. To add insult to injury, there is a correlation between frozen shoulder, what's called adhesive capsulitis, and menopause. So as she plummeted into menopause, she actually got frozen shoulder. she got adhesive capsulitis and she couldn't raise her arm above about right here. A few weeks after she was on hormone therapy, she could raise her hand all the way above her shoulder and point straight at the ceiling. Her mood improved. Her emotional state improved. Her sleep improved.

43:34Gary Brecka:Her brain fog went away. All of these things are perfectly normal. Don't think you're crazy. I also want to point out the fact, I think I talked about it on the podcast, but I also want to point out the fact that the very same study that linked estrogen supplementation and estrogen hormone therapy to breast cancer was debunked in the same study by furthering the study over a prolonged period of time. Happy to link that study below so women do not be afraid of hormone therapy because you think it's going to increase the risk of breast cancer. In fact, in some areas of the study, breast cancer went down.

44:05Gary Brecka:The breast cancer risk was reduced by being on hormone therapy. So years ago, we used to take rifle shots at these hormones. We used to just give estrogen, or we would just give testosterone, or we'd just give pregnenolone, or we would just give progesterone. And that is not a way to treat women. If you're going to replace the levels, you have to replace them all. And that way they feel normal again. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens.

44:38Gary Brecka:Picture this. You're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world-renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect.

45:17Gary Brecka:This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than$100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. This is why a standard blood test doesn't tell the whole story. We pulled standard blood on Sage at the same time. She's been very willing to show this too.

45:50This is another byproduct of menopause as you become less sensitive to insulin.

45:57Gary Brecka:So the hemoglobin A1C, the three-month average of your blood sugar, starts to rise. She would have been pre-diabetic at 5.7. She was at 5.6. I can assure you my wife eats very, very well, and she exercises every day. She is the cleanest diet in our house. There is no reason for her to be almost pre-diabetic. The rest of her levels look amazing. You know, kidney function, her blood urea nitrogen, her creatinine. When you look at her iron levels, they're all within the range. she had done an IV close to this test, so it had B12 in it, what's called a Myers cocktail, so we can discount this level.

46:34Gary Brecka:Her vitamin D3 is in a great range, between 60 and 80 nanograms per deciliter. So when you're walking through labs, I mean, look at her. She's not on cholesterol medication. Cholesterol is amazing. Her triglycerides are fantastic because she doesn't eat a lot of sugar. Let me actually blow these up. So her LDL cholesterol, she's not on a statin. Total cholesterol. Her triglycerides are in a great part of the range. They're nowhere near 150, which is about the high end of the range, 149. Healthy levels of HDL cholesterol because she eats fish oil, olive oils, a lot of good healthy saturated fats, black seed oil.

47:07Gary Brecka:So everything is looking good. Even her thyroid is relatively in the normal range. It's a little low on thyroid hormone T3, but her homocysteine is fantastic. You know, she takes trimethylglycine for that, TMG. So these labs tell a totally different story. There's the stress, right? there's the stress coming from cortisol right there, which is no reason, I mean, no wonder why she was actually floored out. Her testosterone would still tell you that, you know, you should have some libido. Your testosterone's still in a good range. You know, the high end of the range is 50, but the low end is four, almost six times that level.

47:44Gary Brecka:You have free testosterone. You know, it's not zeroed out. Your cycle appears to be in the same phase. So there's no reason for your cycle to be off. The test did pick up the fact that her DHEA was on the low side. It's not flagged low, but look at this. You could increase her DHEA by 100 points and she would still be in the normal range. This will eventually have an impact on testosterone and other hormones because it's a precursor for those things. But what I'm telling you is this lab doesn't tell the right story. Everything is within range, her hematocrit, her blood viscosity, her total red blood cell count.

48:23Gary Brecka:Her immune system's not lit up like a Christmas tree. So it just doesn't tell the right story. And sadly, what happens is people just do a simple blood test and it says, hey, you're healthy. Everything's within normal range or it's slightly out of the range. That's why the Dutch test is so powerful, especially for women. Okay. Was that it? We're back. Oh, we're back. Yeah. Because I'm like, I got other symptoms to talk about. I'm back from the whiteboard. So let's go through the symptoms. Okay, so I see a lot of women that talk about feeling itchy. And I did have that. Not to a point where I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin or anything, but they talk about itchiness, itchy ears, ringing in the ears.

49:07I'm trying to think of some of the other list of symptoms that women have come to me.

49:10Gary Brecka:This is Austin in the morning, brain fog. Yeah. Libido left the building. Yeah. Also my fault. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because honestly, if you just... This is where... I don't want my parents to hear this, but... You know, your mom and dad are watching this podcast for sure. So are our nieces. Sorry, Coral. Just jump me. I mean, I'll say hi, but I'm not going to initiate because I'm just not there. I'm like, I'd rather watch a show or read my book. And so the world became about just very mundane things. It's again, super not sage. and that's what really made us. I don't want to be in big crowds. I don't want to be around a lot of people anymore.

49:51I don't know. Just weird stuff is very different than I was before and I think it was just like a feeling of being overwhelmed constantly and so I just retreat and try to keep it in my, you know, all these struggling thoughts in my head. That's why I laugh and say that 95 % of what's spinning around up here doesn't make its way out of my mouth and everybody should be grateful for that.

50:14Gary Brecka:Right. Because I don't want to end up in a mental institution. I don't think it ever got that bad. But honestly, like put me in a white padded room, I feel like I'd feel safer. But it's better now though. I don't wake up with those feelings anymore. I don't wake up. You're a lot more energetic and super back on your game. Yeah. And your frozen shoulder is gone. Yeah, that is a game changer. That was brutal. Yeah. Frozen shoulder. But when I went to doctors, so we tried acupuncture, cupping, physical therapy. I mean, we tried so much stuff. And then I went to a doctor that said, well, we'll just put you under anesthesia or a light, twilight, whatever.

50:52And we'll just rip it out. Rip it.

50:55Gary Brecka:It's called manipulation under anesthesia. Don't do that. If you see a video of manipulation under anesthesia, it is gruesome. Yeah, I saw a video and I was like, I'm not doing that. That's insane. It looks like they're breaking your shoulder. It looks like they're breaking your arm. So the fact that I got on hormones and three weeks later, I already was able to move up without pain is wild. Here's the wild thing. The night that we started the hormone therapy, she was like, okay, we're in a log cabin, 10 ,500 feet without another soul around, except me, of course, to receive the brunt of it. If it didn't work, there I was.

51:29Gary Brecka:Just call me the catcher's mitt. And so I'm like, let's do it. and she took the hormones, passed out. I mean, passed out cold. Like at seven o 'clock or something crazy. Yeah, seven o 'clock at night and slept all through the night. And I was like, hallelujah, we got it. And truthfully, it was all uphill from there. I mean, in a good way. It was all positive from there. You know, as they started to regulate, as pregnenolone started to provide the raw material for cortisol, her sleep cycle started to normalize. as her melatonin started rising at night and falling in the morning, she was less exhausted in the morning.

52:06Gary Brecka:I noticed that almost right away. She was more on her game. You know, we have a huge project going on in Colorado and she was managing all the contractors and that took a nosedive for a little while. And she was just, I think even the GC was like, who's this chick showing up today with the long laundry list of things to check up on? And she was just all of a sudden back on her game. And then the greatest thing was over the next three weeks that frozen shoulder thawed. Yeah, so there's a freezing, frozen thawing stage is what I've learned about it. It can take a year and a half for frozen shoulder to thaw.

52:41Yeah, so women up to three years if they just don't see anything change with it. So in my head, I was like, oh my God, I can't do three years of this. It's already been nine months.

52:50Gary Brecka:So ladies, it's okay to do hormone therapy. Yeah, I agree. Don't make yourself suffer unnecessarily. Oh, hot flashes, of course. That's just like something that all women, I think, go through. But that was the only thing that was ever like really pinpointed. It was like menopause, hot flashes. But that's the only symptom anybody would ever talk about. So growing up, I just thought that you just get hot flashes. And I always thought, well, I'm always very chilly, so maybe I'll enjoy that. I don't enjoy it. Maybe I'll enjoy it. Okay. She would pull her thing out and go. We're in the middle of the night.

53:25Gary Brecka:And she would blow down her chest at a restaurant. At a restaurant. Which is not appropriate. No. Not appropriate at all. But I had to. I was like, give me a cup of ice. Like, I got to take this down a notch. I'm not saying it's perfect yet. It's been a couple of weeks since I've been on them. And so, like, I'm still having certain things every once in a while. But honestly, I think that it went wonky because we were traveling internationally. So I was in too many time zones. And it's just like birth control. If you don't take it at the same time, it's not as effective. so I think I screwed up my time zones too much and it fell off and that's why I had that episode the other night.

54:01Gary Brecka:Yeah, so we actually put our hormones right here and I'm gonna put these into the show notes. So this is another important thing is the timing of the hormones. Yes, there's an AM and there's a PM and now I realize how very important it is to take it around the same time every single day, the AM and the PM. So the pregnenolone, the DHEA and the testosterone are morning. You know, you want to get the benefits of testosterone because testosterone raises libido, it improves your energy level, it actually improves your bone marrow's production of red blood cells. Red blood cells carry oxygen and what we perceive as energy is nothing more than oxygen in our blood.

54:40Gary Brecka:So if you said, Gary, I had a lot of energy today, physiologically what you're saying is I had a lot of oxygen in my blood today. So if oxygen equals energy, which it does, then if we want to raise your energy level, we've got to put more oxygen into the blood. and the vehicles that carry oxygen are red blood cells inside of a fluid called hemoglobin. It's another reason why when you go to a basic blood test and you look at your red blood cell count being in the lowest 10 percentile, but it's normal, and you look at your hemoglobin being very, very low, but it's normal, and you'll see things like mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration, these numbers start to rise because there are fewer red blood cells, so the bone marrow is trying to fill them with more fluid.

55:23Gary Brecka:and so the oxygen level so you're mildly hypoxic which leads to brain fog it leads to low energy and it also interrupts the sleep you know i very often get asked the question why do people that are the most exhausted sleep the worst and the reason for that is that you're exhausted because if you've known somebody or you've ever had the misfortune of being anemic when you have anemia you're exhausted all the time you have no stamina no energy uh you don't have that positive aggression towards working out. You're walking up a flight of steps. You feel exhausted. So that's anemic state. That does show up on labs.

55:59Gary Brecka:But when you're hypoxic, when you're just low on blood oxygen, low on red blood cells, low on hemoglobin, which happens when your testosterone tanks, then you're tired. Well, what happens when you go to sleep? Your respiratory rate starts to drop. As your respiratory rate starts to drop, your breathing is more shallow. As your breathing is more shallow, you're taking in less oxygen. Think about every time you expire air from the tip of your lips all the way down to the lobes of your lungs, that's all expired air. That's carbon dioxide. So if you're breathing very shallow, a lot of what you're breathing is just that carbon dioxide.

56:33Gary Brecka:So your brain ends up waking you up at night and the way it wakes you up is it pulses cortisol. And so when you're exhausted during the day, you also don't sleep well. And you would think, well, if I'm really exhausted, the thing I would probably do the best is sleep. So you would go to bed exhausted and wake up more exhausted than you went to bed. And so that was largely fixed by adding testosterone. And then in the evenings, she takes something called, this is not the compound of one, this is the one, she takes something called E3 and E2. These are different types of estrogen, which I'm going to explain on the whiteboard or have explained on the whiteboard.

57:12Gary Brecka:And pregnenolone. And pregnenolone is that precursor for things like cortisol and aldosterone. So it's really important to not just replace the hormones, but to replace a lot of these precursors for other hormones. And so Dr. Sardar, who's a board-certified OBGYN with 10X Health, she was our clinic director for years and years, an amazing woman. She read the Dutch test, she prescribed the hormones for sage, and I'm telling you, game changer. Yeah, she really nailed it between the blood test and the Dutch test. I think she really nailed it with finding the right combination. The cool thing, there's a couple different ways that you can take hormones too.

57:52So I have friends that are taking pellets. They do the pellets for like six months. There's the creams. You can rub on estrogen. You can rub on testosterone, estradiol, all the things. Or rapid-dissolve tablets. So I chose to do the rapid-dissolve tablets because I felt like I could adjust them. I could break them in half or do a quarter or three quarters, and I could adjust it depending on my mood. We just happened to hit it just right, and it's exactly what I needed. I feel better. I don't feel nasty anymore. I don't feel really sad. I don't feel you're nasty anymore either.

58:30Gary Brecka:Thank you. But I also don't feel sad. I would just have these – and women will understand what I'm talking about when you like – all of a sudden you're crying your eyes out for no reason, and then you look at your, if you track your periods or whatever, you look at it and you go, oh, that's because I'm getting my period in a day or two. So that's sort of how it was, but it just, none of it made any sense. It was on, you know, sad for no reason, just multiple times throughout the month. So again, I just kept blaming it on other things. One thing I also wondered, so my DHEA was actually kind of normal on the blood test and the urine test, but everything else was tanked.

59:09Is that why if I had too high a DHEA, is that why I had adult acne? Because I never had teenage acne. Yeah. But I have struggled in my chin, which they say is hormone related, for years. And it doesn't matter what lotion I use, what cleanser, what toner, what makeup. I tried everything. and I just was constantly battling these stupid zits on my chin. And is that why? Because it never made sense to me.

59:40Gary Brecka:Estrogen is especially impactful to sebaceous glands, you know, the oil glands. And that's what it is. Yeah, and they start underneath the skin. Painful ones. Yeah, start underneath the skin. And teenagers are infamous for getting this, but you also start to get it later in life, adult acne, and women get it especially when their estrogen is out of ratio, which is why it's so important to look at the ratio of hormones, not just the levels. Because remember, if you're menstruating, it's perfectly normal for your estrogen to be in the 400s. It's perfectly normal for your estrogen to be in the teens.

1:00:12Gary Brecka:So depending on where you are in your cycle, luteal follicular ovulation. So who's to say that 179 or 82 or 64 is high or low? Well, you don't know. You have to know where you are in the cycle. You have to know where the other hormones are in their cycle. It's called monophasic when they're in the same cycle. It's called aphasic when they're out of cycle because when hormones cycle together, women are fine. When hormones cycle in the opposite ratio, crazy pants. Which we've been there before. Yeah, we've been there before. I've got a PhD in crazy, just happens to be. I have a PhD in ADHD. It makes you feel better.

1:00:56Gary Brecka:It does make me feel better. It's my superpower. It is your superpower. It's insane how - I have the H in a big way because I always have energy. The hyperactivity in this one is nuts. She gets so mad at me because I'm like, I take glutathione. She's like, how do you feel? I feel amazing. I feel great. And then everything's so great. It does so great. I could slam you up against the head with a baseball bat. You'd be like, that feels great. Most things have a positive effect on my body. No, it's true. I'm like, I eat steak. I'm like, I feel great. I'm like, I eat yogurt. I'm like, I feel great.

1:01:29I actually really feel pretty much good all the time.

1:01:33Gary Brecka:I am obnoxiously happy. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with happiness. Like I think I could be the first person that could die of spontaneous happiness because I feel like I get so happy. You always say your head feels like it's gonna blow off your shoulders. Yeah, it feels like my head's gonna blow off my shoulders. I'm like, I need some bad news just to take the edge off. Take the edge off. I don't remember the last time I was upset for longer than like a minute. I could bring up a few things. hey guys let me tell you about one of my favorite new hydration drinks now this is for distance athletes hits cardio exercisers people that sweat a lot or exercise intensely and a game is a hydration drink it has eight essential vitamins it has all of the electrolytes the entire suite of b vitamins before you freak out and read that as 21 grams of sugar which it does the sugar is coming from natural cane sugar and honey my preferred mechanisms for getting glucose into the blood during intense exercise.

1:02:27Gary Brecka:It also has natural flavors, but these natural flavors don't come from bacterial fermentation. They actually come from real citrus fruits and the color is from vegetable juice, not artificial dyes. So next time you're looking for a great hydration drink and you're exercising intensely, A-game is your choice. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. Anyway. Anyway. So, you know, we really wanted to do this podcast so that we could be vulnerable and transparent, have some fun with this. You know, I hope that you guys got a lot out of the whiteboard talk, the explanation. You know, we will put Sage's hormones right in the show notes.

1:03:05Gary Brecka:I'm not saying it's exactly what you should take. No, we'll put the, but I think saying the amounts, because I do get that question, like how much, you know, E2, I don't even know. I don't have it memorized, but we'll put it out there. It does not mean that that's good. Yes, please don't take this and then just go talk to your doctor to prescribe that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you want to have data. The doctors will not be stoked about that. Yeah. They already hate the - Hey, here's my - Google warriors. Like, yeah, I've already AI, chat GPT'd all my stuff. But I do think that it helps you learn about this stuff.

1:03:39This stuff is complicated. It is. I can't say all those words and I don't really understand it. But when it was just so helpful and I remember like crying with you when we got all these results back because you looked at it and you go, yeah, and you go, oh my God, I actually, you felt bad for me because you saw it finally. It wasn't just me saying, I don't feel good. I don't feel right. You were like, holy cow, I can see it in the science.

1:04:09Gary Brecka:Yeah, I was surprised she could even get out of bed. Yes. Because I said, babe, you on paper look like a lead balloon. You know, with cortisol floored out in the morning and melatonin as off the charts as it can go, I don't know how you got out of bed. I don't either. Just pure will and stamina and being married to you that you're just like, we gotta go. Here we go. Okay. Here we go again. Put a smile on my face. Fake it till you make it. Yeah. I was happy. And that also, I'm sorry for, see a lot of apologizing. See how easy it is? It's so much easier. No, you don't have to do it that much anymore.

1:04:51No, I haven't apologized in weeks since you started hormones.

1:04:55Gary Brecka:No, it's so much better. So now I make sure that our hormones are refilled every time. But also, you know, don't just jump straight to hormones. Don't just, I think that it is important to get your methylation in balance. Figure out what raw materials, simple raw materials might be missing. What kind of B12 is good for you? What kind of, you know, do you need 5-methylfolate? Those are such important pieces to the methylation balance that leads to the hormones getting out of control. But also recognize like if – when you're in your 30s and you're like probably in baby-making phase, you're not thinking about menopause.

1:05:33Menopause is like years away. That's like grandma stage except I'm 47 and I don't feel like I'm grandma. No, definitely not grandma. But back when I was in my 30s – You're a smoking hot grandma. Thank you. Thank you. But back in my 30s, 50 felt so far away. Now it's three years away. But I think this stuff started back when I was probably 37. When we met, I think it was starting to hit, which is wild to think that.

1:06:00Gary Brecka:Yeah. But things were different in my late 30s. So women just don't need to suffer unnecessarily. Husbands don't need to suffer unnecessarily. No. Learn about it together. I think I send you a lot of memes. Oh, my gosh. Actually, I have a funny one on here. I send you a lot of things. Instagram is shockingly helpful. I'm not a TikToker, but sometimes just to make him laugh. We do have a group chat with Josh and Victoria, and it's just so that Josh and Gary can suffer together and know that. We formed a male support group. It's a support group, yes. But I do believe that men need to educate themselves as well and then just help your person through it.

1:06:45You know, there's - Lots of hugs, lots of back rubs. A lot of hugs. A lot of hugs. I mean, honestly, anything, you can get through anything with a good hug. You can. Yeah, that's true. What is it? 20 seconds of hugging -

1:06:57Gary Brecka:Yeah, oxytocin. Raises your oxytocin. The love hormone. That's what they say is in Cupid's arrow. Yes. That's the psychosomatic response. Oxytocin, dogs have a hundred times the oxytocin that human beings do. That's why they're so loyal. Yeah. We can learn a lot from our dogs. That's a fact, by the way. Okay. So, you know, as I wind down every podcast, first of all, where can my audience that is now, hopefully not newly exposed to you, but maybe they are, where do they find you? I'm only on Instagram. I am nowhere else because I can't handle social media. But at Sage Workinger Breka. We're working on dropping the workinger.

1:07:37We don't have to drop the workinger.

1:07:39Gary Brecka:We just have to shrink it. Sage W, Brecca. Right? That sounds good. S-W-G, shwoog. Shwoog. So I wind down all of my podcasts. I can't wait to hear the answer to this question. This is going to be a good one. You know this question is coming. Okay. You've seen hundreds of my podcasts. Yeah. What makes you an ultimate human? What does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? Oh, I am an ultimate human because I'm married to you. Because I kept up all these years. We do move at a fast pace. We just did 14 cities in 18 days. It's still unbelievable. And we've been home for five and we're about to leave for another month.

1:08:24Gary Brecka:Yeah. Saudi Arabia, Romania, Dubai, New York, Abu Dhabi. We're definitely getting a lot of stamps in the passport, which is super cool. We just got a place in Dubai, which is kind of cool. Yeah. So I'm excited about that. Still love Colorado over everything. But anyway. So what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? I mean, I do laugh that, you know, we've done this together and we've, you know, we've learned so much together. We have been a team. There have been moments where we haven't been a team, but we find that we are better together. No doubt. When we're a team. And that makes us the ultimate human.

1:09:03I really do believe. But yeah, as a female, go get information. Do not let someone tell you you're fine. Don't let someone tell you nothing's wrong with you. Or it's all in your head. Or it's all in your head. Or you need these prescriptions that antidepressants, anti-anxiety, sleep medications, heavy, heavy, heavy stuff. because it might be just simple things that you can get back in balance. And I think by getting all of those things in balance and replacing the raw materials and the hormones that you really do need, you can become the ultimate human.

1:09:44Gary Brecka:That was a great answer. Okay, good. So I hope that you guys enjoyed this podcast. Let us know what you thought about it. Make comments down below. I will put the results of her test and all of her hormones right down to the dosages down there because we want to be open and transparent and authentic about this podcast. I really enjoyed this. Yeah, and ask any questions. There's a VIP community that Gary has that if you're watching this and you want to know more, you can submit questions into the VIP community and we'll answer them. What's really cool is we created an AI that answers questions only the way that I would answer questions.

1:10:20Gary Brecka:We don't let it crawl the web. And so it's got years and years of information in there. Every stage talk, podcast, lecture, interview, white paper, the book that we've written, haven't published yet. All of that, this AI, this private AI is read. It's also read every question I've ever responded to. So if you're interested in becoming an Ultimate Human VIP, just go over to theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP. I pour myself into this community. We do lives. I just did nine hours of lives this week, three hours for my water fasting challenge, another six hours with the VIPs just taking questions from you guys.

1:10:59Gary Brecka:And that's my favorite thing to do. I just said, I don't care how successful we become. I will never get out of that one-to-one communication with the audience. That's what I was going to say. It's a cool community because people become friends and you find like-minded people in there. And at the end of the day, you realize everybody's struggling with the same stuff. So instead of you working one-on-one with someone, it's so awesome that you can share all this information because I hear you say the same thing to everybody that you're talking to because ultimately it's the same answer. Exactly.

1:11:33Gary Brecka:And a lot of people have the same challenges. We've had people that came in with Hashimoto's that don't have Hashimoto's anymore. We've had people with all kinds of autoimmune conditions that have put those into their remissive past. We've handled waking, water retention, thyroid issues. We talk about cancer. We talk about all kinds of things in this community. And then there are guides in there that are specific to mold detox, heavy metal detox, whole food dieting, right down to the grocery list. But the AI is amazing. And then we also did a 10-month course on becoming the ultimate human. And every module is in there, morning routine, sleep routine, travel hacks, whole food dieting.

1:12:13Gary Brecka:It's all in there. And I was going to sell this as an independent course. And I said, you know what? I'm just going to give this to the VIP community. So it really is a lot of value in there. So if you're interested - I think it gives people a good guidebook too to then educate themselves so that when they do go to their doctor's appointment, they know what questions to ask. They understand the answers better because they're like, they've prepped themselves. Because going to the doctor is overwhelming because you don't get a whole lot of time and it's hard to, when somebody might be talking over your head, they don't mean to, but it happens to me all the time.

1:12:49if I go into a doctor's office. So I think that this gives people the opportunity to go, okay, I've studied up on what questions I have and what answers I'm looking for and be a team with your doctor to figure it out together.

1:13:02Gary Brecka:Agreed. And we have a lot of physicians in there. Yeah. MDs, PhDs, researchers, nurse practitioners, nurses in there that are functional medicine practitioners, really giving good practical advice. I do a lot of lives. So I don't want to oversaw the VIP community. Sorry, I just love it too. Now would be a great time to join theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP. Let us know what you thought about this podcast, whether or not you'd like to see Sage back on more podcasts. And as always, guys, that's just science.